Free form this week. We’re pulling out the stops with a mix of gospel from the King’s Sacred Quartette, Band memories from Steve Forbert and Rick Danko, some sixties garage band, classic R&B from Shirley & Lee and Lloyd Price, and the Motown sounds of Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, and Stevie Wonder. The mix includes country, blues classics, and an After Hours mash-up…all for you…all for community radio on a Friday morning in West County. Join in the revelry.
Category Archives: Americana
Stay a Little Longer
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.
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!
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.
Music of Albert E. Brumley Sr.
The music of Albert E. Brumley resides in a shadowy corner of country gospel, but when it’s given the light of day, the glow is blinding. He was a shape note music composer and publisher whose southern gospel pieces are familiar to many. There’s not a lot of information about Albert but the musical legacy of his “I’ll Fly Away”, “Rank Strangers”, and “Turn Your Radio On” are masterpieces of the genre made popular by everyone from The Carters to Bill Monroe and Aretha Franklin to Alan Jackson and Kanye West. We’ll spend time with his music today, sharing numerous interpretations for you on a Friday morning in Sebastopol, live from KOWS studio at the UMC in the heart of town.
Golden Age of Country
It’s a time that followed the second World War and baked into its foundation were the sounds of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Spade Cooley, Bob Wills among others. The music was inspired by bluegrass, folk, blues, and jazz with Country Swing and barn dances sparking a popularity that blanketed the American musical landscape from the Pacific to the southern Atlantic. It was a sound that solidified the title of “Country and Western” and he’ll be sharing some of the great performances in this week’s episode: Patsy Cline, Little Jimmy Dickens, George Jones, Ferlin Husky, and Webb Pierce…just to name a few. While the sound would fade away sometime around the turn of the seventies, when rock n’ roll would elbow it (more like steamroll it) out in popularity on the airwaves, it is revered and restated to this day as a cornerstone of what we recognize as Americana music.
Eight to the Bar
It’s a free form collection that knows no boundaries. Dynamic sounds from the past century of America’s music including tracks from Kinky Friedman, Hank Snow, Clara Ward, The Charioteers, and a host of others from every corner. We’ll be sharing The Old Spinning Wheel, a parlor song; songs about a baseball and silver screen legend; and gospel from the deeper wells. Join Dave Stroud for another Deeper Roots evening on KOWS Community Radio.
California’s Burning
We are remembering what happened here in Sonoma County last October when the firestorm hit, devastating communities and lives. Over 5000 homes and dozens of lives were lost. Disaster struck overnight and our music today reflects back with songs of disaster, songs of burning hell, and music that reminds us that Mother Nature will have its way. Blues from John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf, traditional country gospel from Bill Neely and Kitty Wells, and more in a Friday evening remembrance.
Roger Miller Tribute
There’s a new tribute album out, celebrating the music of country renaissance troubadour Roger Miller. Produced by his son Dean it’s a fully formed varietal that, as Rolling Stone magazine critic Stephen Betts notes, features a dazzling lineup after being beset by repeated delays since 2015. Miller was an extraordinary songwriter with offbeat humor, part Hank Williams, part Will Rogers, and a poet of the uncommon whose song King of the Road “was positively average compared to his other oddball compositions, including Dang Me, Chug-a-Lug, and You Can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd” as Betts goes on to point out. Our show features tracks from the album, some other notable covers of Roger Miller’s music, and, of course, some wacky, some tame originals from Roger himself.
Jukebox Saturday Night
A few years back we celebrated the record, the radio, and disc jockeys on a couple of themed shows. We’re going to rev that theme up once again, but with a bit of a twist. This morning’s show pays tribute to that nickel, dime, and quarter evaporator known as the jukebox. We’ll also extend the music selections to include sounds of record hops, soda fountains, and the healthiest way to partake in any or all of the festivities. Tune in for new and old, including country sounds from Kitty Wells, Buck Owens, and Bill Walker; R&B from Shirley & Lee, Charles Bronw, and The Marigolds; and pop straightaways from Gale Storm, Dodie Stevens, and Brook Benton. All this on a Friday evening on KWTF community radio.