Penni Feather & Stan Jagger @ Rafters Music Club

Known for her soulful interpretations and vocal range, Penni has performed in a variety of genres, but is always drawn back to folk and acoustic – particularly blues and English trad. Penni has recently made a return to the folk scene after a few years’ absence. Some of you will remember her folk-punk trio Siren (part of the Auckland Acoustics collective) back in the day. She has recorded with Mike Harding, Kath Tait and Mahinaarangi Tocker, guested at several NZ folk festivals, and toured the North Island extensively in the 2010s in an Americana duo. In the last couple of years she has appeared at the inaugural Raglan Blues Festival, had a one-woman show in the Hamilton Arts Festival, and toured the local folk and house concert circuit in a double bill with WilkieMac.

Seeing many of her song choices in the last year or two appeared to resonate with current issues, she decided to lean into this theme and has been researching protest songs old and new. Penni now has a feisty collection of such numbers running from the mid 17th century to the 2020s. This Rafters spot will include selections from contemporary folk and her original songs, along with a few of these protest folk-songs (yes, there will be choruses to join in on!).

Penni will be accompanied by guitarist Stan Jagger. In the early 2000s Stan was sideman to folk guitarist/songwriter Chris Thompson, but as a stalwart of Hamilton’s indie music scene he’s more usually found playing everything from surf guitar, to dreampop, to Eastern European gypsy music. He’s starting to get this folk music bug though!

Programme
The first half of the evening brings musicians old and new to warm us up before supper and our main guest/s. See Graham at the door if you want to perform, but you will need to be there before the 8pm start.