Folk singer Rachel Dawick starts tour with Levin gig

Rachel Dawick.

An authentic and well-travelled folk musician who was a finalist for the NZ Tui Award Folk Album award in 2015 will give a live performance in Levin next Friday night.

Rachel Dawick, who has been busking and singing around folk clubs and assorted venues in New Zealand and Britain for the last 20 years or more, will perform as special guest at Levin Folk Music Club.

Dawick was born in Palmerston North to an English mother and New Zealand father, and since childhood has been sharing her time between New Zealand and Britain, with music always a constant thread in her life.

She had been based in London for the last four years, returning home to tour with a new folk album and book, London Labour and the London Poor, a trip back to the mid-1850s, telling of the diversity of people in London during this time.

Rachel Dawick.

As a keen folk historian, she had travelled the country twice before, once cycling from Cape Reinga to Bluff, to find stories about immigrant women in the 1800s.

She had picked out six women with colourful lives – a fraudster, missionary wife, magician, gold miner, washerwoman and prostitute – then fleshed out their characters and set their stories into song, creating a theatrical framework with a narration and musical links “to give the sense of a journey”.

The result was CD/book/performance project The Boundary Riders: Musical Tales of New Zealand Pioneering Women that saw her rise to prominence as a finalist in the 2015 Tui Awards.

Dawick will continue playing at various venues around New Zealand following the Levin gig with performances booked for Waitati, Dunedin, Christchurch, Katikati and Auckland.

Levin Folk Music Club meets again this Friday, March 8 at the Scottish Society Hall, Bartholomew Rd. The evening begins at 7.30pm. The first half of the evening is for the Blackboard, where people can put their names down for an item. Supper will follow, with Dawick due to take the stage after supper.

The Levin Folk Music Club venue is in the Scottish Society Hall, Bartholomew Rd. Entry cost is $7 for members, $12 for non-members and $3 for students.

The Details

Who: Rachel Dawick

When: Friday, March 8

Where Levin Folk Music Club, Bartholomew Road, Levin.

Cost: $7 for members, $12 for non-members and $3 for students.