The Wardens are making their way back to the region with a wonderful show lined up for the folks in Quill Lake on April 4.
In honour of the event, we present an earlier article and conversation in advance of their appearance in Humboldt last year.
The Wardens come by their name honestly, explains band member and retired National Park game warden Scott Ward.
“My band mate, Ray, is a current game warden in Jasper. We have two other musicians in the band. Nico Humby is our stand-up bass man, and our fiddler extraordinaire is Scott Duncan.”
Ward now makes his home in Canmore, and the members of the band come together from various locales when it’s time to tour or drop a new record. They have four albums of original tunes out with many of the songs based on the experiences of working as a National Park warden.
“The job is a multi-functional job with some law enforcement, some mountain rescue, some avalanche control work, grizzly bear and wildlife work, back country patrols with horses into remote districts for weeks at a time. So, there’s a lot of fodder for songwriting there.”
It’s been about 15 years since Ray Schmidt and Ward founded the Wardens. There’s a bit of Kentucky blue grass sound transported to the Rockies in their music. A distinctive roots folk base with western sensibilities blends to a sound that defies a specific genre – it's something that Ward calls “back country.”
“We’ve gone from coffee shops locally to regional, and now we’re international with a lot of dates in the United States. We’ve played a lot of places in Canada from the Canadian Folk Music Awards in Prince Edward Island to Prince Rupert on the west coast. We’ve been getting around over the last number of years.”
Schmidt and Ward share the songwriting duties, each drawing on their unique experiences and approaching the songwriting craft from a different perspective. Ward says that many of the songs are prefaced with stories and anecdotes. A slide show representing the back country environment and illustrating the songs’ contents runs in the background during the show, adding an extra layer of experience.
The tour will bring the Wardens into southwestern Saskatchewan with stops at Swift Current, then eastward toward Weyburn, Estevan, Kipling and Moosomin. The band swings back north to Humboldt, Hudson Bay, Luseland, and Macklin before returning home to prepare for a journey to the States.
Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind musical experience with the Wardens, coming on April 4 to the Quill Lake Community Hall. Tickets available at the door.