Banjos? Yes, Banjos! And dead proud of it!

Last week I had the honor of talking Pete Seeger on the phone. He told stories of his younger years when Charles Seeger, his Dad, was a traveling musician and what life on the road was like 87 years ago. 87 years ago. 1920. Before The Depression. And it was not so long ago that Pete Seeger was sitting in Woody Guthrie’s living room in Coney Island, NY. A little girl with brown curly hair looked up at him, straight and tall, as he played banjo. And that sound, that banjo playing became the bar of what all banjo playing could, should or would sound like to her little ears. I am speaking of Nora Guthrie.

Today, she is a sprite with a magnetic force field around her and she deftly runs the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City. For real, check it out: http://www.woodyguthrie.org/. And once you go to the website, you will see "Wonder Wheel, Lyrics by Woody Guthrie" has been Nominated for a Grammy -- Best Contemporary World Music Album of the Year. Nora Guthrie recently visited XM Satellite Radio and one thing you notice as she tells her stories is that she automatically weaves YOU into them. You become a thread in an amazingly rich tapestry. Perhaps your thread interweaves with Pete Seeger’s thread. Don’t know. And as if this was not enough on it’s own, Nora Guthrie and I sang Patsy Cline “Walking After Midnight” as we drove past the Pentagon, (a long stone’s throw from DC with a major catapult) on a Friday night --all around the strike of midnight.

Working at XM is groovy – no question about it. With the job comes a mantle of responsibility. It is my job to keep various long-burning folk flames burning (Pete Seeger, Nora Guthrie) and it is my job to pioneer the new folk frontier.

Enter The Duhks.

They are nominated this year Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for their song Heaven's My Home on their 2006 CD Migrations on Sugar Hill Records. You can hear The Duhks on XM Café, Channel 45 and we play them a bunch on XM15 The Village. You can find them on XM12 X-Country and XM76 Fine Tuning. Bob Edwards on XMPR has interviewed them as well. The Duhks are ALL over XM and certainly not fixed within one particular genre or channel.

You will be doing yourself a huge favor if you take a minute to check them out. http://www.duhks.com. These tattoed, Canadians have been touring relentlessly for the past four years and I do not think one of them has hit the ripe age of 30 yet. Migrations is a recording that belies their age – showing levels of sophistication and artistic acumen that is quite simply refreshing. So go ahead, dip your toe in the font from Winnipeg, Manitoba, splash around with The Duhks.

And you should know The Duhks house a banjo player, Leonard Podolak, who has been listening to Doc Watson since he was 16. "I met him a couple of years ago when we (The Duhks) played Merlefest and (I) gave him a copy of our first record. A few weeks later the director of Merlefest forwarded an email from Doc that said, "Who is this band, I can't seem to take their CD out of the player."

I wonder what Nora Guthrie would think listening to Leonard’s banjo playing.

Mary Sue Twohy
On-air Host
XM15 The Village