UNITY — If you stand on the concrete pad at Dianne Skog-Humble's backdoor in the Muddy Lake Valley — straddling Highway 21 about two hours west of Saskatoon — the hills unfolding to the north tell the story behind the name of her band; Sugartop.
When I visited Skog-Humble on an oddly hot September afternoon, she led me into the basement where her collection of pianos, mixers and instruments live between dances. On the wall above her basement sink, beside family photos and a vintage beer stein, there's a plaque from ISC celebrating Sugartop Ranch's 100-year-old incorporation in 2010.
But for Skog-Humble, a Saskatchewan girl edging 60, born into a family of musicians where her first interaction with an instrument was at three years old on her mom's knee at the family pump organ — it would be years before she found her way home to Sugartop Hill.
“I know the picture is here somewhere," Skog-Humble tells me, gesturing around her basement. The picture would show a young girl, around four, trying to copy her mother and reach the peddles on the same pump organ she'd first touched a year earlier.
"There was a movie on in the summertime called Miracle on 34th Street, and I heard the song Silent Night, and she [Mom] said I walked over and played Silent Night.”
Skog-Humble was six.
Around the same time, years before babysitters, she would find herself sleeping on the bands' coats or in their drum cases during long nights when the adults would stay up dancing. She was, as she calls it, “soaking up all the music” while she slept.
By seven she'd gotten her first acoustic electric guitar. Then she was mentored by Reg Sittler and Wilbert Bosler (both from the small village of Handel) until she went on to play in their pickup band at age 10. At 15, Skog-Humble got a 12-string guitar and auditioned to join Little Prairie Band alongside Bernard Ochs.
"They needed a guitar player. So they all came to Mom and Dad's house, in the living room, we set everything up, and I auditioned and got the job," she said.
"I think Bernard really wanted to have kind of a house party, so it worked out well," Skog-Humble added, laughing.
The Journey from Little Prairie to Brandles Orchestra
Little Prairie Band was one of hundreds of groups across Saskatchewan who played old-time music — mainly waltzes, traditional polkas, and two steps at dances throughout Western Canada. When Skog-Humble started with the band, she joined Martin and Balzar Weber, Tony Lang, and Bernard and Leon Ochs.
“It's a lot of fun [playing in a band] It can be a little bit tedious at times. But if you got people bringing fresh music in all the time, which we did, that makes it all the best,” she said.
“And when you can look over across and say smile at one of them, like in my case in the Little Prairie Band, Bernard and Leon were like, they were the catalyst that kept me going and, and wanting to do more.”
Skog-Humble tells a story that involves a scandalous dance in Rosetown, a misplaced skirt and a rowdy polka that left her and Bernard Ochs crying on the fire escape for 20 minutes in the middle of winter. She mentions cross-provincial travel, wayward banjos and other stories while holding back laughter.
But everything good does come to an end at some point. Despite learning how to play several instruments, and noting that travelling with a band is enjoyable but tiring, Skog-Humble says she just wasn't challenged anymore.
“It was more or less ... mechanical towards the end for me. I wanted to do different songs that I heard on the radio or bring with me something like that ... they had a lineup of songs that they were comfortable with," she said.
“I think Little Prairie was satisfied with just doing a certain amount of music, they didn't want to reach out farther. And I loved every one of those guys, but I just needed to be let loose a little more and wanted to try a little more.”
By 19 she was working in Humble Music, a store based in Unity that was owned by Leonard Humble, who played with the Brandles Orchestra. Soon after they were married, and she would go on to play with Brandles and Humble for almost 12 years.
“He was very patient, and he loves seeing younger people learn stuff. We're kindred spirits, actually. We were a lot alike, and it just merged into a 39-year marriage."
The Birth of Sugartop
Leonard Humble was a musician himself. With 13 years of training from the Toronto Conservatory. When they'd get new instruments at the shop, they closed down for days and Skog-Humble says it was like Christmas.
"When I was working for him before we got together, it was like a candy shop because there's guitars, there's accordions, keyboards, there's horns, there's everything. And he had this fast and steady rule. One of us has to know how to demonstrate everything in here," Skog-Humble said, though she added that wasn't always the case.
"I couldn't get a bark out of a trumpet," she laughed.
When the Brandles decided to retire in 1990, the pair realized they didn't want to quit. Deciding to take up a duo, they found themselves struggling to find a name for themselves.
"I had heard him tell a story ... his [Leonard's] grandfather homesteaded this and there's a hill you can see from Highway 21, and it's almost like a haystack. But it's got two levels and it reminded his dad of the candies they used to get at the state fair in Minneapolis [before they immigrated to Canada]," she said.
"And they were called Sugartop Candies."
Leonard's dad would go on to call it Sugartop Hill, and rather than name their band after their surnames like most wife and husband duos did at the time, they wanted something different. They had already named their homestead Sugartop Ranch, and their business selling horses was called Sugartop Arabians.
And Sugartop was born.
They served Unity at their music store until 1999 when computers and the rise of the internet began to change the music industry in Saskatchewan. In 2002, Sugartop retired.
"We had put out feelers all over saying we're still ready to play because Leonard wasn't ready to quit. And we did do a few things close to home or whatever. But ... we didn't know Landis [had a] dance club. We didn't know Biggar's [club] was still going, or Battleford."
But Skog-Humble noted something else had changed in Saskatchewan around the same time.
"Leonard and I counted one night just for something to do, and ... we counted between as far south as Salvador right through to Macklin all the way to Cut Knife and all the way through Landis and Biggar. I believe he said there were at least 35 orchestras at that one time when he was young.”
A Cultural Shift in Saskatchewan's Old-time Musical Culture
Historically, music was one of many intentional acts of community in the province. But, gone are the days of large weddings, families of musicians forming orchestras, house parties or New Year's Dances in every small town between La Loche and Estevan.
"Saturday night there was a dance either in Handel or Landis or Biggar. You could pick your choice of players. I noticed it more [while playing] in Brandles but when we went down the road, you'd see, 'Oh, that's Halters ...Oh, that's the Beltones. Oh, there goes somebody else. You knew their vehicles. And we were crossing paths," Skog-Humble said.
"Sometimes you stop on an approach and have a drink," she said, laughing at the now unimaginable taboo.
Skog-Humble notes that DJs gaining prevalence took out several live bands because they couldn't compete with their low prices or their ability to play almost anything solo. A new ease of travel meant fewer local events. Smaller families meant fewer weddings. Bigger farms meant a weakened sense of community that at one point, held people together.
"We played for one fella at Anaheim. He had seven boys. We played all weddings," she said.
"And interests went the other way ... you want to go out and have a social drink. And it's pretty scary right now if you do that. Some people, even my dad, he liked to have a drink before he started dancing, and whatever. But I think the biggest thing though, is that family sizes are way smaller. The communities are smaller because the farms are farther in between them."
But In 2020, Leonard passed away after 39 years of marriage.
“Before he passed, he told me, he says, 'You're gonna want to go back and play.' And he says, 'That's what you need to do ... it's gonna help you get through a lot of the stuff that comes behind when I'm gone,'" she said, adding that he asked her to keep the music alive.
"Keep it going."
And she has. Her first show in nearly 20 years under the name Sugartop happened in February. She's played in Yorkton again, Regina and will be in Saskatoon in October for Oktoberfest. She'll travel down to Moose Jaw and to Biggar three times in the new year.
"So I kept that [Sugartop] now to come back because some people remember. They look for two of us, but they remember what we did," she says, adding that it really opened up for her at the Prince Albert Polkafest and now she's been booked for the 2024 Aberdeen Polkafest.
Sugartop: Moving Forward in a Man's World
But despite the joy she gets from playing, she said it's not always simple.
"But whether I'd be accepted or not ... it's not an easy thing to say. It's a boy’s thing. It's a man's world."
Skog-Humble noted that Leon Ochs helped her get noticed again in recent months, and was an essential force that got her playing again. But even then, she found it hard to deal with the prejudice she'd sometimes face.
"And I had a few phone calls when I started. You know, after I'd played one or two, and they go, 'but you're a woman.’"
As she steps back onto the stage, she realizes Sugartop may be the only band playing old-time music in Western Canada that is led solely by a woman.
"It was always kinda like it was a guy's thing," she said, noting that she was always playing with a man, but never on her own like she is now.
"As a girl [you] were mentored by your mother and grandmother to become a wife and a mother ... to learn how to cook, how to sew, how to raise families,” she added.
But the playing of music is something that's in her heart, despite the pain of losing Leonard.
"When you get in front of other people, as a rule, I'm not too good in crowds ... you just open up, it's like you're in your own little world. They smile at you, and it just builds, and it just makes it so worthwhile."
And that's why it pains her to see the dance clubs and bands dwindling in Saskatchewan.
What will remain? A Loss of Saskatchewan's Culture
"We need to keep this alive ... I am the last playing member of what would have been the Brandel Orchestra ... that would have been considered a playing member," she said.
"The rest have passed, and sadly, all of these old-time bands, the other ones that influenced me were the Beltones from Kerrobert. They're all gone."
Before Leonard passed he'd told her to keep playing. She says he'd asked her to keep people laughing, to keep them happy and to not let this die. When I asked Skog-Humble why it needs to be kept alive, and what value these songs and dances hold, she said it's keeping the culture of Saskatchewan, and the people who built the province — alive.
"All that stuff was from the people that immigrated here. That's a cultural thing. Like the schottische — The first ones I learned was from my grandfather on dad's side, Dad's father, he would sing them in Swedish," she said.
"And you take the German immigrants that came with their families, they brought with us the polkas and lot of the old-time waltzes. The Swedish Scandinavians, they brought some waltzes and stuff too ... We've got Slovenian, there's another country that brought Frankie Yankovic over.
"If we can preserve it, it would be awesome. There's not very many of us, like you said, that are doing that kind of music anymore. And we, I would hope that it would stay," she said.
"But if it doesn't, to me, it would be a loss. Because it's stepping away from our heritage, in a way."
Until Sugartop's Last Dance: What Does the Future Hold?
She tells me about house parties where fiddles signified the start of good times. Her parents spent many a Christmas Eve with a Swiss family from Landis that would cobble together accordions, fiddles, guitars, pianos and they'd play late into the night.
"I would say like, when we go visit there is there was music involved in probably 80 per cent of the visits when I was little, and I went with Mom and Dad some more.”
But even today, as she continues to play under the Sugartop name, she finds herself missing Leonard.
"When I walk out the door, I go, 'Oh, damn, I wish you were with me.’ But when I go now ... you look forward to that. Like, that's the brass ring at the end of the week for me now is I get to go out and get the life that I had back.
"He showed me I would say about 80 per cent of the old-time music ... in Biggar, the first engagement I did in February, I heard several other ladies say, 'we heard the Brandles Orchestra again.'"
Skog-Humble doesn't know how long she'll play, but she hopes that after her, more will come to save this music that is an act of remembrance of a part of Saskatchewan that no longer exists.
"As long as I can put out the quality of music that I want to put out. If I start to not do it as well, then I'll back away. But as long as I can make people smile, and dance, and they're satisfied with what I do, I'd like to do it well into my later years."
An hour and a half after I arrived, I drove home in silence. I look out over hills that once held families on each quarter, where house parties would swell, music would be played, and community would be fostered across Saskatchewan in communities that no longer exist. I wonder — when the last polka is played, the last band member quits playing, and the final hall shuts the lights off for the last time, what will remain?
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