A Small Hall Session With Jolie Holland

To say that I am excited about hosting Jolie for these two shows would be an understatement. I have been a fan for over 20 years, and would only ever have imagined that I would see her live by having to travel a very long way.

I love this piece of writing about her:
Over the span of her career, Jolie Holland has knotted together a century of American song—jazz, blues, soul, rock and roll—into some stew that is impossible to categorise with any conventional critical terminology. This is her burden and her gift, to know all of these American songs of the last ten decades in her head and her heart, and to have to wrestle with their legacy. She dives straight to the pathos of a song, the way the very greatest singers, singers like Mavis Staples, or Al Green, or Skip James, or Tom Waits, do. Upon first encounter, her songs seem challenging, perhaps unsettling at times, but as so many poets and rockers have shown us (from Dante Alighieri to William Blake to Sylvia Plath to Patti Smith to Nick Cave to Mark E. Smith) that’s where the beauty lies. As evident on her first recordings, Holland apparently has no fear of the truth, and there is no emotional core that she cannot reach in song. In fact, she thrives on the red-hot centre of a musical composition, in all its strange and brutal detail.

Jolie is a native of Texas but has made California home for a long time now. She has two significant connections to New Zealand. Some years ago, she collaborated with a wonderful musician, now better known as a Green Party MP, Steve Abel. Steve is actually opening for her for her one other NZ Show in Auckland. More recently, she has done significant collaboration with Theia, who visited us with her TE KAAHU project in 2022.

I can honestly say that any lover of contemporary music will be enchanted by Jolie. She somehow manages better than most artists to combine elements of folk, traditional country, jazz and blues, all with her distinctive vocal style. Be prepared to be seriously wowed.

Date & Time
Saturday 14th March Meeanee Memorial Hall
Sunday 15th March Haumoana Community Hall
Doors Open at 6.30pm Show starts at 7.30pm
Food and drink available for purchase.

Phone: +64224639580

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