What was your inspiration for the making of your show, Saturday Night New Orleans Radio? What is your strategy for choosing the music you play?
Short Answer: Lifelong dream, running out of long-life, Katrina, technology. I listen to at least 500 songs a week from a library of 750k songs collected from music archivists, record collectors, and radio station libraries.
How many radio stations is your show syndicated on? How many people do you think listen?
A dozen stations found it on an archival site giving me a boost in confidence. Bryan Russo provided me with such kind supportive words that I re-dedicated myself to editing and tightening up the shows. I'll send out 100 thumb drives with a year’s worth of shows to uninitiated radio stations next week.
I tape my live midnight until 3am show from the French Quarter which means my local audience is drunk drivers or homebound sober people I put to sleep. Is it fair to count them as full listeners?
It's a destination show. The same listeners every week from Greece, England, Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, and Mexico. Many wake up before Sunday sunrise to hear the beginning of the show. I couldn't keep up with the studio phone, then I couldn't keep up with the emails, and eventually I couldn't respond to the Facebook posts or even USPS letters. Listeners still post about the music and become friends on Facebook. They contact each other when vacationing. I look them up too. Radio unites them where their musical acumen once isolated them.
What do you enjoy most about your show?
Listeners are idealists who look for like-minded support. Radio people are idealists who make their musical vision into a tangible presentation. Musicians too. Radio is the catalyst to expand our community past the geographic and social limits of our presence. Radio has been my dream since elementary school so I consider it my greatest life's privilege to be part of the music community of “us.”
Has there ever been a time when a musician reached out to you and thanked you for playing their song?
Since my show is “music you've never heard by musicians you've never heard of” and “all the non-hits,” most contemporary musicians dread being played on my show.
Most the surviving 1950s and 60s musicians featured on my show recognized their artistic merit was not rewarded or acknowledged a half-century ago. The depth of their disappointment and disillusionment in a musical career means they quit music after a couple 45 rpm records. I think they're pretty settled on their artistic merit versus career choices but I think they or their surviving family would be thrilled to know such an enthusiastic audience of listeners are dedicated to hearing and feeling the hope, joy, and artistic merit they discovered and subsequently buried so long ago. Thank God there's public radio to protect art from the commercial ravages of time and the market.
What is a random fact about you that you would like to share?
The feeling that drove the musician to create the music is the same feeling you feel when you hear this music these 50 to 70 years later. It's intangible but it's real. It's whimsical, optimistic, hopeful, promising, up-tempo, and fun. It's us then and it's us now. No amount of darkness, anger, retribution, and cynicism can extinguish this feeling of “us.” Every show, every song is a reminder of who we are.
Join in on the music with Saturday Night New Orleans Radio from 9pm to Midnight on WSDL 90.7 FM.