When Anna and Regan Luth moved from Alberta to the Lower Mainland in 2018, they looked up the only person they knew in the region.
The couple had met Anna Ratzlaff on a trip to Australia years earlier, and she and her husband, Jason, were quick to invite them for dinner.
“They were musicians, Regan and I were musicians,” Anna Luth says. “We all had our own projects on the go—two duos, specifically. We started sharing music in the living room and they invited us to give some feedback on one of the songs they were writing. Within four hours, we had written our first song, ‘Northern Lights,’ together.”
Shortly after that fateful night, The Crescent Sky was born.
“We walked away from that experience shell shocked, a little bit, feeling like this is really special,” Luth says.
Rooted in indie-folk, the band’s harmony-heavy sound combines all four members’ vocals into an acoustic dreamscape.
From the beginning, they committed to equally sharing songwriting duties—and the spotlight.
“We’ve been really intentional about not having one specific leader,” Luth adds. “There’s not one lead singer either. We really take turns. And I think, being couples, we knew that each person has different strengths and weaknesses and we do our best to support each other musically and relationally as well.”
The group released its debut album, Wonder, in May 2020.
“At that point, we had been a band for 2.5 years and had been working really hard on an album,” Luth says. “We had a tour from B.C. to Alberta lined up that we had planned ourselves. It all got wiped out with the pandemic.”
But they decided to move ahead with the record release, and jumped on opportunities for online shows or stripped-back, outdoor appearances, as restrictions permitted.
“We wanted to have music out in the world,” she adds. “When you’re a new band and applying for different festivals and trying to get shows, it’s really important to have a catalogue available online.”
That perseverance paid off with several festival dates last summer.
“We had a really busy summer,” Luth says. “Our bandmates Jason and Anna had their first kid last year, too. It was busy on a personal level and busy with music, too. We did as much as we could given they had started their family for the first time.”
The group spent much of its pandemic downtime writing new material, with several singles released last year.
“We released three singles last summer and we’re hoping to get into the studio in the coming months. We’d like to work on a full-length album,” Luth adds.
But first up, The Crescent Sky is making its Sea to Sky debut with a show at the Brackendale Art Gallery (BAG) on Friday, March 17 and as part of the Arts Whistler Live! music series on Saturday, March 18.
“A lot of our songs start in the living room, where we’re all writing together and collaborating,” Luth says. “We try to bring that intimate setting to our audiences. Playing in a theatre is one of our favourite settings … We’re always writing from our personal experience. Sometimes that can be pretty vulnerable. We hope folks will find something a little bit universal in our writing.”
Tickets to the Whistler show and the BAG are available at thecrescentsky.com/shows.
