Calgary’s inaugural poet laureate and songwriter/spoken word/theatre artist Kris Demeanor writes and sings about the funny, dark, absurd, maddening and the joyful. For thirty years he has explored and exposed hidden corners of the western Canadian cultural landscape, adhering to Brecht’s credo: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” Kris has released nine records, toured Australia, Europe, and Canada and has co-created and performed several shows with One Yellow Rabbit and Ghost River Theatre, debuting his one man show Russell: Straight Up, at the 2020 High Performance Rodeo and has created and performed with other key Calgary theatre companies, including Making Treaty 7. His February 2 show with local musicians Ella Jean Haggis, Jamie Konchak and the Crack Band will span his career, plus include songs from his latest Songs for My Father to Fall Asleep to, a series of acoustic songs in tribute to Kris’ Dad Wilfried.
Thank you to our supporters
Presented by ATB
Funding provided by Rozsa Foundation
Supported by Big Rock Brewery
Supported by ENMAX
Virtually Live presented by ATB
About Steve Poltz · Nashville, TN
Steve Poltz might be one of Canada’s best kept musical secrets — largely because he got the heck outta Dodge as soon as he could and spent the three decades of his musical career living everywhere but here. Hatched in Halifax, Poltz earned his sardonic rock-country-folk chops as co-founder and frontman for underground legends and road warriors The Rugburns, crisscrossing the continent tirelessly in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. In 1996, while playing at a coffeehouse in San Diego, he met and fell for another musician, and despite Poltz’s sardonic wit and left-turn lyrical tendencies, he wrote a heartfelt little love song that she went on to perform. The musician was Jewel, and the song was the multi-platinum “You Were Meant for Me.”
With his fortune made, and no need to ever play or tour again, Poltz continued playing and touring like his life depended on it. He recorded a prolific 13 albums over the next 18 years. Having lived for two decades in San Diego, his partner decided it was time to try living in Nashville, the musical experience Poltz hadn’t tried yet. The resulting album is 2018’s Shine On which evokes themes of hope, love, contemplation, celebration of Wednesday, pharmacists, and the fact that windows are not inanimate objects and they sometimes have conversations with each other.
Despite Poltz’s irrepressible tendency towards smartassery, his music is also replete with shimmering beauty, like the song “All Things Shine,” written in response to one of the dishearteningly frequent mass shootings on the news, and espousing the belief that however bad things might feel, “there is still beauty. All things shine in their own way.” Poltz certainly does.