The Folk Mike Tod

If you’ve been listening all the way to the end of each episode, you’ll know that each story ends with a song. That song is performed by a contemporary artist, paying homage to an old-time tune. In this bonus edition of The Folk, you’ll hear an all-musical episode of songs featured in the series, including some by Saskatchewan’s Clayton Linthicum (of Kacy & Clayton), Yukon-based singer-songwriter Sarah Hamilton, PEI artist Tim Chaisson (of The East Pointers), and a few more from Alberta’s own Mike Tod joined by Laura Reid and Nathan M. Godfrey.

If you’re from Prince Edward Island, or you've ever heard a song sung on the island, chances are you’ve heard a song by Larry Gorman, who penned hundreds of songs in the mid-1800s. Once in a while a folk songwriter will write a tune that makes it into oral tradition. It becomes so popular that it’s passed down generation to generation - and Gorman’s tunes did just that. This is the story of PEI’s unsung songsmith, Larry Gorman.

A folklorist or a folk song collector is a person who studies folk music, and records and releases collections of folk songs. There is no folklorist more associated with Canada than Edith Fowke. Able to sell the world a vision on the meaning of “Canadian folk music,” her body of work supersedes others in the country’s folkloric realms. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada, she’s written numerous books, and released many recorded collections of Canadian folk music. But was her vision of the country’s folk music scene accurate? Fowke is at the centre of this episode, which delves into her research on folk music, the numerous books and records that she released, and questions some of the contradictory values of her life and work.

In the 1940s and ‘50s in the interior of British Columbia, a logger and mandolin player quietly and humbly amassed one of the largest repertoires of mandolin tunes from the province. Somehow, this unknown woodsman with a rough mandolin style ended up recording and releasing an album with the Folkways record label, the biggest folk music imprint in the world. It’s remained an underground cult release for over 50 years. In this episode, you’ll learn about the mysterious life and music of Stanley G. Triggs.

Charlie Panigoniak, much like the raven in Inuit stories, was a jokester. The Nunavut country-folk legend, who passed away earlier in 2019, soared to ‘territorial’ heights starting in the 1970s as a beloved entertainer and storyteller that shared the Inuit lifestyle through his often-humorous songs. Despite being a household name in the territory, he’s a songwriter that never really got his due with the rest of Canada. This episode is all about Panigoniak, detailing his life growing up on the nuna (tundra/land), to his recordings, the meanings of his songs, and the amusing antics behind the music.

It is said that Leo Tolstoy wrote his last great novel just to get enough money to pay for a sect of Russian pacifists, called The Doukhobors, to move to Canada. Persecuted in their homeland for refusing to fight for the Czar, The Doukhobors made the largest single mass migration in Canadian history in 1899 to Saskatchewan. In Canada, The Doukhobors found peace through their puritanical Christian lifestyle and transcendent style of choral music. In this episode, you’ll learn about real life events told through two fictional characters, beginning with their persecution in Russia, to their eventual move to Canada in the late 1800s, and hear the haunting music that the group created.