Review of The Explorers Club: Antarctica in the Wellington Fringe

Well we've just played 16 shows over 15 days at some of our favourite venues in the country, 2000 people in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, dogs dressed as other dogs in Okarito, late-night throwdowns in Milford Sound, transtasman rowers in Oamaru, Mt Cook Summiters in Te Anau, Pirate Queens in Waitati, and a sold-out show at the beautiful Moorings ballroom in the New Zealand Fringe Festival.  Here's a review of that Wellington show from Simon Sweetman in the Dominion Post.  Thanks Simon!

"Bond Street Bridge Presents Explorers Club: Antarctica


The Moorings, February 16

Auckland-based Sam Prebble has, through his Bond Street Bridge moniker, released two excellent albums and now this stunning song-cycle taking in, and drawn from, the diaries and letters left behind by Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his failed Antarctic exploration and Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition.

Prebble's latest version of Bond Street Bridge is a three-piece, upright electric bass, percussion and backing vocals.

All provide worthy assists but it is Prebble, now filling a role as guitar-slinging, violin-flailing hipster/jive-talking raconteur, who creates the journey for the audience.

There is a devotion to the performance that is remarkable - we're simply lucky to have someone like him; creating songs that mean something, that share interesting history, that interpret lost artefacts - and showing some sense of exploration himself, Prebble deftly demonstrates that he knows his way, time and again, to the heart of a jangly-pop song, to the soul and core of folk music.

Animations accompany the story-songs, spoken-word introductions were delivered with a near-shamanistic fervour, and it is not always the case - hardly ever in fact - that you leave a performance feeling privileged to have been there.

It felt like most of the audience had some version of this; such was the connection, to the stories, to the presentation and - of course - to the music.

The exploring theme was pursued also by local alt-folk duo Rosy Tin Teacaddy. Songs from the band's second full-length album, the somewhat underrated All Mountains Are Men, celebrated (and commiserated) experiences at Tarawera, and there was a new shimmer to the sound, too.

Where previously Rosy Tin had been so very strummy and chummy on stage now the banter is still there but loops and beats and soundscapes add an extra tension to the songs. Andy Hummel and Holly Ewens wind their voices around one another and Hummel's guitar now softly frames each song.

A perfect evening of music."

Wow.  Shamanic I can believe, but perfect? Only Led Zeppelin and mathematics are perfect.

Touring with the Explorers Club:Antarctica

Here it is, eight o'clock in the morning and I've already been for a run. I'm not lying, I waved to my neighbour and my neighbour waved to me, which naturally made me think of this song, and of what the whole neighbourhood might look like under fifteen feet of pure white snow.

And that reminded me about what's happening really quite soon - next year, certainly, but I'm sure we're all starting to realise that that counts as soon. As you'll be aware, there has been a certain kind of monomaniacal obsession happening at Bond Street Bridge HQ lately. It started, as these things often do, with a perfectly normal bout of light reading on common piracy, the lure of the heaving ocean and salt spray - monkeys with little waistcoats on and so forth. This led, via an unhealthy interest in H.M. Queen Elizabeth the first of England, to specific pirates - Drake in particular, and Dampier, and other swashbucklers with letters of marque in hand and fire in the belly. Drake's circumnavigation fired the imagination, as it must - what audacity! The hunger! And suddenly the floor of the living room and my side of the bed were home to half the contents of the 910 (exploration) shelf from the library, which is a good place to work if you tend to get obsessed with things. Drake led to Cook, and Cook - as well as plucky midshipman George Vancouver, who climbed far out on the bowsprit in polar waters as the Resolution went about for the last time and who claimed, for a while, the title of Furthest South - well, Cook led of course to his own great unrealised goal - the mysterious Southern Continent, that great counterweight of the world, locked in ice and tucked all the way down there at the end of the Dewey Decimal system at 998.9: Antarctic History.

 Sled dog and gramophone on the Terra Nova expedtion.  By Emily Cater after Herbert Ponting

And this obsession narrowed, as obsessions will, and it focussed, and for a while all was ice and darkness and the pluck of certain stalwart Edwardians.  You know who I'm talking about, of course - Robt. Falcon Scott, Captain of the Royal Navy, who we're just starting to remember again was not really a colossal bungler at all and whose achievements before his death out on the Great Ice Barrier dwarfed those of his predecessors, and Shackleton of the Merchant Marine, with his superhuman charisma and charming lack of attention to detail, Frank Worsely - a Lyttelton boy, you remember - whose feat of polar navigation in the James Caird is still unparalleled, Tom Crean, Oates of the Dragoons, Bowers, Cherry, Campbell's men in their ice cave all winter, eating rancid seal meat and smoking everything that would burn, and even Mawson, that brash colonial. Titans all, and golly, what pluck!

Capt. Frank Worsley, the Lyttelton boy. By Emily Cater

It soon became clear that this obsession required an outlet beyond my monopolising conversation at every opportunity with garbled stories of the half-remembered exploits of these public-school poster boys. ('And then the ponies fell in the water! And I think it was Oates, or maybe Bowers - no, Oates - or, no, it was Bowers but Oates showed him how - because of the killer whales, and the leopard seals and whatnot all circling round, and they couldn't pull him out, poor beast, onto the ice I mean, so he had to kill him with his ice axe.') So, in order to get the whole thing off my chest, I suppose, I wrote some songs.

These songs and the stories that go with them - such stories! - have now been beautifully illustrated by Emily "Millicent Crow" Cater, and this summer we're taking them on the road as a show called 'The Explorer's Club: Antarctica.'  Bond Street Bridge are doing about 25 shows through February and March, taking in the Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin Fringe Festivals, the celebrations in Oamaru marking the 100th anniversary of the return of the Terra Nova to civilization, Christchurch Music in Parks, opening for Mt Eerie in Barrytown, a party in Okarito, sharing stages with some of our best musical buddies - Rosy Tin Teacaddy, Matt Langley, uncle Delaney, Tiny Lies and of course Luckless and Brendan Turner, and shows from Bayly's Beach in the North to Milford Sound in the South.  The show will take slightly different forms depending on the venue, and in its complete version it's a combination of spoken word storytelling, original illustrations and heritage photographs projected behind the band, and of course foot-stompin, heart-string tuggin folk songs. 

So that's what's happening, and that's what I was thinking about as I waved to my neighbour this morning, staggering in from a really quite unadventurous run around the suburban block, and I must say I'm rather looking forward to it all. Here are all the dates and things; there will be other details to come and we're selling tickets for the Auckland shows here so get in and get them.

The Explorers Club:Antarctica Tour Summer 2013

All of these shows are with Luckless except those marked *

Sat 2 Feb: Paekakariki, St Peters Hall with Delaney Davidson, Rosy Tin Teacaddy and Dos Hermarnos 8pm, $15
Sun 3 Feb: Nelson, Playhouse Theater with Brendan Turner 3 pm, Free
Mon 4 Feb: Barrytown Hall supporting Mt Eerie *
Wed 6 Feb: Franz Josef, Blue Ice Cafe with Brendan Turner
Thurs 7 Feb: Oamaru, Grainstore Gallery with Brendan Turner 8pm $10
Fri 8 Feb: Waitati Hall with Brendan Turner 8pm $10
Sat 9 Feb: Port Chalmers, Chick's Hotel with Matt Langley 9pm $10
Sun 10 Feb: Chrischurch Botanic Gardens Lazy Sundays 3pm Free*
Tues 12 Feb: Te Anau, Black Dog Bar with Brendan Turne 8pm Free
Wed 13 Feb: Milford Sound, Blue Duck Bar and Cafe with Brendan Turne, 8pm Free
Thurs 14 Feb: Fairlie, Kimbell Garage Gallery with Brendan Turner, 8pm $10
Fri 15 Feb: Lyttelton, Wunderbar with Tiny Lies and Ben Brown, 9pm
Sat 16 Feb: Wellington Fringe Festival, The Moorings with Rosy Tin Teacaddy, 8pm $20
Sun 17 Feb: Wellington waterfront, Performance Arcade with Grayson Gilmour, 5pm free
Fri 22 Feb: AUCKLAND FRINGE FESTIVAL, Wine Cellar with Bernie Griffen 8:30 pm, $15*
Sun 23 Feb: Bayly's Beach, The Funky Fish (Sam Prebble Solo) 3pm*
Fri 1 Mar: AUCKLAND FRINGE FESTIVAL, Wine Cellar with Luckless 8:30 pm $15
Thurs 21 Mar: DUNEDIN FRINGE FESTIVAL club*
Fri 22 Mar: Amberly, Nor'Wester Cafe with Brendan Turner
Sat 23 Mar: Wairau Valley, Dharma Bum's Club with Brendan Turner

The Return of The Wine Cellar Strings

OK, listen: It seemed like a good idea, we gave it a go, and it sold out – so we're doing it again.  On Friday the 14^th of December the Wine Cellar Strings return to our spiritual home in the depths of St Kevin’s arcade, joined this time by the cream of Auckland’s alt-folk crop, fresh off  the Gunslinger’s Ball Tour – Steve Abel, Bernie Griffen and The Bads.

The Wine Cellar Strings, who desctibe ourselves in press releases as 'a rag-tag collection of string players from some of the most exciting acts currently operating in Auckland’s thriving alternative folk scene,' made our sell-out debut in September of this year. The concept was simple (as, it must be said. were many of the people involved): fiddle players, cellists and upright bass players from bands that play and drink regularly at The Wine Cellar – the beating heart of the Auckland underground, as we say in press releases – would get together and form a string section, inviting our favorite songwriters to feature in occasional special shows, performing stripped-back versions of their songs with swaggering string arrangements.

That first show in September, featuring Reb Fountain, Goodshirt’s Gareth Thomas and Bernie Griffen, essentially went off in quite a big way, packed the Wine Cellar, everyone was happy, and the Wine Cellar Strings were invited to join Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams and Tami Neilson – the three finalists of this year’s APRA silver scroll for best country song – for a special one-off show on Waiheke Island, which was quite lovely and included at least one member of the string section smooching Marlon's stubbly cheek after he had brought the house down with 'I can't help falling in love with you.' Which is unlikely to happen at future shows so don't get any ideas.

For this second performance at the Wine Cellar, the Wine Cellar Strings have invited along three acts with well-deserved reputations as leading lights of the Auckland alt-folk scene and by God we're lucky to have them.  Bernie Griffen, Steve Abel and The Bads have just toured the North Island with the wildly successful Gunslinger’s Ball, and they’re each in peak performing voice. The Bads and Bernie Griffen have just stepped off the stage after supporting Emmylou Harris at Vector Arena, and Steve Abel has caused audiences around the world to swoon with his mournfully beautiful songs.

Do yourself a favour, tell your friends and catch these three acts at the top of their game supported by Auckland’s hottest band of string-sawing rascals at bar that keeps the scene alive: The Wine Cellar, St Kevin’s Arcade, 14^th December, doors at 8:30.

Go on. Presales are here and you should get them pretty quick I reckon.

The Wine Cellar Strings are:

Dave Khan, Sam Prebble, Emily Giles, Brendan Turner, Will Wood, and Louise Evans. Between them they’ve played in The Broadsides, The Grifters, Bond Street Bridge, Don McGlashan’s Band, An Emerald City, The Broken Heartbreakers, Forbidden Joe, Rodney Fisher’s Backyard Orchestra, The Bads, Reb Fountain’s Bandits, and altogether more bands than they can recall.