The Renderers

Maryrose Crook

Brian Crook

ROCKHAPPENZ Public Collection

The Renderers  —  The Renderers are a New Zealand band from Christchurch formed in 1989 by Maryrose Crook and her husband Brian Crook (of The Terminals).

Previous members of The Renderers have included ..... Brian Crook - (Guitar), Maryrose Crook - (Vocals/Guitar), Hayden Jones - (Drums), John Billows - (Bass), Robbie Yeats - (Drums), Thom Bell - (Bass), Stefan Neville - (Drums), Jo Contag - (Drums), James Kirk - (Drums), Michael Daly - (Drums), Joanne Billesdon - (Drums), Gregg Cairns - (Drums), John Segovia - (Slide Guitar), Sean O'Reilly - (Guitar, Synthesizer, Bass, Percussion), Denise Roughan - (Bass), Shannon O'Brien - (Bass, Electronics), Peter Mitchell - (Drums), Richard Baker - (Bass)

The Renderers released their debut album Trail of Tears, in 1991 on Flying Nun Records and they subsequently produced seven further albums.  Brian Crook also recorded a solo album in 1999 Bathysphere.  Their eighth album In the Sodium Light was released in January 2016.  The duo are an alternative country and psychedelic rock band which formed in Christchurch in 1989 by the husband-and-wife duo Brian and Maryrose Crook.  Both members came from other notable New Zealand underground groups like The Terminals, Flies Inside the Sun, and Scorched Earth Policy.  Known for a dark, distortion-laced style mixing country, folk, and post-punk, they have been associated with independent record labels including Flying Nun Records and American label Merge Records and produced several full-length albums over the decades, such as A Dream of the Sea (1998), In the Sodium Light (2016), and This World Just Eats Me Up Alive (2019).

Later The Renderers relocated overseas to Joshua Tree, California, following the Christchurch earthquakes, while maintaining active ties to the New Zealand music and art scenes.  In the early 1980s Maryrose Wilkinson and Brian Crook were flatting together on Knowles Street, in the Christchurch suburb of Merivale, in a huge multigenerational, two-storey artists' flat, surrounded by large rambling grounds, it was home to filmmakers, writers and musicians, including future Scorched Earth Policy-maker Mick Elborado.

The Renderers are New Zealand's prime example of southern-fried country, and are indeed one of our finest ever bands.  Brian Crook formed The Renderers with his partner Maryrose in the early 90's Christchurch when The Max Block failed to go anywhere, and the duo returned from Sydney, Australia.  Brian was already part of the Scorched Earth Policy / The Terminals sequence of bands that was picking up wind again - but The Renderers were the Crooks' band.  Their early recordings stuck to a strictly country approach and seemed a bit too forced and distant, and it wasn't until the band relocated to Port Chalmers, a small bay just outside of Dunedin that The Renderers really found their sound.