Newman & Cox - A Reunion

Steve Newman

Tony Cox

A REUNION

by Evelyn Benson

Writing a press release for Tony Cox and Steve Newman is a daunting experience. The history this guitar duo has seen, the thousands of shows across South Africa and the world, the albums, the audiences...the love! Do I begin right there in a Claremont music store where they met in 1975? They clicked from the word go. Same second name, birthdays back to back under Aquarius. Much, much later they formed the Aquarian Quartet with Syd Kitchen and Greg Georgiades. But that's a mighty leap ahead. In 1981, the duo performed their very first show at the People's Space Theatre in Long St, Cape Town. It was a lunch-time show and they knew they were trying their luck. The Cape Times did a glowing review for the boys and just like that, they had queues for tickets snaking down two flights of stairs and out onto Long Street.

Cox and Newman have become synonymous with guitar playing and it is probably unknowable just how many they individually and collectively inspired to pursue a life in music. Playful, cheeky, rude, the music all comes out with no lyric whatsoever. A whacky story to preface the tune. The tune usually a crazy superimposition of one well-known song directly on top of another such as Mozart's Rondo a la Turque with de Abreu's, Tico-Tico. The combination of breathtaking skill and the silliest humour, even physical humour as in their turning of their heads in unison during a tango was, to an audience watching and listening, a slam-dunk. No-one had quite seen anything like it, ever. The two were an incendiary coming together of fantastic guitar skills, musical inventiveness and an abundance of humour.

Several albums and DVD productions have been released over the years. The very first being the by now classic collector's item, 101 Ways To Use An Acoustic Guitar. They have toured twice in the UK together, the first in 1982 and the second in a six-berth campervan for three solid months in the winter of 2005. They went everywhere across that isle and of-course, simply blew the UK audiences away.

Time passed, decades passed, each guitarist had strong solo careers. Newman had his exceptional supergroup, Tananas who burned brightly in South Africa and toured the world on the Womad platform releasing several critically acclaimed albums. He went on to collaborate and record with many other musicians, resulting in albums such as, It's a Small World with his band, Mondetta. Revered and highly respected, Steve has been through some tough health issues but has rallied and is out there still performing, his guitar chops as sharp as ever.

Cox developed a breathtaking solo show, toured in Europe, the USA and Canada and recorded three award-winning albums. He brought a series of annual International Guitar Nights to the stage and mounted, The World in a Guitar in 2002, recorded and filmed for DVD release. He published a book in 2019 containing his instrumentals, stories and paintings and moved to the UK in the middle of a pandemic where he continues to perform when he is not busy teaching.

Steve and Tony have not performed together for a number years now. This show is a reunion between two old friends, two great South African musicians who over nearly four decades of performance, have brought the beauty of music and laughter into so many of our lives. This concert is so the boys can do it one more time. Don't be silly and miss it now.