Three widely acclaimed songwriters from New Zealand and Australia will team up this coming March for an urban folk tour of New Zealand. The trio will play together and alone - flipping a coin to decide the set order. They will perform folk songs which have been written largely out of sight of pastoral scenes, and instead in bedrooms beside motorways, in old warehouses waiting for demolition, or in crowded restaurant kitchens between orders. They will also play some select versions of favourite urban folk touchstones, by writers such as Billy Bragg, The Magnetic Fields, or Courtney Barnett.
Tickets for all shows will go on sale via undertheradar.co.nz on Wednesday, December 9, with the first run of tickets available at a special earlybird price until February 1st.
Thursday, March 3 - The Grainstore Gallery, Oamaru
Friday, March 4 - Chicks Hotel, Port Chalmers
Saturday, March 5 - Gustavs, Christchurch
Sunday, March 6 - Donovan’s Store, Okarito
Tuesday, March 8 - The Barrytown Hall, SH6
Wednesday, March 9 - The Mussel Inn, Takaka
Friday, March 11 - The Kings Arms, Auckland
Saturday, March 12 - Meow, Wellington
Selected as BBC 6’s album of the day, scoring 4 stars in The Guardian, and garnering full page reviews in Uncut and Mojo magazines for her new album Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs, Nadia Reid is on the precipice of worldwide fame. Having signed to Angel Olsen’s booking agent in Europe, this may be a rare chance to see Reid in an intimate setting. Paying dues on her rise, Reid has lived in all four major cities in New Zealand, leaving home to live in Christchurch just before the quakes, working in iconic Auckland restaurants, and dealing with a year of weather in the Capital. She is now based in her hometown of Port Chalmers.
Hand selected to tour the USA in 2015 as Courtney Barnett’s support act, Australian urban folk master Darren Hanlon has played around the USA and Europe and sold through more than one pressing of his new album, Where Did You Come From The most experienced of the trio, Hanlon’s intricately detailed, off kilter songs like ‘Punk’s Not Dead’ and ‘Falling Aeroplanes’ across five albums have have made him a national treasure in Australia, each year selling out halls and churches in Australia for his annual Christmas tour. The Melbourne based songwriters new album was written during a long journey through the Mississippi Delta, picking up stories, studio time and backing musicians from the birthplace of modern American music as he went.
Having recently toured the USA, Australia and New Zealand in support of his new album, Successor, and supporting Paul Kelly and The Phoenix Foundation at home, Anthonie Tonnon is bringing home a well honed, futuristic folk set for his portion of the show. A top five nominee for the APRA Silver Scroll, for his political thriller, ‘Water Underground,’ Tonnon writes character studies against a backdrop of 21st century urban life and politics. Originally from Dunedin, Tonnon moved to Auckland in the middle of a recession, and still resides there between tours.
