Event: When the Cat’s Away - April /May 2024

Following the massive success of last year’s concert by New Zealand’s most cherished supergroup When The Cat’s Away, the gals are excited to announce a four-venue tour this April and May.

With mega hits including Melting Pot and Asian Paradise, the four original members of this Hall of Fame group Debbie Harwood, Annie Crummer, Dianne Swann and Kim Willoughby will perform in Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin and return to Aucklandby popular demand over four weekends, beginning on 14 April.

The concerts will see them reunited with their old friends Herbs whose hits like French Letter and Nuclear Waste provided the soundtrack to the anti-nuclear movement in the 80s expressed through the joy and unifying medium of beautiful music. Annie Crummer’s hit See What Love Can Do featured Herbs on vocals and permanently linked the bands who had become champions of the people in the eighties.

Fast-forward almost 40 years and these two bands maintain legions of fans and are classed as national treasures. Tickets to this historic tour – the first in three decades by the originals – go on sale today via Ticketek and Ticketmaster. Going by the speed in which the October concert sold, fans are urged to move quickly to avoid delay.

The event will also feature original members of the When the Cat’s Away backing band, BrettAdams and Gary Verberne on guitars, Mike Russell on trumpet and Holidaymakers’ maestro Barbara Griffin on keys, as well The Band of Gold.

Founding member Debbie Harwood says the band, whose The Melting Pot Tour in 88/89 was the biggest tour in NZ music history (playing to over 85,000 people one summer), can’t wait to take the show out into the mōtū.

‘We were absolutely blown away by the love from our audience at the Town Hall event in Auckland’, says Debbie. ‘Walking on stage and seeing those beautiful, smiling faces – the same faces that looked up at us when it all began in 1986 – it was quite overwhelming. Unfortunately we sold out so quickly we couldn’t accommodate everyone and there were a lot of people from out of Auckland who told us they would have loved to have been there. So, we’re on our way!’.