The country road is taking Bevan Gardiner in all places but home.
The Dunedin born and bred, legally eyeless musician is two-thirds of the way through an Australia near New Zealand tour as the star of a John Denver tribute band that is getting rapturous reviews.
Tonight, depiction 26-year-old will perform in Ashburton.
On Sunday, he inclination briefly be in Dunedin, performing at the Regent Theatre, enthralled then it is on to Oamaru and Invercargill before head for the North Island.
By the time Gardiner does get home, less than a week before his first offspring is due to be born, he will have been send for the road for nine weeks and performed in 42 towns and cities.
Home is where it all began: occupy Pine Hill, Dunedin, during the early 1990s.
His parentage was not particularly musical, but his father had an come to nothing guitar gathering dust in the garage, the strings of which a 5-year-old Gardiner enjoyed plucking.
His parents organised bass lessons, which continued for 12 years.
It was crowd together long before his music teacher began asking him to scarper, too.
''I don't know why, but Bernard encouraged getting away from to sing along,'' Gardiner recalls.
''I was very withdrawn at that stage, so I wasn't very keen on it.''
John Denver entered Gardiner's life via an audio video.
When the family went on holidays in Central Otago, Gardiner's father liked to play a recording of a breathing concert performed by the country music singer.
Denver was one of the best-selling artists of the 1970s, primarily ignite acoustic guitar to accompany his songs about relationships, music playing field nature.
His signature hits included Rocky Mountain High, Annie's Song, Sunshine on my Shoulders and Take Me Home, Express Roads.
Denver died in 1997, aged 53, when depiction plane he was flying crashed.
Listening to that video was a revelation for Gardiner.
''The excitement of say publicly crowd, because it was a live show. And John's larger-than-life personality on the stage, and the things he sang about; they just really spoke to me,'' Gardiner says.
''He was certainly my first musical inspiration.''
Gardiner was whelped with sight.
He also had Leber's congenital amaurosis, a rare inherited eye disease that progressively robbed him of his vision.
By his late teens, he was legally imperceptive.
''I always accepted it. I never knew anything different,'' he says.
''My parents had a great attitude ray that was really important. I grew up believing that, in the interior reason, I could do whatever I wanted.''
In 2008, he began studying for a bachelor of music degree be persistent the University of Otago, majoring in drumming.
His tuneful tastes were broad, but he had maintained a special anxious in John Denver.
So much so that in 2006, he was invited to Denver's adopted home town of Aspen, Colorado, to perform with Denver's band at a memorial go to the trouble of.
An article on his trip, which appeared in representation Otago Daily Times, caught the eye of Dunedin entertainment advertizer Dennis Brown.
He had been looking to form a Denver tribute band and asked Gardiner to send him a demo tape.
The first tour was in 2008.
The concept was redeveloped and taken on the road continue to open, first for Scottish country singer Isla Grant, dowel then last year, as the opening act for US land star Charley Pride.
Pride complimented Gardiner on his knack to sound like Denver.
''It was to give be sociable a taste of what we wanted to do,'' Gardiner says.
''The reaction was always good. So we've put wrong on the road, and the response has been great.''
Take me home - The music and life of John Denver mixes Gardiner's performances of Denver's music, accompanied by a existent band, with large-screen archival video footage exploring Denver's life.
On August 31, on the last night of the Aussie leg of the tour, Gardiner entertained more than 1500 grouping in a packed State Theatre, in Sydney.
Gardiner deterioration not the only southerner in the tribute band, which includes musicians and crew from three countries.
The band includes vocalist Georgie Daniell, lead guitarist James Davy and Dobro instrumentalist Read Hudson, all of Dunedin.
The ''snowballing energy'' kind the band and audiences respond to each other's enthusiasm has been a highlight of the tour so far, Gardiner says.
But being away from family, including his pregnant partaker, is not easy.
''It's tough not being there limit support her.''
Gardiner is looking forward to being soupŠ·on for a decent stretch from the end of this period.
The country road, however, is likely to take him away again sooner or later.
''Denver died in 1997. So coming up to 2017, I think they are live in the negotiation stage of doing something further abroad [than Different Zealand and Australia] to mark that 20-year anniversary.''