Following the cancellation of September’s Sass Jordan concert due to health concerns, Tour de Fort will kick off the 2026-27 season on Oct. 5 with folk roots band Maggie’s Wake.
The Times spoke to fiddle player Lindsay Schindler, who discussed the band’s origin.
“Maggie’s Wake began in about 2022; it came out of a previous band that I was playing in called Rant Maggie Rant,” she said. “That band was wrapping up in 2021, and we had a final tour and invited Tara Dunphy as one of our guests for that tour and Tara and I just hit it off. We had such a great time playing together that we decided that we wanted to continue it. That’s when Maggie’s Wake came to be.”
Schindler and Dunphy make up the core of the band, with Andrew Kosty on upright and electric bass and Ken Palmer on electric and acoustic guitars.
Including the name Maggie in the new project’s name wasn’t a coincidence, but Schindler and Dunphy didn’t necessarily ascribe the same meaning to the name.
“We were shooting a lot of different names back and forth, and we wanted to somehow tie to what was before, because it was kind of a bit of the foundation of the beginning, so I think Tara suggested ‘Maggie’s Wake,’ and I thought that was a great name,” Schindler said.
“I thought, you know, a wake, like the wake behind the boat, and it’s kind of carving a new path. And we had talked a lot about writing original material and creating something new. I thought it was really fitting.”
Tara, meanwhile, had a different take on the word.
“She was thinking of it more as a wake, like an Irish wake celebrating the end of a life,” Schindler said. “She was thinking, Rant Maggie Rant is now dead. We’re going to celebrate that with a wake, and this is Maggie’s Wake. It’s definitely a double take on why, but we agreed that the name was perfectly suiting.”
The band plays all original music written by Schindler and Dunphy, and they tread a line around half and half lyrical vs. instrumental music, Schindler said.
“We present a real mix of sounds. We are about 50-50 on instrumental tracks and songs, vocal tracks,” Schindler said. “It’s all original. Tara and I write all of the music, and you’ve got everything from that folk aspect of stories that may be true or not true, and you’ve got tunes that are going to get you tapping your toes and moving in your seat.”
The instruments on stage include fiddles, whistles, flute, guitar, bass and, of course, vocals. Schindler called it a folk sound very influenced by Celtic instrumentation.
The band is starting a seven-show tour around the northwest starting Oct. 3 in Thunder Bay, stopping in Atikokan on Oct. 4 and then arriving in Fort Frances on Oct. 5 before proceeding to Kenora, Red Lake, Sioux Lookout and Dryden.
The band’s first, self-titled album, which was released in 2024, is available on streaming platforms. Meanwhile, they’re working on a second release to come out later this year; the audience can expect to hear some tunes from the upcoming release at the show.
“We’ve not been to any of these communities before. We love to travel to new places and meet new people,” Schindler said. “So, we’re really, really looking forward to it. We’re actually getting ready to release our second full-length album, and so they can also expect a little bit of a sneak peek at some of that upcoming music.”
While the Tour de Fort passport season is sold out, some tickets may be made available ahead of showtime. Anyone interested in attending should keep an eye on Tour de Fort’s social media pages.
