Alright here it is. This is my pitch for a satellite radio show or shows. I have absolutely no experience or qualifications for this gig other than the fact that I am a musician and performer who is first and foremost a deep, disturbed music fan who is obsessed with learning everything I can about the music and artists whose music i love both past and present. My first love has always been to discover new music. Even if it’s an artist who has been around for a long time I still want to hear his most current music first and then work my way back through the catalog of work. I am also interested in the paths that lead me to an artist and then from that artist to another. It’s not even always the music itself. I might check out a band because I read about them in the paper or in a blog or their photo intrigued me. I might check out a style of music because it pertains to a time period in a book I’m reading.
    I plan to start my show as a podcast on my blog and eventually pitch it to satellite radio and internet radio or old fashioned radio waves radio, commercial or public. It’s for whoever will listen and however I can get it out there for now. I would love to have a regular radio DJ job. It seems that some people on the air-waves have schooling and/or experience and others just seem to have the right personality and a connection so they wing it. Well, I have been in the music biz for awhile and have been a guest on some radio shows, and I love a good radio show when I hear one and have some great programming ideas. So I might as well try.
     If I had a daily radio show it would be built around my own eclectic taste and interest in music. The program would be based around my experience with music, with a desire to expand that experience on the air with my listeners.
     The first official rock concert I went to was at the hockey arena downtown when I was 13 years old. My friend and I were already record geeks by this time. We were in eighth grade and spent all our money buying records and all our time listening to them and reading the liner notes and plotting what we would buy next. It was time to go to a concert. My love affair with the guitar had blossomed and I had to see this concert. It was Eric Clapton’s first solo comeback tour, with Santana as an opening band. My life has been marked by pivotal concerts and albums ever since. The next year Bob Dylan released Blood On The Tracks and I discovered Patti Smith’s Horses. Seeing her live on that tour in Minneapolis was a revelation. Then it was Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Lou Reed, The Ramones, Elvis Costello, Led Zeppelin and more. The first club show I saw and had a beer at was with my dad for Roy Buchanan and that biting Telecaster that took my breath away. Then I moved to San Francisco where I saw The Dead Kennedys, Ray Charles and Bo Diddley.  A year and a half later we came home to Minneapolis in time for The Replacements and The Suburbs. I took my wife out on our first date to see Miles Davis on The Man With The Horn Tour. We’ve seen Bob Dylan in many incarnations over the years. One of the great discoveries was when we saw Ani DiFranco open for him in the mid nineties. We saw a slew of great concerts from under appreciated acts like Alejandro Escovedo, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams during the alt/country boom of the nineties and early 00’s. My love for the jazz and experimental side of rock led me to the music of Mike Watt which led me Nels Cline who eventually joined one of my favorite Americana rock bands Wilco. I recently saw The Nels Cline Singers (his instrumental band) at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville where a huge throng of experimental and noize rock lovers showed up.
     What I would like to do with my show is take one of these music entities that I love each episode and follow the paths it takes me through the course of a show. The paths won’t always be the logical ones that you read about in the bio, it is more apt to be my own way of stumbling down disparate paths of musical discovery. Often quite by accident, happy accidents most of the time though. I am also a fan of music journalism and will be referencing long out of print zines like Crawdaddy and articles by Lester Bangs, to today’s best bloggers, as well as the great music books and biographies, liner notes and more! We’ll be digging music and record info.
      Another thing I would like to do in a weekly show is explore the Nashville underground. There is so much going on in the Nashville underground that is cutting edge and exciting. From rock and roll to electronica to cow punk, Nashville has it all going on. The attention that Jack White and Third Man Records, and The Kings Of Leon and their label Serpents and Snakes, is bringing to the rock underground is leading the way, but there is a lot more to explore and some deep tracks that need to be played from other brilliant labels and artists in Music City. There’s a group of kids who graduated about five years ago who were already thriving at that time, from years of house concerts and warehouse parties and anywhere underage rocker kids could put on a show, who had labels like Infinity Cat, and bands like MeeMaw, Jeff, Be Your Own Pet, and you’re seeing those kids today on Letterman, the covers of magazines and at festivals where bands like Jeff The Brotherhood, Turbo Fruits and Pujol are making big waves. Well....what about those we haven’t seen yet? And what’s coming up next? There are also the myths and legends that have prowled and howled in Nashville’s dive bars for years who we will dig up and interview and get live tracks from too, like Dave Cloud and The Gospel Of Power. These could be some special shows.
     The other idea for a show that I have is a show based around the instrumental music of John Fahey and his counterparts. We could go down many a path of experimental avant-garde music as well as traditional blues, jazz and folk music that ventures out to the precipice of it’s genres. In his later years Fahey also worked with some experimental rock bands that lead down to another sonic terrain altogether. These are just a few of the radio show ideas I fantasize about. Who knows what could materialize? At least a monthly or weekly podcast to begin with. This could easily lead to a nightly show couldn’t it? It already is in my head and in my room. 
Rock on...