THE HISTORY
Home Routes President, podcast host, and founding member of the D-Rangers Jaxon Haldane has much to say about the legacy of the dynamic partnership that was Ava Kobrinsky and Mitch Podolak: “It will endure long into the future. They birthed venues, institutions, and festivals whose influence ripple out through the cultural fabric of our country. The West End Cultural Centre, the Winnipeg Folk Fest remain as tangible reminders of this work. The World Next Door festival will live perpetually in vivid memory for the privileged few in attendance. But one could argue that the most profound aspect of the Podolak/Kobrinski legacy is likely the least well-known of their endeavors.
Home Routes began as many of the great Kobrinski/Podolak born institutions did, as a flight of fancy in Mitch’s head. He saw a new frontier for performance, a way for an untapped resource to be found by musicians. And he saw regions In rural Canada that were underserved by conventional touring routes, where audiences were hungry for live music. Folk Music is a guerilla enterprise, we can pull it off in an elevator, so it makes sense that it could also be presented in living rooms. Nearly fifteen years later and thousands of shows, meals, jokes, songs, drinks and stories shared between hosts, friends and performers, we have the hindsight to see the profound community impact Home Routes has had on communities and musicians across the country.”
From 2007 to 2019 Home Routes/Chemin Chez Nous ran a network of house concerts in 200+ rural communities across Canada, hosted by community volunteers who spread the word throughout the community. The program grew to 11 routes operating 6 times annually, each with 12 hosts. That’s 66 touring artists a year and 800 concerts nationwide. Since Home Routes launched its house concert touring network in 2007, the organization has produced over 10,000 shows in over 1,500 locations to over 210,000 fans, generating over $4 million in artist revenue.
THE FUTURE
What does the future look like for Home Routes?
Executive Director Leonard Podolak explores, “The underlying role of any performer is to bring the audience into their world, and break down the fourth wall, and truly create magic, where the reality of the outside world goes away. Home Routes transcends many realities of music business norms.
In the last two years, with so many tours being cancelled, a major shift has occurred. We have presented a diverse array of folk music online: The Home Routes Online Folk Festival, our series of Zoom shows, as well as special projects as Play It Forward, Prairie Panorama, and The Winnipeg Crankie Festival.
I’m so excited for our traditional house concert tours, to be enhanced by our new digital awareness, and to see the two programs work side by side in concert, supporting each other. These endeavors will enable the organization to connect more community stakeholders in our tours, and allow more local participation in public spaces.”
Prairie Panorama connected visual artists and musicians for unique collaborations. The Crankie Festival puts those collaborations (and a whole lot more) on stages across Winnipeg each fall. And streaming concerts appear here to stay, presenting new opportunities for Home Routes to reach communities and music lovers in every nook and cranny of this big, beautiful country for years to come.
