NEW ZEALAND
ICONIC * SONG 		Dominion Road
Don McGlashan  1992  
Kiwi songs - Maori songs - Home

Dominion Road is a long road connecting Auckland's CBD to the suburbs.
A recovering addict has a long road to walk, but he is now in a halfway house, halfway down Dominion Road. This ballad uses Auckland's longest, busiest and most cosmopolitan street as a metaphor for the long journey of return to sober family life.


       
Capo +4 and use these easy chord shapes.

[Intro]
G F C F C  repeated

[Verse 1]
   G                      C
Dominion Road is bending
F        C         G
Under its own weight
                  C  
Shining like a strip
                 F      C       G
Cut from a sheet metal plate
               C
'Cause it's just been raining.

G F C F C
 [Verse 2]
G                        C
Jane reached the point where she knew
                         F           C               G        
What he meant before he opened his mouth
                              C
She couldn't say the same
                    F                       C         G
Or he'd have guessed she was moving south
        C             G
With one of his friends.
 
[Chorus 1]
                      D  
But it's getting better now
                     C            G
He found it in him to forgive
                     D 
He walked the city
            C                     G
And he found a place to live
                    Gbm
In a half-way house
               C
Half-way down Dominion Road.
G F C F C
 
[Verse 3]
G                                              C
Well he watched Jane's brother sell the house
     F        C           G
He felt no sense of loss
                 C                                  F
More like a mountain climber looking back,
            C          G
Having made it across
       C           G
The steepest face.

 [Chorus 2]
                       D
Oh but he's still climbing
                      C           G
See him try to cross the street
                  D
He tests his footing
                   C             G
Like he was up 10,000 feet
                Gbm
Above the clouds
             D                  
Halfway down Dominion Road.
G F C F C

Em F       Em Dm F Dm  x2  then F  C G
Oh oh oh,  oh oh    oh
 
[Chorus 3]
                      D
But it's getting better now
                   C                          G
He rests his head on the window sill
                        D
He watches the city
                    C                  G
He can see antennas in the hills
                            Gbm
From the half-way house
                C
Half-way down Dominion Road
 
[Coda]
G             D
Half-way down
            Am
Half-way down
              F
Half-way down
    C                          
Dominion Road.   
repeat 'half-way down' part but stay on C,
then play the intro to the end.

A Halfway House

The Salvation Army Auckland Bridge Program is close to the Mount Eden shopping centre, halfway down Dominion Road, Auckland. It provides residential or community support/treatment service for people who have experienced harm as a result of their alcohol and/or other drug use.

Staff are a mix of health and allied health professionals experienced in this field, as well as peer support workers who have experienced addiction and are now living a life of recovery and modelling the hope of this possibility. As part of The Salvation Army, the Bridge Program is able to draw on other services provided by the Sallies such as budgeting advice, food banks, etc.


Don McGlashan

Born in 1959, singer-songwriter Don McGlashan grew up in the midst of a music-loving Auckland family. From an early age he loved to sing, and he played every instrument he could get his hands on. After obtaining a music degree at Auckland University, he has spent all his adult years as a full-time musician, songwriter and composer.

He started his career as a member of a number of bands including Blam Blam Blam and The Front Lawn in the 1980s, and then the Mutton Birds in the 1990s. He then embarked on a solo concert career, with breaks in between to score feature films and television shows. His best-known songs are Dominion Road and Anchor Me, in which his memorable tunes enhance vivid word pictures.

He told an interviewer that he considered our life's work must be an attempt to understand love"...an unstable and dangerous element, but it's the fuel the world runs on."

The Ballad Writers' Toolbox

Write From Your Own Experience

Don McGlashan writes from his own experience of living in Auckland, of riding buses down Dominion Road, and of spending time talking to those who have moved to the big city, found it too alienating, and turned to alcohol or chemical drugs for escape.

His writing enables you to experience what is in the mind of a recovering addict. He does not tell you about addicts in general. Dominion Road is a long road, and so is the spiritual road of any recovering addict.

And he uses rhyme and repetition-with-change to help you remember the song. Tiny Ruin's less-is-more version, with all the testosterone-fueled drums and electrics stripped away, heightens your attention on the word-pictures and the emotions they arouse.

Also see Invercargill, Jackie's Song, Don't Dream It's Over.

Put onto folksong.org.nz website Sept 2022