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In this episode, we discuss the glory of festival workshop sets, and how Home Routes went from concept, to reality.
Proudly presented by Home Routes: The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show, a series of 5 concerts each featuring a variety of amazing Canadian talent
TGTMS Podcast Episode 03
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[00:00:00] Jaxon Haldane: Hi, I'm Jackson Haldane, and you're listening to episode three of the Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show Podcast brought to you by the good folks at Home Routes.
If you missed episodes one and two, we recommend circling back around and enjoying those first. We've introduced some characters who we're going to revisit, and our story will make more sense if you listen in sequential order.
[00:00:33] The Pitchman: Yes. I hope you're all enjoying the festivities here to Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show. Healing is all around us. Just floating in the air. Now, obviously we cannot create this medicine without a recipe. And that recipe is of course proprietary. But I can tout some of the benefits of its active ingredients for you.
Yes. It's largest constituent part is people power, which opens the mind and the soul to receiving the gifts of collaboration. And the main ingredient is of course sound, which draws the patient into a trance-like state of belonging, but last, but certainly not least important if it's competent ingredients is joy.
Yes, unbridled joy. Source of energy that dissolves the barriers between audience and artists creating a direct sublime experience for the senses. It is simply unrivaled in modern pharmacology. You guys step right up. It's right here.
[00:01:47] Jaxon Haldane: I'm crazy about a jam, a spontaneous and risky experiment, perhaps a fading tradition, but the daytime programming at Canadian festivals is historically in quote unquote workshop format. Yeah, now this doesn't mean you schlep your banjo to the show and pluck along. My favorite kind of workshop offers a platform to spontaneity.
Strangers are assembled on stage together by an astute programmer who plays a hunch. Hopefully a musical kinship exists and the audience gets to share in the new musical relationship unfolding in front of them. It's brilliantly bold. It can be jarring for some performers, but for those who embrace the possibilities and accept the risk of public failure, a certain heightened experience is possible.
Workshop programming in recent times has leaned more to a showcase format where each artist has a chance to play their three most popular songs in the round independent of each other. And it may be the best way to hear everyone's rehearsed and polished tunes, but it's not the crucible of ecstasy that the jam workshop is.
I speak poetically about this because I am in fact, very passionate about it. I've born witness to some transcendent musical happenings by way of the workshop stage. And I've aspired to find some magic there myself. But I mentioned it now because the festival workshop is the beginning of a journey that leads to exactly where we are; Home Routes.
a philosophy informs the traditional festival workshop and music festival, generally the same set of values that inform Home Routes. These values are pretty simply humanistic, you know, the objective to eliminate unnecessary boundaries between the artist and the audience. When a grassroots approach to organization prevails an inherent sense of belonging and ownership exists amongst its members.
The volunteer model of operation preferred in most folk festivals and home routes alike engages the community at every. Mitch and Ava's success with the Winnipeg folk festival, the 1980 Alberta traveling medicine show and other large-scale festival enterprises led to many lessons. The festival in all its grand year is also a behemoth to organize, finance and execute.
Our founders realized that smaller, permanent and year round infrastructure could prove less complex to maintain and more culturally impactful. In 1987, they converted an old church and Winnipeg's west end neighborhood into a cultural hub and renowned music venue. And this permanence created tighter bonds and brought the artists and audience yet closer together.
Leonard Podolak son of Mitch and Ava,, speaking about the Western cultural center near Winnipeg's downtown.
[00:04:24] Leonard Podolak: There was a community center. It was a cultural center. There was programs for kids. They turn the place inside out and had a singalong Handel's Messiah where the choir was in the audience, and the orchestra was on the stage.
And also in the middle a little bit, you know, on Sunday afternoons there'd be punk shows. And then at nighttime there'd be folk music, concerts, or classical concerts. Saturday afternoon blues, you know, it always had that energy around it. And then with, with Home Routes too, it's like you're in someone's house and there isn't a stage.
[00:04:56] Jaxon Haldane: This quest to eliminate barriers and encourage a free flow of energy and ideas begat Home Routes, eventually launched in 2007, to bring the festival experience directly into one's living room, eliminating all the boundaries.
[00:05:09] Leonard Podolak: So my dad, who at the time, uh, was dipping into management. Just had this notion that more, more infrastructure needed to be built for folk musicians and folk musicians that at all the different levels of their careers.
[00:05:24] Jaxon Haldane: James Callahan, who was sharing office space with Mitch and his team at this time remembers a conversation that inspired the concept for Home Routes.
[00:05:32] James Keelaghan: I had a little cubicle in there and I'd come in in the morning and then inevitably, you know, over the top would come mitch's head, and the conversation would start for the day. And I said, you know, look, you know, I said, you're trying to build an agency based on one artist at the moment. And I said, even if you got that artist, every good gig in Canada, if you took every good gig in Canada and strung them together, you'd have six weeks worth of work.
Either, there has to be more gigs or you have to start pushing outside the country. You have to start going to the states or Europe or to Australia, or, you know, he went like Well, that's kind of depressing. I went well. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're planning on just having a career in this country thats depressing, I said, but you know, the other thing is that there could be more gigs, right?
You could. And so he went over to Mitch fashion and thought about it and then he came back and he said, well, what about house concerts?
[00:06:29] Leonard Podolak: You know, during the McCarthy's and you know, when the weavers were, were, and many, many other artists were blacklisted because of their association or, you know, alleged association with communism that they got completely blacklisted in their careers went up in smoke.
And, and so a way that the folk community sorta went underground and said, oh, well, we'll still give you a gig. And it would be in like an underground cafes and, and houses and growing up in the business. And my dad also growing up in the business too, saw what a good vibe, you know, music brings in a house when there's live music being played in a house and there's a party going on.
It is one of the most wonderful things. And so that was a major inspiration for Home Routes.
[00:07:16] Jaxon Haldane: Any discussion of the philosophical tenants as something Mitch Podolak helps create would be incomplete without at least the mention of one of his favorite thinkers, Bolshevik, revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Mitch's endeavors always retained a priority to serve the working class and local community.
His ideas generated millions of dollars for hardworking folks, but ambitions of culture always prevailed over those of commerce. Tim Osmond former Home Routes, artistic director, expounds upon the egalitarian aspect of Mitch and Ava's management style.
[00:07:49] Tim Osmond: One of the things that Mitchell always said off the top was that everybody has equal wages.
That was a big part of it. Right. And so, no matter if you're the CEO or the person just joining, everyone makes the same amount of money. And he did that because he wanted everyone to feel like they're all moving in the same direction and all working on the same thing at an equal level. I remember there was this, I guess it was a little story that he had posted on the office wall.
And it was a story about a crew building a cathedral and how, you know, the Glazier would come and do the stained glass and the carpenter would work on their things. And the masons would work on the, the stonework and a gentleman was walking through and noticing all this. And he saw a woman sweeping up, just, you know, cleaning up the dust and sweeping.
And he said, I see the Glazier over there. I see the stone Mason doing what he does and I see the carpenter. And what is it that you do? And as she sweeping up and she said, oh, I'm building a cathedral. Right. And it's just like, yeah, she is, even though she's not actually physically building it, she is, she's part of it, the crew and the team everybody's pulling in the same direction at different times and at different intensities, I guess, you know, but we're all going together, you know?
And that, that was a big principle. I think that both Mitch and Ava. With, with just the way they work with everybody and, and their organizations
[00:09:28] The Pitchman: And now, musician spotlight on Saskatchewan Troubadour, Jeffrey Stryker appearing on the Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show April 15, live stream tickets@homeroutes.ca
[00:09:44] Jeffery Straker: Jeffrey Straker J E F E R Y S T R a K E R.
I'm a singer songwriter and pianist. I think my music is best described as a singer songwriter or roots folk music it's, so, story-driven songs by and large, it's kind of what comes out of me, which is always what has sort of, I think, made sort of folk type listeners gravitate to my songs. I've been a full-time.
You know, musician, touring, musician, you know, writing songs and recording songs and touring them around mostly around Canada, but a bit into Europe and the UK and Latin America too, for the last 16 years has been my full-time work. And I'm pretty grateful for that. It's an awful lot of work doing this, but at the same time, none of it feels like work to me.
It's just like, I love it so much. I do about a hundred to 120 shows a year. They really run the gamut from house. During the pandemic for the last couple of summers, I did what I called my pandemic piano backyard tour. And I performed in backyards across the country. And that was great. It was such a really great sort of experience up close with all these people during the plague.
It was pretty cool, but I played festival stages like folk Fest and jazz Fest I'll fit into. And I also, you know, and then of course, Clubs and theaters and those types of gigs too. But some of my songs have been arranged for orchestra and I do some symphony shows too. And those nights are wonderful. When, you know, when you get to do them having 40, 50, 60, depending on the size of the orchestra, people playing with you and making that sound. I describe it as being like, I'm making music on the wing of a jet plane and sort of having this force, you know, but instead of wind it's music, you know, so those nights happen to, and all of them, but at the core of all of them, it's just these songs that I write at my piano, you know, so to me, I enjoy it.
Whether it's me and a living room with 20 people, or in a concert hall with it, with a symphony with 2000 people. Like they're the same songs, you know, they're just, I enjoy being able to present them in different ways. The last, so in the 2021 Saskatchewan music awards. So for the province, I was named the roots folk artist of the year, and I was also honored to receive that recognition in the 2020 edition of the Saskatchewan music awards and a specific music video I released last year, won an award and has got several nominations.
It's a video for my song Ready to be Brave, which on its own is just a song about mustering up the courage to do something you've been probably . Procrastinating about having a diff and specifically having a difficult conversation with someone and facing that thing. We produced the video in a way that it tells the story of a young boy on a farm on the Canadian prairies.
Maybe Manitoba, maybe Saskatchewan, who knows any realizes he's gay. And he comes out and sort of faces this fairly homophobic father and, you know, in four minutes and it's quite dramatic and it's touched a lot of hearts. So we had one best video in the Saskatchewan independent film awards, and it was nominated as best video in the SAS music awards.
And it's nominated in the Saskatchewan country music awards. So maybe there'll be something there, but I'm quite proud of that. So Home Routes reached out to ask if I would be part of the Prairie edition of the traveling online, good time medicine show, and I was delighted to get the request. And so I got to join forces for an
in the round concert with the McDade's a wonderful traditional folk group from Edmonton and Jenny Allen, a singer songwriter from Calgary. And then, you know, the, the rounding out the, the circle was the Saskatchewan representation, which was me. And we, we got to all meet up at the national music center in Calgary, in Studio A
Which is a gorgeous facility and just do it in the round concert. And it was wonderful. I mean the three groups ha we, we all had a very different sort of approach to music, you know, but also very complimentary I think. And I think Suze Casey and Leonard Podolak who put it together, did it. I think they did a really good job of sort of having it just different enough, but working together at the same time.
And, you know, when we played in the round and then we got to play a grand finale, a number that we did altogether, we picked a Joni Mitchell tune and did it live off the floor. And it was such a great experience like, whoa, when it was done, I was like, oh, I wish we could take this on the road, you know, but we can't fit in my Mazda.
So we'll leave that to some other, some other time, but it was really cool. And it's funny, like I apparently at American folk festivals that like what we call a workshop at our Canadian folk festivals, they don't really do that in the states. Apparently I've been told, I've been told this, you know, so it's quite a special thing.
It's almost like you're good. I mean, maybe this would be going too far, but it's almost like you could have a whole festival of just that, because it's all these moments that you're never going to get again. And I think that's why people crowd around for these workshops. It's like, I don't even know if they think it consciously, but they're sitting down to take something in.
And I think at some deep level, like they know, well, this is going to happen here once, and this is never going to happen again. And that's so cool and because so much music and so much. TV and online cutting everything is so manufactured over time. It's becoming so pre-produced that. I think we're almost yearning for these really organic, real moments.
And that's when it can happen. You know, they're precious time. There's something about a house concert or even the backyard concerts that I did during the pandemic where you're like, you're not generally on a stage, you're typically on the level of the people listening. You can pretty much see every face and every facial expression while you're performing, you know, for better or for worse and, uh, hopefully for better.
And you know, when you take the break, there's usually the break and there's usually a snack table when there's no pandemic, you're all kind of breaking bread together. It's so intimate and personal that like, I love it. I'm kind of a textbook extrovert to a flaw where I kind of need people to get my energy, you know?
And so it's the perfect, I find it to be the perfect setting. Cause like you kind of leave with 20 to 40 new friends. Like it's pretty beautiful. And I had an experience, um, last summer at a couple of backyard concerts. 18 months into the pandemic. It was people's first concert. And I visibly saw several people crying, you know, not like, but like wiping tears.
And I, I hadn't really seen that many people do that before. And I talked to some of them at the break and I, you know, we talked about it and they said, I forgot this feeling. And I, it touched me so much, you know? It reassured me that, you know, that what we're doing really matters, you know, that like, that this live music thing really makes a difference, you know?
And I actually get shivers thinking about that moment.
[00:16:39] The Pitchman: Jeffrey Stryker, my good people, Jeffery Straker an inspiring young man. Most definitely remember tickets@homeroots.ca that's H O M E R O U T E s.ca
[00:16:56] Jaxon Haldane: with an idea for a house concert empire now fully realized focus had to be directed to securing the startup capital to get Home Routes off the ground. Mitch enlisted some young talent to help him. Tim Osmond worked closely with Mitch for 13 years.
[00:17:10] Tim Osmond: I know that Mitch had met with Russ Kelly at a folk Alliance and had kind of wrote this idea out on a napkin.
And there was enough interest with, with, with Russ and the Canada council that, that, that this idea I really had legs. So, so Mitch kind of like brought this idea back and basically he just said, you know, this is my idea. There's some interest. Why don't we try it?
[00:17:36] Russ Kelly: Hi, my name's Russ Kelly, the head of music at the Canada council, which I did from basically 2001 to 2011.
When I went back as head of music, Mitch was one of the earlier ones to call and I didn't know what to expect. He had, he had he not, yeah. He had harassed some of the officers when they were having difficulty sort of figuring out how to talk to. With them. I felt absolutely blessed to sit in the chair that I was in because the people I was taught, I ended up talking to on a regular basis were creators.
You know, they created things and they made things happen for all kinds of other people around them. And I just thought, man, this, this is the force of, of Canadian art. This is how Canadian arts grow, how it develops. And it felt, um, I felt blessed to be able to be at a place where I could help, how that works.
[00:18:40] Tim Osmond: I think Russ said to me later on that he really liked the idea of musicians doing a gig every day. And that didn't really exist anymore. And so he liked the idea of Home Routes, providing that for artists not only for, for, for revenue, but also to develop their craft on stage. And then everyday you can kind of hone what you do and make it better.
[00:19:01] Jaxon Haldane: We're talking about house concerts. So I recognize that Mitch and Ava were not reinventing the wheel here, but I do know for certain, they got a lot of people mobilized the idea of a concert in the parlor. It's an old tradition, but that's the real beauty of folk music that what's old can always be new and then celebrated in the getting old.
Again, it revolves around, timelessly like the generations of people who carry the songs with them. With funding secured via Canada council, Mitch and his team could focus on the next big concern. Remember, the conceptual model for home routes is to establish touring circuits across Canada, sending dozens of artists each year out to perform in people's homes.
Now, all they had to do was find hundreds of homeowners to host, and co-produce the shows . In our next episode, we'll look into what it took to recruit and retain a stable of amazing hosts and the larger cultural impact of their selfless efforts to bring live music into their communities.
[00:20:02] Tim Osmond: our goal was to, to get people's interest in this and try and recruit hosts for, for signing up for this, this program. So what ended up happening was that CBC said, We're having a contest phone in and tell us your best house concert story, and you could win a house concert. Right? And so all these people phoned in it was Canada live.
So it was crossed the country. We got most calls from the Western Canada. So that's kind of where we started.
[00:20:34] Jaxon Haldane: If you'd like to explore the music of Home Routes and the traveling good time medicine show, we've created a playlist of featured content available for listening on Spotify and apple music. Just search for the Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show Playlist, follow and press play. Now would also be a good time to go get your tickets for the next show. That's Jeffery Straker. Jenny Allen, the McDade Dades coming up on April 15th. Go to Home Routes.ca for more information. If you'd like to be a sustaining supporter of Home Routes, go to patreon.com backslash homeroutes
and there you can make a monthly contribution to support us and sustain us through the year. It's a great way to keep some reliable income coming in for Home Routes and a great way for you to show your support on a monthly basis. I'm your host Jackson Haldane. Our producers are Jordan Moore of The Pod Cabin, and Tim Fraser of the Murdoch podcast network.
Our head cheese is Jason Arkley of Home Routes and a huge thanks to Leonard Ava, Cathy, Brianna Graham, and everybody working behind the scenes at the office. And that banjo music you're hearing in the background was played by the one and only Mitch Podolak recorded in the early two thousands. Thanks to factor in the Canadian arts council for funding this project and to you for listening.
See you next time for another dose of the Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show podcast. .