"We who love this station need to do what we can to keep it going" says Catie Curtis
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Highway 61 Revisited brings back the spirit of the Sixties when folk-rock and protest music ruled the airwaves.
The show, which debuted in the summer of 2000, includes classic folk music and a smattering of classic rock from that era, including "hits" and less-familiar tracks from groups such as the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield.
The singer/songwriter genre is defined by such diverse artists from Jackson Browne to Gordon Lightfoot. Less-remembered lights such as P.F. Sloan and Tim Buckley are also tapped for the influence they left behind. Barnes also includes folk and folk-rock from outside the US with gems from Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, to name but two.
Finally, the program also showcases covers of the music from that era by contemporary and local artists, including Bonnie Raitt, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, and Patty Larkin. And, of course, there is always plenty of music from the master himself, Bob Dylan!
Barnes was born in Providence, Rhode Island and has lived in New York City, Puerto Rico, South Florida, and Jamaica Plain, MA. He spent his college years in the Pittsburgh area, often in the right field seats at Forbes Field or Three Rivers Stadium watching Roberto Clemente excel!
His music interests started with a small transistor radio and the sounds of Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and Del Shannon in his ear. Eventually, his tastes "segued into the folk music of the 60s." One day, Barnes said he heard an electric guitar tagged onto a Bob Dylan song and it changed his life forever.
Music has played a major role in his professional career. While working as a medical social worker in a hospital in Stoughton, Mass., he started the Blackthorne Tavern in South Easton in 1985, and was a co-owner until 1996. He booked all the musical acts there until he left to start Rockpile Compact Discs in East Bridgewater, which is now an online CD store.
Barnes began his radio career at WUMB in 1998 when he was tagged by Program Director Brian Quinn to do a Saturday morning version of Acoustic Sunrise. That became a Folk Radio format in 1999 and, in July 2000, Highway 61 Revisited was inaugurated. Barnes and Brian decided to tap into the relatively uncharted territory of the booming folk, singer/songwriter, and folk-rock scene of the mid 60s into the mid 70s.
Barnes is of the firm belief that the spirit of the time, and the music he plays from that era is timeless, influential, and equally inspirational today.