A musical tour-de-force partnership, planted on the Canadian Prairies, will make a return trip to Salmon Arm at the beginning of March.
Canadian folk stars, The Small Glories, will appear in concert as a special Roots & Blues presentation.
The Small Glories are Cara Luft and JD Edwards and it has been four years since this dynamic duo played the festival, just a year after they teamed up in Winnipeg.
“Fast forward five years and the two have played hundreds of shows, and received resounding raves for their latest recorded work Wondrous Traveler, and their inspired live shows,” says artistic director Peter North. “Having played most major festivals and numerous concert dates in their homeland, and many in the U.S. and the U.K., Luft, who was a founding member of The Wailin’ Jennys, and Edwards, who worked in Dry Bones with Nathan Rogers and Leonard Podolak, are sure to wow North Okanagan audiences again, in this overdue return.”
Related: Slate offers musical smorgasbord
With a stage banter striking a unique balance between slapstick and sermon, these veteran singer-songwriters have a way of making time disappear, rooms shrink, and audiences feel as they are right there on the stage with the band — writing the songs, living the songs, performing the songs. It’s not uncommon for listeners to find themselves laughing, dancing, crying, or caught up in a good ol’ fashioned sing-along.
“We’re folk singers, we try to write stuff that people can relate to,” says the multi-instrumentalist Edwards, whose looming stage presence and penetrating eyes find him the yin to Luft’s petite, snort-laughing yang. The material of a Small Glories concert is rootsily welcoming in terms of subject, folk-pop melody and instrumentation — songs of love, loss, and environment, delivered with soaring, interwoven vocals on various combinations of stomping clawhammer banjo, guitar and harmonica.
Greil Marcus, the dean of American roots music journalism wrote, “The Small Glories have a musical chemistry that is both connected and tight, but one that allows their distinct personalities to shine through, resulting in a live show that is as heartwarming as it is hilarious, as finger-picking proficient as it is relatable, and as Canadian as, well… it’s very Canadian. But that hasn’t stopped them from winning over audiences from Nashville to the Australian outback.”
The Small Glories perform at the Nexus at First at 8 p.m. Friday March 1. Doors open at 7. Tickets and info are available at rootsandblues.com or by phoning 250-833-4096.
@SalmonArm
barb.brouwer@saobserver.net
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter