Three of the West’s most madly creative underground songwriters will be returning to the stage next month for the Death Ballad Love Tellers tour.
Ben Sures, David P. Smith and Bubba Uno will premiere new songs – death ballads of course – written specially for the tour, and for a new album they’ll record together when it’s over.
They’ll also accompany each other on guitar, ukulele and accordion respectively while each takes a turn showcasing songs from his solo repertoire.
Not content to stick with the tried and true themes of love and loss, Troy “Bubba Uno” Cook sets his acoustic indie folk music in make-believe post-zombie-apocalypse wastelands populated by robots, aliens, vampires and serial killers, and a satanic rabbit trying to restore old-fashioned evil on earth.
Ben Sures is touring to support his latest album Gone to Bolivia, which was CKUA’s most-played album by an Alberta artist in 2011, and which made Sarah Greene’s Top 10 albums of 2011 in Toronto’s Now.
David P. Smith is excited to be back on tour again as last year’s Death Ballad Love Tellers Tour marked his first time on the road in three years. At the core, Smith is essentially a storyteller, albeit not a teller of the kind of stories you’re used to. His narratives are visceral and often hilarious. They peer into darkness and stumble into surrealism, before lurching back into universal everyday-isms.
Smith says touring with Sures and Uno is exciting because everyone on the bill is so different. “There’s not a chance to get bored,” he says.
Ben Sures, Bubba Uno and David P. Smith will perform at the Clawhammer Press, Fernie, on February 17.