I was speaking with a friend of mine who organizes ethnic festivals on the Eastern Seaboard. She was lamenting about the state of the festivals in general. Smaller attendances mean smaller budgets mean less funding to draw the big artists that pack the people in. "I don't know what to do about the decline," she said.

One could imagine her on the other end of the phone, wringing her hands with worry. "I think people are looking for something new," she continued. "I love some of these big bands that draw in the crowds, but where is the next Saw Doctors or Black 47 coming from? I pray someone finds them pretty quick."

Well, friend, your prayers have been answered. Spearheaded by Toronto's Enter the Haggis, Rootstomp is a smoking hot collection of the finest contemporary Celtic music sampled from both sides of the Atlantic.

"For us, it's all about pushing the boundaries of what Irish or Celtic music can mean - whether it's using traditional instruments in new ways or incorporating Celtic melodies and themes into different styles of music," reasons Enter the Haggis frontman Brian Buchanan. "There are some great trad bands out there, but I don't think of trad bands as playing music in a contemporary way."

Fiddler's Green, an Irish outfit by way of Germany, is an electrifying combination of thunderous drumming, breezy Irish melodies, and the funkiest bass lines from the land of Volkswagen. They start the craic with "Folk's Not Dead," a fitting opener for a mouth-watering sampler of progressive folk and rock.

The Elders contribute a bright track from their collection of sunny melodies. "Gonna Take a Miracle" comes complete with crowd noises from their minions in their Kansas City home.

Enter the Haggis contributes "New Monthly Flavor" and "One Last Drink." Seven Nations, Nashville's Slide Show Baby and Vancouver's Paperboys are all worthy festival headliners if given the chance. "Celtic/Canadian folk/stomp/Son Jarocho/ acoustic//Latin/alt-country/pop/roots band" is

how the biography describes the Paperboys, and truer words were never spoken.

"We looked at the world of contemporary Celtic music, and while it seemed like there were a few really good Celtic punk compilations out there, there weren't really any Celtic rock compilations," explains Buchanan when asked about the motivation behind the compilation.

"It seems like we run into people all the time who are really into our music but have never heard any other Celtic rock bands. Tons of times I've written out lists of my favorite bands/ albums from within the genre for people who are enthusiastic about the music but don't know where to start. We decided that there was so much great music being made by so many of our friends that a compilation was the logical next step."

At first, Buchanan did an e-mail campaign to get bands interested. With the buzz Rootstomp is generating, bands are now coming to Enter the Haggis to be on future compilations.

They hope to put Rootstomp 2 together in the summer, but not before Haggis tours Ireland in March and the eastern and midwestern parts of the U.S. this spring.

For anyone who worries about the festivals' future, Rootstomp is living proof that all is alive and well within modern Irish rock.

For more information, log onto rootstomp.com or enterthehaggis.com, where you can buy this CD, get biographies of each band, and link up with their Myspace pages and web sites.