Aug 30 2016
On the Radio: A Chicago Jazz Festival Preview on WXOX FM Louisville
Note: Updated below for embedded audio of the show
So, it’s happening again. Tonight, Tuesday (08/30/2016), I’m returning as a guest on the Louisville-based ARTxFM show Mingle, hosted by Kevin Coultas.
The show runs from 6-8pm (EST) on WXOX 97.1 FM.
If your location happens to fall outside the station antenna’s range, then you can listen in via the internet. Visit this station site page (LINK) to either listen via their embedded audio player or download one of their recommended apps.
And, remember, if you’re playing the custom ARTxFM Mingle drinking game… each time I mispronounce a musician’s name, you take a shot. Double it if I also misidentify an album title, song title, or geographical location. If I forget either Kevin’s or my own name, then it’s three shots. Might be a good idea to be proactive and call in sick to work for Wednesday right now.
And speaking of artists… here’s a tentative playlist of songs you can expect to hear. We’re going to be featuring music from the performers (and, in one instance, the Festival programming chairperson) at this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival. So, if you like what you hear, you should consider heading on up to the festival, which runs from Wednesday night, August 31st through end-of-day Sunday, September 4th… all it performed in and around Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. I’ll be attending this year. You should, too. Follow this LINK to learn more about the festival.
Now, here’s that playlist…
1. Random Charles Mingus tune, which Kevin always begins his show with.
2. Mike Reed’s People Places & Things – “A New Kind of Dance”
3. Anat Cohen – “Putty Boy Strut”
4. Whirlpool – “Remedies”
5. Charles Rumback – “In the New Year”
6. Ghost Train Orchestra – “Alligator Crawl”
7. Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas – “Destination Unknown”
8. Kendall Moore – “Focus”
9. Pharez Whitted – “Unbroken Promise”
10. Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra – “Throughout”
11. Christian Scott – “New New Orleans (King Adjuah Stomp)”
12. Orbert Davis – “Blues for the President”
13. Tar Baby – “August”
14. Chris Greene Quartet – “Future Emperor of Evanston”
15. Mike Reed’s People Places & Things – “Fear Not of Man”
And hopefully that’s enough music to fill up the two-hour show duration. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to start singing Pearl Jam tunes to a live studio audience (aka Kevin Coultas, poor poor Kevin Coultas)
*****
And here’s a link to the audio archive of the show, where you can listen after-the-fact to this show and previous guest appearances or, mercifully, those shows where Kevin takes the reins solo.
*****
UPDATE
Here’s an audio embed of my radio appearance in case you weren’t able to tune in live or, perhaps, because you’re a sick puppy and have fallen in love with my voice and need to hear it again at all costs. Note: The audio begins with the very end of the previous music show.
The playlist is posted above.
Enjoy! And seriously, thanks for listening. I really hope you find some cool new music.
Cheers.
*****
2. Naomi Moon Siegel – “Ukelady”
3. Psychic Temple – “Music for Airports 1/1”
4. Blommor Inomhus – “Ga din vag”
5. Dirty Snacks Ensemble – “Cousins”
6. Jasper Høiby – “Folk Song”
7. Stijn Demuynck – “Pouancé”
8. Dillon Baiocchi Quintet – “Between the Clouds and the Deep Blue Sea”
9. I Think You’re Awesome – “Be Kind To Your Neurosis”
10. Bryan Nichols – “Lake View”
11. Jacknife – “On the Nile”
12. Dave Nelson – “Twenty Thousand Feet”
13. Greg Ward – “The Menacing Lean”
14. Sound Underground – “Tiny Kingdom”
I’m very pleased to announce that I will be writing two monthly columns for the
Dec 17 2016
Five Birthday Candles: A Bird is the Worm anniversary
Back on December 9th, Bird is the Worm had officially reached its five year anniversary.
(Note to self: Yes, that’s correct. Five years.)
This post will be the 1,427th post on this site since it first opened up shop. And that doesn’t include all of the columns I wrote for eMusic’s 17 Dots (blog), their spin-off Wondering Sound, my new gig at Bandcamp and my seriously sporadic write-ups at Music is Good (dot org). That’s a lot of music, and all of it has been fun as hell to listen to and share the word. Here’s one such album…
Bird is the Worm looks different than it did when the year began. I’m thrilled with some of the changes, disappointed with some of the things that got lost in the move but looking at opportunities to improve upon them, and thinking about maybe changing something else up again. But after a lot of downtime from the change in domain and theme, I’m happy just to be back to where the site is featuring regular recommendations again.
Also new is my regular contributions to The Bandcamp Daily. It’s nice to have a writing gig again, but I’m especially gratified that it’s with Bandcamp… a retailer that I was on board with early as a music fan. It’s been very cool seeing how many jazz artists and labels have gravitated to it as a retail platform. Back in the day, it was a wasteland for modern jazz. Now, it’s all I can do to keep up.
The radio appearances on Kevin Coultas’s WXOX-fm show The Mingle continue to be fun. It’s also wonderful to discover how much of the music he features is also recommended on my site. It used to be that it was easy for me to cobble together a playlist of music for a guest appearance on his show… but now it takes serious effort to find albums that he hasn’t already featured. This, too, I chalk up as a good thing.
The year 2017 may open up some possibilities for me to help musicians find gigs in Kentucky, especially here in my new hometown of Frankfort. If you think you might be touring through the South/Mid-South in 2017, you should shoot me an email and we can chat. Some of these plans are very much in the conceptual stage, but they will be moving forward one way or the other. So, get in touch.
Speaking of live shows, it was pretty cool to cover the Chicago Jazz Festival this year. Here in Frankfort, KY, I do my own thing and keep to myself and have a certain isolation from all of the music and musicians I write about. It was nice to finally meet some of the musicians and personnel that work so hard in getting the music out there. I also got to meet some of this website’s visitors, which was no less cool. Covering the festival was a lot of work, but all of it fun, and I’ll be looking to do more of it in 2017. I’m already tentatively planning on finally hitting the Iowa Jazz Festival, and hopefully the Chicago Jazz Fest will be in the cards next year, too.
I have some other plans for the new year, but five years of doing this has finally got me wise to keeping those close to my vest until I can actually proceed on getting them done. A perusal of my previous anniversary posts could substitute for a very long, unaccomplished to-do list. But there’s reason to be hopeful for the new year, and I look forward to rolling them out.
But the current year is not quite over. The Best of 2016 reveal begins next Saturday, December 24th. We’ll be running down the top thirty albums of 2016, four a day, until announcing #2 and #1 on the 31st. I’ll talk more about that list on January 1st, when I typically unleash a rambling still-drunk-from-New-Years-Eve post upon my unfortunate site visitors. As it was before, it was not easy selecting just thirty, and picking the top three was no less painful. Any one of my top three could have been given the top slot, and I’ll probably continue to second-guess myself for as long as I’m running this site.
Thanks to all of you who stop by Bird is the Worm. I appreciate all of your kind words and comments. I appreciate those of you who I never hear from, too. It’s my sincere hope all of you keep finding favorite new albums. And an equally sincere thank you to all of the musicians who make life better with your creativity. It wouldn’t be the same without you.
Cheers.
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By davesumner • Announcement - Site & General • 10