Los Angeles folk duo The Milk Carton Kids are heading back to Australia for a national run this March.
The American folk pair bring their Lost Cause Lover Fool tour to Melbourne, regional Victoria and up the east coast, with The Milk Carton Kids lining up six headline shows and two festival sets in March.
It’s the first time the pair have made it down here since 2023, and the tour lands as promoter Love Police kicks off a year marking its 30th anniversary. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan started The Milk Carton Kids back in 2011, earning a name for interlocking vocals, precise guitar playing and deadpan stage patter that often lands like a comedy set.
Their most recent album, Lost Cause Lover Fool arrived in 2026 through Thirty Tigers and hands the tour its title. To celebrate the outing, the two have just released a standalone single, Making A Fool Of Myself, which folds a dobro into the mix for the first time on one of their recordings. The dobro marks a rare new colour for a group known for restraint.
The Milk Carton Kids
- 3 March – Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC
- 5 March – Meeniyan Town Hall, Meeniyan, VIC
- 6 March – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC
- 10 March – Princess Theatre, Brisbane, QLD
- 11 March – A&I Hall, Bangalow, NSW
- 12 March – City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW
- Also playing Port Fairy Folk Festival and Blue Mountains Music Festival
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
On stage is where Pattengale and Ryan tend to win a room over, trading verses and dry one-liners with a looseness that’s made them return favourites for Australian audiences. That balance of hushed, close-up playing and easy laughs is a big part of why their sets keep connecting here. Love Police first toured the duo in 2015 and again in 2023, so this booking marks the promoter’s third time bringing them south.
The March itinerary threads out of Melbourne through regional Victoria, with stops in Meeniyan and Castlemaine, before pushing north to Brisbane and across into New South Wales for shows in Bangalow and Sydney. Two festival appearances round things out, at Port Fairy Folk Festival and Blue Mountains Music Festival. Both are long-running fixtures on the country’s roots circuit.
Tickets go on sale at 11am local time on 18 September through Love Police, spanning the Melbourne Recital Centre opener all the way to the closing night at Sydney’s City Recital Hall.
For more information, head here.
