- Saturday, May 4th on “Dark Was the Night” we’ll continue our feature on music of the “Boston Diaspora” during the 10 PM hour.

- Saturday, May 11th on “Dark Was the Night” we’ll feature songs concerning the downside of drink and drug during the 10 PM hour.

Dylan just continues to fascinate me.  While his voice it almost unrecognizable these days, he’s still writing some incredible stuff and is on the road constantly.  Another reason I’m fascinated by his music is the timelessness of it all.  You can say the same for so many artists as well, that their music is “timeless”…but Dylan’s music has the almost unavoidable calling we all go through.  At some point (usually in your younger years) you just start to realize that Dylan is, well….cool.  You hear a song you couldn’t stand the year prior, but now all of a sudden it makes sense…it strikes that one particular chord.  Every weekday afternoon we celebrate Dylan’s music with Daily Dylan…it’s a fun way to really curate the songs, to go deep, to find a rare live track etc…and on top of that we’ll be doing some extra celebrating on Dylan’s birthday May 24^th (more details forthcoming).  Finally, I’d also like to make it known we’ll be featuring Dylan’s music at our next WUMB Member Concert on May 29^th at Johnny D’s in Somerville.  We’ve got a pretty stellar lineup of musicians including Tim Gearan, Merrie Amsterburg, Danille Miraglia and Brendan Hogan who will all be performing the Dylan songs that inspired them.  So with that, I hope to see you at the show and I hope you have a terrific month of May!

Jay Moberg
Music Director

Laura Smith’s “Everything in Moving” is her first in 16 years. It comes after years away from the music scene because of a series of debilitating accidents which manifested in chronic pain. The good news is that after overcoming her dependency on prescription drugs through the adoption of non-narcotic pain treatment therapies she is doing well and has not only returned to recording but preforming. Her previous discs have been, for the most part, all original affairs, though she gained some notoriety for her recasting of “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.” In this one she has recorded gorgeous and very personal versions of a pair of traditional songs as well as three by other authors. The remaining five are Laura originals that are simply stunning.

On one hand, over the last few years, Stephen Fearing has been busy with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. On the other, he’s suffered through a divorce, moved to the east coast of Canada and had the recording of this project threatened by severe storms that, for the most part, missed New England but did major damage in Nova Scotia, his new home. Hence the name: “Between Hurricanes.” You’ll be pleased to know that this is not a down deal but is typical Fearing, mixing the playful with the reflective. One standout for me is a song about the Ocean Ranger tragedy. It was a semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit that sank off the coast of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982. All 82 crew members were lost and Stephan’s “Cold Dawn” stands with Ron Hynes “Atlantic Blue” as fitting memorials.

The latest to arrive was David Francey’s “So Say We All” It contains this message from David: “The songs on this album seem to me to encompass what proved to be a very difficult year. From the heights of joy to the depths of grief, the lesson learned was to celebrate every day spent on this side of the soil and to keep marching no matter what comes our way.”

That, I think, is good advice for us all, especially after the tumultuous April that we have just suffered through in our area.

-Dave Palmater
Mid-days from Noon -3pm

You can count on hearing the best-of-breed vintage country blues, bluegrass, old-time country, country & western, western swing, honky tonk, rockabilly and more.  Each week we have special mini-features.  Some recent examples are Merle Travis style guitar, or perhaps chicken songs, or even songs about Kentucky.  You just never know!  And of course our most popular feature is the weekly candidate for the “Worst Country Song of All Time” at around 10pm.  Your suggestions are welcomed, please email me here at the station, and I’ll try to dig them up.  Please check it out, Sundays 9 – midnight!

Sincerely, Jon Gersh (for Sandy Sheehan).

Traditional Folk
Sunday  9pm-Midnight

We’re adding more all the time, running the gamut from about 1925 to 1970.  I’ve been having a lot of fun playing these tunes, and you’will too!  It’s all about fun music, though you may learn a factoid or two along the way!  Join me each Sunday night from 9PM to Midnite for a very cool corner of “Traditional Folk”.  See you then!

-Jon Gersh.

It was early April 2004.  I was standing at the corner of—no, not 12^th Street & Vine like an old song says—but of Brookline & Lansdowne in Boston.  A few hours before, I had come off a plane trip from California.  Rather than sleep the day away, I dropped my duffle bag, showered, and soon after took the subway to the station nearest that corner.  By now you may be asking, “what’s with that particular street corner already?”  That corner is near Fenway Park.  And that was the corner to line up in vain hopes of getting a ticket to the Red Sox home opener.

Also on that corner was a 29 year old guy…kind of ragged, rugged, and scruffy…passing out postcards.  I took one from him, then noticed that the person pictured on the card was the same guy.  His name was Brendon Bates.  A young playwrite, he was pushing a performance of his play “The Savior of Fenway.”  It is now easy to forget how in danger Fenway Park was of getting the wrecking ball before the current ownership saved it.  The threat of losing the Olde Ball Yard brought about a grass roots campaign with bumper stickers to save it.  It was also a great emotional and metaphorical connection for a play.  Brendon and I both agreed that there is a lot of theatre inherent in Baseball.

Around the same time, I had been wandering through a bookstore in Coolidge Corner, Brookline.  Walking past a bunch of Red Sox and other baseball books, I thought to myself, “yeah they look great, but I’ve seen it before.”  And then one of them grabbed me enough to pick it up.  It was an anthology called “The Red Sox Fan Book” by Leigh Grossman (now with subsequent updates).  A poem by author Robert Macomber opened the book.  It had so much humor and pathos for fans who “have been there.”  Having been a fan for many years before I moved to Boston, I understood most of the references.  Actually, “understood” doesn’t do it justice.  I felt the warmth of the experiences.  I cringed from the pain.  Yet more than anything I smiled.  And laughed.  I was chuckling so much while reading this opening poem that I half expected a tap on the shoulder from a store employee, who would tell me to leave the store or buy the book.  Or at least stop disturbing the other customers with my laughing.  Fortunately that did not happen.  And fortunately for the store, I had decided midway through that opening poem to buy the book for a good friend in California, who is also a longstanding/suffering Red Sox fan.

Here is the connection.  Baseball has a poetry to it.  Why was April picked to be National Poetry Month?  I do not know.  But I could easily be convinced the answer is because April is when Baseball Season starts.

There have been good songs to go with Baseball at least since the ‘40s.  If you need good Baseball music for the season, a great place to start is Rhino Records Baseball’s Greatest Hits albums.  There are at least two volumes (Volume 1 starts with an excerpt of Doc & Merle Watson’s “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and also includes “The Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” by Steve Goodman, reason enough to recommend it).  Chuck Brodsky has recorded his own rich collection of Baseball songs.  You’ve heard some of his stories behind the uniform on WUMB.  He’s written songs about some of the game’s most interesting yet little known characters.  There is Eddie Klepp, a White player in the Negro Leagues, and Moe Berg—also the subject of the book “The Catcher Was A Spy.”  Berg played a few seasons with the Red Sox.  Many of Chuck Brodsky’s ode to the game’s stories are gathered on his The Baseball Ballads.

Musicians Steve Wynn, Linda Pitmon, Peter Buck, and Scott McCaughey come together now and then as The Baseball Project (more on the rock & roll side, with the occasional language warning needed).  They have two albums out under that name, and I kept hearing last season that they were working on a third, inspired by events as they developed.

Ahh, Baseball is back.  Those are some musical suggestions to help you say, “bring it on!”

Go Red Sox (and Dodgers),

Thank you for supporting WUMB!

-Perry Persoff

P.S.  If you’ve got a few favorite songs or books on Baseball to share, I’d love to hear them!  For

now, I’m going to go to my nearest ballfield and breath in the thrill of the grass (apologies

to W.P. Kinsella). Please email perry.persoff@umb.edu with any suggestions!

It’s also been a treat sharing with you recordings by folks we haven’t heard from for a long time,  like Kirstina Olsen, Michael Holland, Heidi Muller and Martin Swinger to name a few. It’s also been an equal pleasure, premiering or previewing new albums by David Mallett, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen Fearing and Martyn Joseph. Of course what would Acoustic Sunrise be without some carefully chosen instrumentals, and songs by Stan Roger, and James Keeleghan, and June Tabor, and Michael Smith, and….. well, you get the idea.

Why not join me Sunday Morning? You bring the coffee, I’ll bring the music. I can’t promise you that you’ll hear something you’ve never heard before, but I’ll bet you hear songs and tunes you haven’t heard in a very long time.

See you Sunday morning, and thank you for supporting WUMB Radio.

-Dave Palmater

- Did you know that many early 20th century commercial blues recordings were made in furniture stores, hotel rooms, and other temporary studios because of a lack of proper recording facilities during that era? For example, both of Robert Johnson’s recording sessions were held a year apart at makeshift studios hotel rooms and office buildings in Texas, far from his home in Mississippi.

However, something I never saw coming has blindsided me.  It is the new album by Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, called “Child Ballads.”  Anais has shown herself to be a very ambitious songwriter and artist.  You get that sense from the songs on 2011’s Young Man In America.  But she also is the one who wrote and staged a “folk opera” version of the myth of Orpheus.  Yes, staged.  It was called Hadestown, and began life as a staged production in 2006 in her home state of Vermont.  Four years later it arrived on CD, with people like Ani DiFranco, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and Greg Brown playing musical parts (Brown played Hades himself).  So yes, Anais Mitchell is very ambitious.

Which made me the 500^th person to think Child Ballads might be one of the more interesting albums of songs for kids.  At this point in a recent music conversation among WUMB staff, a fellow announcer off-handedly said, “yeah, an album of ballads collected by Francis James Child.”  I thought he was half chuckling.  I laughed.  I also remembered that this person is a folklorist…and so maybe he wasn’t joking.

He wasn’t.  Francis James Child was an American professor at Harvard.  Between 1882 and 1898, he published a five volume collection of English and Scottish ballads that date back to the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The 305 collected songs have made their mark on contemporary music.  Joan Baez, Nic Jones, Bob Dylan and Fairport Convention are among those who have sung or adapted these ballads (e.g; “Tam Lin” from Fairport Convention).  Now it is Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer’s turn.

Despite their often dark subject matter, Mitchell & Hamer’s musical treatment of these tales has a stark allure to it.  Hamer’s guitar picking is just beautiful, with a Renaissance type style (I happen to be a fan of that sort of thing).  He has a warmer, smoother voice than Mitchell’s.  Sometimes the harmonies are a little dissonant.  Sometimes they are pretty.  Both contribute to the dynamic imagery of the record.  The album’s production makes it sound like you are in a simple room with the musicians.  It’s a very intimate sound.  If you have a good pair of headphones, indulge yourself with them on this album.

Child Ballads by Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer.  It might inspire you to check the literature section of the library for the source material…after you’ve listened to the album a few times first.

Happy March, good listening, and thanks for being part of WUMB.

–Perry Persoff.

Thanks for listening!
-Brendan Hogan
Dark was the Night   Saturdays 8–Midnight