Terri Clark’s laugh has a way of lighting up a room — warm, and unmistakably genuine. As she talks about her Homecoming 2.0 Tour with Paul Brandt, her voice carries both nostalgia and excitement. “Back in the ’90s, people used to playfully call us the king and queen of country,” she recalls. “We thought it would be fun to lean into that — maybe even call it the Homecoming Tour.” What began as a lighthearted idea, she says, soon grew into something more meaningful. “It’s about coming home. It’s about what Canada has meant to us — and now, bringing our stories together across the country.”

For Clark, that “homecoming” is both literal and symbolic. “We’re going coast to coast this time — thirty-four different markets in seven weeks,” she says. “Paul lives in Alberta, and I’ve had a part-time residence in Ontario for about fifteen years, but I’m still based out of Nashville. So it really does feel like a homecoming for me.”

When she and Brandt first teamed up, neither expected their chemistry to click quite so naturally. “What’s really great about it is I don’t think either one of us realized going in that the chemistry would be what it was,” she explains. “We were friends — we’d had dinner at each other’s houses — but we hadn’t really had much contact in recent years. Then, when I was being inducted into the Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Fame in 2018, Paul was at the show. I’d just toured solo across Canada in 2016 with just me and a guitar — forty-four shows — and it did really well. I remember saying to my booking agent, ‘Can you imagine the venues we could play if Paul and I did this together? We’re from the same era, both Canadians, both with a stack of hits — one female, one male — it’s a no-brainer.’”

She laughs at the memory. “I went and talked to Paul in his dressing room, but he already had a big band tour planned. Then in 2022, we started talking again, and off we went in 2023 for the first Homecoming Tour. It was kind of an experiment — we didn’t know how it would feel or how it would do. It was a big question mark.”

The result, she says, was a coast-to-coast success story that even they found surprising. “The banter and chemistry that happens between us on stage — people find it hilarious,” Clark says. “There’s this playful competition, that whole thing about who has the biggest number-one hit or sold more records. But at the end of the day, there’s such mutual respect. It just evolved so naturally, and it’s still evolving every night. There’s no set script — a lot of off-the-cuff moments. I think that authenticity is what people are really drawn to — it makes this tour different than just going to see people sing their songs.”

That authenticity, she adds, is essential to keeping the show fresh through a seven-week sprint. “It’s hard, so that’s why it’s important to allow for flexibility in the talking parts,” she says. “The songs are what they are — people want to hear those same songs every night. So the parts where we can react to somebody in the audience or talk about something local that happened that day — that’s really important to keep it real.”

For Clark and Brandt, that openness has turned the tour into something that feels more like a gathering than a concert. “It kind of feels like a kitchen party,” she smiles. “We’re sitting there in a beautiful set with some nice mood lighting, and it’s like being in somebody’s living room. We patterned it after the guitar-pull style at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville — where artists sit and play the songs they wrote, tell the stories behind them. It’s got that vibe.”

That intimate energy connects especially well with places like northern Ontario. “I can’t tell you how many songs we have about small towns,” Clark says. “It just goes together. I’ve got a song called Northern Girl, and when I wrote it, I talked about the northern lights, spinning in circles, the temperatures being really cold, driving on black ice. The farther north you go, like Thunder Bay, the more true that song is.” Her voice softens. “We Canadians are polite people, but I challenge anybody to be as tough as we are, growing up in the climates and conditions we do. There’s a resilience and hard-working attitude — and honestly, the farther north you go, the tougher you are. That’s what I really respect and appreciate about the people up in that area.”

Storytelling, she says, continues to evolve right along with life. “Of course it changes, because you accumulate more and more — things happen, you always have something new to talk about as long as you’re still out there doing what you do,” she says. “Paul and I even talk about fishing during the show, because I’ve become an avid angler,” she laughs. “There’s always something new.”

After twenty-five years, countless awards, and tours that have stretched across decades, what drives her now isn’t chart success — it’s connection. “I feel like at this point, we’ve both become part of a person’s history and nostalgia through music — a part of their memory bank,” she says. “Where was I when I heard that song? What was I doing? I’ll hear people say, ‘I was in university when Better Things to Do came out,’ and they remember a party where everyone sang along. That’s the gift — that connection. When they come to the show now, and some of them are parents or grandparents, they’re reliving their youth through you. It keeps us all young.”

She pauses. “In a world that’s changing so fast, with so much division on both sides of the border — when everyone’s sitting beside each other singing Better Things to Do, they don’t care who would vote for who. They’re all just one. That’s the part that keeps me coming back.”

Away from the stage, Clark credits her grounding to the people who’ve been there since the beginning. “I stay connected to the people who’ve been in my life since way before any of this happened,” she says. “I surround myself with people who’ll tell me the truth, not just what I want to hear. It’s important to surround yourself with authenticity — you are who you hang out with.”

That authenticity extends to a circle of artists who share her journey. “There are some artists I love having dinner with because we can talk in confidence and it doesn’t leave the room,” she says. “We share the same experiences — being female artists in this business. Me, Reba, Trisha, Pam, Suzy Bogguss — we sit and wine over wine,” she laughs. “But outside of that, I gravitate toward my friends who are social workers, school teachers, nurses, factory workers — just real people with real lives. I take the garbage out, walk my dog, and live a simple, grounded life. The minute I come off stage, that hat comes off and I’m in pyjama pants — just somebody’s neighbour.”

When asked what advice she’d give to a ten-year-old like my daughter Emmy, her answer comes easily. “Be your authentic, true self — who you are at the core — and don’t waver from that,” she says. “There are a million copycats and people out there chasing trends, but you have to find your own voice and stick with it. There’s only one you. That’s how you inspire other little girls — by being who you are, authentically. I really respect artists like Ashley McBryde and Lainey Wilson — they’re unapologetically themselves, and that’s what it takes. The one thing AI will never replace is live performance — you can’t replace a human being in that way.”

Before wrapping up, Clark offers one more reflection for fans ahead of her Thunder Bay show. “People are going to hear every hit they want to hear,” she promises. “It’s half comedy, half music — we poke fun at each other a lot, and there’s so much authenticity and banter that you just don’t get from seeing us individually. I don’t know if we’ll ever do Homecoming 3.0 — maybe years from now — so I’d encourage people to come out. If there’s one thing COVID taught me, it’s don’t wait. If you think you want to see an artist live, do it. You only live once, and the opportunity may not come back around again. I’d go see it myself,” she laughs, “because I’m having fun doing it — and that’s the point.”

For Clark and Brandt, Homecoming 2.0 isn’t just a tour — it’s a celebration of where they’ve been and the fans who’ve been there all along. As their voices rise together once more, they’re not just revisiting the past — they’re reminding Canadians that the road home is paved with music, memories, and the stories we share along the way.

Terri Clark & Paul Brandt – Homecoming 2.0 Tour plays the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium on November 5, 2025, at 7:30 PM. Tickets are available online and at the box office.