The first one, Riff Foundry, is being brought to you by the crews from Fortify Events and Avo Audio. Their aim is to bring you a fresh new musical experience, with four exciting local bands playing some intense music at the Gasworks Museum on Friday, August 9 starting at 6pm.
The Gasworks Museum is an under-rated local attraction that lives in the old factory buildings behind Woolworths/Countdown in South Dunedin.
The museum is open on Sunday afternoons and, if you’re lucky, you can sometimes see some of the ancient coal-fired machines pumping away like a bunch of Terminators on steroids.
The museum’s buildings are part of New Zealand’s first and last gasworks, which operated from 1863 until 1987. The factory used to burn coal to produce gas for cooking and heating and the machines were used to pump it around the city for local home-use. It is one of only three known preserved gasworks museums in the world and it’s a significant local and world heritage site. If you haven’t checked it out already this gig might be a good time to do so, but you’ll need to come back on a Sunday to see some of the real machines at work.
This industrial space was also the setting for a soon to be released video by local dark-pop group - Robots in Love - and you can see this band on the night, alongside three other stonking local bands - Puppet Milk, No Danger, and Donnahue.
The gig
• Robots In Love, Donnahue, No Danger and Puppet Milk play Dunedin Gasworks Museum, 20 Braemar St, South Dunedin. Friday August 9, 6pm. Tickets from Humanitix.
DONNA DEAN TOUR
The second gig is going to be a bit more relaxed but no less interesting and professional. I’m talking about Butterflies and Bees, a South Island tour by well known Auckland singer-songwriter, Donna Dean, who is being ably supported by two local artists, John Dodd and John Egenes.
You can see and hear this mellifluous trio at the Dunedin Folk Club, at its home in the Opoho Bowling Club building, Lovelock Avenue, on Sunday August 11.
The trio are touring the South Island with their own unique brand of country, folk and bluegrass.
Donna has won multiple APRA and Tui awards for her songwriting and record production and she has recorded and performed with the likes of Willie Nelson, Kasey Chambers, Jimmy Webb, Paul Kelly and Don McLean, as well as writing the title track to Rhonda Vincent’s 2010 Grammy-nominated bluegrass album, Destination Life. She also has a new album out Kisses and Other Things, which you can stream or download on Bandcamp.
The two Johns drive the bus and they’re also the opening act, serving up their own brand of homegrown original tunes, along with the occasional cowboy poem and some amusing outright lies.
The gig
• Donna Dean with Dodd and Egenes, Butterflies and Bees Tour, at Dunedin Folk Club, Lovelock Ave. Sunday August 11, 7.30pm. Tickets from Humanitix.
• Donna Dean’s new album, Kisses and Other Things, is at Bandcamp.
MARLIN’S DREAMING
This cruisy band of alt-rockers was formed in Dunedin in 2017 by longtime friends, Semisi Ma’ia’i (vocals and guitar), Oscar Johns (bass), Hamish Morgan (drums) and De Stevens (guitar) and, like Six60, they quickly found success with their debut album Lizard Tears, which garnered international acclaim.
Subsequent releases such as Talk On/Commic (2018), Quotidian (2020) and Hasten (2021) showcased their smooth angst-driven melodies and drew praise from the high profile English publications, Clash and NME. Their introspective 2021 release Hasten was an acoustically driven album exploring themes of post-pandemic life in New Zealand’s desolate, rugged South Island.
The band will be touring in September in support of their upcoming release, HIRL.
The album, the gig
• Marlin’s Dreaming release new album HIRL on Friday, August 16 and play Errick’s, Dunedin on September 21.
