Steve Gunn (USA) announces New Zealand tour

On his first musical journey to New Zealand, New York-based guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn will play four solo shows across the country. Former guitarist in Kurt Vile’s The Violators as well as collaborator with Vile, Black Twig Pickers and Mike Cooper, Gunn will be bringing the personal and evocative new album Eyes On The Lines to New Zealand this July, as well as drawing from his significant and prolific catalogue of critically acclaimed solo, duo, and ensemble recordings. 

‘The guitar playing, which is superb throughout, feels inextricably bound to the structure and shape of the melodies.‘
★★★★ – MOJO
‘He’s the hipster-friendly guitar slinger of the moment, in the spirit of John Fahey or Robbie Basho, with a lovely sun-glazed lilt to his fluid fingersmithery.’  ★★★★ – THE GUARDIAN
‘By embracing the expanse, his music has gotten bigger, and more universal”
 ★★★★ – PITCHFORK
‘So intimate and so mysteriously distant all at once’
– WASHINGTON POST
Thu July 13th – Auckland – Whammy Bar
with Oscar Dowling
Fri July 14th – Wellington – Caroline
with Ryan Prebble
Sat July 15th – Christchurch – Blue Smoke
with Candice Milner
Sun July 16th – Queenstown – Sherwood
with special guests

Tickets from Under The Radar

His albums with GHQ and longtime collaborating drummer John Truscinski represent milestones of contemporary guitar-driven, forward music. Mining the catalogs of Basho, Bull, Chapman, and Sharrock, among other titans of stringed-things and record-session royalty, Steve Gunn has steadily processed these inspirations into a singular, virtuosic stream. Close listening reveals the influence of Delta and Piedmont country blues, ecstatic free jazz, and psych, as well as Gnawa and Carnatic music, on the continually unfolding compositions.

People have written about roads for as long as they’ve been around. And before there were roads, they still wrote about travel and about landscape. Landscape is the stage upon which our greatest experiences and desires play out. Steve Gunn’s music has always embraced expanse and movement. It springs from the simple and profound relationship between humans and their environment. Eyes On The Lines is his most explicit ode to the blissful uncertainty of adventure yet.

Gunn’s roots in the underground run deep, from his days in GHQ to his collaborations with Black Twig Pickers and Mike Cooper. He’s toured and recorded with Michael Chapman, and released two remarkable duo albums with drummer John Truscinski. His solo ventures, emerging over the past decade and culminating most recently the highly-acclaimed Way Out Weather, have been pastoral, evocative affairs. Here he embraces his urban surroundings through a series of songs that fully showcase his extraordinary ability to match hooks to deftly constructed melodies. Gunn is a consummate guitarist, that rare fingerpicker who can harness the enigma of the American Primitive vernacular without lazily regurgitating it. His playing is inventive and full of personality. His instrumental virtuosity calls upon a vast library of technical skills at will, but he’s never showy — his riffs and runs are always in the service of the song at hand.

And what a pleasure to have this music presented to the wider public.