This week’s show takes us across the landscape of the state of Georgia and then reminisces about ladies that share her name. No genre is off limits and no era too far in the past is excluded in this latest Deeper Roots show that takes on a theme. We’re also hoping that the will of the people is not interfered with in a state that’s struggling to awaken; a lumbering giant of democracy still haunted (and celebrated at the highest levels) by plantation politics. Our music this week will feature some tradition from Georgia’s own Jake Xerxes Fussell, country tunes from Lefty Frizzell and Charley Crockett, jazz from Nina Simone and Joe Venuti, and we’ll visit a Georgia Camp Meeting and One More Sunday in Savannah. Tune in for a collection of tunes about a state of mind and some fine women who share the name of a southern state where peaches and a darker past prosper. Tune in on Friday morning here on Sonoma County Community Radio.
Category Archives: Americana
Streets of Bakersfield
It was Nashville West but with a decidedly more amount of midwestern flavoring. Bakersfield was the terminus of most of the migrant traffic from the dust bowl where the hope for a better life was not always fulfilled. So many landed square on the Central Valley and for those who grew up it became a whirlwind post-war prosperity that was familiar: oil drilling, agriculture, almond orchards, cattle raising, and a transportation industry to support it. Those who were raised on country swing and the classic country sounds coming out of Nashville were lucky given Bakersfield’s proximity to the studios of Hollywood and Los Angeles. We’ll hear from many of them, digging into the early years of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart and a host of other performers who made that blend of rough country, trucking songs, and honky-tonk swing what it would become.
Finger Pickin’ Good
Tune in Friday morning for a finger pickin’ helping of Americana and beyond as our show revisits some guitar masters from blues, country blues, folk and tradition. We’ll take a spin across the landscape of steel and gut string tradition with a collection that features tracks from Stefan Grossman, Mississippi John Hurt, Leo Kottke, Merle Travis and over a dozen others. As February wraps up, we’ll be completing our February journey out of winter’s doldrums and into the sweet breezes of Spring. Let this show be a warmup for your good life and times. So put your feet up and drop in. We’d love to have you.
Songs of Harlan Howard
Harlan Howard is said to have coined the term “three chords and the truth”. He’s also the guy that gave Willie Nelson his first job as a songwriter after the two met up at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville in 1960. Harlan was a well-established songwriter in Nashville by then and would go on to become one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation, having penned over 4,000 songs. To lead off next month’s release of Willie Nelson’s 73rd solo album, a tribute to Howard called “I Don’t Know A Thing About Love”, Deeper Roots will share a small sampling of Harlan Howard’s music. Songs that played a big part in defining the Golden Age of Country Music featuring the likes of Waylon Jennings, Skeeter Davis, Jan Howard, Buck Owens, and Patsy Cline. We’ll also hear a couple of Harlan’s own performances as well. Friday morning country on Sonoma County Community Radio.
Sinner’s Playground
The landscape this morning is smothered in ominous clouds as the music we have for you features the gospel beat with a blend of suggestive celebratory, suspicious, and devil-may-care songs. We’ve got the fire and brimstone bible-thumping sounds of Brother Claude Ely, some classic gospel warnings from The Golden Gate Quartet, a pastiche of British Clerkenwell nuggets from The Real Tuesday Weld, The Weavers, Lonnie Johnson, and a whole lot more. An eclectic blend of songs of Satan, dark nights, and sinner’s bemoaning their dirty little religion on another Friday morning collection of sounds on Deeper Roots. Tune in. The ground is saturated with blues, gospel, country, and even some hillbillies from hell…just for you.
Classic Country Covers
It may be Friday the 13th, but we won’t be bothered with the superstitious. Instead, we’ll go with traditional and popular country nuggets as our topics with some couplings of contemporary and vintage. We’ve gathered a collection of modern country covers from the likes of Rosanne Cash, Solitaire Miles, Charley Crockett, Chuck Mead and others and we’ll be coupling them up with originals and favorites from the distant past. Merle Travis, Red Foley, Hank Williams, and The Louvin Brothers take the stage from a dream-filled past. We’re celebrating country classics from fifties, sixties and seventies and having fun doing it while kicking back. You don’t need to be wearing pretentious boots and hats to appreciate the easy sway of classic country … you just need to close your eyes and appreciate the performances … well, unless you’re driving.
Wild in the Streets
December’s arrived and we’re going to get ourselves warmed up for the Hot Stove League, New Year’s Eve, football playoffs, reindeer on the roof and all the rest of it. But our show today will take on a common thread: songs about ‘the street’ or streets or boulevards, avenues … only the surface streets, not the highways. Dave’s picked out a collection of songs that are sure to stir emotion bringing home music that take on the ‘street’ topics from the genres of country, early pop, rock, folk, blues and all the rest. We’ll hear from Dylan, The Ink Spots, Tony Rice, Charlie Spand, the Orlons and a couple dozen others taking on an eclectic blend of songs where the streets as the muse. Tune into Sonoma County Community Radio’s KOWS 92.5 FM, streaming to all of planet earth on kowsfm.com/listen. Deeper Roots brings you a morning of sounds from the locales of Easy Street, Lonely Street and 4th Street…directly from Orchard and 7th.
Session Masters: Guitar
When trying to put together a Deeper Roots episode that covered the great session masters from the past one hundred years it became exceedingly clear that the show would need to be broken up into multiple parts. Percussion, keyboards, brass, bass and all the rest will follow but this week we’re going to focus on the string masters; those guitar stars who account for the bulk of Top 30 hits that graced our lives over the second half of the 20th century. They include Hank Garland, Grady Martin, James Burton, Joe Messina, Glen Campbell, Jimmy Johnson and, of course, Tommy Tedesco. There are many others who deserve the recognition but our show is only a two hour show and, even at that, picking only three or four examples per performer doesn’t do it justice. We’re going to give credit where it’s due…those who stood in the shadows.
Top Country Albums of All Time
It’s list time! For better or worse, we’re going with the top tier of the Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Country Albums of all Time as our guidepost. There’s some great ones here, in fact the majority are agreeable in our estimation but there are also some “huh?” moments. We’ll just assume that that is par for the course with any opinion-based list by a disparate group of critics. For the most part, it captures the core of country pretty well. We’ll share music from Tom T. Hall, The Carters, George Strait and a few nineties and aught pop stars that made the list because they swim the pop country charts. Join Dave as he walks down the list, one that has its cringe-worthy moments, right alongside moments of pure Americana country gold.
Loretta & Jerry
This past October, we lost a couple of very important ties to two whose stars shone bright in both the Golden Age of Country and the Golden Age of Rock ‘n Roll. We’ll take on a dual tribute to the passing of Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis. The torch has surely passed but their fire burned white hot as their stars rose, both sharing controversy and almost overnight fame. They also continued to perform into their later years, teaming up with songwriters and performers who were relevant to new generations, but true to their core calling. Our first hour take time to visit Loretta Lynn’s humble but no-nonsense storytelling and the second hour will take us into the whirlwind of unapologetic badassness that was Jerry Lee Lewis.