Podolak a product of his environment

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This article was published 08/11/2002 (8596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ONE question begs to be asked of Winnipeg banjo maestro Leonard Podolak: Why the heck didn’t the kid rebel against his parents and become an investment banker?

Podolak, now 27 and about to launch the debut CD of his new Celtic fusion folk quartet the Duhks, answers with his distinctive laugh, a machine-gun rattle that makes him sound like a refugee from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, circa 1967.

“I knew there were a couple of things, like being a lawyer or a banker, that would have got me cut out of the will. Then I thought, WHAT will?”

This causes him to laugh again. He pauses for a minute, sitting in the funky Wolseley second-floor suite he shares with his girlfriend Meghan Hayden, to consider the idea of wearing a three-piece suit to a corner office in the Richardson Building.

“My mother might have liked it.”

Podolak’s mom is local arts administrator Ava Kobrinsky, general manager of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers.

His dad is Mitch Podolak, founder of the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the West End Cultural Centre and now a consultant to various struggling musical causes.

“Everyone is a product of their environment,” says Podolak Jr., who launched the Duhks’ forerunner, Scruj MacDuhk, at age 19. “And I’m certainly no exception.”

Tonight at the WECC, the Duhks pull the wraps off their debut CD, Your Daughters & Your Sons, a 12-song collection of Appalachian, French-Canadian and traditional Celtic folk recorded last May at Norman Dugas Productions.

Local singer-songwriter Nathan Rogers, the stepson of Hamilton-based folk legend Stan Rogers, will open the show. Admission is $13 at the door.

Besides Podolak on the five-string clawhammer banjo, the core of the Duhks consists of three relatively new talents on the folk scene. The guitarist is Jordan McConnell, 21, whose dad, Rob, also has strong roots in Manitoba’s folk scene. The fiddle player is Tania Elizabeth, a former Victoria resident who, at 18, already has a few recording projects under her belt.

Handling vocals is Jessica Havey, 19, an actor and singer whose mom, Karen Dana, has been a stalwart folk festival organizer and volunteer.

Sons and daughters, indeed.

Podolak attended his first Birds Hill blowout in 1975, literally before he could walk. He grew up with leading folk musicians crashing in his parents’ house and jamming in their living room.

“I remember Leonard as a kid dancing around to that music,” says local banjoist Daniel Koulak. “With him, it comes from the heart.”

Scruj MacDuhk employed some 15 musicians over its six-year existence, many of whom, like singer Ruth Moody and drummer Christian Dugas, have gone on to bigger things. They also recorded two CDs, one of which, The Road to Canso, won a Prairie Music Award and a Juno nomination.

But competing ambitions and touring demands brought the band to an end.

“When someone’s heart isn’t in it, little things become big things,” says Podolak, an alumnus of Kelvin High School.

“This new group is my favourite lineup so far.”

Later this month, they hit the road for a week’s tour of Eastern Canada. They plan to do the West next winter. They’ve already got bookings at two U.S. folk festivals next summer.

“America is what it’s all about,” Podolak says. “You can add up all the festivals in Canada and it totals about a month’s work.”

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca