Failing to retire

More than 45 years in the business, Toody Cole brings her latest band Downunder.

- BY GRAHAM REID

Two years ago when she was 74, an age when most have retired, Toody Cole - living in Clackamas, just outside downtown Portland, Oregon - started a rowdy rock band. And not for the first time, because Toody and her late husband Fred, who died in 2017 at 69, had prior form when it came to bands. In 1978, they founded the punk-cum-country band The Rats, then The Range Rats, and in 1987 the one that made their reputation, Dead Moon.

Over the decades Dead Moon - guitarist Fred, bassist Toody (real name Kathleen) and drummer Andrew Loomis - established themselves through constant touring. They came to New Zealand in 1992 as unknowns (booked by John Baker, who also brought the White Stripes here in 2000), eschewing a big-time opening slot to do so.

You turned down Nirvana to come to the bottom of the world?

“Yes, we did,” she laughs, “but we'd agreed to do it and thank god we did. I've never had more fun on a tour than we did on that crazy one. We played 19 shows, every little town and met amazing people.” And they recorded a live album in Invercargill, which few people and probably no international act could claim.

“That's true. I knew they were recording but it was great, an amazingly fat sound and beautiful. Who knew?”

That album,