Solving the paradox of vast open spaces of land and ‘Prairie skyscrapers’ in Saskatchewan is one item that will soon be checked off on Jeffery Straker’s to-do list. A new 10-track album is about to drop on June 7 and Straker will follow that up with a concert series in seven communities – all featuring a grain elevator. To celebrate the release of Great Big Sky , Straker will do a tour inspired by the song More than Two by Fours and Timber this summer.
“I’m fortunate to call the Prairies home. A place that reminds, inspires, lifts and grounds me,” he said in a news release. “ Great Big Sky is about being lost and then being found again, it’s a whisper painted on a giant canvas, and its gratitude for not knowing all the answers but being able to ask all the questions.
This great big sky we live under is an amazing thing.” Both of his parents have passed away in the last five years and it was they that made him thankful for a childhood “in a beautiful place”. The song More than Two by Fours comes from a personal place in Straker’s history.
Growing up on a grain farm near Punnichy Saskatchewan one of his first summer jobs was cleaning the boot of the old Pool elevator with a five-gallon bucket. “That’s when I first developed an intimate relationship with grain elevators, down there with the mice and the dust and everything” he said. A few years ago that elevator – the last of four that once stood in a row – was torn down.
The album comes out o.
