If you had told us eleven years ago that we’d be gracing the Massey Hall stage in 2018, we wouldn’t have believed it. Not because we didn’t want to, and not because it wasn’t a long-term goal of ours, it just always seemed a little out of reach.
So you can imagine our collective delight when we were approached to kick off our Shapeshifters CD Release tour, and our first Toronto show in almost two years, at Massey. Freaking. Hall.
It is not lost on us, the magnitude of the show we’re about to play, nine days from now.
We’ve just returned home after a month touring across Australia at some beautiful festivals and clubs. We had our biggest audience at the National Folk Festival in Canberra where we played to a room of two thousands strangers. What a feeling that was, electric and exciting, playing to a crowded room of music lovers and not one single person in the crowd was related to us.
This Toronto show is going to be a little different. It’ll be filled with family members, our husbands will all be there side by side, beaming from the second row, holding hands in nervous excitement – at least that’s how I’m picturing it. And our friends and fans, some of who have been with us from the very beginning, will be scattered throughout the room – we know this because they keep telling us whenever they buy tickets.
These are the people who helped build our band up from nothing; who packed into the Cameron House and Hugh’s Room time and again; the people who encouraged us to quit our jobs and hit the road, the people who passed the hat so we could buy a few pints at the end of a show.
Those same people who have seen our live show over a dozen times in as many years, who have watched us grow up, build families, move towns, then tour the world and come home again, we know a lot of them will be in the room with us on Friday May 11th. Knowing that and knowing that this is our Canadian debut of Shapeshifters, takes our breath away in quiet moments like this one.
But it also gets our hearts racing too, you know, in the good way, the way the anticipation of a big day gets you going. Months of planning, rehearsing, scheming, preparing seem to all be leading up to this big, beautiful, moment. It’s like all of our birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Christmasses, and every visit from the tooth fairy wrapped into one night.
But it’s more than that. Massey Hall is literally setting the stage for our 2018 touring year on our home turf and we’re going to give it every thing we’ve got that night and every night in the weeks and months to come.
Because after Massey comes our first Canadian tour leg that starts May 30th in London, then Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria.
We have a new album we’re deeply proud of, and a body of recorded work that has taken us to places we never imagined we would get to travel in this lifetime.
So, if you’re free on Friday May 11th, we’ll be at the legendary Massey Hall kicking off this tour in style alongside our bud, Royal Wood, and with potentially one third of the audience being related to us. And we’d like to outnumber them so it’s still considered a show, and not a family reunion, so please go now and buy your ticket.
This will be one to remember. I hope we see you there.
xoxoxo
