Canadian Spaces
Saturday August 31st, 2019 with Chris White
A tribute to Mitch Podolak: Paul Mills, Leonard Podolak, Campbell Woods, Miriam Dawn, Elle Crites
The world lost an amazing individual on August 25 in the form of Mitch Podolak, a person whose passion for folk music and human rights fuelled the creation of the Winnipeg Folk Music Festival, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, the West End Cultural Centre (Winnipeg), the Stan Rogers Festival, the Home Routes national house concert network and much, much more. Leonard Podolak talks about his father and his mother, Ava Kobrinsky, and their massive contributions to musicians, audiences and communities.
Radio show and record producer Paul Mills (a.k.a.'Curly Boy Stubbs') talks about Mitch's support for his work and for Stan Rogers' first album. Paul describes Mitch's massive and enduring impact on all of us.
Singer-songwriter Campbell Woods calls in with updates from the recording studio and the tour circuit. He plays at the Black Sheep in Wakefield this evening on a bill with Victory Chimes.
Miriam Dawn fell in love with folk music and recently recorded an album of folk classics entitled "Vineyard".
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6fsJ2DJh1FlX7oic2Dflnh
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnxwxisBneE
Elle Crites is a young singer-songwriter whose career is receiving support from an Ottawa-based company callled Artist Alliance. She's launching her new single with local label Young Wild & Free Records this evening at Bar Robo, 692 Somerset Street West ($10).
| Northwest Passage Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage 
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| 12:00 – Leonard Podolak talks about his father, Mitch Podolak, and his mother, Ava Kobrinsky, and their massive contributions to musicians, audiences and communities across the country. |
| Thoughts about Mitch Podolak and Ava Kobrinsky Leonard Podolak - .
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| Build a Bed West My Friend - In Constellation
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| Everywhere Wild Jabbour - Saint Bernard
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| Slouching Towards Bethlehem Eliza Gilkyson - Roses at the End of Time |
| Leave the Light On Chris Smither - Leave the Light On |
| Skybound Station David Wiffen - Coast To Coast Fever
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| Heavy Lifting The Lynnes - Heartbreak Song for the Radio
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| Safe Home Sweet Light Laura Smith - Everything Is Moving
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| Who Will Sing for Me? Finest Kind - Heart's Delight
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| 50:00 – Interview with Miriam Dawn |
| Sweet Sir Gallahad Miriam Dawn - live in the studio
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| Rhiannon Miriam Dawn - live in the studio
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| 63:00 – Interview with Paul Mills about Mitch Podolak, Stan Rogers, "Touch the Earth" and the Winnipeg Folk Music Festival. |
| Fogarty's Cove Stan Rogers - Fogarty's Cove
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| 76:00 – Interview with Campbell Woods |
| Picture of You Campbell Woods - .
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| Georgian Bay Gentlemen of the Woods - The Great Unknown
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| 96:00 – Interview with Elle Crites |
| Company Elle Crites - .
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| Stubbs Stomp Paul Mills - The Other Side of the Glass
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| Parkette Bob Snider - Caterwaul and Doggerel
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| My Blue Sweater Missy Burgess - Pour Me a Song
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| One Sky Shari Ulrich - Everywhere I Go
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Mitch taught me all the essentials for staging an outdoor folk festival. I worked with him to host the 1980 Travelling Folk Festival and Medicine Show in Alberta that he talked the Province's Culture department into funding. The busload of amazing performers he brought to us included Stan Rogers , Garnet Rogers , Sylvia Tyson, Stringband, Duck Donald and Cathy Fink, John Allan Cameron, Connie Kaldor, Paul Hann, Joan MacIsaac, Jim Post and from southern Alberta I programmed a host of other musicians. The festival was on the August 23 weekend...held in the river valley of Lethbridge Alberta and it launched us in to hosting other outdoor festivals and many concerts thereafter, and in a way the wonderful South Country Fair Festival - 33 years running Fort Macleod - http://southcountryfair.com/ is a legacy of his mentoring. Mitch taught me that location and natural setting were crucial, that volunteers were all to be valued ( he did not like how the orginal Mariposa festival excluded volunteers from meeting/hanging out with the performers ( a lesson I maintained ever since) food, hospitality for performers was critical, involve artisans, artists ..and finally that the show had to be exceptionally and technically good. He was a trickster, a teaser, a challenger, a disdainer of bureaucracy and a mentor, loved a good joke, and was so committed to the music and performers over and above everything else. We always had a connection ever since, and shared other experiences, (hanging out with him and Pete Seeger into the wee hours after the 1985 Winnipeg Folk Festival's Saturday night) but that first time was very special. His passing hit us very hard in this household up the Ottawa Valley here and all week we've played music from those times that he put on the stage. Getting older truly sucks when the good ones leave us too soon .
11:24 AM, August 31st, 2019