PORT ANGELES — Cara Luft and her musical partner JD Edwards are crisscrossing the Northwest, making good on promises made years ago.
They are the Small Glories, and this tour is “life-giving,” said Luft, who grew up on the Canadian prairies with folk-singing parents.
The duo, whose Port Angeles show was canceled twice last year, will at last arrive at the Naval Elks Lodge, 131 E. First St., at 7 p.m. Saturday. Ticket information can be found at JFFA.org or by phoning 360-457-5411.
When asked to describe exactly what kind of music they play — thesmallglories.com uses “folk” as the umbrella term — Luft laughed a bit.
“I’m going to say something kind of funny but kind of serious. We play good music,” answered the singer, who plays guitar and clawhammer banjo.
So don’t close your ears if you’re not into folk music or, for that matter, you detest the banjo, she said. The Small Glories specialize in harmonies — guitar and vocal — and connecting with their audiences, genre labels be darned.
As with several of the concerts on this tour, which began in Colorado and will wrap up next month in Oregon, the Small Glories are honoring contracts inked before the coronavirus erased such plans in 2020.
The Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts booked the pair in its 2020-2021 season concert series and had to postpone. Now the Small Glories are opening JFFA’s new season of 10 performances running this fall through next spring.
Luft said she and Edwards, as they came back out on the road, realized how much they had missed meeting music lovers face to face. Both live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, “smack dab in the middle of Canada,” as Luft puts it, where they did some online shows.
They had to remember how to pack for the flight to the first stop on the tour, how to pack the car they would drive from town to town — and “find our sea legs again,” she added.
“It’s been refreshing, exhausting, all of the things.”
The Small Glories’ name came from a producer friend who suggested it as Luft and Edwards were preparing their first album. The duo had mentioned the Glories as a possible band moniker, but they knew that wasn’t quite it. Freshly named the Small Glories, they released their first record, “Wonderous Traveller,” in 2016.
“We’re very Canadian,” said Luft, who, before teaming with Edwards, was an original member of the folk trio the Wailin’ Jennys.
She acknowledged it’s a big generalization, but said “very Canadian” means the duo is on the modest side, and “not as big and boisterous as our neighbors to the south, whom we love dearly.”
She also called Port Angeles “honorarily Canadian,” since it’s so close to Victoria.
Luft and Edwards look forward to an evening made memorable by live music — and connection.
Those things are “small glories,” Luft said, along with the pleasures of traveling across the country and meeting people.
“We’re funny, we’re delightful, we’re adorkable,” Luft said.
“We really love to engage with people. We really believe in having a moment in time that will never be replicated.”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer living in Port Townsend.
