The Duhks on Tour This October!

The Duhks On Tour this October!

Thur, Oct 6th, 2011   Newton-Conover Auditorium  Newton, NC
Fri, Oct 7th      Pisgah Brewing Company     Black Mountain, NC
Sat-Sun, Oct 8-9th      Shakori Hills Festival    Silk Hope, NC
Wed, Oct 12th     Jammin’ Java     Vienna, VA
Thurs, Oct 13th      Kent Stage     Kent, OH
Fri, Oct 14th      The Newton Theatre    Newton, NJ
Sat, Oct 15th      Infinity Hall    Norfolk, CT

www.duhks.com

The most vital acoustic music being made today acknowledges its predecessors and lives in the here and now. The Duhks, a band of five skilled, high-energy, tattooed musicians from Winnipeg, Manitoba, has been riveting audiences and winning staunch fans around the world with just that kind of music. The Boston Globe says about them, “Canada’s premier neo-tradsters romp from world-beat to blues, urban-pop to old-timey, with wild-eyed invention, haunting traditionalism, and spine-rattling groove. Who says the Frozen North can’t sizzle, eh?”

Since the release of their self-titled album in 2005, the consequent re-release of its Canadian debut (Your Daughters and Your Sons) to their most recent release (Fast Paced World), the band has won admirers as diverse as David Crosby, Dolly Parton and Doc Watson. This isn’t surprising, given the band’s blend of soul, gospel, North American folk, Brazilian samba, old-time country string-band music, zydeco and Irish dance music, folk rock and the attraction to these interwoven acoustic styles. The Duhks’ unique sound has also earned the band a Grammy nomination, one Juno Award, two additional Juno nominations, two Folk Alliance awards and an Americana Music Association nomination for Best Emerging Artists.

NPR says, “The inventive Canadians in The Duhks are widely beloved for their smooth blend of traditional roots music and soul, which they inject with well-placed Afro-Cuban and Celtic influences.” Ultimately though, according to band founder and claw-hammer banjoist Leonard Podolak, the Duhks “just want to play music that speaks to everybody.” Mission accomplished.

2008’s Fast-Paced World was the first Duhks record to feature prodigies Sarah and Christian Dugas. The siblings have been immersed in music their whole lives, thanks in part to their musician parents. “We had a family band that toured across Canada when I was 7 and Christian was 9,” remembers Sarah. “My father had a recording studio in the house, so I grew up hearing a variety of musicians playing everything from rap to rock to world beat. I grew up in a fun and creative environment.”

Joining the band in 2011, violinist Duncan Wickel‘s (formerly of Asheville, NC and now in Boston, MA) studies also began early with classical violin training at age 4. He was soon after introduced to Irish fiddling and has evolved into a wildly diverse and highly accomplished improviser, composer and technician on the violin; which fits amazingly with the Duhks diverse sound.

Guitarist Jordan McConnell also started digging into music at an early age and he started making guitars right out of highschool. He built both the guitar he plays on stage and one of Leonard’s favorite banjos as well. Currently, Jordan’s luthier business is taking off through the roof- a guitar he built was recently played by Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers alongside Bob Dylan on the Grammys!

Sarah and Christian have started playing as a duo and signed with Southern Ground Records (Zac Brown, Wood Brothers, Sonia Leigh). Since then they have played on Zac Brown’s Cruise “Sailing the Southern Seas” as well as the renowned folk and roots cruise “Cayamo”. They released an EP titled “Another Day” in February of 2011.

When not performing with the Duhks, Leonard has been invited into the Cecil Sharp Project based in the UK, as well as a new project, he’s started with some great Canadian songwriters called Dry Bones who performed earlier this year at the Vancouver Folk Fest.

With all of the side projects taking off, this tour is a special and rare opportunity to see the band. According to one blogger‘s live review, “The Duhks have soul in spades and a heart beat that pulses more true than an Ibiza night club. A night spent with The Duhks is summed up best by their own encore, ‘HALLELUJAH!’ Hallelujah indeed.”

Read Full Post »

Archive: Kent, Ohio inspired by Arts2People’s Asheville Mural Project

Art Spark

Posted by daver in City Living on March 12, 2010 | no responses

http://www.kent360.com/2709-art-spark.html

My mention of the Haymaker Farmer’s Market interest in an art mural on the columns beneath the Haymaker Bridge earlier in the week sparked a fair amount of interest from folks.  People seemed to feel that the Market was on to something good and they were letting me know that we (aka the City) needs to do more to promote public art projects like this since art runs deep in Kent’s DNA — both formally with the art education programs and professional galleries like the KSU Gallery and the McKay Bricker Gallery, and at the other end of the spectrum with a glom of  indie artists randomly found around town doing their own thing in unexpected places (like streetcorners or at the Professor’s Pub).

I tend to agree that the City needs to do whatever it can to advance the arts — both the formal and informal forms of creative expression.  I don’t make that statement to be politically correct or for some philanthropic agenda, rather if we’re serious about selling the Kent experience as an eclectic mix of characters, places and sensory stimuli then art has to be part of the community conversation and stake it’s claim at the alter of eccentric Kent.  The adjectives and descriptors of art — quirky, surprising, confusing, thought provoking, and even shocking — also happen to pop up when talking about many aspects of Kent so in that regard art resonates and even amplifies the Kent ethos (or milieu for the high brow artists among us.)

Our efforts to market the Kent lifestyle is not unique to us — it’s the core of a lot of city development efforts.  Those bold Texans in Austin have taken it so far as to proudly adopt the tag line “Keep Austin Wierd” in a national campaign to be the world headquarters of everything odd.  You can’t help but admire the lengths they’ve gone to realize their aspiration — the video of the 6′4″ cowboy walking down the street in his raw hide boots and matching thong did me in but clearly they have no fear in embracing their unique sense of style.

Another ambitious city that has embraced the off-beat is Asheville North Carolina.  They’ve carved themselves a unique place in the mountains of North Carolina that is equal parts hippie and hill-billy – and it works really well.  Great art, great street scene, great restaurants and a surprising mix of people of all kinds of dispositions.

It turns out that Asheville is one of the sources of inspiration for the Kent art mural project that has been adopted by the Haymaker Farmer’s Market.  They’ve got their own infrastructure art thing going on.

Here’s a few good links to learn more about the Asheville project

Asheville Story Archives

Kent still has a long way to go to catch Asheville but it’s nice to know that we’re in good company.

Read Full Post »