Hailing from Invercargill, near the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, Arun (pronounced Aaron) O’Connor was born into a musical family. The youngest of four brothers who have all followed in dad’s drumming footsteps, he instead deciding on the guitar, for his musical weapon of choice. Dad played for many celebrated local acts including NZ icon Tom Sharplin.
The singer-songwriter has been playing in bands since he was 15 years old and by the end of 2016, was working in music full-time, despite initially pursuing a career in the automotive trade. When Arun isn’t working on his own music you can find him fulfilling guitar duties for some of New Zealand’s finest, most notably often-dubbed ‘Queen Of Country’ Jody Direen – including a recent tour of their homeland and Australia.
In 2018 Arun seemed to dominate the NZ Gold Guitar Awards – he was awarded in “New Country”, “NZ Song” and “Male Vocal Solo” categories plus the big one, “Overall Senior”. Having tried his luck at the NZ prestigious awards a few times before it was Arun’s performance of Chris Stapleton’s ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ that snared the big trophy haul. Arun insists choosing this particular song was no-brainer for him, “I just love it, Chris Stapleton sings it like it’s an old country song but makes it new”. This philosophy can be heard in Arun’s original music.
In September that same year, as part of the awards’ prize package, Arun travelled to Nashville, TN and recorded his debut single. An original tune, written by the NZ native, ‘Following The Line’ is a song about pursuing what you truly want in life. It is about not doing something because that’s what is expected of you. After observing some friends in rough situations like bad relationships or jobs, who had decided it was the easy option to stay. The song celebrates breaking out of the easy life and doing what you love. Even if that, is the hardest thing to do.