Conan Gray’s cargo boxes didn’t all make it to Auckland. The wishbone stage still did.

Conan Gray opened the Australasian leg of his Wishbone World Tour at Spark Arena on Friday 26 September, and gave the crowd a heads-up before doors that not everything on the tour had made it into the country in time.

A couple of hours before the show, Conan posted a story to his Instagram breaking the news himself:

The main wishbone-shaped stage itself made the trip fine, so the show’s core visual identity, the bicycle and boat imagery pulled from the record, was all there for a nearly two-hour set. What didn’t arrive was smaller but still felt: the physical campfire setup used for the tour’s acoustic “surprise song” segment.

Turning a gap into extra songs

Every stop on the Wishbone World Tour normally gets two surprise tracks, one acoustic “campfire” song, and one decided by a live wishbone-breaking ritual between Conan and a fan onstage. With the campfire prop missing, Auckland got something better instead of something smaller, Conan doubled the segment rather than cutting it:

• Campfire (missing its prop, played anyway): “Comfort Crowd” and “The Story”
• Wishbone break: “Moths” won the fan vote, and “Alley Rose” got played too, “to make up for stuff not shipping in time,” per the room’s own account of the night

That’s four surprise songs where most cities get two, all off the back of a gear delay Conan owned publicly before the doors even opened.

The rest of the night

The set moved through its four acts as planned, from set opener “My World” through to “Actor” and “Maniac” late in the night. “The Best,” an unreleased Wishbone-era track, landed mid-set to a room singing along to something they’d never heard, a trick that only works with a crowd that trusts the artist enough to try. “Eleven Eleven” carried a local touch too, a fan-organised crowd project (credited to @wishboneauckland) that had the room holding up signs during the song. The encore closed on “Caramel,” and Conan sent the room off with a traditional Māori greeting, “Tēnā koutou katoa.”

The verdict

A cargo delay on the first date of a new touring leg is the kind of thing that could easily sour a night, and Conan’s own story acknowledged as much before a note had been played. What actually happened was closer to the opposite: a stage that mostly showed up, an artist who was upfront about the part that didn’t, and a surprise-song segment that turned a shortfall into the night’s most memorable stretch. Auckland didn’t get a diminished Wishbone show. It got a slightly rearranged one, and the rearrangement might’ve been the better version.

Wishbone World Tour continues to Australia this month and through to October.