Article Contributed by Sacks and Company
Published on 2026-02-18
photo credit: Max Wagner
Critically acclaimed and much beloved folk duo The Milk Carton Kids—Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan—share their new song, “Blue Water,” today; Listen/share HERE.
“I think of ‘Blue Water’ as a song that pays attention to how the past drifts back in during the most ordinary moments. It’s just this very small image that makes you realize the same thought can hold who you were and who you are all at once,” shares Ryan.
Renowned for their songwriting, folk sensibilities and vocal harmonies, “Blue Water” is the latest unveiled from the duo’s highly anticipated new album, Lost Cause Lover Fool, out April 24 via Far Cry Records in partnership with Thirty Tigers (pre-save/pre-order HERE).
Produced by Pattengale, Lost Cause Lover Fool is the duo’s seventh studio album, expanding on their signature minimalist sound while staying grounded in the intimate songwriting and understated arrangements that define their work. The new nine-song collection, including previously released track “A Friend Like You,” focuses on the small, quietly magnified moments that lie at the heart of the record.
“This album is, at its core, a collection of songs about transformation,” Pattengale reflects, “About the shifting terrain of consciousness and the stories we build to understand who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’re becoming. Each song takes a single moment, sometimes examined with microscopic closeness and sometimes viewed from a great distance, and lets it expand until it becomes an entire world. By enlarging small feelings until they’re inhabitable, the record looks for eternity not in the sweeping or monumental, but in the intimate specifics that usually pass too quickly to notice.”
The Milk Carton Kids are currently wrapping their extensive co-headlining tour with Sierra Hull; upcoming stops include Pontiac, MI’s Flagstar Strand Theatre, Shipshewana, IN’s Blue Gate Performing Arts Center and Marietta, OH’s Peoples Bank Theatre, among others. See below for full tour routing.
Founded in 2011, The Milk Carton Kids swiftly emerged as a major force in Americana folk tradition, blending ethereal harmonies and intricate musicianship with a contemporary songwriting sensibility. The duo has earned four Grammy nominations, had their music featured in film and television projects, including Gus Van Zandt’s Promised Land and Tina Fey’s Girls5Eva, and collaborated with Joe Henry, Rosanne Cash, Sara Bareilles, and Josh Ritter, among many others. Their 2023 album, I Only See The Moon (listen/share here), received widespread praise, with Relix proclaiming, “A collection of songs bathed in warming eloquence and poetic nuance,” while Glide Magazine declares, “The eleven-song effort eases out majestically around the duo’s vocal harmonies and light acoustic instrumentation…listening to them [is] a joy.”
In October 2023, the pair founded the Los Angeles Folk Festival, with its first annual iteration earning accolades from Variety, The Bluegrass Situation, KCRW, The Orange County Register, and others. The festival has featured performances by critically acclaimed artists Emmylou Harris, Waxahatchee, Sierra Ferrell, Willie Watson, and more. Across all their endeavors, the duo remains dedicated to a single idea: music can help turn down the volume on a chaotic world and make room for what matters most.
LOST CAUSE LOVER FOOL TRACK LIST
1. Blue Water
2. My Place Among the Stones
3. A Friend Like You
4. I’ll Go Home From Here
5. Lost Cause Lover Fool
6. Blinded and Smiling
7. Sad Song
8. Ribbon
9. Young Love
THE MILK CARTON KIDS TOUR DATES
February 19—Pontiac, MI—Flagstar Strand Theatre*
February 20—Shipshewana, IN—Blue Gate Performing Arts Center*
February 21—Wadsworth, OH—The Celestia Theater*
February 22—Marietta, OH—Peoples Bank Theatre*
March 13—Miami, FL—Cayamo Cruise 2026
July 21-24—Big Indian, NY—Sad Songs Summer Camp
*with Sierra Hull
