Mixing bluegrass and country into what they call west Canadian folk, Tiger Moon will be bringing their unique sound to the Forest Grove Royal Legion on June 28.
“We’re very excited to play the Forest Grove Legion. We’ve never played 100 Mile House before, though we’ve played north and south of town many times,” said Dan Tait, on behalf of the duo. “We’re excited to bring our tunes to new folks and I share some stories back and forth with them. It should be a very good night of tunes.”
Formed in 2012, Kasey Graff and Tait met each other in downtown Kelowna and started playing as a duo at coffeehouses, before becoming more serious about music and released a self-titled EP in September 2014.
Afterwards, they completed a seven-month tour across North America in a 1981 Volkswagen Westfalia.
The duo has no qualms about where they play their craft, playing in yacht clubs, street corners, radio shows, coffee shops, weddings and funerals. They even played at a BC Transit bus stop early one morning.
Cariboo and Whiskey was recorded at the Bakerville National Historic Site and in Wells. The album was also crowd-funded about $8,860 to fund the pressing of the record onto vinyl through Kickstarter.
“The major theme in Cariboo and Whiskey is community,” said Tait. “We’ve got songs about our friends and family, love songs, songs about disappearing to build a brand new community and lots more.”
The record was a two-year process of planning, pre-production, recording, mixing and a couple months of waiting for the Kickstarter campaign to come together and when it did, it came for the mastering and pressing.
Graff and Tait also had Chelsea McEvoy, also based in Kelowna, to film, direct and edit a documentary on the duo’s experience on creating the record, entitled The Making of Cariboo & Whiskey.
The music from the album has charted on college radio across the country and featured on the CBC. The duo also toured 150 times in 2017 and hand-delivered 900 physical copies of the record to fans in 2018.
“The best thing about touring so much is the people we meet and the places we see. We have travelled so much with Tiger Moon and have met so many folks that have become long-term friendships along the way,” said Tait. “On the other hand, touring can be very taxing. We take care of ourselves the best we can on the road but it can be hard on our health, sleeping schedules and can create some tough situations mentally.”
In 2015, they released their second EP entitled Mama Nature’s Finest where after it’s completion, they embarked on VIA Rail’s Artists on Board program from Vancouver to Halifax. The same year, they also did a tour travelling from the south-east of Ontario to Montreal and another two-week Maritime tour in locations such as Halifax, Moncton and St. John’s.
After returning home, they embarked on another VIA Rail Artists on Board tour in the summer of 2016.
The show put on by Momentum Productions, starts at 7:30 at the Forest Grove Royal Legion. Admission is $10.
Momentum Productions is also hosting another show at Steve and Astrid’s Circle A Farm in Forest Grove. The band is Blackberry Wood, who will have some new tricks to show off to the crowd, such as sword swallowing and fire eating/breathing. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., show starts at 8 p.m. Admission is also $10.
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