Their rich familial history is the stuff of lore except that it’s absolutely true. It’s easy to understand why Weyman – and later, MacMaster – was so enchanted with the Leahys. “We’re just so busy.” When the project is completed, it will be a fitting bookend to The Leahys: Music Most of All, a short by filmmaker Peter Weyman, whose vivid depiction of the touring musical sibs won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Student Film in 1985. “We need to make the documentary a priority,” Leahy laughs. Fields famously quipped, “Never work with animals or children,” he clearly hadn’t seen the MacMaster/Leahy clan fiddling, step-dancing and positively delighting audiences, something a planned documentary should bring gloriously to light… whenever that gets made. They feel like a part of the tour and that provides amazing gratification.” Our kids are practicing and when they come out on stage and do their little number, it’s their reward. For me, the game was playing house parties. But you need to get into the game at some point. “When I was a kid, I played the fiddle for my parents and my brothers and sisters. “But then one night we put Mary Frances on stage. We worried the expectations might be too much,” Leahy says. “Initially we were reluctant to let the kids perform. That the children were already being home schooled (MacMaster has a teaching degree) made enacting that decision easier.

Rather, the pair realized early on that being on the road without their kids was infinitely harder than touring with them. MacMaster is referring to her and Leahy’s six musically gifted children, who today are the centrepiece of the MacMaster/Leahy live set though not because the couple necessarily envision showbiz careers for Mary Frances, Michael, Clare, Julia and Alec (Sadie’s only 3). And here I am now doing almost exactly the same thing. “But I was so in awe of Donnell’s family, of 11 siblings who could play and had a family band. “The fiddle was definitely common ground for us when we first got together,” MacMaster, a Member of Order of Canada since 2006, recalls with a chuckle.

That’s no small feat when your combined album sales exceed one million when past collaborators include classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bluegrass star Alison Krauss and banjo ace Béla Fleck and when your ecstatic fan base (which boasts Shania Twain and The Chieftains) stretches from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Sydney, Australia.

Natalie macmaster fiddle