Wrecking Ball Radio Show On Ten Times a Week On Line

People keep asking when I'm going to do a podcast. There are folks looking in to the legalities of this. I don't want to get into a situation where I have to pay through the nose to promote other people's music. I'm doing this out of the love of the music but I"m not going to spend money I don't have in order to do it. If there's a way I can do it without paying anyone for the rights, sure, I'd do it. As for now, we're on TEN TIMES a week on line and we're looking for more outlets. In this kind of situation the radio outlets themselves pay for the rights, not me. So I like it better this way. Again, if there's a way to do it, I'd certainly love to know what that way is. I'd love to podcast the show. Meanwhile, please check the stations and showtimes for a time during the week you can listen... in the column to the right on this page. Our thanks to WCOM, North American Broadcasting, Wildman Steve Radio, Radio Basingstoke and Radio Bracknell for making this show possible.

A 420 Night in Carrboro? Kimock vs. Lotus on November 11th

Steve Kimock Crazy Engine will be live at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro the exact same night Lotus is performing right next door at Cat's Cradle. What to do, what to do? Hope to score tix to both and go back and forth between the two?

Music We'll Feature in Upcoming Shows

There's so much great music out there it's hard to keep track of it all.

Loving John Fogerty's brand new CD (The Blue Ridge Rangers Ride Again) of mainly cover tunes. The standout for me is a cover of one of his own post CCR songs, "Change in the Weather". Has a more acoustic feel than the original, which fits in well with the rest of this collection. On paper the songs seem like pretty odd choices. The Kendalls' "Heaven's Just a Sin Away", John Denver's "Back Home Again". Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved" (with guest vocals by Bruce Springsteen), Jumpin' Gene Simmons' "Haunted House" and perhaps, most oddly, Rick Nelson's "Garden Party". I say "most oddly" because it was such a personal song for Nelson as he lamented being thought of as irrelevant nostalgia - it'd be like doing a cover of "Ballad of John and Yoko" - it's hard for me to imagine "Garden Party" by anyone else. But, come to think of it, the lyrics probably seem very personal for Fogerty as well. Fogerty sings it with Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmitt, members of the Eagles, who are also probably tired of being considered an oldies act.
Many times I'll hear a cover by someone with a distinct voice - I'm thinking Willie Nelson covering Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans" and I wonder, why? And then a few years later the Willie version equals or even supersedes the previous recording. Maybe the same thing will happen with some of the songs from this Fogerty collection. I'm not knocking them at all. On paper, yes, it seems screwy, but the entire album is a winner, track by track.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's new CD Speed of Life is, perhaps, their best since the early 80s when they scored big with Rodney Crowell's "Viola, An American Dream". True to form, NGDB has always been a favorite band of mine and they do not disappoint at all here. The title track "Speed of Life" is the big winner but there are a lot of "tied of #2's" on this CD.

Mark Knopfler incorporates some moody bagpipes with his new mellow Americana cd "Get Lucky". The arrangements are a little off putting at first but after a few plays, they grow on me. Reminds me a little of Willie Nelson's "Stardust" album, except the songs here are not standards. They are Knopfler originals. One in particular ("So Far from the Clyde") reminds me very much of my favorite Dire Straits song, "Brothers in Arms".

Mindy Smith has a mellow 3rd album out called "Stupid Love". It's a little less country and more in the vein of Minnie Driver's last album which spawned one of my favorite songs ("Beloved"). There are a lot of gems here. Mindy reminds me sometimes of the lead singer of The Sundays.

Jason Eady is a new name for me but his new "When the Money's All Gone" sounds like an old friend. Some bluesy rockin' country, great lyrics, excellent production.

Danny Barnes, lead singer of one of my favorite disbanded bands, Bad Livers, is back with another solo outing called Pizza Box. Danny's still got that perfect hillbilly rock voice. Bad Livers f'n ruled, man. Glad to have that sound back for a new CD.

Monsters of Folk - the new supergroup consisting of M. Ward, members of Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket - is so good, it's a strong contender for Album of the Year. I'm hoping they'll stick around longer than the last supergroup I liked, The Thorns.

Phish is back together for a new one called Joy. I was never a Phish-head but this CD is instantly accessible to a casual fan. Lots of great, introspective, revelatory songs with great hooks. It's easy to dance to and I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

For hardcore bluegrass fans, you can't do better than Sam Bush and his new Circles Around Me.

Mat D and the Profane Saints have Dirty Town City Limits which I'd say is a cool combo of the sound of Steve Earle at his roudiest mixed with the punkabilly sound of Southern Culture on the Skids.

New Show Tonight

The internet's been plagued with techie problems this past week. Last Wednesday WCOM's stream was down and Sunday NAB's stream was down during my show. So we're hoping for better things tonight. Join me, won't you? 9pm Eastern for The Wrecking Ball Radio Show on WCOM. Excited to play you new music from a new "supergroup" The Monsters of Folk featuring members of Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket and M. Ward himself. We'll also play Band of Horses, Cat Power covers The Highwaymen (!), Blitzen Trapper, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eliza Gilkyson, Mat D. and the Profane Saints, Allison Moorer, Nanci Griffith, Bruce Springsteen, The Be Good Tanyas, Scott H. Birum and "a whole lot more".

Hope you enjoy.

That's 9pm Eastern til 11pm on WCOM.

Welcome New Affiliate: Wild Man Steve!

Wanna hear The Wrecking Ball Radio Show on a new time? Try Friday Nights on Wildman Steve Radio - a cool station we've recently discovered and hooked up with. Will give the specific times and start date very soon, keep flipping back to this page for details...!

8.29.09 ~ CORRECTED UPDATE: At this writing it looks like The Wrecking Ball Radio Show will be on www.wildmansteve.com Saturdays. 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central.

James McMurtry at Cat's Cradle - Tix to Give Away!

I have 2 tickets to give away for September's James McMurtry show at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro.

If you want to win, here are the simple, easy to follow contest rules:

Listen to my Wrecking Ball Radio Show this Wednesday Night and keep track of the first 7 songs I play.

At some mysterious point during the show - I will play a James McMurtry song. As soon as you start hearing the James McMurtry song, email me at the show wreckingballradio@gmail.com with that list of 7 songs - titles and artists. (YES, I WILL announce the song titles and name the artists, of course.)

Along with this list of 7 songs, send me a 3 song list of your favorite James McMurtry songs.

BE THE FIRST to get that list of 7 songs/artists from the show AND the 3 favorite James McMurtry songs to me via email (after hearing James McMurtry on the show) and you'll win the 2 tickets to see James McMurtry at Cat's Cradle Wednesday September 16th.

Got it? Ok then. Listen to The Wrecking Ball Radio Show this Wednesday Night Aug. 26th, 9pm through WCOM's website: www.wcomfm.org - or in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill vicinity on the FM dial at 103.5. It's a low power station so you'd probably be better off with the web-stream, depending on where you're at.

Hear The Wrecking Ball Radio Show with Jayson Tanner 8 Times a Week

It's really cool to know that the Wrecking Ball Radio Show is now heard 8 times a week on line. That's 8 chances for you to catch the very best of "Cosmic Americana": Contemporary Folk Rock, Acoustic Pop, Jam Band favorites, modern Bluegrass, a little blues & more. We like to say it's where Bonaroo meets Merlefest, where Austin City Limits meets The Shakori Hills Festival.

Hear the new show on WCOM Wednesday Nights ... with replays on Sunday and Thursdays on South Carolina's NAB. There are replays in the U.K. on Radio Basingstoke three times, and twice on Radio Bracknell. Check their schedules on their websites for exact show-times. Links to all the stations are in the column to the right.

Wrecking Ball Radio - All Over the World!

A Few Missing Playlists

I've gotten lazy about printing up the playlists - sorry about that. Here's a few current shows:

July 15th, 2009

Rosanne Cash - Radio Operator
The Damnwells - Bastard of Midnight
Todd Snider - Corpus Christi Bay
Keb Mo - Big Yellow Taxi
Steve Earle - Colorado Girl
Pretenders w/Emmylou Harris - She
James McMurtry - Fireline Road
The Greencards - Water in the Well
Slaid Cleaves - Black T Shirt
Jackson Browne - Going Down to Cuba
Bonnie Raitt - God Was in the Water
Dave Alvin - Redneck Friend
Andrew Bird - Oh No
Mercy Creek - Baby It's Not Your Fault
Bombadil - Cold Runway
Grateful Dead - China Cat Sunflower
Corinne West - Cabin Door
Ben Harper - Skin Thin
Dave Matthews Band - Lying in the Hands of God
Wilco - Deeper Down
Po' Girl - No Shame
Rodney Crowell - I Want You #35
Ben Kweller - Things I Like to Do
Jan Smith - Woman Your Guitar
Johnny Cash - Further On (Up the Road)

...

July 22nd, 2009

My Morning Jacket - Look at You
Be Good Tanyas - For the Turnstiles
Gillian Welch - Pocahontas
M. Ward - Stars of Leo
Cat Power - Love and Communication
Blitzen Trapper - Black River Killer
David Lutes - This Echo Life
Christabel and the Jons - More Than Friends
Frog Holler - New Year's Day
Crooked Still - Old Virginia
Elvis Costello - Sulpher to Sugarcane
Widespread Panic - Crazy
The Derek Trucks Band - Maybe This time
Donna the Buffalo - I Don't Need a Riddle
Drive By Truckers - The Purgatory Line
Gomez - If I Ask You Nicely
Ha Ha Tonka - Word Climbing
Indigo Girls - Love Of Our Lives
Josh Rouse - Givin' it Up
Jenny Lewis - Bad Man's World
Low Stars - Tracks in the Rain
Tony Furtado - I Wait for This
Lucinda Williams - Well Well Well
Band of Horses - The General Specific
Neil Young - Off the Road
Pretenders - Bless You

Music Sales Slump? I Might Have the Fix.

The music industry, it seems, is always looking for someone to blame for poor record sales. When I was younger, they blamed cassette tapes. "People will just tape their favorite songs off the radio!" Or, the fear was that people would just tape other people's records. And people did. But studies came out later that proved that people who did the most taping also did the most buying. And now, flash forward a few decades, it's downloads. Whether or not people who download the most also purchase the most remains to be seen but I have another theory about why music sales are down - besides the proven fact that people are simply spending more on computer games and DVDs than they are on music.

In the 80s, when I was still in commercial radio, we started hearing from professional radio consultants that the audience didn't want to hear a lot of patter in between songs. "Tune out factor", they'd say. It just wasn't important, supposedly, for a radio listener to hear interesting tidbits about the artists or the songs they were hearing. "Just shut up and play the music." It became kind of a mantra. And now after nearly 30 years of just shutting up and playing the music, most radio announcers, deejays, tend to be bland, unexciting, uninformed about the music they're playing. They play it aloof, pretending to be too cool to care. Any hype is reserved for the station itself. Lots of hype about station remotes, since deejays tend to make a lot of money doing a stint down at the local car dealership. Lots of hype about how the station you're listening to is the best so don't touch that dial. But not so much interest about the music itself. Worse, I've heard deejays actively diss the music they're playing.

There's a correlation in the retail world. Stores pay people to survey customers, and of course only the ones who have little else to do except fill out surveys get surveyed, rank sale items and specials as their main concern - not mentioning much about customer service. So what happens? We have plenty of stores now paying very little attention to customer service thanks to consultants who get paid for their surveys whether it really helps the stores or not.

I hate to sound like an old fart but radio in the 60's and 70's was a lot different than it is now. You had deejays who cared about music, cared about what they were playing. You could hear it on the air. Now? Not so much. And as we have fewer and fewer deejays who are passionate about music - and basically see radio as a way to get a paycheck without working in fast food - the audience is as bored with music as they are.

That's just my theory. Sticking with it til someone proves me wrong.

I hope I can start a trend on The Wrecking Ball Radio Show. I hope when you hear my show you will know instantly that it's music I am passionate about. I hope that it translates into sales for the artists I play. And I hope your life is richer for it.

Check Cat's Cradle September Schedule

James McMurtry and Margaret Cho, Son Volt and Chapel Hill's own Arrogance = all in the same week at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro this coming September. All I can say is, wow! I hope I have enough money left over to buy some tickets after I get the new Mac I need to get The Wrecking Ball Radio Show back up and running again. Should be soon. My apologies to everyone waiting anxiously for a new show.

Short Hiatus

My home studio's most important aspect has bit the big one so, until i can replace the mac, the Wrecking Ball Radio Show is off the air at WCOM in Carrboro for a bit. There's a few "in the can" at Radio Bracknell and NAB, and Radio Basingstoke has another one to play - and we should replace the mac very soon. How'd we ever get so dependent on these toys anyway? Sears can't change a tire if their computers go down.

Thanks to Joe Sr. from Joe&Joe's local show for filling in for me tonight on WCOM.

Our friends in HWYL rocking out at Southern Village