When we reach Craig Bignell on the phone, he and his wife Suzanne Levesque are in Thunder Bay, driving their horse trailer (their “tour bus” they joke) to a bunch of shows in Ontario.
Also known as the Alberta roots duo Over The Moon, the two recently launched one of their most ambitious projects yet.
It goes back to 2023, when Bignell was poking around on Facebook Marketplace. He saw an old movie theatre for sale in Hardisty, around an hour and a half drive from their home in Chauvin, AB.
“I said, ‘Sue, look, a theatre’s for sale.’ And she said, ‘Do not even think about it,'” he laughs. “So we didn’t think about it.”
He kept an eye on it, though, and it didn’t sell. They decided to take a look.
“We walked in and as soon as we saw it and more importantly, as soon as we heard what it sounded like – the acoustics were amazing – we said, ‘we have to buy this.’ So we did.”
Built in 1926, it had been sitting for 20 years. The plumbing had been leaking and the floors were rotten in the lobby. The toilets were sinking through the floors. “We had to go down to the very joints and rebuild everything all the way up: flooring, drywall, everything,” says Bignell. “So it took a long time.”
They funded the theatre project themselves, without any grants. It’s named after their dog, Teak, who is a German shorthaired pointer i.e. a bird dog.
As they neared the end of the renovations, they decided to announce the grand opening concert in three months, to pressure themselves into finishing the work.
“I pressed ‘Send’ on the Facebook post and almost instantly someone bought 16 tickets,” says Bignell. “It scared us to death.”
Within a week the show was sold out. They added another. It sold out. They added another. It sold out.
“It was amazing, people came from Edmonton, Calgary, from Ontario,” he says.
Professional audio and lighting friends came to help install the lighting system and PA. “We worked really hard to make it sound good. When people came to hear it they were just blown away by the sound, and that felt really good.”
The theatre is also set up as a recording studio. That was the main reason they bought it, Bignell says.
They usually record at home but when they moved to Chauvin in 2020, they discovered they were very close to a main train line. Trains came through incessantly, rattling the windows and blowing their whistles.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop the sound,” Bignell says. “We built our own studio in the house and I tried to build a room inside of a room with the best sound insulation you can get but it shakes the house, the trains are so loud.”
As soon as they get back from their Ontario tour they’ll start recording their next album. In the Bird Dog, of course. “We’re really excited about it because we’ve been writing like crazy and we really feel it’s going to be our best so far.”
Keep an eye on all the upcoming Bird Dog Theatre shows on their website. Dave McCann is next, on September 20.
“The Hills of Grey County” by Over The Moon:
Park Power
