My word, 25 shows in five weeks and Bond Street Bridge is firing on all cylinders. We've had a beautiful run around the country on The Explorers Club: Antarctica album release tour with sold-out shows and rave reviews, old friends and new ones, a lot of good mountains an time spent with other people's dogs, often in the same bed. Now we're back in Auckland and the Wine Cellar Strings are getting back in the saddle to raise some money for Oil Free Auckland - press release follows:
As the protest flotilla gathers off the West Coast and Anadarko’s minions prepare to deploy their sinister machines deep below the waves, a great muttering anger can be heard from the dives and wine-sinks of Auckland’s K Rd. The Wine Cellar Strings are not happy with the way the National Government are encouraging dangerous deep-water oil exploration just off our coastlines, and we plan to do something about it, on Friday 29 November, at the Wine Cellar.
The last couple of times The Wine Cellar Strings have got together, we’ve pulled in a full house, played up a storm, brought down the roof, and if we’re honest made a fair bit of money which by and large we have frittered away on things like rent and whiskey. So this time around we thought we’d do the same thing, only instead of drinking the money or using it for boring things like housing, we would give it to Oil Free Auckland to help them do something about these Anadarko goons before their noxious trolls bore too deep and open up a hellmouth off the coast of Raglan.
This will obviously work best if we get a lot of people to come along to the Wine Cellar for the show we have planned, so of course we have pulled out stops to put on the kind of lineup that would make a Texas oil baron blanch: Steve Abel, that high-seas hellraiser, one of our finest songwriters and storytellers, Reb Fountain, fresh from tearing up stages with The Eastern and with new songs loaded, The Tattletale Saints whose heartbreaking harmonies pack houses all over the country, Bond Street Bridge, appearing on the back of an epic year of sold-out shows and rave reviews, and Wellington’s true troubadour Miles Calder.
Steve Abel, Reb Fountain and The Tattletale Saints will be backed, of course, by the Wine Cellar Strings – that rag-tag, swaggering, bow-slinging, motley band of double bassists, fiddlers, and cellists culled from the cream of Auckland’s bumper crop of high-class alt-folk, country and rock outfits. The members of the Wine Cellar Strings have played with Don McGlashan, Tim Finn, An Emerald City, Paul Ubana Jones, Delaney Davidson, The Grifters, The Broken Heartbreakers, The Bads, the list goes on, who remembers? They know how to do what they do and they do it well, and on the 29th of November they will be appearing with some of Auckland’s most exciting songwriters in a unique collaboration.
Oil Free Auckland will be there to tell us what is going on out there beyond the horizon, and we confidently expect that the room will be full of the kind of people who have the good taste to both appreciate this extraordinary lineup and feel very uneasy about the kind of cowboy wildcatting that is being allowed to go ahead just off our coasts. These drill ships might be out of sight, but the Wine Cellar Strings aim to keep that trouble very much in mind. We want to fill the room, play some mind-melting music, and raise some funds to support Oil Free Auckland in their noble quest.
The Wine Cellar Strings feat. Steve Abel, Reb Fountain, The Tattletale Saints, Bond Street Bridge and Miles Calder The Wine Cellar, K Rd Friday 29 November, 8pm Tickets $20 from undertheradar.co.nz, proceeds to Oil Free Auckland
