Tour news: Neil Finn, Fat Freddy's Drop

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3 Jun, 2015 08:00 PM2 mins to read

Finn will play at the Auckland Town Hall on July 18. Photo / Joshua Morris

Neil Finn thinks it's time he dusted off some old songs for a good cause.

Having toured the world off the back of his acclaimed album Dizzy Heights and finished with a national tour late last year, Finn is heading to the Auckland Town Hall next month for a retrospective solo show.

The evening promises songs from across his career dating back to Split Enz with Finn playing a mix of acoustic and electric guitar and piano and accompanied by a 12-piece string section playing arrangements by Victoria Kelly.

"I find playing solo to be a very free environment where I'm able to explore strange tangents, reinvent old songs, reminisce with friends and lampoon at will. I love it."

He's been playing solo in Australia recently and decided to extend the tour to hometown Auckland - though he has an ulterior motives.

All profits from the show will go towards charity Medicine Mondiale and the manufacturing of LifePod incubators. They have been designed by scientist Sir Ray Avery for use in Third World countries where supplies of clean water and power are intermittent. Each incubator costs about $2000 to produce.

• Finn will play at the Auckland Town Hall on July 18. Tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster on Friday June 12.

And another bunch of local legends are also announcing a big gig.

Fat Freddy's Drop will be heading off to Europe this November and December for a 22-city continental tour, but first they're going to give local fans a treat with a celebratory show at the Auckland Town Hall on Saturday October 24.

It will be their first show at the venue, and they'll be presenting it "in the round" with the choir stalls behind the stage also made available for seating, if you're keen on a bit of a sneaky birds-eye view of the Freddy's machine.

Fat Freddy's Drop will play at the Auckland Town Hall on Saturday October 24. Photo / Tony Mott

They'll be playing plenty of material from across their three LPs, along with a bunch of new tracks which they'll be road testing.

"We've got half a terabyte of jamming and recording in the studio for a new album, and we're looking forward to getting these songs on to the stage" says beat master DJ Fitchie, aka Chris Faiumu.