Banjo duo to celebrate release with a concert

Published 1:30 am Thursday, March 5, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — American folk-duo The Lowest Pair will play their first official release show for their newest record when they perform this weekend in an intimate studio space at historic Fort Worden State Park.

The Olympia-based band, Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee, who started as dual banjoists, also play guitars and interleave melodies and harmonies through acoustically rich soundscapes. They recorded their new record, “Always As Young As We’ll Ever Be,” live with a group of studio musicians, but are touring as a duo.

“(The songs are about) uncertainty and aging and trying to find that child’s mind, trying to stay fresh, to stay new and find awe and find beauty when in dark times and challenging times and heartbroken times, in times of grief, grappling with hard goodbyes and figuring out how to not just be a bitter old person,” Winter said.

The duo’s arrangements remain spare but intricate, with voices treated as instruments.

“The Lowest Pair fits our profile perfectly: exquisite bare-bones strings, supporting heartfelt lyrics, sung by down-to-earth voices, as much at home on the concert’s stage as they would be on the street corner,” wrote Matt Miner, a Port Townsend-based concert producer who books and promotes shows at Rainshadow Recording Studio.

The show will take place at Rainshadow Recording Studio, 200 Battery Way, building 315. Doors will open at 7 p.m. Saturday and the concert will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Online tickets cost $28 after fees, or they can be purchased at the door with cash or check for $30. To purchase tickets online, go to tinyurl.com/yhn4edrm.

Released in January, the record was produced in Portland, Ore., by Tucker Martine of The Decemberists.

The band met Martine online after he left likes and comments on some of Winter’s improvisational banjo compositions that she posts.

Martine is a magician, Winter said. His studio is full of neat old vintage keyboards, guitars and gear, Palmer added.

“(Martine’s) got a reverb chamber in the basement of the studio,” Palmer said. “Then he’s got this plate reverb just adjacent to the mixing room. It’s like 12 feet long.”

The mixes sound lush, even polished, but still hearken to the band’s traditional roots.

The band has recorded together enough times, over their more than a decade together, that they are open to experimenting more freely in the studio, Winter said.

The record was featured on NPR Music’s New Music Friday as one of the best albums out on Jan. 23. The record shared a list with country legend Lucinda Williams and revered jazz guitarist Julian Lage.

Winter has been a tutor at Centrum’s Voiceworks and had a job through Centrum during Fiddle Tunes, she noted a love for Port Townsend.

“I love the place of Fort Worden, and I feel like it’s a pretty magical place,” Winter said.

This trip will be the group’s first to the studio.

Winter and Lee, from Arkansas and Minneapolis, respectively, met on the bank of the Mississippi in Winona, Minn., during a bluegrass festival in 2013.

When Lee brought up the idea of doing a dual-banjo record together, Winter thought it was a wild idea. The Lowest Pair has since recorded eight records, Winter said, and toured consistently.

Most recently, they are returning from a run of shows in Europe, where they performed in the Netherlands, Germany, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Denmark.

Upon returning from Europe, the band picked up a shipment of vinyl records, which they will sell at their upcoming shows.

To listen to the pair’s new record, visit tinyurl.com/2k8n3j3t.

Taps at the Guardhouse, 300 Eisenhower Ave., is offering 10 percent off for concertgoers before the show.

Miner said he began producing singer-songwriter concerts locally before the pandemic and later partnered with Rainshadow Recording Studio to expand offerings at the studio and the Palindrome. The team now books two to three shows a month, choosing venues based on audience size and whether artists want to record their performances.

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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.