Sneaky Bones Returning To New Zealand in January 2023

Last here in Aotearoa playing a marathon run of headline gigs during the pre-pandemic days of 2019, the coast is now clear for California-based folk songwriter Sneaky Bones aka Matthew Bean to make his long-awaited return. He'll be treating Te Ika a Maui audiences to songs from his latest album Little Words in January, joined for his seven date tour by drummer and keyboardist Marshall Wildman — the first time the studio long player "will be performed live, anywhere in the world!" Reigniting the touring flame following a hurly burly couple of years for live musicians worldwide, Sneaky Bones' forthcoming summer run of NZ shows will conclude with a set as part of the 2023 Auckland Folk Festival. Scope out the details, read Annabel Kean's interview with the artist from his last visit HERE and grab tickets below...

“I wanted to start back up with NZ because that run of shows in 2019 left me with an overwhelming love for touring – the audiences, venues, bands, and people we met across the country were so passionate about music and engaged in what we were about, on and off the stage.

When I make records, usually the songs have been road tested and then the arrangements get a blank studio treatment, meaning we try and build a new performance using the studio environment as an instrument. But, LITTLE WORDS was born in the studio, where you get a chance to freeze time and use tools and techniques that are impossible to replicate live. It’s been a beautiful challenge to synthesize these songs onto the stage and I’m excited to see them evolve as they travel across the world.” — Sneaky Bones

Sneaky Bones Summer 2023 NZ Tour Dates

Thursday 19th January - Common Room, Hastings*
Friday 20th January - Globe Theatre, Palmerston North
Saturday 21st January - The Jam Factory, Tauranga
Sunday 22nd January - TSB Festival Of Lights, New Plymouth
Monday 23rd January - Whangateau Folk Club, Whangateau
Wednesday 25th January - ONEONESIX Theatre, Whangarei
Friday 27th January - Auckland Folk Festival, Kumeu, Auckland

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
*Tickets on sale at sneakybones.com

Listen to Sneaky Bones' 2020 album Little Words...

Press release:

“It’s strange to release a record with the possibility that it might never be heard live.” Matthew Bean, better known under the musical moniker Sneaky Bones, released LITTLE WORDS in May of 2020. Songs like OUTLAW, ALREADY THERE, and SWITZERLAND quickly found their way onto radio playlists around the world, including strong support from radio in NZ. The new album continued to build momentum and anticipation for return tours across Europe, New Zealand, and the US. “Sometime in the summer, I realized it would be years before I would play live again,” Bean remarks, “and I was completely okay with that.”

Two years later, the idea of getting back on the road started to feel right. And the first place to start was the last place he left off – New Zealand. Sneaky Bones will return to Aoteaoa for his third tour kicking it off on Jan 19th in The Hawkes Bay. Other highlights of this tour include The 50th Auckland Folk Festival and Taranaki’s Festival of Lights.

Sneaky Bones 2023 NZ tour is the first time LITTLE WORDS, an album that was primarily written and orchestrated in the studio, will be performed live, anywhere in the world!.

Without needing to be categorized, Sneaky Bones is pure American folk music. The foundation of simplicity in words and music is ornately decorated across the sonic spectrum, freely roaming through the colors and tones of both tradition and contemporary exploration.

With that in mind, a forced three year touring hiatus & many changes globally, Bean’s musical landscape also drastically changed. "I spent the fall of 2020 living in a pseudo artist residency in France and diving deep down the electronic music rabbithole," Bean explains. "A close friend died in late 2019 and left behind a massive and profound body of unfinished work in the form of scrambled ableton sessions. 2020’s pause was my gateway into midi, synths, sequencers, drum machines, filter boxes, and other various robots that now occupy every inch of free space in my tiny home studio." So although Sneaky Bones was on hiatus, Bean was working more than ever. "Designing patches and figuring out how to link my entire studio together via midi and cv kept me up at night -- my bedtime reading was manuals, it was a little crazy, but it has completely changed the way I think about music, and the way I make music."

Bean will be returning to Aotearoa and live performances for the first time in over three years, in January 2023. Touring live with Marshall Wildman on drums and keys. Fans can expect to see the much loved music of Sneaky Bones and his renowned live shows, along with the evolution of a musician performing an album live for the first time!