Scruj MacDuhk

Scruj MacDuhk was a Juno-nominated folk band that included singer-songwriter Ruth Moody, a current member of the Wailin' Jennys, as lead singer. The band released one album, The Road to Canso, in 1999, and broke up in 2001.

Career

The group started as a Celtic oriented band one crazy night in the kitchen of Winnipeg Folk Festival founder Mitch Podolak. The band was three people. Leonard Podolak on great banjo and horrible fiddle, Dan Baisley on Steel Drum and pipes and Jeff Butler of Figgy Duff fame on button accordion. From the first note the music was infectious and within a few days they had their first booking.

Like all bands they mutated both musically and personally and within a two year period went through about 15 players before settling on a Leonard Podolak on Banjo, Ruth Moody as the voice, Jeremy Penner on fiddle, Oliver Swain on stand up bass and comedy and Christian (Coco) Dugas as the percussionist. They released their first album, Live at The West End within the first year and then this collective won a Western Canadian Music Award for their second CD, The Road to Canso.

The band name happened as a result of an accident where names were going around a circular table at an very quick pace because they needed to quickly find a name for their first gig and Mitch Podolak suggested Scrooge McDuck the Disney character. They immediately liked the name, after all it was for one local gig, but they were wary of the Disney monolith because of the mythology of Disney squashing the Mickey Mouse festival in (Osh Cosh Wisconsin?) so they decided to spell it "Celticly".

With some research they later discovered that MacDuhk was legitimate as the Clan MacLeish originally called themselves MacDugg, MacDean and MacDuke and with the Celtic spelling, MacDuhk was as hieland as MacIvor or MacDonald. There was a MacDuhk with Wallace when he faced Langshaft, there were MacDukes at Culloden.