07/11/2023
Time is running out before this year’s Mission Folk Music Festival! Get your tickets today!
Welcoming Leonard Podolak to our 36th Annual festival!
Founder and band leader of The Duhks, Leonard Podolak is a foremost innovator and folk music contributor, with musical experiences worldwide that form the backbone of his repertoire. Leonard has shared styles of music from the string traditions of Appalachia, Ireland, Scotland, England, Quebec, and Louisiana, while bringing in influences of Gospel, Blues, Rock, Afro-Cuban, and African traditions. His unique style of clawhammer banjo makes a place for the five-string in all of these traditions, based off of the Appalachian clawhammer technique. He loves playing jigs and reels but if there’s a Cajun song he plays his banjo like a triangle. If it’s an Irish tune, he plays it like a tenor banjo. And a rock song, a screaming electric guitar (in his mind anyway)!
A Grammy and Juno award winner, along with many nominations under his belt, the biggest accolade came from his hero Doc Watson, who once told him at MerleFest, that his banjo playing on the first Duhks CD, “Your Daughters And Your Sons”, was as fine a clawhammer pickin’ as he’d ever heard!
For more detailed information on lineup, tickets, schedules etc please visit www.missionfolkmusicfestival.ca