Grant Haua visits the South West region with the Soul Decree for the first time in four years for WA tour

Grant Haua will be visiting the South West region with the Soul Decree for the first time in four years for his WA tour, Tough Love.

Grant Haua and the Soul Decree are making stops in Manjimup, Margaret River and Bunbury this weekend, along with stops in Dunsborough, Albany and Esperance in February.

Haua is a New Zealand artist who toured WA as a part of the New Zealand blues duo Swamp Thing from 2015-2019, including Blues at Bridgetown and Nannup Music Festival, before starting his solo career in blues and soul music and travelling to Europe.

He said growing up listening to soul music and the adaptation to both electric and acoustic influenced his songwriting and his choice to play souls and blues music.

“I grew up on a lot of black music, like motown music like Marvin Gaye, when I was little, that was always on the turntable, mum used to love that stuff,” he said.

“All of a sudden, I hear this really cool Texas blues on the radio and that opened my eyes up to the blues genre, and the blues genre has electric and acoustic guitar, so it was a perfect fit for me.

“I still love the music, I still listen to it today as much as I did back then, and it influenced how I write my songs and it’s very much a building block to how I write my songs today.”

This weekend’s shows will be Haua’s first in WA in four years. He said he had a lot of memories of the State in his touring history.

“I’m excited and I’m a little bit nervous as well, because I’m playing with a new line-up and there’s always some kind of anxiety that comes along with that,” he said. “But I like that, I like to be a little bit scared and I’m looking forward to it.

“I always loved WA because that was the first real overseas touring I had ever done, and that was when I was with Swamp Thing.”

“The first time we went over was about 2012 or 2013, for Blues in Bridgetown, and I got to meet some characters and the Backsliders, and we actually took their slot, because their flight got delayed, so our first gig in Bridgetown was a huge crowd because they came to see Backsliders and we took their slot.

“It really is a place that I have fond memories of because of the first encounters I had.”

Haua said audiences should expect some high-energy tunes followed by some calmer, slow-paced songs.

“I like to describe it as travelling down a river on a barge,” he said.

“There’s some calm patches, then all of a sudden you get some rocky bits and some rapids and you get knocked about a fair bit.

“I try to cover a range of emotions with what I’m trying to convey to the audience and keep them engaged, and it definitely works for me, and people walk out happy and having had a good time.”