Cara Luft entertains on social distance mini tour

Cara Luft is driving from Manitoba to BC to visit her tiny home. “I’ve been doing a few solo distancing concerts in Manitoba and some with my (The Small Glories) band mate. I thought this feels really good. So I checked to see what restrictions were lifted and planned a few stops along the way, where ever they would have me.” We love live music so much that most shows sold out quickly.

It’s a warm Sunday evening in the Holyrood neighbourhood of Edmonton. Summer is waning and autumn is biting at our heels as you can feel the chill in the air while the sun sets. This Sunday evening is not like most Sundays in August, especially this weekend. The night that Cara Luft is preforming on the Holyrood Mennonite Centre front lawn would have been the final night of the Edmonton Folk Fest. This neighbourhood is close enough to the hill where folk fest takes place that sounds would be wafting in the air and ending with Four Strong Winds. Instead we are treated to a new sound. The great music of Cara Luft regales us as most people in attendance are folkies. Her sweet voice carries across the lawn and reverberates off the houses giving us a ‘hill’ like feeling.

It’s been a while since we were treated to the special moment that occurs between an artist and fans. It was nice to sit on the grass and let the music take you away from the troubles that are front of mind lately. When I asked her what its like to be out in front of people playing music again, she replied, “It’s powerful and beautiful and very life giving. It’s like waking up after a very long troubling sleep. Now I feel like I’m awake and I’m tapping back into what it is I’m meant to be doing.” Even though the audience was small, around 50 people, Luft says she doesn’t care, “I just want to sing for people and when you can sing for people who want to be there and need to be there, their spirit needs it or their soul needs it, it’s a temporal beauty that we get to have this moment in time together.”

Excuse me for not having the song titles, but that’s secondary in this review. The songs were all selected from her vast catalogue spanning the past two decades from both her solo project and her duo work with JD Edwards as The Small Glories. Her opening song was a great introduction to a wonderful set interspersed with amusing antidotes and stories from her many festival appearances including the aforementioned Edmonton Folk Fest. Apparently she was smitten with this guy she met while doing the festival circuit one summer and ended up spooning with him on the hill at Gallagher Park and was slightly taken aback when she saw him flirting with someone else at the after party on the final day. Stories ranged from long drives to the middle of nowhere, great friends she’s met along the way and even the chipmunks who were making out to her music the night before this show.

After a few songs with her acoustic guitar, Cara broke out her clawhammer banjo. As she was tuning it, she threw out a few good banjo jokes, “How long does it take to tune a banjo? … No one knows.” or, “What’s the difference between a banjo and a trampoline? … You take your shoes off before you jump on a trampoline.” Each joke was punctuated with her well known snort of a laugh. She was talking to her dad about the set up she had for this tour and she was wondering if people would be able to hear her. Her father replied, “If they can hear you snort, they can hear you sing.” And sing she did. One song had a particular importance to her and her father. Cara was raised in a folk singing family starting out early playing the dulcimer and autoharp by the age of four. She was working on a song that seemed to be missing a little extra. So she contacted Neil Osborne. He added a touch here and there and before you know it they had a great song called, Sing. She wanted to play it for her dad right away thinking she had a song that he would play. Neil Osborne said to her that you have a song that Pete Seeger would play. After she played it for her father, he said, “I would definitely play that song.”

As the evening wore on, the unofficial bird of Edmonton decided to make an appearance as is usual with twilight in these areas. When Luft said the mosquitoes are even showing up, a friend and audience member came to the rescue with bug spray. This was just after a very humourous tale about sunburned breasts, Cara asked the person, “Make sure you get my sunburned boobs.” If I was a mosquito, I would not want to leave the confines of the lawn and miss any more of this entertaining and delightful performance.

It was wonderful evening. Cara played for almost 90 minutes adding in audience requests. She included The Small Glories song that’s in an episode of the CBC production Decoys. Several times throughout the set, she asked people to sing along, “But if you sing moistly, sing safely and wear a mask. It’s like the Safety Dance, but different.” You could tell Cara was endeared by the gathering on the lawn but also concerned for everyone’s well being.

After the show I spoke with Cara asking here about the shut down of the industry. She said, “I was going so hard for so long my body wasn’t used to being still and I’m kind of liking it a bit. It also allowed me to refocus on how I want to do my job. I’m actually quite exhausted from doing three shows in a row, a lot of driving and prep. These few shows have been pay what you can and people have been incredibly kind and generous.” She hopes that this will enable artists to take control of their careers again instead of jumping through hoops. “Perhaps we don’t have to listen to the label or the promoter any more. We can do things our way.” She added, “We know the fans are behind us. Events like tonight are what it’s all about. It’s about connecting. It’s about having these special, unique one off performances with people who really want to be there and sharing my heart with them.”

Cara Luft has one more show left on this mini tour in Kaslo BC on Sunday. For tickets in info go to Cara Luft’s Instagram feed.