MNZ Interview: CoffeeBar Kid Cuts S02 / E15 – Ian Wards

In 2005, Fat Freddy’s Drop unleashed their debut studio album, Based On A True Story – a genre-bending masterpiece that shot straight to number one and went on to become the longest-charting album in Aotearoa history, holding its place in the Top 40 for over two years.

Born from live, improvised jams and refined on stages around the globe, the album was recorded in a humble basement studio in Lyall Bay, Wellington. It captured the energy of a thriving, collaborative music scene and signaled a new era for New Zealand music.

This exhibition dives into the story behind the sound. Created in partnership with Fat Freddy’s Drop, Based On A True Story: The 20th Anniversary Exhibition explores the creative process, the community, and the cultural impact of this landmark album. Open now and running until March 8, 2026.

Muzic.NZ’s Tim Gruar popped down to the Museum to have a look around and a bit of a kōrero with the Senior Curator, Ian Wards, who put the show together.

Kia Ora, Ian. Tell me about yourself.

I’ve been at Wellington Museum for about six or seven years now, and I’ve worked in the museum field for all of my adult life, about 25 odd years, and my job involves collecting the material culture of Wellington and making exhibitions. I studied at Canterbury, Massey, and Otago, did a Master’s in Anthropology, Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies, that kind of thing.

Is this a growing field, or has it always been a challenging field?

Museums, yeah, museums have been around for a couple of hundred years, and their ethos and way of operating has obviously evolved through time. Initially it was about bringing the curiosities of the world to gentlemen in Europe, but these days we’re very much about working with communities to share those stories of communities in an uplifting way, and we work very much in collaboration and partnership with communities.

The kaupapa for Wellington Museum is all about telling the stories of Wellingtonians who live here, and looking around some of the exhibitions, particularly ones on the top floor, where everyone’s eyes light up when they recognise one individual thing The Aro Street Video sign, Steven Adams basketball boots, things like that. There’s a real connection with that.

Yeah, definitely. I’m really interested in collecting more recent history, stuff that people have a personal memory of. It’s also stuff that’s around as well, (because) history doesn’t begin 50 or 100 years ago, it begins at the end of this sentence. So, it’s nice to acknowledge and reflect contemporary history as well. And one of my big things is that Wellington’s history, particularly over the last 40 or so years, has been really vibrant and rich, with things like coffee culture taking off in the late 80’s, early 90’s, Absolutely Positively Wellington campaign, and through the late 90’s, in the early 2000’s, the number of creatives, musicians, filmmakers who’ve just flowered in the city is really special. A cool part of my job is creating exhibitions and displays that touch on that positivity.

Which brings us nicely to the one that we’re talking about today, which is the exhibition to celebrate 20 years since the release of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s landmark album – Based On A True Story.

I’ve always been a fan of Fat Freddy’s Drop. I came back from overseas in about 2003, and it struck me straight away that there was this incredible kind of explosion of roots-based, rhythm-based music coming out of Wellington. And I love that kind of music. And I remember with great anticipation, myself, waiting for this album to come out. I’d burned CD copies of Hope and Midnight Marauders. Just the most amazing tunes.

Myself and, obviously many thousands of other New Zealanders, were waiting for this full-length studio album to come out. It seemed to take forever, and it did. A number of the band members have said that, you know, the pressure from their friends and fans that kind of made them actually finish the album. It was a big job, and a big learning curve for them too. When it finally came out, it was everywhere, saturated all over, cafes and restaurants, parks. You couldn’t move anywhere without hearing Based On A True Story. So a couple of years ago, I was just kind of kicking my thoughts around for future exhibitions, and I thought, ah, it’s almost the 20th anniversary of Based On A True Story. So, at the beginning of this year, I contacted Freddys and Nicole Duckworth (Freddy’s manager) and Sarah Hunter (their content manager). We worked collaboratively over the last eight months really closely. And it’s been a fantastic co-curation with the band, especially Sarah, a labour of love. I can only really speak from the position of being a fan of the band, but I know that this band has touched the lives of many, many people in the city, in this country, and around the world. I just knew that this exhibition was a positive story that Wellington needs right now and the ephemera we’ve got in there is incredible.

I know. There’s early gig posters – right back to the Roots Foundation days – a Whopper Chopper poster, a book of sketches that became the artwork for Based On A True Story, instruments from the band and footage from their early tours. Mu’s MPC!

You can see the floppy disk and the nicotine stains on the side. And a keyboard. That’s Iain Gordon’s (Dobie Blaze) Korg Trident, which he lugged all around Europe on their first tour – it weighs about 20 kilos. That’s the iconic piano notes you hear in the intro to Ernie, the first track on album. So many other tunes that have sort of woven their way into the album come from that keyboard. Toby Laing’s (Tony Chang) trumpet is also from that era. And, of course, Warren Maxwell’s saxophone Bessie, which apparently, he used to talk to quite often.

The Freddys are amazing archivists, amazing recorders of their things, they’ve got an incredible collection. We could have made the exhibition twice the size, Making the selections on images and objects was, you know, often quite hard. Most of the material that’s in the exhibition is from the Freddys themselves – the band members and also their whānau and friends.

We had an opening blessing event on the Friday the 21st of November, just for Freddys and their whānau, a private occasion. And that was the first time almost any of them had seen what the exhibition was going to look like.

And what was their reaction?

There was just sort of joy, you know, there was just smiles on faces. Most of the band were there. I think Scott Towers (Chopper Reedz) couldn’t make it that night – but he was in the next day.

It was awesome. And yeah, so it was a really special occasion. Everyone there, except, of course, Mu, who so sadly we lost recently.

But Mu was involved in the exhibition anyway, because we have a lot of quotes on the wall that, from around 2005, various oral histories or interviews were done with the band. We kind of used their voices from when it was all still fresh and new for them. And we modelled the exhibition in the style of the album. Because, of course, the physical album itself is visually very strong.

Graphically, there’s these very strong cartoon characters that they developed early on. Who came up with the original artwork?

That was Dallas Tamaira (Joe Dukie) and Michelle Healy. Dallas, I think, who did the initial sketches. The idea was to kind of give the band members kind of superpowers, but also to acknowledge that they’re a collective. So by having individual characters, it meant that they weren’t just this amorphous whole, that they all have their own personalities, their own instruments, they’re all distinctive human beings. And that was a way of democratising the visual and community understanding of the band. They were seven individual people, but together, as a collective, they make this beautiful music.

The visual side of Freddys has always been a big part of them. And that’s why we have the subsequent albums on display, to acknowledge that, you know, but it’s not all about B.O.A.T.S.

There’s a piece of footage in there, which looks like a German beer festival or something like that.

The Freddys are probably one of the most well-documented bands in the history of New Zealand music. We got (from The Drop) two hours of footage, based on film work that Sarah Hunter did in 2003, when they did their first European tour. She came along and just filmed them, thank goodness. And also, there was a documentary (Fat Freddy’s Drop: Based On A True Story) which was recorded, released in 2005, and covers the kind of the final phases of making the album and their European tour as well. That footage, it’s kind of fascinating. And you can actually see Dallas coming up with the first lines for Wandering Eye. There’s a bit where he’s just singing away to himself and the guys are playing in the background. There’s a kind of hook, this little guitar lick, noodling away in the background… it’s really cool that Sarah Hunter was there to film it.

It’s kind of an interesting song, isn’t it? Because it’s sort of, on the surface, seems like infidelity going on, and yet it’s such an upbeat tune.

Yeah, but listen to the lyrics, it’s got a strong moral element to it. It’s not about having a ‘wandering eye’ – it’s about the folly and loss that can happen.

And then the video on the fish and chip shop, which is yet another layer, which brings in my other question around whenever I’ve been at a Freddys gig, or they’re doing an album launch or something, there’s always been Kai.

Particularly the pāua wontons, which is like a trademark. It’s such a unique thing.

Iain is actually running a pāua wonton-making workshop here in a couple of weeks – sold out sadly, within about half a day.

I’m not surprised.

That’s their signature dish. We’ve even got a menu on display from a Freddy’s event, a B.O.A.T.S event in London, with a menu. It’s on the fridge in the exhibition. Apparently, they bought pāua over from New Zealand to the UK for the event. And Iain whipped up his pāua wontons. Sarah’s said to me a number of times, you know, that MU would say, “The band that eats together, stays together.” Yeah.

We’ve got photographs of fish and chips, as a reference there, because when they recorded B.O.A.T.S they were in the studio down in Lyall Bay called The Beach, which was just across the road from the Seaview Takeaway, right there by the Maranui Surf Club. So, I mean, I imagine they did a roaring trade out of the Freddys at the time.

And now you’ve got me hungry, any more events coming up?

No more culinary adventures. Last weekend, we had an On the Couch session, where the guys pretty much sat around and talked about the band and the making of the album – which was recorded by RNZ. And that was really well received. Around February, we’re looking to host some performances in the Museum by the next generation; with Freddy’s talented offspring. It could be a mix of spoken word and musical performance, DJing too. So that would be another public programme.

The band tours in May, next year. No word on who will fill Mu’s shoes going forward?

I’m just a fan of the band, not a spokesperson, so I can’t say. All I know is that they make all their decisions together. So, there’s kind of no hierarchy in the band, which is, I guess, one of the reasons why they’ve stayed around. They seem very democratic, and that’s a very genuine thing. And I guess that shows in their longevity.

Based On A True Story: The 20th Anniversary Exhibition Saturday 22 November 2025 – Sunday 8 March 2026.

Check out related events developed by Te Waka Huia Wellington Museum in partnership with Fat Freddy’s Drop: https://www.museumswellington.org.nz/based-on-a-true-story-the-exhibition/

 

Photo Credit: Tim Gruar