Bond Street Bridge Summer Throwdown Tour

Hard on the heels of an epic 2013 of sold-out shows, rave reviews, and thousands of winding miles, Bond Street Bridge are hitting the road again to visit old friends, meet new ones, and raise the roof from Invercargill to Baylys Beach.

The past year has seen Bond Street perform over 100 shows on the road, playing at fancy places like arts festivals, museums, art galleries, opera houses and theatres all over the country. They have performed their unique show ‘The Explorers Club: Antarctica’ to packed houses and critical acclaim across the length and breadth of New Zealand, circling the country twice and winning the award for ‘Best Music’ at the 2013 New Zealand Fringe Festival awards.  The show was a ‘perfect evening of music’ according to the Dominion Post, a ‘tour de force’ said the Nelson Mail, the new album spent a month in the charts and won the praises of the toughest critics in the land, but with all of these high-culture venues and hushed, seated audiences - not to mention hotel-grade accommodation and the better sort of whiskey - Bond Street Bridge are worried about going soft.

So to kick off 2014, Bond Street Bridge take it back to the bar-rooms and Community Halls in a Summer Throwdown Tour, setting aside their high-concept Antarctica show and upper middle-brow cultural aspirations for a month or so to bring out a raft of new material and demonstrate that they can sling a guitar in a bar full of good-time yahoos just as well as they can hold a room full of history buffs in thrall with tales of icy disaster.

Bond Street have been writing new material and plundering folk-song archives to breathe new life into old singalongs and shanties, unearthing hair-raising stories and rousing choruses.  Expect the Devil, expect jealous gods and queens of the underworld, maimed seadogs and lost loves, the darkness at the edge of town and the light of a spiteful moon, vocal harmonies, stomping feet and jangling guitars as Bond Street Bridge reveal the work they have been writing on the road over the course of their 2013 travels.

Along the way the band are meeting up with old friends around the country - The Broken Heartbreakers for selected South Island shows, Rosy Tin Teacaddy for their annual St Peters Hall shindig in Paekakariki, Hannah Curwood, back from London for the Summer appearing at the Golden Dawn, and of course the enigmatic Brendan Turner will be opening the shows along the way with his trademark dark delta blues.  Later on in March, the band have been invited to open for Billy Bragg at the Opera House in Wellington and the Powerstation in Auckland, a state of affairs that has them reeling in happy disbelief.

Join Bond Street Bridge as they blaze a track through the summer of 2014, hearts on sleeves and boots on the floor at a bar in your town.

Friday 3 January: Baylys Beach , Funky Fish

Saturday 4 January: Whangarei, Old Stone Butter Factory (Explorers Club: Antarctica show)

Friday 24 January: Auckland, Golden Dawn with Hannah In The Wars

Saturday 1 February: Christchurch, Brewery

Monday 3 Februrary: Blue Duck, Milford with The Broken Heartbreakers

Tuesday 4 February: Invercargill, Brad and Chrissie’s place

Wednesday 5 February: Oamaru, Grain Store Gallery with The Broken Heartbreakers

Thursday 6 February: Waitati, Mandy Mayhem’s

Friday 7 Februrary: Blackball Hilton

Saturday 8 February: Nelson, Playhouse Café

Saturday 22 February: Paekakariki, St Peter’s Hall with Rosy Tin Teacaddy

Sunday 23 March: Wellington Opera House opening for Billy Bragg (Explorers Club: Antarctica show)

Tuesday 25 March: Auckland, Powerstation opening for Billy Bragg (Explorers Club: Antarctica show)

Bond Street Bridge supporting Billy Bragg on NZ tour

We're opening for Billy Bragg on his March 2014 NZ tour.  As you can imagine, we are happy as clams. He is one of my total heroes. Plus we get to play at the Opera House in Wellington, which is a beautiful room.

Here's the press release:

Following an epic year of sold-out shows and rave reviews, Auckland alt-folksters Bond Street Bridge are taking their award-winning show ‘The Explorers Club: Antarctica’ to the Wellington Opera House and The Powerstation, Auckland, opening for their hero and yours, the Bard Of Barking: Mr Billy Bragg.

 In The Explorers Club: Antarctica, Bond Street Bridge use a combination of spoken word storytelling and original folk songs to bring to life the incredible tales of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Captain Scott’s tragic death on the Great Ice Barrier and the extraordinary survival of the crew of Shackleton’s Endurance are presented as stirring ballads and foot-stomping sea shanties. Since its premier in the 2013 New Zealand Fringe Festival, the show and accompanying album have garnered critical acclaim and played to sold-out houses at Arts Festivals, theatres, museums and bar-rooms around the country.

Bond Street Bridge tour and play constantly, with over 100 shows on the road in 2013, with their extraordinary live show earning them recognition for ‘best music’ at the 2013 NZ Fringe Festival Awards. Described as a ‘perfect evening of music’ by the Dominion Post and a ‘Tour de Force’ by the Nelson Mail, ‘The Explorers Club: Antarctica showcases a unique band at the height of its powers.

 This one-of-a-kind show and album are the product of Bond Street Bridge frontman Sam Prebble’s obsession with the stories and heroes of a dramatic period of history a century ago. Reading diaries, letters, and published accounts of the early Antarctic expeditions, Prebble used the words of the explorers themselves to create songs which pay tribute to their legacy and celebrate the indomitable spirit of this lost age.

‘We think of these as folk stories in the same sense as folk songs’ says Prebble. ‘One of the reasons we drive all over the place sharing these stories is that they are tales that belong to everyone, and tales need to be kept alive by being told. We’re honoured to be playing with Billy Bragg because he is someone who works tirelessly to keep folk stories alive.’

The band’s live reputation saw them invited to showcase the production at a string of sold-out gala events at galleries, museums and arts festivals around the country on their recent album release tour, including appearances at the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, the Voyager NZ Maritime Museum in Auckland, the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui, the MTG Hawkes Bay and the Nelson Arts Festival.

Along the way, the band played special daytime shows to share the stories and songs with school students, performing over 25 shows in five weeks. Now the band are excited to be invited to share a stage with Billy Bragg, one of the true legends of folk music, and to be given the opportunity to tell these stories in two of New Zealand’s iconic live music venues.

 A night of adventure, heartbreak, stories and great songs with Billy Bragg and special guests Bond Street Bridge performing ‘The Explorers Club: Antarctica’.

WELLINGTON • Sunday 23 March • The Opera House (All Seated) TIX: www.ticketek.co.nz / 04 384 3840 or 0800 TICKETEK

AUCKLAND • Tuesday 25 March • The Powerstation TIX: www.ticketmaster.co.nz / 09 970 9700 or 0800 111 999

Wine Cellar Strings Against Oil

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