Charlotte Thornton reviews Wilson Dixon & Paul Douglas – The Cabin Fever Comedy Tour, at Little Andromeda, Saturday 17 October 2026.
I leapt at the opportunity to review Wilson Dixon & Paul Douglas The Cabin Fever Comedy Tour. I was introduced to Dixon when I was a kid through his YouTube clips – still worth a watch, by the way – but I’d never had the opportunity to see him live. Cabin Fever is a loose two-act show, with dates mainly in small towns and a few cities. Its warm energy is a great fit for the intimate Little Andromeda, though it deserves huge audiences all over the country.
Paul Douglas opens the show with a laidback set, loosely connected by his takes on Lime scooters. Douglas has a “cool best mate” vibe and looks like a more approachable Bo Burnham. His beer-soaked stories are well-written and warmly received by the slightly tipsy audience, though as a teetotaller my favourite part is his case for the dap to replace the traditional handshake. He demonstrates his idea with some well-chosen audience members – like Zeb, who works “in concrete” – and the result is thrilling. He nails a dap and asks, “Do you feel the energy in the room right now?” We really do. He makes quite the case.
The second act is Wilson Dixon, the country singer alter ego of Kiwi comedian Jesse Griffin. Dixon, allegedly “from Cripple Creek, Colorado,” wears a cowboy hat over a ponytail wig and constantly fiddles with his microphone stand. He performs songs from his decades-long career, including one from his 2010 debut album Wilson Dixon’s Greatest Hits. He says of its title, “Well, they were my best songs at the time.”
The (real) country singer Harlan Howard once described country music as “three chords and the truth”. Dixon’s songs follow that simple doctrine: each is a series of extremely precise one-liners threaded together by a few acoustic guitar chords and Dixon’s pitch-perfect timing. His delivery could not be improved upon. He has the audience in the palm of his hand, to the extent that we start cackling at jokes during their setups. The most extreme example: we laugh at his brother’s name, Jethro, prompting Dixon to ask, “Do you guys know Jethro or something?”
This Wilson Dixon is surprisingly with the times, with hot takes on vaping and politics which feel entirely true to the character. The character is also newly divorced from wife “Maureen” and tells us the surprisingly poignant tale of her new relationship. Dixon intersperses his set with musings on his journey to Aotearoa, including an astute breakdown of the logistics behind paying the squeegee guys at intersections. He also delivers the funniest airplane food joke I’ve ever heard, which I won’t spoil for future attendees, but rest assured that I was in tears. As a reviewer I try to remain invisible within each audience, but Cabin Fever made this impossible. I laughed harder, and louder, than I have at any comedy show before.
Dixon’s act has been honed to perfection over the decades, but he is also brilliantly funny when put on the spot. When a punter exits Little Andromeda the wrong way, through the backstage area, Dixon says, “He’s gonna urinate in my suitcase.”
Wilson Dixon is exactly my kind of comedy character. I share Griffin’s fascination with country singer-songwriters: their droll sincerity and naïve wit, a Southern accent worn like a uniform. Griffin never wastes a word or a pause, never goes for a lazy observation when he could take the opportunity to shape Dixon into a fuller character instead. He’s also consistently very quiet, both in his vocal delivery and his guitar-playing, an effective yet invisible request for the audience’s close attention.
I have felt for years that Dixon is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most underrated comedians, and Cabin Fever has only strengthened that opinion. Wilson Dixon is obviously the best comedian in country music, but he’s also the best comedian in the country.
The Cabin Fever Comedy Tour is touring, slowly.
