Colette Rivers- The Backyard Wonder Album Launch

Indie-Folk Artist Colette Rivers and her band will be performing her intimate new album, The Backyard Wonder.

Independent artist Colette Rivers is releasing her second full-length album, The Backyard Wonder, an intimate exploration of healing, change, and the quiet beauty of ordinary moments.

This album holds special meaning for Rivers: after being diagnosed with cancer in July 2023, her planned sophomore release had to take a back seat to recovery. But when the cancer returned in early 2025, she felt compelled to finish and release the album, not just as a legacy project, also as a celebration after hard times, with a focus on how “you can find the wonder in life, even in your backyard.”

A lifelong creative, Rivers records, mixes, and produces in her home studio in Masterton, and plays every instrument heard on The Backyard Wonder. Her debut album, Memory Lake (2020), was shaped by early years spent in the US, and her move to Taupō at age 11; this was followed by a nationwide tour. Now based in the Wairarapa and working as a secondary school drama teacher, Rivers continues to move between solo performance and full band sets, while staying rooted in the acoustic traditions that define her sound.

With her right arm partially paralysed following recent treatment, Rivers has gathered a group of close friends to help bring the songs of The Backyard Wonder to life (especially its intricate fingerpicking parts) for a run of live shows. She’ll be touring the Wellington and Wairarapa regions from August through October, finishing with a set at the Wellington Folk Festival.
The album will be available digitally via Bandcamp and all major streaming platforms, with vinyl copies stocked through her website, Slow Boat Records, and Rough Peel.
For updates, and behind-the-scenes glimpses, visit www.coletteriversmusic.com or follow @colettemusic on Instagram and Facebook.

Opening for Rivers are artists:

Phil Masters

Saali Marks
A singer, songwriter, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Saali Marks hails originally from the
South Island, but has made Wairarapa his home for the last 20 years, where he lives on a farm
with his family and teaches music at Kuranui College.
Saali has played in numerous bands over the years, in a wide range of styles from proto-punk
to psychedelic dub, covers, originals and fully improvised music with no discernible genre, on
stages throughout Aotearoa since 1991. Currently he fronts the Wellington ska band Battleska
Galactica.
Throughout and alongside it all Saali has indulged his love for songwriting and solo
performing, developing a unique style, rooted in folk and blues, and inspired by greats from
across the decades. A skilled guitarist, Saali rarely plays straight ahead chords, and an
education in jazz has informed his ear for harmony, the beauty of dissonance, tension and
resolution, with unconventional song structures, alternate tunings and intriguing melodies.
Although not adverse to penning the odd love song, most of Saali’s lyrics tend to focus on
other aspects of the human condition, from religion and politics to our relationships with the
environment and our own minds.