Lindon Puffin

Born in Christchurch and raised in Picton, Puffin first rose to national prominence as frontman of glam rock group The Puffins in the mid nineties. His music has been described as ‘a blend of heartfelt acoustic, country, rock and folk music’ and with a sound that compares to Chris Knox, Elvis Costello, and Morrissey.

In 2003 he released his first solo album entitled Stuff Like That from which the singles Thing Called Love, Rock No More and Hazy Blue received widespread radio play. Instead of another album, his next release turned out to be a self produced feature length music documentary called Figure 8000 about the ups and downs of life on the road during a non-stop 108-night New Zealand tour.

Puffin released his second album Show Pony in 2007 which was awarded Waikato Times ‘Album Of The Year’ and also received plenty of radio play. Puffin has twice been voted ‘Best Live Performer of the year’, first by The Press in Christchurch in 2004 and again in 2007 by Victoria University Press.

Over the past couple of years he has performed and toured with artists including Billy Bragg, Jack Black (Tenacious D), Dave Dobbyn, Jordan Luck, Shona Laing, The Warratahs, Chris Knox, Greg Johnson and Gin Wigmore.

In 2008, Puffin spent three months touring the world, performing in a dozen countries through Japan, Europe and the USA.

As well as having a fantastic voice, he plays guitar, ukulele, kazoo, piano, harmonica and drums. He lists his influences as everything that has ever gone through him - music, TV, politics, school, food, sport, film, cars, drugs, and rain.

In 2011 he was part of fundraising tour of NZ with the Lyttelton-based The Harbour Union which includes Delaney Davidson and members of The Unfaithful Ways and The Eastern. They performed at the 2011 Silver Scrolls and released their self titled album in the same year.

While based in Auckland he recorded his third solo album Hope Holiday at The Lab. It is his first foray beyond the indie scene and into commercially recorded material. He did this after the album he was working on in 2009 was remixed by Olly Harmer, who runs The Lab studio and listened to by manager Lorraine Barry, who challenged him to “record them properly”.

Currently based in Auckland while he is recording solo album Vaseline On The Lens, Puffin considers his home base to be in Lyttelton where he has spent the majority of the past ten years.

Library resources

• Search our catalogue for Lindon Puffin

Websites

• Lindon Puffin’s website
• Lindon Puffin’s MySpace page
• An article on Lindon in NZ Musician magazine