New Zealand IceFest

This weekend Bond Street Bridge are heading south again, answering the siren song of the frozen wastes, heeding the call of the wild, seeking, as Robert Service would have it, to 'pierce the veneer of outside things.' We're not actually going to Antarctica, more's the pity - although if you would like to facilitate that you're more than welcome - no, we're going to Christchurch.  Which is actually not at all frozen at this time of year, but what they are doing is having a festival called 'NZ IceFest,' which celebrates Canterbury's role as the gateway to the ice, and they have very kindly invited us to play some shows at it.

Millicent Crow has started work on the illustrations for the show we're putting on in the 

2013 Fringe Festival - here's Captain Scott.

So we're playing this Friday at the Naval Point Yacht club, overlooking the very harbour from which Scott sailed on both the Discovery and the Terra Nova expeditions, the port where Shackleton laid up for a month or so on the Nimrod expedition, trotting his ponies up and down the beach at Quail Island to teach them how to drag sleds. (If you want to talk about how this isn't quite as dumb as it sounds, buy me a drink after the show and we can discuss the physical properties of ice and sledge runners at low temperatures; It will be fascinating, I can assure you.) The exciting thing about this show on the Friday is that we're opening for Mr Don McGlashan, who remains one of my very favourite songwriters in all the world.  No doubt I will do or say something foolish, so that's something to look forward to.

Look, it really happened.  

Preparations for the British Antarctic Expedition (1907-1909); shows a horse pulling a man on a sledge, along the beach. Kinsey, Joseph James (Sir), 1852-1936 :Photographs relating to Antarctica and mountaineering. Ref: PA1-o-463-04-2. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22326585

Then on the Saturday and Sunday we're playing a couple of daytime shows at IceFest events: on Saturday the Antarctic Air Day at Christchurch airport, which will give me an unparalleled opportunity to nerd out about planes, and on Sunday we're playing at the IceFest Ice Station in Hagley Park.  The Ice Station has all kinds of amazing events and exhibits, including an immersive 3D projection exhibition of Jane Usshers beautiful photographs of the huts at McMurdo Sound, so it's entirely possible that I might get distracted and forget to play the set. Altogether, I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend.

Fri 28 Sept: Don McGlashan spring tour with support from Bond Street Bridge at Naval Point Yacht Club, Lytteton

Sat 29 Sept: Bond Street Bridge at NZ IceFest 12:15, Chch International Airport

Sun 30 Sept: Bond Street Bridge at NZ IceFest Ice Station, 1:30, Hagley Park