Jeremy Penner

Scruj MacDuhk, formed in Winnipeg in 1995, played traditional dance music and songs from Ireland, Scotland and French Canada alongside its own songs. Penner was its fiddler on Live at the West End Cultural Centre, recorded in Winnipeg in May 1997 with Ruth Moody singing and Leonard Podolak on banjo, and on The Road to Canso (1999), on which he also sang. In 2000 the band won the Prairie Music Award for best independent album, and it broke up in 2001. In 2003 Penner, Moody and the bassist Oliver Swain, another former member, made an album together, South Bound.

Moody went on to sing in the Wailin’ Jennys, a vocal trio, and Penner became the group’s regular accompanist on fiddle and mandolin. He played violin on their album Firecracker (2006), and by 2007 he was touring with the trio of Moody, Nicky Mehta and Heather Masse. On Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House (2009), recorded on tour, he played fiddle and mandolin throughout, including on Gillian Welch’s “One More Dollar,” and shared the arranging credit with the three singers for the traditional “Bold Riley” and “Motherless Child.”