Country swing is the thing this morning on Deeper Roots. We won’t be spending time on the ancestral roots as much as we’ll be exploring the small local bands of the Southwest. We’ll use Jean A. Boyd’s excellent reference “Dance All Night : Those Other Southwestern Swing Bands Past and Present” as our rudder and guidebook in the show. The heartbeat of any American genre is usually the local band and during the later years of the Great Depression and throughout the Second World War people were looking for something uplifting to dance to. In Texas (and really all across the Southwest) the sound was country swing: a mix of jazz, blues, polka, latin and hillbilly fiddle. We’ll be featuring the small time big names like The Tune Wranglers, Cliff Bruner, Leon Selph, Floyd Tillman, and Adolph Hofner and so many more in our show this morning, direct from our studios in downtown Sebastopol.
Monthly Archives: December 2018
Country Christmas 2018
It’s a holly, jolly, country Christmas on a Friday morning in West County. We’ll put our political blinders on this morning in search of the merriment that ’tis the season on Deeper Roots. This year’s Christmas special is a collection of country sounds, both new and old, that takes us down a path that mixes contemporary Americana, bluegrass, rockabilly, and classic country into a finely tuned blend of holiday cheer. We’ll be cooking from the Texas panhandle with Dale Watson, taking the high lonesome yule train with Jimmy Martin, spinning yarns with Johnny and Tommy Cash, and dropping by the Waffle House with Bill Anderson. Tune in knowing full well that the dinner’s in the oven and the stockings are all hung by the chimney with care. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Louisiana Gumbo
Back to the bayou. Back to Bourbon Street. From a house of blues to the small clubs out across the river. We’ll be taking a journey into the deeper wells where the influences include urban blues, jazz, French Acadian, Caribbean, and African American. And one could argue a handful of others. It’s all there in the sounds of south where the pianos and guitar amps are wired into a foundation of tradition…as if performed from a garage or cabin. Cookie & The Cupcakes’ swamp pop, swamp rock from Randy & The Rockets, New Orleans busking from Snooks Eaglin, classic piano noodling from the Professor and Dr. John, and a warm bouillabaisse of southern musical cuisine from Dave Bartholomew and Fats Domino all served up on a Friday evening celebrating a few of the treats on community radio for Sonoma County, KOWS.
Carl Sandburg’s Songbag Pt 2
We had so much fun with our first installment a few months back that we thought it was worth a second installment…well, that and the depth and breadth of the American Songbag certainly lends itself to doing so. It doesn’t hurt either that it fits our deeper roots sensibilities so well. This installment finds us meandering about those classic songs whose topics include mellow blues ballads, hobo songs, Mexican border songs (how appropriate), tarnished love tales, and the ‘road to heaven’. Helping us through our sets we’ll be featuring an interesting collection of performers: Dave Van Ronk, Dock Boggs, Rosanne Cash, and Peter Case. A host of others will join in the fun on Community Radio for Sonoma County.