Tuesday, May 06, 2008

If you want bluegrass, country, and Americana music, the real thing, WDVX.com from East Tennessee is by far America's best radio station. Just click on "Media Player" for the music. WDVX is a non-commercial station funded by its listeners, so you might want to send them a few bucks. Every weekday at noon Eastern US time, which is 6 PM Spanish time, they have a live concert by an up-and-coming artist. This is worth tuning in to; occasionally it's bad, but usually it's very good. Non-Americans will enjoy the disc jockeys' Highland Southern accents.

WDVX broadcasts on several different frequencies out of several different Tennessee cities; one of them is Instapundit's Knoxville, and another one is Sevierville, where my siblings-in-law Kerry and Brenda (is my brother-in-law's brother my brother-in-law, too? I think so) live. Sevierville is right next to the Great Smoky Mountains national park, America's most-visited, probably because it's the closest national park to the big Eastern cities. It's beautiful up there, though the tourist-trap towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are best avoided unless you're going to see a band play at one of the many venues there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

John,
I have never been a fan of country or bluegrass music, but in a previous post you mentioned the likes of the "Drive-by Truckers".
I gave them a listen and now I am a big fan. Thank you.

El Mago del Dedo said...

John,
are you still updating your music blog?

any good live music venues in the BCN area lately for Country, Bluegrass...?

John said...

I was never a country fan until I heard the real thing, not the disco-pop Tim McGraw-Shania Twain stuff. I always liked Johnny Cash and Doc Watson, and that's about it, until I saw Dwight Yoakam play a show in KC in around 1993 and realized I'd been missing out on something.

There are supposedly some country bars in Barcelona, but I've never been to one. In Badalona every year they have the Blues & Ritmes festival, which normally invites some country acts--I've seen Buddy Miller, the Bottle Rockets, and Guy Clark there. Shooter Jennings and Stacey Earle played there, but I missed them. I saw Steve Earle at the Bikini a couple of months ago.

I've kind of let the music blog die--nobody was interested. I will start linking to some videos here when I figure out how to do it.