Dale Kerrigan: Watch Dunedin Band’s China Tour Documentary

When we put together our year-end New Zealand albums list for 2025, much of the top 10 sorted itself out. Marlon Williams? Of course. The Beths? Naturally. I think it would have been a New Zealand criminal offence to have Lorde and Virgin lower than 10.

Nestled amongst the more established names, at No. 6, was Dale Kerrigan, whose HEAVY GREASY album fully deserved to compete with the best Kiwi releases of last year.

Because in a just world — a more just music industry — Dale Kerrigan would be as well-known as Dick Move or The Beths or any number of ‘bigger’ local bands.

Alongside the likes of Pearly* and the 4EPs bands, Dale Kerrigan are one of the bands making Ōtepoti Dunedin’s music scene so exciting in the middle of the 2020s.

They are Shlee Nicholls, Josh Nicholls, Connor Blackie, and Joel Field, who all orbit a variety of different musical projects in the Otago city, but come together to do some of their finest work as Dale Kerrigan.

In the same year HEAVY GREASY dropped, they became the latest Kiwi act to tour China, under the impressive guidance of Kristen Ng: originally from Pōneke Wellington but now based in Chengdu, China, Kristen started the well-received multimedia blog Kiwese just over a decade ago, using it to promote independent music and culture across both China and Aotearoa. Two years later, in 2015, Kiwese expanded into a touring label for Kiwi acts.

Since that year Kristen has, in addition to Dale Kerrigan, organised Chinese tours for Orchestra of Spheres, Lady Lazer Light, All Seeing Hand, E/N/T, Alphabethead, mr sterile Assembly, Strange Stains, Womb, BIRDPARTY, Vera Ellen, and Flesh Bug. Dale Kerrigan’s fellow Dunedin band, DIY duo Night Lunch, were the latest Kiwi act to embark on a tour of China through Kristen (read about their experience here).

Love Music?

Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.

“I wanna give a big shout out to Kristen for organising our tour! Going to China was life-changing for all of us and we haven’t shut up about it since we got back,” Dale Kerrigan guitarist Joel Field tells me. He also plays in Pearly*, who recently featured in our Future of Music 2026 series and also enjoyed an excellent year in 2025.

Field decided to capture the experience in a feature-length, fly-on-the-wall documentary. The title, Amps for Everyone, paraphrases the title of the closing track on HEAVY GREASY, which was a bit of a mission statement for the noise-rock band (a snippet of the track opens the documentary).

Their latest album acts as the perfect soundtrack for the documentary, which was filmed over the course of their month-long stay in China, where Dale Kerrigan played in nine cities with a population exceeding that of their homeland.

“The footage was almost lost for a long time, at one point I thought I’d never see it again, but thankfully after Night Lunch got done with their trip Kristen had a good look and found it,” Field says.

“This project was eye-opening to me as I really fell in love with the process while making it. I was reminded how excited I was while over there filming, and how much I cared about documenting the trip right. This kind of documentary is something I will definitely do again for future tours!”

The guitarist adds: “In a media landscape that so rewards visual content I think a lot of musicians end up making artistic compromises, resorting to skits and reels to get picked up by the algorithm.

“I feel very strongly that you shouldn’t have to do that. ‘Amps for Everyone’ was me trying to approach visual content in a way that felt more similar to making a record.

“I want it to represent who we are, or at least my take on who Dale Kerrigan is, and I think this film does that.”

Watch the full documentary on YouTube above, and check out a selection of photos from the tour below.