This winter Monkey Records/Banished From the Universe and Earl Grey Records are putting the Slow Burn Winter Tour on the road around New Zealand. The tour brings new albums from Auckland’s Bond Street Bridge and Wellington’s Rosy Tin Teacaddy to life for audiences from Auckland to Dunedin and towns and cities in between.
Both acts have stories to tell on this tour. Bond Street Bridge (Auckland based multi-instrumentalist Sam Prebble) has been on the move, playing shows in the last couple of years as far north as Copenhagen and as far south as Invercargill, from Milford Sound lodges to the dive bars of Berlin. Touring both solo and as a member of An Emerald City and The Broken Heartbreakers, he's played shows alongside psychedelic heavyweights Black Mountain and the Black Angels, New York art-pop duo The Books, Tim Guy, Don McGlashan, and Californian alt-folksters The Mountain Goats.
In between time on the road he's been crafting a new album entitled Spring Summer Awesome Winter, his second as Bond Street Bridge and a follow-up to 2008's critically acclaimed The Mapmaker's Art. This is the album he's bringing on the Slow Burn Winter Tour – songs from staying up late and getting up early, songs from travelling a long way, songs from going nowhere fast, songs about storms, love, the internet and ocean-going birds. Everything is dressed up in his trademark lush string arrangements, jangling mandolins and guitars, glitchy beats and warm vocal harmonies.
Wellington alt-folk duo Rosy Tin Teacaddy have been collecting stories of another kind. For six weeks during 2010 Rosy Tin Teacaddy’s Andy Hummel (The Woolshed Sessions, Rhian Sheehan) and Holly Jane Ewens were exiled to New Zealand's most volatile landscape; the Rotorua Lakes District. In the shadow of Tarawera, the mountain which unleashed a devastating volcanic eruption in 1886, Rosy Tin Teacaddy summoned the spirits and stories left buried there under ash and mud. In their journeys they discovered the characters, news reports and legends that would fuel the imaginings of travelling back in time.
By forging new interpretations of existing myths, the duo carved their own into a full-length album; All Mountains Are Men. Written and recorded entirely in isolation at the cottage by the lake, this new collection of songs extends Rosy Tin Teacaddy's sonic palette by layering field-recordings, omnichord and cello on a bed of interlacing vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars. From an old-fashioned camera flash comes contemporary musical story-telling; cinematic and intimate.
Rosy Tin Teacaddy have played the Nelson, Tauranga and Wanaka Arts Festivals, the ASB Magic Gardens, City and Dowse Galleries, guest-appeared on Radio NZ National and shared the stage with Chris Knox, Jose Gonzalez and Iron and Wine. In 2010 the pair were recipients of the 'Wild Creations' artists-in-residency programme from Creative NZ and the Department of Conservation which took them to Lake Tarawera for six weeks.
Both acts are no strangers to touring in the New Zealand winter. In June and July of 2009, they travelled together throughout the country along with their friends The Eastern and The Broken Heartbreakers on the Slow Song Revue tour, staying one step ahead of the snowstorm and the gales, warming hearts, lifting spirits, and raising roofs. 'We're really looking forward to touring together again' says Prebble. 'These are some of our favourite venues in the country, and playing good music to nice people is a great way to keep warm in winter.'
