Down Home Radio Show

[Paxton and Fairfield perform "Poor Little Bennie."]

Down Home Radio favorites and past guests on the program Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and Frank Fairfield have recently been featured in the New York Times, following their appearance last Tuesday at the Jalopy Theater.  CLICK HERE to read the NY Times piece by Ben Ratliff.

CLICK HERE for the Down Home Radio interview with Frank Fairfield, and HERE for the interview with Blind Boy Paxton.

Here’s some more footage I shot at the Jalopy show:

The Cangelosi Cards, one of Down Home Radio’s favorite bands, have just completed a three month stint playing nightly at a club over in Shanghai, China.  The Cards are a brilliant old-time jazz, blues, country band local to Brooklyn who have been touring the U.S. for several years and are now starting in on the rest of the world!  Filmmaker and “Down Home TV” producer Chris Low happened to be over in Shanghai on another project and was able to catch up with The Cards to film this segment:

An extended interview with The Cangelosi Cards

And don’t forget to check out the Down Home Radio advert in the Old Time Herald Magazine – www.oldtimeherald.org – lots of great articles, reviews and more!

[Radio Jarocho at The 2010 Brooklyn Folk Festival.  Photo E. Smith]

Well, the 2010 Brooklyn Folk Festival has come and gone, and I can tell you that it was a great success!  It sold out every night, the new outdoor stage was a huge success and people had a great time!  The whole thing was professionally recorded by Don Fierro and we look forward to the release of at least one Brooklyn Folk Festival 2010  CD/LP probably over the winter on the brand new Jalopy Records label.  The music that was played at this festival was to put it plainly AMAZING.  I knew it would be good, but didn’t realize just how good.  As the organizer and MC I was very emotionally moved by the whole proceeding!  Truly.  Already planning for next year… well maybe I’ll take a break.  But I’m already excited!

Below are some photos I took at the festival.  All of my photos from the event can be seen at this link. Look out in the reasonably near future for some films from the festival shot by filmmaker Chris Low.  I’ll be posting up a bunch of those plus audio and some videos I took, etc.

[The Calamity Janes.  Photo E. Smith]

[Feral Foster.  Photo E. Smith]

[Rashad Brown performs at the outdoor stage.  Photo Susan Heske]

[Clifton Hicks (R) The Dough Rollers (L)  Photo E. Smith]

[The Tillers. Photo E. Smith]

[John Cohen.  Photo E. Smith]


[John Cohen screens his new film "Roscoe Holcomb From Daisy Kentucky." Photo by E. Smith]

[Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues.  Photo E. Smith]

To see all my photos from the 2010 Brooklyn Folk Festival Click Here. And check back for audio and video from the festival coming soon…

Here is a brief excerpt from the film “Homemade American Music” made by Carrie and Yasha Aginsky in 1980, featuring Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard as they pay a visit to Roscoe Holcomb.   This film follows Mike and Alice as they visit Tommy Jarrell, Lily May Ledford, Roscoe Holcomb and Elizabeth Cotten and recount their own history as musicians and students of the music.

The complete 40 minute film is available for viewing at: http://www.folkstreams.net/film,153

This incredible incredible website features literally dozens of amazing folkloric documentary films, mostly on music but also on other folk art forms.  It is worth it to watch everyone of these films- visit www.FolkStreams.net today!

Hey Everybody!  Look out for the next Brooklyn Folk Festival – May 21-23rd, 2010 at the Jalopy Theater!  Its gonna be fun…

CLICK HERE for more details.

Radio Unnameable Documentary Trailer from Lost Footage Films

Radio Unnamable on WBAI 99.5fm New York is one of my favorite all time radio programs.  Its host Bob Fass (probably arguably) invented “free form” radio with the shows inception in 1963, and continues to be its greatest practitioner to this day.  Over the years Bob has had an incredible array of guests on his program, everyone from musicians like Bob Dylan, Skip James, Muddy Waters, Rambling Jack Elliot, The Holy Modal Rounders and Sis Cunningham, to Leftist political/cultural figures like Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Timothy Leary, Wavy Gravy and so many others.  Radio Unnamable was one of the prime focal points in the media for the 1960’s era counter culture both musically and politically.  Luckily many episodes of this amazing program were taped and have survived so there is a large archive that is slowly being digitized, a little taste of which is up here on Down Home Radio.  This material will only be available for a couple days, I can’t keep it up indefinitely, so check it out now! –> time’s up on the audio, hope you enjoyed it, and keep checking back to DHR since I will be posting up more Radio Unnamable audio in the future.

The folks over at Lost Footage Films are in the middle of making a documentary about this historic radio show, and they need your help.  So check out their fund raising website and help them out if you can so they can finish the film.

On today’s show we hear a few selections from the Radio Unnamable archives, courtesy of Lost Footage Films.  The first is Jack Elliott and Arlo Guthrie live on the show.  This is a pretty stoned out episode from 1967.  Jack sings his talking song about truck driving and then Arlo sings a very different version of his hot off the press Alice’s Restaurant song with a totally different “story.”  They’re obviously having a very good time!  In the 2nd selection from Radio Unnamable on the show today we hear a remarkable recording that Bob Fass made as reporter.  In 1968 he traveled to Chicago to cover the protest of the Democratic National Convention which ended in a major over reaction by the first Mayor Daley’s police department.  Bob interviews protesters, gets tear gassed and reports on this now historic day.  In the 3rd piece of audio we hear Abbie Hoffman calling in to Radio Unnamable to report on his own trial as a defendant in the Chicago 7 case.   This was a landmark case were a number of leaders of the ‘68 protest were charged with conspiracy to incite riot.  The trial became a circus, a piece of political theater where counter cultural figures of every stripe paraded through the court room as witnesses and brought the 60’s counterculture more out in to the open, mass media, etc… on and on.  Good stuff.  This is a departure for Down Home Radio which usually sticks to folk music, but I just couldn’t sit on this stuff.  Hope you enjoy.

As a side note- I will be on Radio Unnamable tonight! with Peter Stampfel and The Dust Busters.  Bob Fass is still on the air and Radio Unnamable airs every Thursday night from midnight till 3am or so on WBAI 99.5fm and is is archived on the WBAI website.

(more…)

Here’s the 2nd installment of our new venture into Down Home TV.  That same night after speaking with Mamie Minch, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton stopped by and I was able to film a segment with him.  If you’ve heard the interview from a year and a half ago that I did with him (when he was only 19) then you know that he is a truly amazing guitarist, banjoist and stride-piano player as well as an excellent singer.  On today’s show Blind Boy plays a few guitar and banjo pieces for us on camera and talks a little bit about his background.  For more information, be sure to check out the extended audio interview with him from back in the DHR Archives.

Thanks go once again to filmmaker Chris Low and his crew for shooting and editing this footage.