Biography
The Dust Poets are a five-piece acoustic folk-pop group with roots deep in the Canadian prairie. The band pokes affectionate fun at themselves and the world around them while spreading their own irreverent brand of small town angst. The Dust Poets have performed extensively across Canada and are well known for their infectious spirit, powerful stage presence, genre-bending originals, hot instrumental chops, and juicy harmony singing.
Murray D. Evans - guitar, vocals
Karla Ferguson - accordion, vocals
Corey Ticknor - mandolin, vocals
Sean McManus - clarinet, percussion, vocals
Gord Mowat - bass
The Dust Poets perform the original music of veteran singersongwriter Murray D. Evans, whose wry writer's eye explores themes of home-town losers, travel in foreign lands, and the absurdity of war. Ranging in tone from the darkly humourous to the achingly tender, Evans finds a fertile muse in the joys and disappointments of modern living. With their unmistakable original sound, the Dust Poets also perform an eclectic collection of country swing standards and underground pop covers.
The musically restless Dust Poets create arrangements that wander easily among different styles, including folk, bluegrass, swing, pop, and circus freak ragtime. The band's all-acoustic line-up features guitar, upright bass, accordion, mandolin, clarinet, and percussion, plus extraordinary four part vocal harmonies.
Since the band’s formation in 2001 in Brandon, Manitoba, they have released three albums and toured throughout Canada and the United States. Originally known as "das macht Show," their first record, "...one night in Berlin" - recorded live in a single evening - earned a nomination for Outstanding Roots Recording for the 2002 Prairie Music Awards. Their second professionally recorded release, entitled "Four Legs Good," was released in 2003 and contains all the edgy excitement of their live show. In 2006 the band released "Lovesick Town." The new disc finds songwriter Evans reveling in the quirky caricatures of small town life and showcases the acoustic band with an infusion of horns, drums, piano and electric guitars.
In recent years, the Dust Poets have spread themselves across North America – Murray lives in rural Manitoba near Riding Mountain National Park, Karla and Sean are in Winnipeg, MB, Gord lives in Toronto, while Corey lives in Tempe, Arizona. That they can thrive as the Dust Poets with such distance between them characterizes the passion and tenacity that the band summons to create, record, and tour its music.
The Dust Poets continue to earn fans and attract international attention with great music, a great sense of humour, and great performances, every time they take the stage.