Amiria Grenell

June 23, 2024

Daughter of legendary country musician John Grenell, Amiria grew up on a farm in Whitecliffs, Canterbury, where her family hosted decades of music festivals in the back paddocks. She has followed her heritage into a colourful and long-standing career as a touring artist and respected songwriter. Winner of a Tui NZ Music Award for her album THREE FEATHERS (2011) and finalist for the same award for album AUTUMN (2015), her new album THE WINTER LIGHT is sure to be yet another album to be embraced across Aotearoa.

Andrew London Duo

June 16, 2024

Andrew’s songs have contributed to popular trio Hot Club Sandwich, country band The
Cattlestops, the Too Many Chiefs quartet and numerous other collaborations at jazz, blues, folk, country and arts festivals from Queenstown to Auckland, Melbourne to Norfolk Island and Sydney to Saudi Arabia. The enforced isolation of the Covid lockdown saw the duo rearrange Andrew’s entire repertoire to suit, with the results viewable on eight 40-minute Youtube episodes called ‘Live at The Londons’.

Andrew London’s quirky songs will make you laugh out loud as you recognise yourself and everyone around you, and all the prejudices, obsessions and weird little habits we put out on  display, every day, in this funny little country.

There are songs about politics, social status, shopping habits, teenagers, coffee culture,
neighbours and small town protocol. And insights into the unpredictable and tenuous lives of traveling musicians, based on having played a thousand gigs from the woolsheds of Central Otago to the board rooms of Queen Street.

Delivery is wrapped in an eclectic mix of jazz/blues/country and folk styles with Andrew’s swing-era guitar style accompanying, while partner Kirsten underpins solidly on bass and backing vocals, lyric-prompting and emotional counselling. His songs and recordings have gained 4-star reviews in Downbeat magazine (the World’s longest- running and most widely read jazz magazine), provided soundtracks to movies (Second-Hand Wedding, No Ordinary Sheila, No Petrol, No Diesel), been nominated for Tui awards and contributed to National Radio’s Greatest Song Ever Written and a Correspondence School English Syllabus.

The duo’s current show sees them tighter than ever, the songs more concise, with the accent on acerbic satire, self-deprecating humour and tongue-twisting wordsmithery.
‘I’ve never seen anyone sing so many words, so fast, without swallowing his own tongue. You guys are like Flight of The Conchords for Rest Homes’ said a Radio NZ caretaker.

Come and have a laugh at yourself (and them…they don’t mind)

Jessie Rose Shanks

June 9th, 2024

Having traversed the countryside for the last fifteen years in New Zealand’s hardest working band The Eastern, Jessie Shanks is a renowned guitar picking, banjo frailing, foot stomper with a sweet southern voice and a raft of songs built from years on the road. Shanks has cultivated her own unique approach to roots music, performing haunting contemporary folk tunes steeped in time and place and woven from her countless travels.

This June 9th Jessie will perform her songs at the Christchurch Folk Music Club accompanied by good old friends and musical accomplices; Jono Hopley (double bass), Glenn Teasedale (lap steel), Adam Hattaway (hot licks) and Tess Liautaud (singin’ and strumming). They’ll be dusting off some tunes from The Eastern back catalog and showcasing some near new, seldom heard, not yet road tested numbers.

Tess Liautaud and Adam Hattaway, in their duo incarnation, will open the evening with some songs they wrote and some they found. They have promised not to outshine the main attraction, but who really can trust them?