A Conversation with Leonard Podolak (continued)

LP: He had a heart-to-heart with Scott and said, "You really ought to join." And so Scott did, he joined the band officially. And I just said, "You know, man, you've always been in the band."

[laughter]

LP: "And I want you to be in this band." And we went down to Nashville and made a really great record with Bela Fleck and Gary Paczosa. It's done so much for us. And the whole experience with Sugar Hill, and the whole thing has just turned into something I can see making a living at. There's a light at the end of the tunnel that is actually getting bigger.

PM: I mean, you guys must be making a pretty good living right now.

LP: Well, I would say it's starting. If we didn't owe money up to our ass, then we'd be doing great.

PM: Okay. And on or off the record, why do you owe money up the ass?

LP: That's on the record. That's actually a really good part of how--I keep running into these people--my friend Eleanor Grace, who I was roommating with at the Folk Alliance, Ellie and Leela Grace, they're from Missouri, and I've grown up with them on the folk scene. They used to play with their parents. And Ellie plays the hell out of the mandolin, and is a great clogger, and her sister plays the banjo.

PM: Is she really thin with glasses, and pretty?

LP: Yeah.

PM: Oh, yeah, I met her. She's great! [It was just one of those things. She had this little light over her head, and I walked over and asked her who she was. Then we kept bumping into each other, in elevators and escalators. She’s a lovely person, and apparently a great musician. You can find out more about Ellie and Leela Grace, as a duo and as a family band, here.]

LP: Yeah, she's wonderful. What a great player, and what a great person. And she said, "Leonard, man, I don't know how you do it. I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to take it to the next level the way you can do it. You seem so sure of yourself. And you know what you want to do." And I said, "Okay, you want to know how I like pulled this band out of my ass?"

PM: Right. Exactly.

LP: [laughs] I said, "I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do." Right?

PM: Right.

LP: And I borrowed money.

PM: Right. Just like starting a business.

LP: It's just like starting a business. It's just a business. You have to make a business plan. You have to figure out what you want and how you're going to get there. And I was really, really lucky that my aunt could do that for me.

PM: Amazing.

LP: She lent us the money to buy a van. She lent me money to have some capital so I could get Tania from Victoria--who was 17 at the time--to move to Winnipeg, and I could put her on a bit of a salary a month, when we weren't making anything. There was nothing coming in. And also my aunt funded half of the first record. And I'm really lucky, because Manitoba Film and Sound, which is this arm's length arts organization that loans money for touring and for making records, they kicked down a whack of cash, too. I mean, we're certainly lucky in Canada--that there is such thing as arts funding.

PM: Canada is amazing like that. It's a beautiful thing.

LP: Yeah, it really is. There are a few different agencies. There's the Canada Council for the Arts, which is giving us money to go to Europe, and la la la. But yeah, so I told Ellie, and I've told a number of people, "You have to have a vision, you have to have a work ethic, and you have to have money so you can make a record. Because if you don't have a record, then what the hell is the point?"

PM: Yeah. And making a record with Paczosa and Bela in Nashville, that costs dough.

LP: Oh, yeah. Though that wasn't that record. That was the first record, Your Daughters and Your Sons.

PM: The first, Mark Shatz record?

LP: Yeah. And what's great about that record is that it really was a calling card. And that's the record that the guy in Florida heard. And there are some things about that record--it's young and it's a little by-the-seat-of-our-pants, which is what we totally were. We were on the edge of our seat recording that record.

[laughter]

LP: But it started from there.

PM: Wow.

LP: So that's what it is. It isn't like I was just able to say, "Hey, you want to come and move in?" It took a lot of investment of time and money. And we really haven't been able to pay that back. And this year we are now in a position where it's going to start to happen.

PM: Right.

LP: We're going to have this new record. And the fact that Sugar Hill released Your Daughters and Your Sons--they did what they call a soft release, so they didn't spend a quarter-million dollars on publicity on the re-release of our first record. They're just going to slide that into the slot next to the Duhks and next to this new one.

PM: Right.

LP: And it's sort of going to chug along. In the first couple weeks, we sold 1,000 copies.

PM: Really? On a soft release, that's great.

LP: Yeah, exactly. That's going to start making dough for us soon, too. So it's starting to come around. But I mean, really, I can't imagine being able to do what we're doing without those couple years of rehearsal and investment, and time. It really does take time. And that's what I told the band. I said, "Nothing is going to happen--I mean, we're going to get folk festivals all summer long. We'll have a few tours during the year. But until the name gets out there to the right people--and it's going to take a while, too, because in order to get to the right people, you have to work up."

PM: Right.

LP: I was really lucky that I had Scruj MacDuhk, because I had a whole list of people I could just call and say, "Hey, Scruj broke up, but I’ve got this new band, The Duhks." And with that it was like, "Oh, really? Oh, you got a new band, great. Send a disc and we'll give it a listen." It wasn't just like I was sending CDs out there, praying somebody would open it and look at it--on the huge stack of CDs that they get. It was certainly an in. And the reputation helped me get a jump start on getting gigs, which was great. And yeah, so it really is an investment, a life investment.

I'm in Victoria now, and I was just talking to this guy who was in the touring ensemble of Scruj MacDuhk. And he's got this brand new band out in Victoria with a bunch of great players, and they're thinking today, "Okay, what are we doing here?" They have a lot of talent and a lot of potential, but they're just like, "Oh, my God, it's just such a huge thing."

PM: Yeah, you get to that point where it's, "Okay. Now, how are we going do this?" [laughs]

LP: That's right. That's just what I said to him.

PM: So are they a similar kind of outfit? Are they a folk roots--

LP: I have no idea. They're going to open for us tonight.

PM: Oh, wow!

[laughter]

LP: Yeah. I have no earthly idea what they're going to sound like.

PM: So what's the Victoria venue?

LP: It's called the Central Bar & Grill. But apparently it's a decent venue, though, so that'll be really cool.

PM: It's a great town, I hear.

LP: Yeah, Victoria is beautiful. We're staying in this old hotel. It has a ground floor, a first floor. It's just like an old European hotel. Really cool.   continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home