A beloved concert series is kicking off once again at Red Deer Lake.
Starting off On the Edge at Red Deer Lake United Church for the 2022-23 season on Oct. 21 is folk and country duo Over the Moon, Suzanne Levesque and Craig Bignell, accompanied by Cedric Blary on clarinet and Bruce Hoffman on fiddle and steel guitar.
This isn’t their first time playing the venue, with Levesque having performed there with the Travelling Mabels and the duo backing up musician Paul Rumboldt.
“It should be fun – we like the sound in that room and everybody is nice,” Bignell said. “It was really a neat experience playing there.
“We’ll play some of our new stuff, some of our old stuff, we’ll have lots of silly stories about the songs. We’re recording our new album now so we might even play a song of two off of that as well.”
While there’s no set release date for that new album, work is well underway.
“When we don’t have any shows for a while, we get really hard at it, then all of a sudden we get busy playing again,” Bignell said.
The two will be travelling in style when they go on tour in the spring, having bought a 30-foot horse trailer with living quarters in the front and their gear in the back.
“We have a tour across Saskatchewan, then we go into Ontario and then out to the Maritimes,” Bignell said.
“It’ll be pretty neat playing our kind of ‘Alberta rootsy’ almost cowboy music then showing up at theatres with this horse trailer rather than a tour bus.
“For us, it just kind of fits our style, because we’re playing this sort of Western swing music and we’re going to show up with a horse trailer.”
Despite the setbacks coming out of the pandemic, the duo has enjoyed its share of success.
Their 2021 album Chinook Waltz was well-received, Bignell said, holding the number-one spot on folk radio charts in the U.S. for November and remaining in the top-10 for three months following.
“Which is pretty awesome for a pretty much unknown Canadian artist,” he said.
“Then we toured the U.K. for two months in March and April and a friend started texting us – it turned out we were nominated for a Juno.”
Bignell and Levesque were also “humbled and thrilled” to learn this week they were nominated for 2023 Group (Ensemble) of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards
Over the Moon plays at the Red Deer Lake United Church on Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m., with doors open at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $30, $15 for youth age 13-18 and children 12 and under are free.
Season tickets are also available and for more information visit reddeerlakeuc.com
