FRIDAY JULY 18 | Great Lake Swimmers | 8:00PM

Celebrating 20 years of atmospheric indie-folk, Great Lake Swimmers—led by Tony Dekker—blend acoustic intimacy and rural nostalgia into hauntingly beautiful songs that feel both timeless and deeply of the moment.

Purchase Advanced tickets on SHOWPASS HERE ($40 plus tax and fees) OR at the Door while quantities last ($45 plus tax)

Dinner is available with our kitchen open until 9pm. Reservations are strongly suggested—make yours HERE. We are an intimate 85-seat venue, so every seat is a great seat! While we do our best to accommodate all seating requests, they cannot be guaranteed. For the best experience, we recommend making reservations in even numbers (for example, a party of three may be seated with an additional guest). Doors open half an hour before showtime for those who will not be dining with us.

Featuring a blend of acoustic instruments, rural soundscapes, and wistful vocals, Great Lake Swimmers are a critically acclaimed indie-folk group led by songwriter/vocalist Tony Dekker. Based in Toronto, Ontario, the group emerged in the early 2000s with a succession of heavily atmospheric albums recorded in old silos and rural country churches. The music developed in that pastoral warmth, performed and recorded in acoustically unique and historical locales with a revolving cast of personnel. They are renowned for their homespun folk and lush, intimate Americana in their live set.

Great Lake Swimmers celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2023 with “Uncertain Country,” an album where doubts are followed by discovery, demos end up as finished tracks, and themes of new beginnings, rear-view reflections, and ruminations on the fluidity of time form the basis of the eleven new songs.

It follows a prolonged period of collective anxiety. Recorded in different locales—and with a variety of musicians—a theme of questioning runs throughout. Even before the world turned upside down, Dekker felt mired in uncertainty: from the climate crisis to the ever-changing political landscape. The “uncertain country” chosen as the album’s theme is not a specific place. Rather, it’s a territory we, as humans, inhabit in the 21st century — a world that, more often than not, is confusing, unfamiliar and unsettling.

“Moonlight, Stay Above” epitomizes what Great Lake Swimmers represents. A 10-voice strong women’s choir (Niagara's Minuscule) lifts the lonely-sounding and wistful song up. As with that addition, the band on each album is fluid and always evolving.

Great Lake Swimmers were shortlisted for the prestigious Polaris Music Prize and nominated twice for Canada’s Juno Awards, with the CBC calling them “a national treasure.”