The Duhks - 30-Minute Music Hour PBS - Part 1
The Duhks - 30-Minute Music Hour PBS - Part 2
Jessee Havey remembers the day she took the Duhk call like it was … well … 2011. Four years after leaving the Duhks, one of the Canadian neo-folk scene’s most influential roots acts, the stunning songbird was sitting in the backseat of a taxicab heading toward her day job as school administrator at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People in Winnipeg. Leonard Podolak, who had known Havey since she was a baby, was phoning with a proposition. The founder, frontman, and clawhammer banjo player of the Duhks (rhymes with shucks) had to know: Would she “be into” returning to the band she joined fresh out of high school? “And I immediately, before I could even say anything, tears started streaming down my face and I was, ‘Yes, I want my band back! Yes!’ ” Havey enthusiastically recalled over the phone last month from her home in Winnipeg. “And this cab driver must have thought I was a lunatic. It’s not the first time or the last that I cried hysterically in the back of a cab. But, yeah, that was a pretty amazing moment.” Calling it her second chance, Havey was reborn, along with the Duhks, who nearly became as extinct as the dodo. Now that there’s an intact quintet again, with three new members — Rosie Newton (fiddle), Kevin Garcia (drums/percussion), and Colin Savoie-Levac (guitar/bouzouki) — this tasty potpourri of cultural influences, styles and substance sounds as vital as ever on Beyond the Blue. The 12-song record produced by Mike + Ruthy, to be released June 24 (Compass Records), is the first Havey has done with the Duhks since Migrations in 2006, when they were still with Sugar Hill. A lot has transpired since Havey left in 2007. So much, in fact, that she stayed on the phone for 30 more minutes after sharing Duhk tales for an hour with Podolak, who had to run after joining this joint interview on Victoria Day from the North End St. John’s bungalow he and his wife own in Manitoba’s capital. The two self-proclaimed Winnipeg babies (born and raised) barely got around to promoting the album, which initially required going to crowd-funding website Indiegogo, where they raised $18,276. The band subsequently signed with Compass, the label co-founded by banjo virtuoso Alison Brown and her husband Garry West. That partnership almost happened much earlier, when, according to Podolak, a deal was “99 percent of the way there” shortly after the Duhks were hatched in 2001, the year Havey said, “Leonard and I had our first jam (and simultaneous ‘aha’ moment).” After self-releasing Your Daughters & Your Sons in 2003, three studio albums (including one without Havey) for Sugar Hill followed. Now that Beyond the Blue is almost upon us, Podolak has a simple plea for anyone with ears: “Gee whiz, just give it a listen.” Urging loyal fans who have been there from the beginning or jump-on-the-bandwagon aficionados with a sense of adventure, he added, “It’s new and it’s fresh, but in Duhks tradition, it spans a wide variety of styles and traditions and it’s new and it’s old at the same time. And if you want to listen to an experimental folk record, listen to the Duhks.” “Tradition” means a lot to Podolak, who also shares an extraordinary gift of gab with Havey. In what goes around/comes around fashion, the two original lucky Duhks like to say they have come full circle. But to see how they got here from there requires going back in time.
Learning to Fly
Before there were the Duhks, there was Scruj MacDuhk, pronounced just like the Disney cartoon character. A 19-year-old Podolak formed that group in 1995 after a jam session he now calls “the most amazing night of music that I had ever had up until that point.” The players that evening included Geoff Butler, an accordionist from Newfoundland group Figgy Duff, and Dan Baseley, who brought a tin whistle and, much to Podolak’s amazement, also could play Irish and Scottish tunes on the steel drum. They planned their first gig for St. Patrick’s Day. But before Scruj MacDuhk there was — honest to God — Duckworth Donald, whom Podolak called “a killer bluegrass mandolin player and tenor singer” from Winnipeg who often performed with Cathy Fink. “He was 4-foot-11 or something and he weighed like 100 pounds,” Podolak said. “He was just an amazing character, an amazing guy. So when we were coming up with a band name, my dad (local folk hero Mitch Podolak), who was sitting around the same table, said, ‘Yeah, it has to be something with Duck.’ “So then someone yelled, ‘Fuck a Duck.’ And then somehow Scrooge McDuck came up. And I didn’t even really realize that was a Disney character. I didn’t watch Disney. It just sounded funny. And then Dan ran out of the room and came up with the (alternate) spelling.” Podolak eventually recruited Kelvin High School acquaintances Ruth Moody, who went on to become the exquisite singer-songwriter of the Wailin’ Jennys, and fiddler Jeremy Penner. In my 2010 interview with Moody, she called the Wolseley neighborhood where Podolak also grew up “the granola belt of Winnipeg.” Podolak, who went to school with Moody from their kindergarten days and remembers singing with her in the 12th grade choir (“I needed an extra credit”), inserted an adjective (“hippie”), then added, “Now it’s become yuppie, hoity-toity. But when I was a kid, it was like [laughing], it was where all the artistes and all the freaks lived. And Ruth and my families couldn’t be more different. I come from hippie Communist Jews and she comes from Australian, classical music people.” When Scruj MacDuhk broke up in 2001 (“We had a falling out and this and that like the way bands do,” Podolak said), the Duhks were born.
Teenage Crush
“I was literally just graduating from high school,” said Havey, who also attended Kelvin, but, as she was thrilled to point out, “eight whole years” after Podolak. Havey was recommended by her Uncle Marshall, who then was living in the Podolak family’s basement. “Something my mom told me years later was that I wrote a letter to Scruj MacDuhk because I was obsessed with them when I was a teenager,” Havey said, thinking that might have happened when she was 14. “And they were my favorite band. And apparently I wrote them a letter professing my undying love for them and saying that I loved Ruth Moody’s singing but if she ever decided she wanted to do something else, I would like to be the singer in their band.” Though their families knew each other socially, Podolak wasn’t aware that Havey was a singer until her uncle told him. “I was already a rock star in town here, and she was a kid,” he said tongue-in-cheekily. “And so, I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose.’ ” He invited Havey over to his parents’ new house in Wolseley, where they played a couple of old-timey tunes together in the kitchen, including “I’m Going to the West.” “I taught her the words, very simple, and we were like face to face singing harmonies together,” Podolak said. “You make this connection and it’s like you’ve been playing or knowing each other the whole time. The whole family connection just made sense in that one moment. It immediately felt right for both of us.” The Sugar Hill contract they signed on the advice of a lawyer, who Podolak recalls saying, “It looks like a record deal,” gave them incredible exposure (NPR’s All Things Considered, records produced by Bela Fleck and Tim O’Brien, spots at prestigious festivals like MerleFest and Telluride), but little spending money. Still, Podolak said, “We went for it. And in some ways, I’m sure it was really great. I know it was really great. We were there. We experienced it. We met some amazing people.”
From: https://www.nodepression.com/interview/welcoming-back-the-mighty-duhks-an-interview-with-leonard-podolak-and-jessee-havey/
Learning to Fly
Before there were the Duhks, there was Scruj MacDuhk, pronounced just like the Disney cartoon character. A 19-year-old Podolak formed that group in 1995 after a jam session he now calls “the most amazing night of music that I had ever had up until that point.” The players that evening included Geoff Butler, an accordionist from Newfoundland group Figgy Duff, and Dan Baseley, who brought a tin whistle and, much to Podolak’s amazement, also could play Irish and Scottish tunes on the steel drum. They planned their first gig for St. Patrick’s Day. But before Scruj MacDuhk there was — honest to God — Duckworth Donald, whom Podolak called “a killer bluegrass mandolin player and tenor singer” from Winnipeg who often performed with Cathy Fink. “He was 4-foot-11 or something and he weighed like 100 pounds,” Podolak said. “He was just an amazing character, an amazing guy. So when we were coming up with a band name, my dad (local folk hero Mitch Podolak), who was sitting around the same table, said, ‘Yeah, it has to be something with Duck.’ “So then someone yelled, ‘Fuck a Duck.’ And then somehow Scrooge McDuck came up. And I didn’t even really realize that was a Disney character. I didn’t watch Disney. It just sounded funny. And then Dan ran out of the room and came up with the (alternate) spelling.” Podolak eventually recruited Kelvin High School acquaintances Ruth Moody, who went on to become the exquisite singer-songwriter of the Wailin’ Jennys, and fiddler Jeremy Penner. In my 2010 interview with Moody, she called the Wolseley neighborhood where Podolak also grew up “the granola belt of Winnipeg.” Podolak, who went to school with Moody from their kindergarten days and remembers singing with her in the 12th grade choir (“I needed an extra credit”), inserted an adjective (“hippie”), then added, “Now it’s become yuppie, hoity-toity. But when I was a kid, it was like [laughing], it was where all the artistes and all the freaks lived. And Ruth and my families couldn’t be more different. I come from hippie Communist Jews and she comes from Australian, classical music people.” When Scruj MacDuhk broke up in 2001 (“We had a falling out and this and that like the way bands do,” Podolak said), the Duhks were born.
Teenage Crush
“I was literally just graduating from high school,” said Havey, who also attended Kelvin, but, as she was thrilled to point out, “eight whole years” after Podolak. Havey was recommended by her Uncle Marshall, who then was living in the Podolak family’s basement. “Something my mom told me years later was that I wrote a letter to Scruj MacDuhk because I was obsessed with them when I was a teenager,” Havey said, thinking that might have happened when she was 14. “And they were my favorite band. And apparently I wrote them a letter professing my undying love for them and saying that I loved Ruth Moody’s singing but if she ever decided she wanted to do something else, I would like to be the singer in their band.” Though their families knew each other socially, Podolak wasn’t aware that Havey was a singer until her uncle told him. “I was already a rock star in town here, and she was a kid,” he said tongue-in-cheekily. “And so, I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose.’ ” He invited Havey over to his parents’ new house in Wolseley, where they played a couple of old-timey tunes together in the kitchen, including “I’m Going to the West.” “I taught her the words, very simple, and we were like face to face singing harmonies together,” Podolak said. “You make this connection and it’s like you’ve been playing or knowing each other the whole time. The whole family connection just made sense in that one moment. It immediately felt right for both of us.” The Sugar Hill contract they signed on the advice of a lawyer, who Podolak recalls saying, “It looks like a record deal,” gave them incredible exposure (NPR’s All Things Considered, records produced by Bela Fleck and Tim O’Brien, spots at prestigious festivals like MerleFest and Telluride), but little spending money. Still, Podolak said, “We went for it. And in some ways, I’m sure it was really great. I know it was really great. We were there. We experienced it. We met some amazing people.”
From: https://www.nodepression.com/interview/welcoming-back-the-mighty-duhks-an-interview-with-leonard-podolak-and-jessee-havey/
