Shayne P Carter - Offsider (2016)

Shayne P Carter (born in Dunedin, New Zealand) is a musician best known for leading Straitjacket Fits from 1986–1994, and as the only permanent member of Dimmer (1995–2012). He currently operates under his own name. Accolades Carter has earned during his career include membership of the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, the New Zealand Herald Legacy Award (both earned with Straitjacket Fits at the 2008 New Zealand Music Awards), and New Zealand Music Awards for Best Group and Best Rock Album (Dimmer, 2004).

At the same time as calling an end to Dimmer in 2012, Carter described a new plan to learn piano, and record an album with it as the main instrument. Piano became part of his live shows in 2014, and in August that year he launched a crowdfunding campaign for "a new album in its final stages of production" - written entirely on piano, and recorded ("free of record company backing") with Gary Sullivan and other guests. The successful campaign had a goal of $8,000 and raised over $9,500.

Performing and recording as Shayne P Carter, he announced the album name Offsider in 2015. The first music released from Offsider came out more than a year later, in June 2016, when the song 'We Will Rise Again' appeared as a digital download.

"I was born in Dunedin ages ago now, and wrote all the songs for my first band Bored Games on one string. My flatmate Graeme Downes (Verlaines) taught me the chords of D and E and G while we were flatting together in a student hovel and I applied that information to six strings in my successive bands the Doublehappys, Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer.

I guess I grew up around the fabled Flying Nun Dunedin scene but when my friend Roger Shepherd sent me a signed copy of his new book recently, he'd signed it to David Kilgour. I thought maybe there was a metaphor in that.

Rock n roll has taken me everywhere from the Winz office in Dunedin to the Arista offices in New York with both locations providing their own oppressive ambience. I've enjoyed varying levels of success here and abroad. I've been given a few New Zealand Music Awards including the old school perspex ones that bust in half when they get sent to you in the post. They inducted our band Straitjacket Fits into the Hall Of Fame which made my mum proud so there was always that.

I'm about to release a new album of piano based songs called "Offsider". I like the title because it seems to suggest being out of step or out of kilter with the times which it probably is. I decided to write the songs on piano - despite having never played the instrument before in my life - because I liked the idea of naivety and discovery and having a new angle on songwriting after so many years doing it. I explored the classical music solo piano music canon before embarking on the project because I wanted to see what had been done with the piano before I sat my useless self in front of it. Schubert's lieder, Chopin's Nocturnes, Debussy's neo psychedelia, Mozart's pristine classicism, Beethoven's cosmic exploration - it was an amazing journey of discovery of a whole universe of music I'd previously known nothing about.

Like all influential music it was the essence of this music rather than it's actual sound that inspired me." Shayne P Carter on himself and ‘Offsider’


Track List:
01. I Know Not Where I Stand (03:36)
02. Man For Every Season (04:04)
03. Waiting Game (04:00)
04. Ahead Of Your Time (04:23)
05. Mat (05:04)
06. Just A Moment (03:04)
07. We Will Rise Again (04:26)
08. Still In Your Way (03:45)
09. Carried Away (03:33)