February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Leading this current old-time wave in America are not just performers inhabiting Round Peak, N.C., or other rural Southern mountain musical enclaves. Young bands from Boston (Crooked Still, Wayfaring Strangers), New York (Ollabelle, the Mammals), San Francisco (Crooked Jades), and Canada (the Wailin’ Jennys, the Bills) are carving their own reputations for today’s version of porch picking and for fusing diverse roots sounds into something contemporary.
Jeremy Penner, a fiddler with the Bills (shortened from their earlier name, the Bill Hilly Band), once played with a popular, Manitoba-based, Celtic revivalist group called Scr_j MacDuhk. Also in that band were singer-pianist Ruth Moody, who later joined the Wailin’ Jennys, and banjoist, fiddler, and vocalist Leonard Podolak, who in late 2001 founded the Duhks (pronounced “ducks”), a Manitoba-based group whose moniker stems from Scr_j MacDuhk.
The Duhks recorded “Camptown Races” for “Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster,” winner of the 2004 Grammy for best traditional folk album. The band itself has released two CDs, “Your Daughters & Your Sons” (self-issued, 2002) and the brand-new “The Duhks,” their U.S. label debut on Sugar Hill Records in Durham, N.C.
Both recordings reveal Irish musical influences from Tommy Sands (his song was used for the title of the first album), Tommy Peoples, L_nasa, Dervish, the Bothy Band, D_ith