This feature is part of a new Scene Report on Dunedin. Check out the series here.
Grace Gemmell knows her way around a catchy melody.
Play her song “This Kind of Peace Is Free” just once and you’ll find yourself humming and singing along to it for days afterwards.
A bright and optimistic slice of acoustic Kiwiana in the vein of Dave Dobbyn, “This Kind of Peace Is Free” was the opening track on 2025 Peace Song Competition – Volume 3, a compilation put together by Play It Strange.
Two years prior, a landmark achievement arrived for Gemmell when she won the Lion Foundation songwriting competition thanks to her song, “Will You Love Me?”.
But it’s “This Kind of Peace Is Free”, she insists, which is “the song that I am most proud of.”
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The young Dunedin musician’s dad taught her to play guitar when she was just seven or eight, and a lifelong love affair with music was born.
She started out “writing little songs about kittens and things like that,” but really began to take music seriously around Intermediate.
Throughout those early years, her dad’s music taste had a major influence on her.
“[H]e would always play music in the car… he listens to lot of David Bowie and The Cure and The Libertines and that kind of thing,” she says. “I’m a big Libertines fan now — I really like guitar music.”
Now 17, Gemmell cites evergreen American-Canadian singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco as an inspiration.
“She’s got this one really popular song called ’32 Flavors’. She’s just kind of like folky and sort of spoken word… But you know, my music taste is just so all over the place. I do like listening to Dunedin music as well though.”
Gemmell came through Amped Music Project, a free music mentorship programme for musicians of high school age. Produced by Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust, Amped provides workshops with both industry professionals and renowned artists, as well as education on promotion and recording.
“[…] I started doing it in year nine, and so this year will be my fifth year doing it,” Gemmell explains, “the amount of opportunities that I’ve had from that project — it’s actually insane.”
Of the current musicians around her in Dunedin, she names talented singer-songwriter Keira Wallace and punk rockers SEEK HELP! as being particularly nice.
“Everyone’s just supportive of each other [in] the music community here, and it’s just a really nice thing to be a part of. I don’t know, people always talk about Tall Poppy Syndrome in New Zealand, but I really don’t feel that in the music community. And I think everyone celebrates everyone. It’s a really nice thing.”
What kind of music does Gemmell make?
“I would describe it as like folk-pop,” she tells me, also calling her songs “catchy.” (“This Kind of Peace Is Free” is a prime example of this catchiness.)
Her dad, who plays in “a wee band,” encouraged his daughter to always “come up with something original.”
“He never wanted me to just play four chords over and over…” she says.
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Gemmell knows there’s still a lot of work to be done — but she’s ready for the challenge.
Just before our call, she played Shakespeare in the Park in her hometown, and even at the age of 17, she proves to be a stern self-critic.
“I don’t know if it was my best performance to be honest,” she admits, “wwe had to do pick a Shakespeare sonnet and I really don’t know that much about Shakespeare. And then we had to write music to it and stuff, and I think it really challenged me, to be honest, because I’ve never really written about something that’s not come from myself, you know?”
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Gemmell graduates from high school at the end of the year, whereupon she’ll go to university — but don’t expect her to be studying music.
“I always think to myself, I can do music in my own time. I mean, I had thought about doing it at uni, but I don’t know. I want it to be something I enjoy and not something I’m getting marked on and stuff… I just figure I don’t need a degree in music to be a good musician.”
Follow Grace Gemmell’s music here.
