What’s a guy to do when his front tooth breaks on the first leg of a three-month 30,000 km. cross-Canada folk tour? Dave Lang has the answer: “Keep calm, carry on” and crazy glue your tooth back on. In the weeks since Lang’s impromptu dentistry session in Sault Ste. Marie, he and his tour mate Dave Newberry have endured a number of other breaks as well. But broken vans, broken guitars, broken calf muscles and broken hearts have not slowed these two down. Instead they have embraced these bumps along the road and officially rebranded their tour the Keep Calm and Carry On cross-Canada tour, adopting the famous Second World War propaganda poster slogan as their new moniker.

The tour reaches Prince George on Nov. 20.

Lang and Newberry come from different places and perform in vastly different styles. Both use humour as a mechanism for delivery their own brands of commentary. Bad relationships, bad people, bad governments and other singer’s bad songs are all on the chopping block for these two talented and road-won satirists/musicians/writers.

Lang’s website describes him as having smart words, smart chords, smart clothes – “Dave Lang has had a fondness for smartness since someone told him he had a smart mouth. Inspired by Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Bob Wills and Lenny Bruce, Lang writes smart songs that make people smile.”

For his part Newberry sings folk songs with rock sensibilities. Or is it the other way around? His simple songs capture insights into the complex contemporary social world.

“David’s music is delivered with passion and intensity...Each song is like a masterpiece of concise writing, not one wasted word or thought,” says three-time Juno Award winner David Francey. “Each drives home the fact that I am listening to exquisite insights into the human condition. A brilliant blend of heart and mind that is all but missing in most of his contemporaries’ writing today. He is a brilliant poet and compelling performer. I think he is an outstanding writer. Simply outstanding.”

The “Keep Calm, Carry On” tour with Dave Lang and Dave Newberry plays Artspace on Friday, Nov. 20. Tickets are $10. Show starts at 9 p.m. For more about Lang, visit www.davelang.com, and for Newberry, visit www.davidnewberry.ca.