Any Young Mechanic will open all five Australian shows on Dermot Kennedy’s The Weight of the Woods tour, including Rod Laver Arena on 21 November.
In 2018, Dermot Kennedy played to a small crowd at Brunswick’s Howler. His next Melbourne room is Rod Laver Arena.
Dermot Kennedy has named the acts opening his Australian and New Zealand run, and the Australian slot goes to Any Young Mechanic, a five-piece from Tarntanya/Adelaide. They’ll play every Australian date, starting at Perth’s Kings Park and Botanic Garden on 14 November and hitting Rod Laver Arena on 21 November. Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre closes the leg on 22 November. That makes the last Australian show a hometown gig for the openers. Final tickets are on sale for the tour, which Live Nation announced back in May.
Kennedy is touring The Weight of the Woods, his third album. He made most of its 14 tracks at a studio near his home in rural Ireland with Gabe Simon, whose credits include Noah Kahan and Lana Del Rey, and recorded extra material at Simon’s studio in Nashville. When it went to No 1 in the UK in April, Kennedy became the first Irish solo artist to top the chart with each of his first three studio albums, following Without Fear in 2019 and Sonder in 2022.
Dermot Kennedy Australia and New Zealand tour 2026
- 14 November – Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Perth
- 17 November – Riverstage, Brisbane
- 18 November – TikTok Entertainment Centre, Sydney
- 21 November – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
- 22 November – Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre, Adelaide
- 25 November – Town Hall, Christchurch
- 27 November – TSB Arena, Wellington
- 28 November – Spark Arena, Auckland
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
Who are Any Young Mechanic?
Any Young Mechanic used to be called Wake in Fright. Their current name comes from a line in Hooray for Hollywood, the 1930s song Robert Altman used in The Long Goodbye. The lineup includes Thea Martin on violin and Allan McBean on upright bass. Adelaide’s Helpmann Academy backed them with seed funding through its Creative Innovator program in 2024. No band had played the Reading and Leeds festivals without a released song until Any Young Mechanic did it. Their debut album, The Modern Shoe Is Ruining the Foot, came out through Warner in June. It runs to 11 tracks, one of them called I Never Met an Engine Don’t Need Tanks.
Mountain Boy open in New Zealand
Across the Tasman, folk-rock band Mountain Boy open the three New Zealand shows. Songwriter and producer Aaron Clarke built the group out of his friends so he could play his debut record live. They’ve since released an album, The Nights, and wrapped a headline tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Kennedy started this touring cycle in May with his biggest UK and European run so far. That leg took him back to London’s O2 Arena, and North America came next, with nights at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Forest Hills Stadium in New York. Every show on the Australian and New Zealand tour is all ages.
For more information, head here.
