ESTEVAN — North Portal country-folk duo Last Birds, featuring Mike Davis and Lindsay Arnold, announced their October Moon Tour.
The tour will include showcases at two major Canadian music conferences: Breakout West in Saskatoon on Sept. 25-29 and Folk Music Ontario in Mississauga from Oct. 3-6.
"These are great opportunities to perform for music industry people, for the folks that are responsible for booking festivals, so we're really excited to have two major Canadian conferences this year," said Arnold.
They will then have solo concerts, first in Alberta, where they will be performing at venues in Red Deer (Oct. 16) and Calgary (Oct. 17). After that, the southeast's beloved duo will come to their home province for concerts in Saskatoon (Oct. 19) and Regina (Oct. 24).
"It's a different length of performance. Your conference performances are short, you play your strongest material or what you think is your strongest material only, and you got to hit it hard and fast in order to get people's attention," Arnold explained. "With the performances that are just us, these are longer. We can take the time to tell a little bit more about the song, share stories, have that on-stage banter that we really like."
"It's a little less stressful," Davis added.
The October Moon Tour will be the first time Last Birds has performed in Alberta.
"This tour is long overdue. We can't wait to play for our friends to the west of us," says Arnold.
She noted that booking is tricky, as artists send out a lot of emails, trying to make connections, and their efforts to arrange for performances in Alberta finally paid off.
"We're really excited to be going to Alberta for the first time," she said.
The tour will wrap up with a special show at the Mac Murray Theatre in Arcola on Oct. 26.
"We're capping the tour off with our show at the Arcola theatre. We've been there before. It's a really awesome little venue. But this one will be filmed," Davis said.
The concert will be recorded by Bamboo Shoots and will air on SaskTel MaxTV local on-demand at a later date.
"This is the first time SaskTel MaxTV will have one recorded in Arcola," Arnold said.
"They were very excited to come out to a rural location to do the filming. And it's great for the Mac Murray Theatre in Arcola. They're excited about it, too. They did such a great job on their renovations and it's awesome to see it put to use for things like this," Davis added, noting that it will be a live concert with an audience at the theatre.
The tour follows a summer of playing some of Saskatchewan's biggest music festivals, including Saskatoon's SaskTel Jazz Fest, Bengough's Gateway Festival, as well as Bienfait's first Coal Creek Festival. The duo also celebrated winning a Saskatchewan Country Music Association Award for Alternative Country Album of the Year back in June.
The upcoming tour supports Last Birds' self-produced LP, Endless Turn of Day into Night, released in October 2023. But the duo noted the guests can expect some new compositions as well.
"We actually just wrapped up a bunch of writing. We got a SaskArts independent artist grant to support some songwriting this summer. So, we've been busy writing songs as well, and we have new material," Arnold said. "We'll be playing a few of our new ones."
Using their Prairie hometown as a backdrop, Davis and Arnold weave together rural legends and current-day experiences to form a modern Prairie gothic. Keeping instrumentation minimal, Last Birds' live shows focus on a two voices-two guitars approach reminiscent of early country folk music. The simplicity of the songs is counterbalanced by Davis' intricate guitar solos and the couple's close vocal harmonies.
For more information about any of the Last Birds' upcoming shows and to buy tickets for the Arcola concert, visit their website at lastbirds.com.
