Emcee

Mike Regenstreif is an editor, writer and broadcaster now based in Ottawa who has written about folk and roots music since the 1970s for Sing Out! Magazine and the Montreal Gazette and other Canadian newspapers.

His radio show, Folk Roots/Folk Branches, was on CKUT in Montreal from 1994-2007. I now host Stranger Songs (weekly) and he is one of the rotating hosts of Saturday Morning (every fourth week) on CKCU in Ottawa where his programming is based on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format he developed at CKUT. In the 1970s and ‘80s.

He ran a folk club, the Golem, and produced most of Montreal’s folk-oriented concerts. He also booked tours for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Priscilla Herdman, Rosalie Sorrels, Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl, Bill Staines, Guy Van Duser & Billy Novick and Dakota Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn.

In 2014, he was the recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival's Helen Verger Award for "significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada." In 2017, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the Folk DJ Hall of Fame created by Folk Alliance International.