Music · Country · Bluegrass
Jake Vaadeland & The Sturgeon River Boys
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The profile · researched 16 October 2026
Twin banjos out of Cut Knife: Jake Vaadeland's slow-built road to the Thekla
A self-taught Saskatchewan multi-instrumentalist who has turned 1950s country and bluegrass into one of Canada's hardest-working touring acts, Jake Vaadeland is midway through a British run in October 2026 with a new 17-track record behind him and a fresh Western Canadian Music Award on the shelf.
Cut Knife, and a band from down the road
Jake Vaadeland was born in 2003 or 2004 and grew up at Cut Knife, a village in west-central Saskatchewan. He is self-taught on guitar and banjo, and the music he settled on was not the country of his own lifetime but the sound either side of 1955: traditional country, early rockabilly, and bluegrass played straight. The first releases came out independently and quickly — the EP Retro Man on 1 August 2021, followed by No More Pain in My Heart on 13 November the same year — and the first full album, Everybody But Me, arrived on 8 September 2022.
The Sturgeon River Boys were assembled close to home rather than hired in from a city scene. Joel Rohs, who plays electric guitar, and stand-up bassist Stephen Williams both live near where Vaadeland was raised and had played with his father; banjo player Jaxon Lalonde came to the band after seeing him at festivals. That proximity shows in the way the group operates on stage, with two banjos running together and the bass worked as a piece of physical comedy as much as a rhythm instrument.
An early marker of how fast this was moving: on 1 February 2023 the band drew a near-capacity house at the E.A. Rawlinson Centre in Prince Albert, a hometown date for Williams, who afterwards said the audience made the job easier. In the autumn of that year they went across Canada supporting the Hunter Brothers on the Burnin' Down the Bar Tour, which put the act in front of mainstream country rooms without changing what it was doing.
Two records that collected the awards
Retro Man...More and More, released on 26 April 2024, is the record that moved Vaadeland from regional curiosity to national recognition. It appeared independently, on CD, vinyl and streaming, and on 30 March 2025 it won the Juno Award for Traditional Roots Album of the Year — an unusual landing place for an artist marketed largely through country channels, and a fair reflection of how much of the material is built from old forms.
The follow-up, One More Dollar to Go, came out on 25 April 2025, almost exactly a year later, and took Alternative Country Album of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Association Awards in September 2025. In the same period Vaadeland reached the finals of the SiriusXM Top of the Country competition. The business around him firmed up in 2024 with a publishing deal with Arts & Crafts Productions and distribution through Jayward Artist Group, while the recordings themselves stayed independent and management sits with Birthday Cake Records.
Alongside the albums there has been a steady run of collaboration and borrowed audience: a bluegrass rendition of Tebey's "Wake Me Up", a United States tour with The Dead South, and a closing slot at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. The touring, rather than radio, has done the heavy lifting — Vaadeland is the youngest artist to be certified Road Gold in Canada, a mark for 25,000 tickets sold in twelve months, and has collected nine Saskatchewan Country Music Awards along the way.
This Is Jake Vaadeland
The current record, released on 22 May 2026, is the most inward-looking thing he has made. This Is Jake Vaadeland runs to 17 tracks, was recorded at the National Music Centre in Calgary and co-produced with Joel Rohs, the band's guitarist and his longest-standing collaborator. The sound is deliberately warm and analogue, and the track list sets original writing beside material much older than the band — "Wildwood Flower" and "Keep on the Sunny Side" among them.
Vaadeland has been blunt about why those standards are there rather than as filler: "These are not just ordinary old folk songs. They are the harmonies and notes that are deeply embedded within the strong roots of my childhood." The lead single, "The Homesteader's Song", came out on his 23rd birthday and traces his own family's arrival on the prairies, written around his great-grandfather Severin and in memory of his great-grandmother Karen, who was born in 1901 and died in 2000.
Canadian coverage on release day framed the album as a deliberate step away from the band record towards something closer to a family document, and the title makes the same claim without much decoration. It is the first of his releases that explains the repertoire rather than simply playing it.
Where things stand in October 2026
The most recent accolade is a fortnight old: at the Western Canadian Music Awards, held in Victoria, British Columbia from 1 to 3 October 2026, Vaadeland was named BreakOut Artist of the Year, ahead of Leith Ross and Pony Gold. It is the third significant award in eighteen months, after the 2025 Juno and the 2025 CCMA.
2026 has been the year the touring stopped being mostly Canadian. The band opened it in Scandinavia, playing Monument 031 in Gothenburg on 30 January and Kollektivet Livet in Stockholm on 31 January, then Merleyn in Nijmegen on 12 February. Summer took in Mariposa Folk Festival at Orillia, Ontario on 5 July, the Cavendish Beach Music Festival in Prince Edward Island on 8 and 9 July, and Sjock Festival in Belgium on 12 July — a rockabilly bill that suits the band better than most country festivals do.
The British run is underway now. Remaining dates are The Rum Shack in Glasgow on 17 October, the Hare & Hounds at Kings Heath on 19 October, Thekla in Bristol on 21 October, Concorde 2 in Brighton on 22 October and St Luke's Church in Portsmouth on 23 October. Canada follows immediately — the Rivoli in Toronto on 1 November, the Seahorse Tavern in Halifax on 8 November — before two larger seated rooms in December, the Bella Concert Hall in Calgary on 13 December and the Myer Horowitz Theatre in Edmonton on 15 December. A return to Denmark is already booked for Pavillonen in Grenå on 20 February 2027. UK and European bookings run through Midnight Mango, with Paquin Artists Agency handling North America and Australia.
The band on stage
The live format has settled into something closer to a variety show than a support-and-headliner gig. At Rough Trade in Bristol on 5 September 2025 the band played two full sets with an intermission and an encore, and no support act or DJ — an arrangement they have kept on the smaller British dates, where the whole evening is theirs.
What fills it is a mix of original material, bluegrass instrumentals played at speed, gospel numbers and comic pieces written in the shape of old Opry advertising spots. That Bristol show opened with "My Father's Son" and worked through "Flint Hill Special" and "Farewell Blues" as instrumental showcases, alongside "Be a Farmer or a Preacher" and "A Bachelor's Life", and closed the encore with "Blue Suede Shoes". Setlist records across the year show the most frequently played songs are the "Diet Pepsi Jingle" and "I Ain't Going Back to Nashville", with "Jake Vs Jake", "More and More" and "The Bachelor's Life" close behind, and covers drawn from Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.
On European dates the bass chair has been filled by 'Cousin' Jake Smithers, who is from Sheffield, with Lalonde on banjo. Reviewers have tended to note the same two things: the standard of the playing, and that the band stays behind afterwards for autographs and photographs rather than disappearing.
The show, now
On the current British dates the band headline the whole evening: two sets with an intermission plus an encore, and no support act, as at Rough Trade in Bristol on 5 September 2025. The shape alternates sung material with fast bluegrass instrumentals — "Flint Hill Special" and "Farewell Blues" both featured in Bristol — and leaves room for gospel numbers and comic songs written in the style of old Grand Ole Opry sponsor spots, including the "Diet Pepsi Jingle", which is the single most-played item in the band's 2026 setlists alongside "I Ain't Going Back to Nashville". Covers are drawn from Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, with "Blue Suede Shoes" turning up in the encore. Staging is minimal and acoustic-leaning: Vaadeland on acoustic guitar and banjo, Joel Rohs on electric guitar, Jaxon Lalonde on a second banjo so that passages run on twin instruments, and stand-up bass — Stephen Williams in Canada, Sheffield-born 'Cousin' Jake Smithers on the European legs, both of whom play the instrument as a piece of stage business. Reviews consistently single out the standard of the playing and the fact that the group stays out afterwards for autographs and photographs; Canadian write-ups going back to the near-full E.A. Rawlinson Centre show in Prince Albert on 1 February 2023 make the same point about the between-song patter carrying as much of the night as the songs. Remaining UK dates run to 23 October 2026, with Canadian theatre shows in Calgary and Edmonton in December.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · jakevaadeland.com · completecountry.ca · ctvnews.ca · midcenturychap.com · songkick.com · ca.billboard.com · setlist.fm