Paul Kelly Touring New Zealand In September 2025 w/ Reb Fountain
A towering figure in Australian music for more than four decades, Paul Kelly is returning to Aotearoa with band in September 2025, playing a triple date tour hitting Auckland Town Hall, Christchurch Town Hall and Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre. He'll be here toasting his forthcoming album Fever Longing Still, the multi award-winning songwriting luminary's twenty ninth (!) studio long player, from his early days as frontman of The Dots onwards. Kelly's new record is a collection of "love songs, all different kinds of love. There’s even a love song to sleep! Our aim was to make each song its own world so you hear all the different colours of the band" — out in full this coming Friday.
Inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997 (alongside the Bee Gees) and appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017, Paul Kelly is the subject of director Ian Darling's award-winning 2012 documentary Paul Kelly – Stories of Me and even has a street named after him — Paul Kelly Lane, behind Adelaide Town Hall. Kelly will be joined on stage by bandmates Peter Luscombe, Bill McDonald, Dan Kelly, Cameron Bruce, Jess Hitchcock and Ash Naylor, supported for every Aotearoa event by our own Reb Fountain, who is releasing her new album How Love Bends this coming March. Don't miss Kelly's only Aotearoa headline dates of 2025, general public tickets go on sale at 3pm today, brought to you by Frontier Touring and Stuff...
Paul Kelly New Zealand Tour
with special guest Reb Fountain
Tuesday 9th September - Christchurch Town Hall, Christchurch
Wednesday 10th September - Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Friday 12th September - Auckland Town Hall, Auckland
Tickets on sale from 3pm, Wednesday 30th October via www.paulkelly.com.au
Hit play on Paul Kelly's new single 'Houndstooth Dress', from his new album Fever Longing Still — out this Friday...
Here's Paul Kelly's classic 'To Her Door' from 1987's Under the Sun...
Experience the official clip for Paul Kelly's 1996 single 'How To Make Gravy'...
Watch the trailer for director Ian Darling's 2012 documentary Paul Kelly: Stories of Me...
Press release:
Paul Kelly today announces his biggest shows in Australia and New Zealand to date, and his only live shows for 2025: nine huge arenas in Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland in August/September 2025… proudly presented by Frontier Touring, Triple M (AU) and Stuff (NZ).
Today’s tour news comes in the lead up to Kelly’s forthcoming studio album, Fever Longing Still, to be released November 1 and available for preorder now. His first album of new original material since 2018’s Nature, Fever Longing Still delivers 12 additions to a superb catalogue of love songs spanning more than 40 years. The title comes from a line in Sonnet 147 by Shakespeare, whose writing has thrilled and inspired Kelly ever since schooldays. Led by singles ‘Taught By Experts’ and ‘Houndstooth Dress’, it’s an album driven by a band in peak form – who fans can witness live onstage next year.
Awarded the Order of Australia in 2017 and with 17 ARIAs and five APRAs, few songwriters find ways to keep that creative fever burning for as long and as brightly as Kelly. The country of his birth, its emotional interior and geographical landscape, its heroes and villains, our hopes and failings, have all been a constant in Kelly’s long list of Australian-set songs: ‘To Her Door’, ‘Leaps and Bounds’, ‘From St Kilda To King’s Cross’, ‘How To Make Gravy’, ‘When I First Met Your Ma’, ‘Dumb Things’, ‘Before Too Long’… the list is endless. He has written about the country’s greatest cricketer, ‘Bradman’, and its most infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, in ‘Our Sunshine’. ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, co-written with Kev Carmody, has taught more Australians about the history of the battle for land rights than newspaper headlines ever could.
From live recordings and compilations albums, Christmas standards and originals, variety has long been a key to Kelly’s recording career, which includes albums ranging from bluegrass and country (Smoke and Foggy Highway) to funk and soul (Professor Ratbaggy, The Merri Soul Sessions), alongside classic records such as Gossip, and Post. Kelly’s decades of touring have seen him play the kind of shows fans never forget.
With his incredible live band by his side – including members Peter Luscombe (drums), Bill McDonald (bass), Dan Kelly (guitar), Cameron Bruce (keys), Jess Hitchcock (vocals), and Ash Naylor (guitar) – Paul Kelly live is not to be missed. Tickets on sale next week!
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