Released yesterday to mark the date New Zealand women won the vote in 1893, Dawick's package includes a double album along with a book featuring images, research, tales of life on the road and a script of her live show.
Dawick will explain her research at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum at 1.30pm tomorrow before performing at the New Edinburgh Folk Club, Dunedin, at 7.30pm.
Although her album features some acclaimed musicians, including Jon Sanders (bouzouki, guitar, ukulele and harmonium), Dave Khan (violin, accordion and mandolin), Andy Laking (double bass) and Chris Koole (percussion), Dawick's Dunedin show will be a solo performance.
The singer-songwriter is no stranger to the stage. As a member of blues/Celtic trio Ruby Blue, she spent nine years playing at festivals and clubs across New Zealand and the UK, where she has also performed as a solo artist and with others.
The launch of Ed's Bar and Grill at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2009 saw a move from the more reflective, folky Journeys (2008) to a country-blues groove.
Dawick began her latest project at the end of 2010.
Having returned to New Zealand after eight years in the UK, and helped by a grant from Creative NZ, she embarked on a 40-date solo tour across the country, performing and collecting stories of women in 19th-century New Zealand.
A second round of collecting stories involved her cycling, camping and performing the length of the country before she began putting together her research and writing songs.
''The Boundary Riders is the collective name I gave to the women in New Zealand during the 1800s whose lives straddled two worlds, one foot bounded in Victorian social customs and values and the other exploring uncharted and lawless territory in a new land far removed from their own,'' she explains.
''These are more than just songs. These are gateways into our past and to the lives of ordinary but extraordinary women. These are our stories to discover and to own.
''It started out as a question: Where were the songs of these women in the 1800s? The more I discovered, the more personal the journey became.
''Each song took months of research, piecing together a line here with a piece from a newspaper there, information from a museum, stories from someone's memory that gave me a link to follow up.
''Every line of every song points to a specific part of research and at some point in the future I will put that into a much larger book.
"But at this stage, I wanted something manageable for anyone to pick up and enjoy visually so they would read the journey and the stories and begin to get excited about history.''
See her, hear her
Rachel Dawick performs the following dates in the South:
• Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, tomorrow, 1.30pm (public talk)
• New Edinburgh Folk Club, tomorrow, 7.30pm
• Queenstown Public Library, Saturday, September 27, 10.30am
