Friday, February 21 @9am on KOWS
Western Sunsets
We’re revisiting a show from 2019 and it just happens to be our first show in the new Santa Rosa studios. It is one that celebrates that Old Chisholm Trail and other prairie passages that resemble all things that follow those romantic icons whose life on the range was less than what their songs usually embellish. In the western sunsets where John Lomax first went out in search of the ‘cowboy song’, we’ll explore more enlightened performances from the silver screen to the deep folk traditions that have become so laminated with romance that it’s hard to see the images beneath. This week’s show will take us from Carl T. Sprague, the original cowboy crooner, to Johnny Horton, Fess Parker, Rex Allen, and Roy Rogers. The music is sometimes sappy (Rick Nelson’s My Rifle, My Pony, and Me), sometimes light (Roy Rogers’ My Chickashay Girl), and other times full of storytelling and history. So many performances to light up the evening sky…just before dusk…just before that ceiling of stars appears in the night sky.
Saturday, February 22 @3am on KOWS
Episode 497
What a week it was. The world witnessed a display of egocentricity (among other things) in the Oval Office. And then, on the other side of the room, the dark and lumbering failure of a Press Corps to speak truth to power. This week’s Blue Moon will be on the political side; after all, we all want to celebrate all FORMER Presidents on President’s Day, now don’t we. Throwback sounds this week will lead off with some Utah Phillips and we’ll run down the line with Baez, Newman, Simone and a couple of others to commemorate what we once had. There’s also some fine new sounds to share with you this week. Valerie June, Charley Crockett, Miss Tess, and The Altons are all queued up and rady to spin as Sonoma County works its way past one more cold winter storm and Spring promises what it can. Join us on kowsfm.com/listen this Thursday morning.
Saturday, February 22 @9am on KOWS
Rock Meets Country
It was without question a natural progression. All of the attributes that country inherited from gospel, blues, and jazz resulted in what amounted to competition in the charts (and in some mid-century cultural clashes). Although The Beatles had suggested a kinship with mid-sixties tributes to Buck Owens and Chet Atkins, the only comfortable way to make the marriage work was to have it come from other directions…specifically from cultural prods of Nudie suits, coupled with folk and country nudges, and the inevitable respect for the music. Gram Parsons’ influence on the late sixties rise of something they called ‘country rock’ is easy to find but Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album from 1968, The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Leon Russell’s alter-ego Hank Wilson opened the doors to a sound that swept the charts. We’ll hear some originals, covers, and a whole lot more in this week’s Deeper Roots. Hope y’all can join us.
Thursday, February 27 @9am on KOWS
Saturday, March 1 @3am on KOWS
Episode 498
Two months into 2025 we find ourselves longing for the good times, the good days, when we knew what a social contract was all about. This week on Blue Moon we’ll pay our usually homage in tributes and birthdays but we’ll also listen carefully to some of the better songwriting talents in the Americana corral. Tune in this week for some originals and covers of Tom Waits’ brilliant songwriting, classic Faron Young and Rosanne Cash. We’ll even have a sneak peek at a track from the new Numero label “Barnyard Beehives” with a track going way back by one Vanita Thompson. But the new music has risen above all today’s fray with Sean McConnell, Natalie Jean, Seth Walker and Lilly Hiatt at the front of the new release line. We hope you’ll join us.