Sing it loud! It’s a whole new year and our country can take heart without letting our guard down. We’ll celebrate a fresh new start knowing that hard work lies ahead with a two hour show featuring the theme of ‘singing’. Join Dave Stroud once more for a mixed bag; an eclectic blend of sounds from the past century featuring the likes of Ukulele Ike, Wingy Manone, The Cats & The Fiddle, John Sebastian, Cat Power, and a couple of dozen more, all belting out songs about the very act of singing. We’ll take you down Memory Lane with old fashioned songs, simple songs of gospel and freedom, swinging low, singing high, and those joyful sing-alongs we’ve shared over the past century. That’s right. It’s theme time on this week’s Deeper Roots show and we’d love to have you. Join in the festivities.
Category Archives: Country
Wide Open Places
A bright future is in store….that’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it! Today’s show contains an inordinate amount of upbeat tickers including a trip to Tulsa with Asleep at the Wheel, a Fats Waller song about those wide open places, a journey following the North Star with Rhiannon Giddens, The Boswells, Hank Williams, Les Paul, and a whole lot more. We’re in a free form mood on a Friday morning here in Sonoma County, celebrating the Twelve Days of Inauguration the best way we know how. Join us on Sonoma County Community radio from the Deeper Roots Den with your host Dave Stroud, celebrating our democracy in a big, big way.
Christmas Joy
Happy Holidays! Proving that there is no war on Christmas and looking forward to the coming year, join Dave Stroud as he shares some of the great holiday chestnuts from years past. He’ll be sharing celebratory sounds from every decade, moving the needle from the 40s to the 10s in a new Deeper Roots Christmas shindig. Tune in for everyone from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Frank Sinatra to Ella, The Andrews Sisters, Los Straitjackets and Otis Redding’s Merry Christmas Baby. As we barrel out of 2020 as fast as we can, we remind ourselves of the fortunes of the few and the need of the many in this season of desperation. So get out that Georgia vote, folks, and stand steadfast against the anarchy of this dying administration’s push towards fascist principles for power. We have the power to do this. We do.
The Songs of Dan Penn
With a new album just released, Dan Penn reminds everyone that there are few songwriters, and only one living, that have influenced (if not defined) the Memphis soul sound as he has. At 78, Dan Penn’s legacy is already sealed with songs that are enduring: “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”, “Dark End of the Street”, “Cry Like a Baby”, and so many more. Our show this Friday had to carefully curate tracks from Irma Thomas, Percy Sledge, Solomon Burke, Arthur Alexander, and a couple dozen more to pay proper tribute. As a musician and songwriter, this Muscle Shoals legend deserves a spot in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and, while never considered a performer, his catalog includes three solo studio albums, one from 1973, another from 1994, and this year’s Living On Mercy. You’ll hear tracks from these and so much more in this morning’s episode of Deeper Roots.
Change is Gonna Come
Positive vibes and sweet sounds in another eclectic free form show on Deeper Roots. Dave Stroud will take the opportunity on this week’s Black Friday to share some golden sounds, some classics and others that you may not know. They’re the sounds from the deeper wells and the dusty digital archives of the past century. You’ll hear some Gary US Bonds’ best known and obscure tracks, gospel delicacies from The Gospel Tones and The Zion Travelers, new sounds and classic early tracks from Dion, and so, so much more in the show today as we give thanks for the decomposition of the torch bearers of racism and white supremacy that occupy the highest seats in the land. Change is gonna come and none too soon.
The Itinerant Life
The Great Depression brought to the forefront the blight of runaway capitalism and a country that was not prepared to put safeguards in place for working people, let alone the working poor, until FDR’s New Deal in the 30s. By then it was too late for the many itinerant homeless and impoverished migrant workers who moved from town to town by any means necessary, looking for hope amongst communities of those equally disenfranchised. The itinerant life brought about its own language, hieroglyphics, and rule of law. Our show today rides the rails with the music; songs of the itinerant life. We’ll hear from the likely suspects like Woody and Cisco, Doc Watson, Jimmie Rodgers, and Harry Choates as well as the Goose State Ramblers’ story of Ole Olson, Norman and Nancy Blake’s tale of Hobo Bill, Montana Slim, and Bob Dylan. Tune in Friday morning for the best in roots sounds on the might KOWS Community Radio. 92.5 FM on your dial.
License To Vote
We’ve waited four years so there’s no need for any more hopes, prayers, or incantations. Our way of American life is on the line. The choice is ours. As our image says: “Vote as you please, but please vote.” We’re kicking off the five day countdown with a collection of music featuring political songs, songs about voting, democracy, freedom, and civil rights; ; all of which are currently threatened by this administration and its sycophants, traitors, and rats. We’ll hear from Steve Goodman, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bob Dylan, The New Christy Minstrels, and (of course) Roy Zimmerman, all of whom touch on one or more of our topics of the day. We’ve got free speech, no bull radio here in Sonoma County and Deeper Roots will take this Friday out to use a bullhorn to ask that you go out and vote, for heaven’s (and democracy’s) sake. We need to turn this ship around and this is our best opportunity.
Mama’s Getting Hot
Free Form Friday is considered the calm before two upcoming events, both suspenseful in nature. Halloween and Election Day. Halloween because we’ll be sharing some of the haunted reminders as well as social distancing, whereas Election Day will send the right message and send the ghouls, rats, and seditionists scurrying back to their nests. This morning’s music is the bright reminder that good still can come of our situation, taking a time out for music that keeps us centered. We’ll make the leap from Mama Cass to Geraint Watkins, Ella to Laura Nyro, John Prine to The Beach Boys…all in perfect form. Join Dave Stroud for another celebration of a hundred years of America’s music on KOWS radio, a bastion of free speech and no bull, streaming to your ears on www.freespeechnobull.com. And donate to support community radio.
Murder Most Foul
Our show this week is brought to you by a song, a narrative like no other Bob Dylan has ever produced. Murder Most Foul was released earlier this year as the first single from his latest album Rough and Rowdy Ways. It is a 16 minute narration of cultural reflection that speaks to the passing of time in the context of what has been lost and what still might be lost yet still celebrating our gains. The Kennedy assassination is one of those times that we reflect on, remembering the day that it happened with as much clarity as time permits. What Dylan does is use pastel images of ‘what was then’ with who we are now as he speaks to cultural touchstones in his (and our) life. And he warns us, once again, that the times are indeed changin’ and that we should likely hear this song as a storm warning. Tune into for a listen. Two hours of Deeper Roots this week. You can also find out more about the Dylan song at https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/murder-most-foul-and-the-haunting-of-america.
Mr. Songwriter – Harlan Howard
We’ll be honoring the songwriting prowess of Harlan Howard this week on Deeper Roots. A country songwriter and performer whose career spanned six decades and wrote some of the classic songs of the Golden Age, turning formula into phrasing and stories of true life as he saw it. After a few minor successes, his song Pick Me Up on Your Way Down became a No. 2 hit for Charlie Walker in 1958 and Heartaches by the Number for Ray Price the following year,his name appeared at the forefront of songwriting talent of the time. His songs were performed by everyone from Merle Haggard to The Kingston Trio and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. This week’s show will feature songs written by Harlan Howard and we’ll get to hear him perform many of his own. He coined the oft-quoted phrase “Three chords and the truth”. Tune in for the festivities.