Musician, best-selling author, TED speaker, and community leader Amanda Palmer is paying homage to New Zealand with a very special new EP and live tour.
Palmer, who spent over two years waylaid in Aotearoa, New Zealand with her young son during the pandemic, will honour her time as an accidental Kiwi with New Zealand Survival Songs, a brand-new five-song EP collecting material written and recorded during that life-changing experience. The new EP – which was fully financed by the over 17,000 patrons who support Palmer’s extraordinary crowd-funded career as a touring songwriter and recording artist – will be available on January 11, 2024.
Palmer will return to the Australia for “Amanda Palmer Comes Down For a Quick Catch-up: Old Songs, New Songs, New Zealand Survival Songs” an intimate run of concerts in Australia and New Zealand hitting Sydney’s City Recital Hall on February 1 and Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on February 3.
The tour will see Palmer engaging her devoted fans as only she can, telling stories, revealing the inspiration behind the survival songs, and of course, playing material from her ever-evolving body of work as both solo artist and one- half of The Dresden Dolls, including new songs from the iconic punk cabaret duo’s upcoming new album arranged especially for solo piano. Pre-sale tickets will available to members of Palmer’s official Patreon beginning November 20; general on-sales begin Thursday November 23. For complete details, please visit amandapalmer.net/events.
Today sees the world premiere of the EP’s deeply personal “Little Island,” a duet with legendary Kiwi musicians Julia Deans of Fur Patrol, available everywhere now. Described by Palmer as “a complicated and heartfelt love letter to New Zealand and to the people who held and took care of me, as well as a reflection on our collectively difficult relationships with the past, and what ‘home’ really means”.
“It is still shocking to me that I wound up living in Aotearoa, New Zealand–unexpectedly–for over two years of my life, ” says Amanda Palmer, “and that my young child was raised in a foreign country while Covid raged around the planet. I came to New Zealand at the end of a world tour and was supposed to be in the country for four show dates and eight days total. I wound up living within the borders for two and half years. Sometimes I wake up in New York and find myself short of breath and cannot believe that this all happened.“
When Covid hit, my life was mangled in four departments at once: I lost my marriage, I lost my country, I lost my artistic identity, and I very nearly lost my mind. I managed to write a song about every six months while I was down there, and they felt more like messages-in -a-bottle to my friends and patrons. These songs kept me tethered to sanity as I grappled with raising a child alone in a place where I had no community. I was very, very scared and very, very lonely. People abroad saw my Instagram feed from afar and would say: ‘You’re so lucky! It’s so beautiful there! And you managed to dodge Covid!’, and it’s true, New Zealand is gorgeous.
But the pictures and little captions could not express the sorrow I felt about the collapse of my marriage, nor the incredible loneliness I felt being overseas with no prediction, nor the gratitude I felt for the strangers who took me and Ash into their homes and befriended us at my darkest hour. The songs did that.“
I wanted to come back for this short tour–not only because I’m homesick for my Kiwi friends, but because I’d like to share the music: the handful of songs that helped me survive this period of my life.
“AMANDA PALMER COMES DOWN FOR A QUICK CATCH-UP: OLD SONGS, NEW SONGS, NEW ZEALAND SURVIVAL SONGS” AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2024
Sun 21 Jan – Queenstown – Sherwood
Wed 24 Jan – Auckland, Q Theatre
Sat 27 Jan – Wellington, Old St Pauls
Thurs 1 Feb – Sydney, City Recital Hall
Tickets on sale 8am AEDT, Thursday Nov 23
Sat 3 Feb – Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Tickets on sale 10am AEDT, Thursday Nov 23
