Minneapolis duo The Cactus Blossoms return to the Bartlett Arboretum Sunday and also have a show at Lawrence’s The Bottleneck on Saturday.
The group has been performing for over a decade, with brother Jack Torrey and Page Burkum displaying their unique vocal harmonies and prodigious gift as songwriters across albums such as “One Day” (2022) and “Every Time I Think About You” (2024). While the pair focuses primarily on material they’ve penned, they issued an EP of Bob Dylan compositions in 2022 and this spring issued a single version of Nick Lowe’s “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide” to broad acclaim.
Burkum and Page recently spoke about touring with Lowe and their previous visit to Belle Plaine in 2024.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The last time we spoke was in 2024, and you were just about to play the Bartlett Arboretum for the first time. Do you have any memories of that show?
Jack Torrey: I’ll let the tree expert take this one.
Page Burkum: [Laughs.] The thing is that I was excited to play there because I’m one of the people that actually is interested in trees and learning about them. I had checked out the place before and saw that they booked a lot of friends of mine and I thought they had great music there, and I could kind of tell that there was a real music lover involved with it just from looking at their bookings. We had a good time.
We had [our friend] Lou Hazel opening for us for that show. He’s a great songwriter, too. We just had fun rolling around before we played, between our soundcheck time and our show time, getting a tour of all the trees there. It’s a real special place.
You also have this cover of Nick Lowe’s “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide Out,” which is a great rendition.
JT: It doesn’t mention drinking once, but it is the ultimate hangover ballad about letting your life slide. It’s a wonderful song. We put that song out this spring, just before we went out on a tour with Nick — Colorado, down to the Southwest and then up the whole West Coast. We had a really great time with him. It was just us as a duo opening for Nick Lowe solo. It was a blast.
PB: At the beginning of the tour, he knew that we had recorded that [song], and he said, “You know, you guys can do that if you want to in the set.” We said, “Nah, we wanna hear you do it.” [Laughs.]
JT: We said, “What if someone drove three hours to hear you sing that great song, and then we came up and sang it? That could ruin someone’s day.
PB: [Laughs.]
He seems to have embraced you as a peer, which has got to be a really cool feeling.
JT: Nick is obviously in a mentor role. He turned 77 on this tour we were on. He’s done it all. He’s ten times as talented as us, but he still treats us as peers in music. That’s a huge honor.
How much does the set change night to night?
JT: We’ll see. We don’t really have a method to our madness. Maybe if we have a lot of fun playing a couple of songs in Lawrence we might definitely do them the next night in Belle Plaine. Or we’ll switch it up because it’s going to be beautiful weather outside and we’re just going to play some slower waltzes and put people to sleep on their little blankets.
PB: [Laughs.]
