Finale performance in 'Dylanesque - Always Beginning' Tour

A special finale performance in the 'Dylanesque - Always Beginning' Tour:
Gaslight Theatre, Cambridge - Saturday August 16

Bob Dylan and rugby. Cambridge UK and Cambridge NZ. River's Edge connects them all.

New Zealand's number 1 Dylan Fan, Chris Rivers, is playing a special finale to round off the 'Always Beginning' tour (a hat tip to Dylan's 'Never Ending Tour'), in his hometown of Cambridge. As well as being a tribute to Bob Dylan, it also showcases his 'thesis' on Bob Dylan - the album 'Cambridge Town', written in Cambridge UK, and brought to life in Cambridge NZ.

“I’ve eaten, breathed, melted, swallowed, washed and sucked in Dylan’s records”, says Chris "Rivers" Baigent, who claims to be New Zealand’s biggest Bob Dylan fan. The lead singer and songwriter for the band River's Edge says he rightly earned this title after living in poverty for six months, in Cambridge UK, in order to dedicate himself entirely to studying Dylan’s discography. During this pilgrimage, he wrote all the songs for his second album, aptly named ‘Cambridge Town’, which has recently been released by Powertool Records. “I guess you could call this album my thesis on early Dylan".

This special night at Cambridge's Gaslight Theatre also showcases a new song Rivers has written about Hamilton during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, to welcome Bob Dylan to the city. 'The World is Watching' debuted in Hamilton last week, and playing it just down the road in Cambridge makes a lot of sense. Rivers says “It seemed appropriate I write about the Hamilton event that made Nelson Mandela feel ‘as if the sun had come out’ and with his death last year, it’s more poignant”. Hamilton was the only city, to stop a rugby game against the Springboks, during the 1981 tour. The lyrics are here.

One of the highlights of the "Dylanesque" tour has been the duo of Rivers and Mimi transforming into Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, reworking their songs with passion and respect.

Here's a recent performance from TVNZ's Good Morning show of the lovely River's Edge song 'Love Speak": https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5UgOjhzoV2ZOEp0ZTB1YTBwbkU/preview

Listen to 'Cambridge Town' here: http://powertoolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/rivers-edge-cambridge-town-2013

Saturday 16 August – The Gaslight Theatre Cambridge – early Baez and Dylan folk from Mimi and Rivers, plus the River's Edge Band.
Tickets available at Cambridge Paper Plus and via riversedge2003@yahoo.co.nz

ENDS

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