Adam Mcgrath

Gate opens 6.30pm, music starts 7pm

We are SO LUCKY to have Adam McGrath returning to Hilltop – he’s one of the best. Adam has already had a full-on year (and it’s only half way), including touring with the ‘Come Together’ Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen concerts, and then touring with Gary McCormick. Adam is the winner of the 2024 Aotearoa/New Zealand Folk Artist of the Year Award at the Aotearoa/New Zealand music awards. Described by RNZ as a “National Treasure” and the Herald as “NZ’s toughest minded songwriter”, Adam is also widely known as lead singer and songwriter with one of NZ’s most loved roots/country bands The Eastern. Adam’s new album Wrecker Songs was released on May Day 2026 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ). It hit #1 – Aotearoa Albums Chart and #4 – Official Top 40 Albums (all albums, domestic and international). It also reached #1 on the IMNZ (Independent Music New Zealand) Album Chart. “Wrecker Songs is here, on all the streamers, the cd’s are here the vinyl is late, the spirit is high, the heart is a eye and its wide, the muscle is gristly, the bones brittle, the mind shows grit despite the fog, the fists clenched, the struggle real, the solidarity true.”… Click for the first song on the album -> ‘The Assembly” Adam is a folk singer and yarn spinner stationed, he says, wherever he can get a key! He spends eight months a year on the road between NZ, Australia, Europe and parts beyond. With The Eastern and solo he has shared stages with and opened for Fleetwood Mac, Steve Earle, Old Crow Medicine Show, Paul Kelly, Jimmy Barnes and many, more. His song Hope and Wire was the inspiration behind Gaylene Preston’s TV series of the same name and he is known for his service orientated approach to music in the years since. Described as “maybe part folk singer, part preacher, part boxer, and part rodeo clown he is however all heart”. Raucous, tender, roof and spirit raising, a McGrath show goes straight for the spirit level in all of us, looking deep for the good parts and hoping to reach all the thoughtful bits that matter.
Adam’s first solo album was released December ’23. “It’s called Dear Companions, because of everything I’ve learnt or am learning about the people in the songs and what they help me learn about myself and about the world big and small (especially small). But that kind of conception is just how records start, where they end up is up to whoever gets a copy in their life.”
“One of the best modern roots artists, from any country”
-No Depression magazine