Presented by The Tuning Fork & 95bFM

The Tuning Fork and 95bFM are excited to share that Dunedin-based folk singer and poet, Emily Fairlight will play support for Justin Townes Earle's three-date New Zealand tour this August.

Emily Fairlight has a proper folk singer's background: a teenage runaway adventurer in Australia and India, a circus school student who once sang naked at a burlesque night on a whim, a female-friendly pornography-free sex toy shop assistant, a barista and a runner/jack-of-all-trades at a digital visual effects company.

Her vocal style is a powerful quivering vibrato and a stark, haunting tone; teak hard, yet soft as crushed velvet, eliciting comparisons to PJ Harvey, Bridget St John, Emmylou Harris and Cat Power; musicians with distinctive voices and a lyrical ability to conjure a kind of experiential realism—although Mother of Gloom can also hold its own alongside the storytelling of Will Oldham and soundscapes of Calexico.

Fairlight currently lives in Dunedin and has been composing and performing for over a decade. She has played throughout NZ and Australia and recorded her sophomore album, Mother of Gloom with Doug Walseth at The Cat's Eye Studio in Austin, Texas on her third trip to the USA. The "doom-folk" record, which was mixed at Ben Edwards' Sitting Room studios near Lyttelton harbour (Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Nadia Reid), was released in May and immediately praised for it's "dream-like" qualities.

Friday 23 August, 2019 - Tuning Fork, Auckland
Saturday 24 August, 2019 - Blue Smoke, Christchurch
Sunday 25 August, 2019 - San Fran, Wellington

tickets via Ticketmaster