She was only meant to be here for 10 days. In March 2020, American punk/cabaret musician Amanda Palmer said goodbye to her husband and 4-year-old son, and hopped on a flight to New Zealand for the last stop of a year-long global tour. One week later, New Zealand was in lockdown, and it would be more than two years before Palmer made her way back home to Woodstock, New York.
Known for playing interesting lesser-known venues (her last New Zealand tour saw her take her ukelele and grand piano to Auckland CBD’s neo-gothic St Matthew’s cathedral and a four-stop “small hall crawl” on Waiheke), Palmer has returned to our little corner of the world to tour a new show, Amanda Palmer Comes Down For a Quick Catch-Up, for just three shows at Queenstown’s boutique Sherwood Lodge, Wellington’s historic Old St Paul’s and Q Theatre in Auckland’s tiny unofficial theatre district on Queen St.
Last night at Q Theatre, Palmer told the story of her time here in a sold-out show that was as much lounge act and confessional as gig, where there was as much storytelling as music. Between songs, Palmer thanked the audience - many of whom were clearly friends - for the kindness she and her son were shown during the pandemic. In a show that ran over by an hour (and was sprinkled with promises that the Waiheke dwellers would not miss the last ferry home), she told the story of how life unravelled in two-and-a-half years stuck in New Zealand.
During her time in Aotearoa, Palmer’s marriage of 12 years to author Neil Gaiman ended, and she found herself locked down and living in an Airbnb in Havelock North, solo parenting their son, navigating a new culture and community, and feeling desperately cut off from the world. Usually a prolific artist, she composed just four songs in New Zealand - songs she says were written just to keep her sane in a crazy time.
