After two amazing performances at the Halifax Urban Folk Festival in 2024, Leeroy Stagger – along with very special guest Dennis Ellsworth – returns as a trio with a new, Joel Plaskett-produced, album – Pilgrimage – to play The Carleton on Sunday, May 17th. Show time is 7 PM and tickets are $25 + HST.
Leeroy Stagger is a beloved, award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter, producer and master storyteller. Stylistically his music moves between Folk, Roots and Rock’n’roll.
He is inspired as much by John Prine and Nick Drake as he is Tom Petty and Joe Strummer. For the past twenty years, he has been touring North America and Europe, making records and gaining a strong and, more importantly, dedicated following.
His music is written through the lens of a spiritual path through addiction and recovery; he cuts a trail through the human condition in only a way that a veteran observational traveller and artist can.
Leeroy has been signed to the famous Canadian label True North Records (Bruce Cockburn, Blackie and The Rodeo Kings) as well as industry mogul Danny Goldberg’s (Nirvana, Steve Earle, The Cranberries) Gold Lake Records.
He has supported and toured with Steve Earle, Josh Ritter, Buffy Sainte Marie, Frazey Ford, The Pixies, Modest Mouse, Los Lobos, The Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, and more, but is just at home in a cafe with an audience of 50 as he is on a festival stage with an audience of 10,000.
These days Leeroy is raising kids and producing records in his studio, Neighbourhood Recorders. He is also the host of the weekly Dirty Windshields Radio Hour on world-famous CKUA radio.
Dennis Ellsworth is a songwriter, performer, sideman, and record producer from Charlottetown, PE. His songwriting career started in high school, filling notebooks with lyrics and poems. He grew up on the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles, Kris Kristofferson, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. His tastes evolved in grade 6 and he began collecting cassettes. His personal music collection is stylistically expansive. Some might call his love for music an addiction, but whatever.
Over the years he has collaborated with Josh Finlayson and Andy Maize from Skydiggers, Gord Downie from The Tragically Hip, Joel Plaskett, Donovan Woods, Rose Cousins, John Smith, and David Barbe (producer of Drive-by Truckers and bass player for 90’s alt rock band Sugar.)
Ellsworth has released 2 full length albums with his previous group, Haunted Hearts, an album as a duo with Kinley Dowling, two EPs and 10 full length solo albums, including his most recent triple album project called Bound by Love.