PRI’s The World featured a great segment with correspondent Julie Caine profiling Japanese teacher and country and western singer Toshio Hirano. Hirano heard Jimmie Rogers when he was a teenager and he talks about how it changed his life. Hirano currently lives, plays live, and evangelizes the gospel of Jimmie Rogers in San Francisco, CA.
The Daily News reports that Columbia University’s WKCR (89.9 FM) will kick off their annual Country Music Festival today and it will last over the weekend for 50 hours total. The festival features vintage country as well as live tunes from city bands. Maybe this is the first step for getting Gothem a full time country radio station. Of course commercial radio doesn’t come close to being this good!
The schedule:
FRIDAY
Noon-3 p.m.: Great country songwriters, like Billy Joe Shaver
3-6 p.m.: Modern country storytellers, like Robert Earl Keen and Guy Clark
6-7:30 p.m.: Live music, with New York bands in the studio
7:30-10:30 p.m.: Gram Parsons
10:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m.: 40 Years in Folsom Prison. The anniversary of Johnny Cash’s famous live album
SATURDAY
1:30 -4:30 a.m.: Uncle Tupelo and its family tree
4:30-7 a.m.: Murder ballads and disaster songs, 1913-1938. Based on recent box set of the same name
7-10 a.m: Zydeco
10 a.m.-1 p.m.: Norman Blake and Tony Rice
1-7 p.m.: Tribute to the late Porter Wagoner
7 p.m.-midnight: Tribute to the late Hank Thompson
SUNDAY
Midnight-3 a.m.: Johnny Cash and June Carter. Their duets
3-8 a.m.: Country rock
8-10 a.m.: Country gospel
10 a.m.-noon: Black string bands
Noon-2 p.m.: Hank Williams
The Americana Music Association has published it’s top 100 albums for 2007 based on airplay spins. Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams and Kelly Willis top the list.
As always a great group of artists are represented and it makes for a handy list for last minute shopping!
Mostly I think terrestrial radio is a unholy wasteland of rotting play-list crap, but sometimes you pass across some smaller stations that are doing it the way it started. Keeping the focus on the music by people who love music instead of just a focus on some delusional concept of mass-market appeal (crazy, huh?)
This evening I was “friended” on MySpace by a DJ here in New York calling herself Honky Tonk Radio Girl. HTRG says on her page that she “tells tall tales of these (old country) troubadours and keeps things rolling with a sense of humor about the music she adores. Honky Tonk Radio Girl will also add a fresh edge by featuring new and local artists who keep the spirit of classic country alive.” Sounds good to me!
Becky, HTRG ’s real name, does the Thursday 7:30pm - 9:00pm slot on New York University’s WNYU. Folks in the New York area can tune in to her old-timey-style” country radio show on 89.1 FM. For the rest of the world you can tune in to the show on-line by clicking “Listen Live” on wnyu.org or navigate to iTunes radio then to “Eclectic,” then WNYU. Past shows can be found in the archives.
You can also send requests, thoughts and comments to becky@wnyu.org. Requests during the show can be made to (212) 998-1818 or WNYURadio on AIM.
And people think there’s no hillbillies in the Big City…Twang says check her out!
Just got back from seeing the family in Dallas for the 4th. While tooling around in Mom’s Merc I checked out the local flavor and tuned into Lone Star 92.5, the Clear Channel radio station I previously had posted on. Sure I could stream them online and enjoy the tunes here in Manhattan but it’s not the same as cruising around the rain soaked streets of my youth.
I one sitting I heard The Allman Brothers, Dylan, Reckless Kelly, Johnny Cash, The Drive By Truckers and Todd Snyder. This, in my mind, is heaven.
On the plane home we too AirTran Airlines. They are always good and, from my experience, mostly on time. Most importantly, the servers on board are always nice to my daughter and they get major points for that.
The airline offered XM Radio on board the plane and while my daughter was absorbed in Miyazaki’s superb animation feature Spirited Away, I checked out what XM had to offer. I stayed a while at “Willie’s Place” and was pleased to hear the old school outlaws represented – Merle, Ray, Leftie – legends you don’t hear enough of on commercial radio. I then headed over to X (cross) Country and it sweetened the deal with John Prine, Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle. I was sold. When I get out of the city and buy and truck the very next day I’m getting XM Radio. But when I drive it through Dallas, it’ll take a back seat the Lone Star 92.5.
Has Clear Channel lost it’s little rigid, corporate mind?
The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram’s Cary Darling (great name!) has an interesting article on a local radio station with went from the old tried-and-true classic radio format to an alt-country mix, an example playlist contains the Drive-By Truckers, Johnny Cash and Robert Earl Keen, coupled with a low-key PBS style of corporate sponsorship instead of the hyper-audio-effects whiplash-inducing commercials that make most terrestrial radio hard to take seriously. Even thier web-site shows images of Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Tom Petty. Nice!
XM and Sirius satellite radio and it’s more niche formatting (think radio in the 70s) has displayed enough relative success at pealing off listeners that Clear Channel is throwing the dice and taking some calculated chances. D.js. are seen as more than playlist parrots and more like the musical authorities with their own crates of vinyl they schlep to the station and with tales about the music and the artists.
I still think Clear Channel is an example of everything wrong with a corporate media giant, but I will take my hat off to them for treating listeners and the music with respect and not simply a spreadsheet list of product and consumer.
Lone Star 92.5’s Commercial Featuring Wille Nelson
