Here are all my radio shows from last year and this year:
On March 17 I took over Pearl's General Store for two hours of country and Americana music including the first Cover Me, where I play a great song and then a great cover and ask you the listener to let me know which one you prefer. Since it was St. Patrick's Day I played some Irish music. Also the rodeo was in town and the Luck Reunion at Willie Nelson's ranch was taking place that day so I played some music from both.
On March 30 I did my first show on the Lonesome Stranger. It was delayed 45 minutes due to technical difficulties but I was able to get a few sets in. Then we brought in Shakey Lyman, a musician from Philadelphia that I didn't know beforehand, to play some songs. This was a good experience for me to handle live music. I finished up with Cover Me at about the 1:02 mark.
This was a fun show. I started with some duets from Gram and Emmylou and Johnny and June, then played First Aid Kit's fantastic song Emmylou, which namechecks all of them. Lots of Don Williams, some Merle, some Cojo, and Tex-Mex from both the Tiarras and Selena for Cinco de Mayo. In the second hour I had a great set of Miranda Lambert, some local Austin women, music from Crazy Heart, and ended with the Clint Black classic A Better Man.
I had a co-host, Saint Annie, who is apprenticing with KOOP, for part of the show. She was fantastic and the music she played, Wilco, the Nude Party, Neko Case and others definitely complemented the music I played. I started with Jason Isbell, who is in town this week, had two women singers in Cover Me, played some Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens, and then a lot of Bruce Robison's songs including some of his Next Waltz projects. The show finished with a shout out to the Big Squeeze, Texas Folklife's youth accordion contest, and then some Red Dirt music from Oklahomans Cross Canadian Ragweed, Turnpike Troubadours and Jimmy LaFave.
This was the week Jason Isbell released Weathervanes as well as the 10th anniversary of Southeastern so I played songs from both albums. Then Mary Beth, a new apprentice, came on and played a few sets including Blaze Foley's Clay Pigeons, which John Prine covered. For Pride Month I played songs from Brandy Clark, Brothers Osborne and Allison Russell. I played a few songs from the new album of country Stones covers, Stoned Cold Country, had Grammy winners for both song and performance in Cover Me, and played a bunch of Texas country songs. I did a set of songs (Alabama Pines, My Tennessee Mountain Home and What I Like About Texas) that illustrate why a sense of place is so important to me in southern music, and finished with Anniversary Song for my wife Leslie!
This may have been my best show yet. I started with Will Hoge and the Black Opry's Can I Be Country Too?, played a lot of new music including Rhiannon Giddens' You're the One and Zach Bryan and Kasey Musgraves' song of the year, I Remember Everything. I paid tribute to the late Ian Tyson and finished up with Luke Combs' cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car.
11/30/23 The Lonesome Stranger
Many of my favorite Country and Americana artists, that I have been playing all year, like Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, Jason Isbell and the War and Treaty were nominated for Grammys so I played them all. I played tributes to two college friends we lost, Gary Stein and Adrian Sanchez, and played a bunch of new stuff.
This is a homegrown roots music show made on my PC without a great mike. I may eventually try to do this show on the radio on a regular basis. I played a lot of great soul music from Macon, Memphis and Muscle Shoals, mixed in some classic country, and played some tunes that blur the boundaries between roots rock, country and soul. I finished up with my Song of the Year, I Remember Everything by Zach Bryan and Kasey Musgraves.
My first show back on the air in several months, I reviewed the Grammy winners, played the new one from Sierra Ferrell, American Dreaming, and played songs from Rhiannon Giddens and Adia Victoria from the new My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall. I followed Kacey Musgraves' journey through weed and included a couple of songs about country folks raising contraband.
I started this one with a tribute to Dickey Betts, then did some 4/20 songs, a few new ones from Zach Bryan, Morgan Wade and Brothers Osborne, some Muscle Shoals rocknrollcountrysoul from Etta James and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, two Beyonce songs from Cowboy Carter, a few Texas songs, and my two candidates for my Song of the Year, Kacey Musgraves' The Architect and Sierra Ferrell's American Dreaming.
I kicked off this one with Steve Earle's Satellite Radio, then played my usual combination of new songs with a few classics. I highlighted the first release from Black Opry Records, Jett Holden's Backwood Proclamation, and included Allison Russell's contribution to My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall. Cover Me included two versions of a song by great Texas songwriters, with the listener invited to figure out who wrote it.
We started with tributes to Kris Kristofferson and JD Souther, had new ones from Reckless Kelly, Morgan Wade, Lainey Wilson and Zach Bryan, had some songs from the great soundtrack to Twisters, plus Jason Isbell's and Mickey Guyton's songs from the Democratic National Convention, new Black Opry and Ishkode (Indigeneous) material, previewed Chris Stapleton's and Sturgill Simpson's upcoming appearances at the Austin City Limits Fest, and had a classic Cover Me.
I kicked it off with the classic Gram Parsons song, The Return of the Grievous Angel, followed by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's cover of Tom Petty's Room at the Top (from GP to TP), then played new Reckless Kelly, Flatland Cavalry, Sunny Sweeney and American Aquarium. As always some Black Opry - The War and Treaty, Julie Williams and Amythyst Kiah. Cover Me was a classic covered by one of the best voices of our time.
