Duhks

Group Members:
Scott Senior
Jessica Havey
Leonard Podolak
Tania Elizabeth
Jordan McConnell

The five practiced, risk-taking twenty-something musicians and singers who make up this singular new band out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, will, if asked, good-naturedly toss out some of the attempts at labels astonished listeners have turned to (in the two years that they’ve been a unit) trying to describe The Duhks’ music—”contemporary acoustic,” “progressive soul-grass,” and “kick-ass rock/folk fusion” being just a few. There are elements appropriated from Irish fiddle tunes, Canadian French and Scots/Maritime folk, and Appalachian Old Time string band in their high-energy music—but from the first sight of The Duhks (pronounced as in “That’s Just Ducky” and “Ducks L’Orange”), you know that no classifying stab in the dark can quite capture the synthesis and musical attack of this crew.
That phrase “contemporary acoustic” doesn’t readily suggest—until the moment you see The Duhks go at it live—a drummer (Scott Senior) pounding dance rhythms, even graceful salsa polyrhythms, on a nearly triangular cajon drum right out of Havana, or a striking, soulful singer up front (Jessica Havey) awash in tattoos, cooing, crying, and shouting like a punk rock Gladys Knight or India.Arie. That their salsa and soul regularly intertwine with turns on banjo (Leonard Podolak), fiddle (Tania Elizabeth), and guitar (Jordan McConnell) only underscores that this band is essentially something else again, with sounds of their own making, working a potent new North American vein of World Music.
Festival fans have been found dancing and banging on the front of the stage during their sets, in spontaneous full-on, working mosh pits. For all of the delicacy that The Duhks bring to their quieter tunes, all the swing that drives their jazzier numbers, the full-throttle force they bring to the whole endeavor yields something very much like acoustic rock and roll.
This striking mélange is captured in the studio for all to hear on their new, self-titled CD, their first with Sugar Hill, produced by that storied master of the unexpected traditional and of-the-moment mix, Béla Fleck.
The disc features surprising, inventive musical turns on traditional tunes as hoary as “The Wagoner’s Lad,” original instrumentals that firmly mine the Celtic and bluegrass traditions with enough knowledge and respect to get playful with them—or frenetic—and Duhks interpretations of new material from songwriters as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, and Sting.
Havey makes the traditional “True Religion” (“Who’s gonna make up my dying bed?” it asks) a deep gospel blues excursion—but the track is laced with the danceable slaps of Senior’s drum and tasty commentary of Elizabeth’s jazz violin. Podolak’s vocal brings to the song of another Canadian “Leonard” (Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”) an intense, beatnik off-handedness that might be at home on an old Dave Van Ronk or even Allen Ginsberg LP—but the track is tightly focused and forwarded by his own always surprising banjo picking, Elizabeth’s gypsy violin, and the driving drum and guitar rhythm section. When he sings, “Everybody knows it’s moving fast,” he’s not kidding.
Most irresistible of all, arguably, and perhaps the best example of what happens when all the streams in The Duhks’ sound flow together into one potent piece of hydraulics is their rendering of their friend Don Frechette’s “Mists of Down Below,” a track as dark and mystical as its title suggests—built on old timey tones, spooky, rising violin fills and solos, incessant hand slap-drumming, and a memorable vocal by Jessica that rides that rhythm.
The band itself, like the sounds The Duhks create, came together by a combination of planning and happenstance. Founder Leonard Podolak set out to bring together a group of musicians who could create a new sound with traditional roots. Each of their distinct individual styles (blues, salsa, old-time, celtic, Scots-Metis) collides with surprising fluidity and forms something fresh and unexpected.
As Leonard put it, “Folk music is supposed to be the music of the people, right? Well, ‘the people’ are what you see all around, and part of what makes our music is mainstream music. The world is changing. The people in the audience might be listening to Eminem two minutes before they listen to us. We want to redefine not just ‘folk’, but what ‘pop’ music can be. It doesn’t necessarily have to be all drum machines and synthesizers, or electric guitars. We can play pop music on these acoustic instruments.”
What they play together, they all say, finally, is best defined as “what we like.” And they’re not without ambition for where they’d like to take those sounds they care for so much. - Bio courtesy of Sugar Hill Records
After Leonard Podolak's band Scruj MacDuhk broke up, the Appalachian-style clawhammer banjoist decided that this gave him the perfect opportunity to start another group, one that would fuse eclectic modern sounds with traditional roots. In 2002, along with lead singer Jessica Havey (who brought blues influences with her), fiddler Tania Elizabeth (who played in the French-Canadian style, among others), and guitarist Jordan McConnell (who had studied Celtic guitar), the Duhks self-released their debut, Your Daughters and Your Sons, in Canada in 2002 (it was then re-released in the States the following year). The album did well enough to bring the band a contract with North-Carolina-based Sugar Hill Records, which issued the Duhks' -- who had since added Latin-influenced percussionist Scott Senior -- self-titled Béla Fleck-produced record in 2005. The next year Migrations, produced this time by labelmate and contemporary bluegrass stalwart Tim O'Brien, came out, followed by an extensive tour and an appearance at 2007's MerleFest. Not long after, Jessica Havey and Scott Senior left the band. Sarah Dugas and her brother Christian Dugas filled the vacant vocalist and drummer roles, and the new band settled down in Nashville to prepare songs for a new album with producer Jay Joyce. Fast Paced World was released that August and the group made immediate plans to tour. Conscious of the amount of waste accumulated on the road, the band started an environmentalism initiative called The Duhks Sustainability Project, complete with a website and mission statement that encouraged musicians to be greener by using biodiesel fuel, wearing earth-friendly cosmetics, and eating organic foods.