Humbird Embarks On The Rocky Mountains & Then East Tour 2022

Humbird, the group led by singer and songwriter Siri Undlin, are touring in support of their critically acclaimed album Still Life. The Minneapolis-based band recently embarked on their Rocky Mountains And Then East Tour, with stops in Boulder, Colorado, Nashville and Chicago.

The 29-date run concludes with a pair of hometown concerts in early December at The Icehouse in Minneapolis. Undlin will be joined on the tour by bassist Pat Keen and drummer Peter Quirsfeld, who played on Still Life. The trio format emphasizes Siri Undlin’s songcraft and guitar playing, both of which are essential elements of Still Life songs like “Pink Moon for John Prine” and “Standing in the Way.”

With acclaim from No Depression, Folk Alley and Americana Highways for its adventurous and innovative songwriting, Still Life, which was released in October 2021, represents a pivotal moment in Humbird’s career. The new album serves as a follow-up to their 2019 full-length debut Pharmakon, which also garnered rave reviews from critics and fans. Since then, Humbird won the 2021 Kerrville Folk Festival’s songwriting award.

The sonic palette of the band was expanded on Still Life, with hints of ‘70s-style progressive rock, classical music and folk adding extra dimensions to Siri Undlin’s songs. The concept of Still Life comes out of the summer of 2020 when the pandemic — and the murder of George Floyd in her Minneapolis neighborhood — led Undlin to look inward. Recorded with multi-instrumentalist Adelyn Strei at the Minneapolis house she shared with Siri, Still Life is an album that offers solutions to problems of insularity.

Undlin took the Humbird songs on her well-received Summer Tour 2022 of the U.K. and Ireland, where she performed in major cities and seaside villages as part of a double bill with fellow Minneapolis singer-songwriter Luke Callen.

“I personally think it’s really important to do both large and small cities and to offer up art and collaboration in different contexts,” Undlin told Minneapolis’ independent radio station The Current about the tour. “And I think the kind of music that I make and the person that I am and my background makes me able to do both.”

Undlin met up with the producers of The Cloudwatcher Uno Podcast while performing at The Green Note in Camden Town, London this September. Mo, host of The Cloudwatcher Uno said:

“Humbird is the genuine article: a beautiful singer and a phenomenal songwriter who explores what it means to be a musician in this modern age. Humbird’s music and lyrics explore, with an infinite passion and curiosity, the human condition and an honest exploration of love, loss and happiness.”

Humbird’s Rocky Mountains And Then East Tour marks the rise of a major songwriter. The year since the release of Still Life has seen Humbird’s music reach new audiences. The tour will, of course, feature Siri in a band context, where her expert and harmonically sophisticated guitar playing interacts with the intuitive work of Peter Quirsfield and Pat Keen’s rhythm section. As Still Life demonstrates, Humbird is deeply invested in record-making and creating innovative textures. Taken as a superb singer-songwriter who also knows how to lead a band, Siri Undlin shines as a creator of songs that have heart, soul and subtle magic.

Like one of Undlin’s inspirations, John Prine — who is honored on the album track “Pink Moon for John Prine” — Siri revels in the quotidian details of everyday life. Still Life is about how the curves and edges of real life can’t be found on a flat map, and this image of a map underpins “Standing in the Way.”

Siri Undlin has the kind of grounding in songwriting and music-making that comes from her combined experiences. Like so many talented songwriters and performers, she believes in the power of communication a live audience gives her. Her deep roots go back to her formative years in Minneapolis, where she learned to play traditional folk tunes and the rock, pop and folk of the past and present. She’s also a student of songwriting, having spent 2013 and 2014 exploring and learning the various folk musics of the U.K. and Scandinavia on a grant she received after graduating college.

Undlin works in the timeless space of folk music. But she’s a thoroughly modern songwriter, influenced by Big Thief, Joni Mitchell, John Prine and others. Her chords are, in the end, her own, and you get satisfaction from her sheer harmonic ingenuity. The songs are personal narratives framed in the language of advanced pop. Humbird is a band with a real, worked-out style of its own, and that style comes through in the studio and onstage. Like the great songwriters who have informed her art, Siri has created a universe — a method of walking through the world — in her songcraft. That’s what it comes down to when all is said and done.

“I like to think of me and my bandmates as a very scrappy, grounded ensemble from the Midwest,” Undlin told Americana Highways earlier this year about the upcoming tour. “We show up and work hard. We believe in what we’re doing. So I think the attention is really nice, and really strange, and hopefully, it keeps going.”

Watch and listen to Humbird’s official artist showcase video for Folk Alliance International, recorded live at The Sheldon Theater in Red Wing, Minnesota earlier this year:

!function ($) {

$(function(){ // document ready

$(‘.video-sticky’).stickybits(
{
stickyBitStickyOffset: getNavbarsHeight()
}
);

});

}(window.jQuery);

.video-content .panel-body {
padding-top:40px;
padding-bottom:40px;
}
.video-sticky {
z-index: 999;
background-color: #fcfcfc;
}
.honorable-mentions {
padding-left: 0;
margin-left: 1.375em;
}
.honorable-mentions li {
margin-bottom:5px;
}
.honorable-mentions .fa-li {
margin-top:-2px;
}

.video-summary-wrap table.glance-table.jambase-videos-songs-table{
background-color: #e2e8ef;
}

[Sponsored Content: KWV Creative Communications is a JamBase client.]

Source: JamBase.com