Smokey and dangerous acid-folk, sweet’n salty old-tyme country, funk-fused blues-rock, Laurie Sarkadi’s genre-bending songs tell stories about place, politics and desire that aim to make you think and sway.

The Yellowknife singer-songwriter who fronted the popular dance band “Wake Up Hazel” was to launch her debut album Middle World at the 2020, 40th anniversary Folk on the Rocks music festival, but the global crisis intervened. The chance to perform the album live a year later at a much-celebrated FOTR festival completed the journey.

Produced by Marc Ganetakos – a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist whose mad guitar skills have accompanied the likes of Nelly Furtado and Ashley MacIsaac – Middle World is designed to be a companion to Laurie’s northern bestselling memoir Voice in the Wild, which like her songs, speaks to the need for enduring relationships with the natural world and one another.