Scott Cook and Pamela Mae w/ Mike Ward- October 28, 2022

In 2007, Albertan songwriter Scott Cook quit his job teaching kindergarten in Taiwan and moved into a minivan. He’s made his living as a troubadour ever since, touring almost incessantly across Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, averaging 150 shows and a dozen summer festivals a year, and releasing seven albums of plainspoken, keenly observant verse along the way. His latest collection Tangle of Souls comes packaged in a cloth-bound, 240-page hardcover book of road stories and ruminations, equal parts introspection and insurrection. The album spent two weeks at #1 on Alberta’s province-wide community radio network CKUA, and earned Scott his third Canadian Folk Music Award nomination, for English Songwriter of the Year. Its second single “Say Can You See” was the second most-played song of 2020 on Folk Alliance International’s folk radio charts, and took top honours for the folk category in both the 2020 UK Songwriting Competition and the 2020 Great American Song Contest. In 2022 he’s touring the album around North America with his sweetheart Pamela Mae on upright bass, banjo and vocals, living in their campervan Roadetta, and believing more than ever that songs can change your life, and your life can change the world.

Lyrically-centric, vocally-charged folk songs that occasionally take on political issues. Those are what singer-songwriter Mike Ward loves to create. Living in Detroit, Mike grew up listening to Irish music and singing in choirs. A few of his influences are Jason Isbell, Nanci Griffith, Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and John Prine. His writing echoes along empty sidewalks, on our nation’s backroads,

in family portraits, and in the thin lines between joy and tragedy, love and loss, past, present and future. Mike spent the better part of 40 years on the creative side of the advertising industry but now creates music full time and is immersed in the Michigan music scene.

In June 2022, Mike emerged with a 12-song album titled, “Particles to Pearls” where he dug deep into love of family (past, present and future) and the idea of how fleeting our time is. His song, “Letting Go”, received an honorable mention in the Great River Folk Fest Songwriting Contest. 

A new three-song EP released Oct 7, 2022 is dedicated to those who raise their voice, chase freedom, make their way from other lands to seek refuge and to all those who support basic human ideals. From protecting individual rights and free speech to the issue of immigration we all share responsibility to question wrongs and to fight to make them right.