East Side Pride

When I was searching for my first place to live in Nashville in 1996, a lot of signs pointed East. Historic East Nashville was said to be a good place to find an affordable home in a quirky, developing neighborhood that was becoming an arts and music enclave - with a great view of the Nashville skyline to boot. So on an early house-hunting mission, I walked into the Radio Café at the corner of 14th St. and Woodland Ave. for the first time. Not only did I get a good breakfast, I met a guy who played drums with Steve Earle at the counter. I took this as a good omen. And once I moved into the ‘hood, there were many many great nights of music at the Radio, many of them by artists who lived right there in zip code 37206.

Across The Great Divide

Bluegrass is a music of bridge-building, spanning multiple generations and styles. It’s one of the only music forms in the world that assimilates hard-edged old conservatives and youthful progressives, making it one of the last places where extremely disparate Americans can gather to jam and enjoy. That diversity has been cultivated by a handful of musicians who’ve had credibility on both sides of the cultural divide, like John Hartford, Vassar Clements and our guest next week, the great Peter Rowan.

Strong Southern Stories

We Southerners take stories seriously. They’re our conversational currency, our living history. From Faulkner and Flannery to today’s bright writing stars like Nashville’s own Ann Patchett and Tony Earley, we celebrate those who celebrate life through words, just as we celebrate the regular raconteur.

Connections

I loved that old PBS show Connections, where host James Burke would wander around the world describing how one small invention centuries ago led to this and then that and then ultimately to some earth-shattering change like, oh, the Great Depression. He was one my guides to looking beneath the layers. But I was already on board that idea thanks to my passion for music. Reading liner notes and books LONG before the internet, I built a framework on which I could hang new bits of musical knowledge. You think you know Led Zeppelin and then you find out Jimmy Page was in the Yardbirds first! You fall for Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue album and find out that the piano player Bill Evans had a solo career as well, and you check that out, and life is never the same again.

The Real Deal On Your Dial

A note from Micol Davis was a reminder that Music City Roots: Live From The Loveless Cafe is about far more than just two hours of great live music on Wednesday nights. Micol is the female half of the husband and wife duo Blue Mother Tupelo. She and Ricky Davis are a bracing blues/rock team who can lay it down as a self-contained unit or scale up with a band. They’ve truly become friends of the show; we see them in the audience most weeks, hanging out and taking in the music and the atmosphere. This coming week, however, as Roots begins its Spring 2010 season, they will grace our stage for the first time as featured artists.