National "Public" Radio

A lay song of the past

Punch Brothers 2016 for City of Ontario | Huck Finn headline, 3-day Bluegrass Festival coverage - we had the standard 15 minute allotment in the pit - Very serious management. Please do not use photos. Licensed per my copyright.

I feel the shadows now upon me
And the angels beckon to me
Before I go dear sisters and brothers
Won't you come and sing for me

Sing those hymns we sang together
In that plain little church with the benches all worn
How dear to my heart how precious the moments
We stood shaking hands and singing a song

My burden is heavy my way has grown weary
I have traveled a road that is long
And it would warm this old heart my dear brother
If you come and sing me one song

In my home beyond the dark river
Your sweet faces no more I will see
Until we meet where there's no more sad parting
Won't you come and sing for me

Songwriter: Hazel Dickens - Won’t You Come and Sing For Me

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The sounds of Bluegrass have been playing throughout the house, the last few mornings, in fact all day. Before that it was a multitude of genres. I am up, down and all around in the notes and lyrics. God has given me titles, music and images that conjure up in the complicated waves of my brain, leaving me awkward in a crowd, running for the keyboard.

This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh with in my mind
This I mean my mind to serve 'til
Service is but Magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is Magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is Magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself the magic length of God

- Songwriters: Buffy Sainte-Marie / Leonard Cohen, God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot

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July 1st 2016 Garrison Keillor, of NPR’s Prairie Home Companion sang, performed skits and ended his last show with the standard monologue about his fictional hometown, Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above-average.” He retired. One year later, in the fall of 2017 Minnesota Public Radio withdrew ties with Keillor amidst an accusation of inappropriate sexual behavior toward a colleague, a “friend” years prior to working together on the show. His statement, “if this is harassment, then every friendship must be abusive.” Reading several articles, I couldn’t tell you what is true or not. There’s a lot to be said about the topic of inappropriate sexualized behavior from anyone. We had a new president in the U.S., everything was weird, Keillor didn’t go down in lawsuits.

*Back to my sentimental slice of NPR. In the same year (2016) Garrison Keillor would leave the infectious Sunday afternoon radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, he would hand over the microphone to Chris Thile, who first performed with Keillor on the radio show in 1996 at age 15. Over the next two decades, Thile returned to APHC eight times performing both as a solo artist and as part of the groups Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers. I would also work with Punch Brothers in 2016. Short and sweet as music coverage is. Then in 2017 John took me to see the newly named “Live From Here,” Thile hosting “live” for NPR radio. It ended in 2020, citing lack of funds. Covid devoured just about anything and everything, deeply impacting live events, from Broadway to concerts.

In 2001, we moved into a new home and, I due to my laziness, not really really began to like the quiet. I didn’t order cable or whatever it was back then, DISH hanging off the roof?, for six months. It was bliss. On Sundays, with two radios in the house, ours an old Bose in the bedroom and a very old Crayola styled little box I had plugged in for all three kids growing up, I found A Prairie Home Companion. This, of course was after listening to a myriad of shows, one being “Car Talk,” referring to the work of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi. The brothers really got me with the show’s closing lines, leaving tears of laughter rolling down my face, snorting out my nose. Somehow it was the Tappet brothers that finally broke my roly eye-balled children down, “mom did you hear Car Talk this morning…”

Best line (read in perfect Bostonian accents): “Caaa Tauk was brought to you today by little old ladies that think tha listening to Cat Tauk.”

Upon one Christmas visit, during this time, mum was downstairs wrapping gifts, while I was upstairs wrapping, insisting she also listen to Prairie Home. I gave her the little Crayola radio box. We spent an hour or more wrapping, listening, as Keillor’s show entertained. Then he read a letter from home. I have searched for it. Anyways, it was very sentimental and I began to have tears, so I ran for my bedroom door and opened it quick, as I nearly banged into mum with tears running down her face.

Many things, as I’ve stated, have gone to the wayside, ruined. This was one of them for me. I left when public radio turned into public ousting. We all know when.

National “Public” Radio in the quiet weekday mornings, fetching coffee with non-bias news, is encased in my modern day laments of the old days, a narrative poem on Sunday afternoons, a treat, written in tales of adventure and romance.

What used to be for everybody is now a lay song of the past...

How appropriate Chris Thile would be on tour with his latest, “Laysongs,” singing about God’s magic. We can’t wait for the San Diego show.

Bluegrass, Americana, honed on front porches, strings speaking of faraway homelands, NPR introduced us to a subliminal consciousness of bluegrass sounds every Sunday afternoon.

A dream since those days, John presently plays in a sweet bluegrass trio, The L.A. River String Band, info on IG and here on Facebook. Two years practicing, playing, building a songbook, busking on the street, kids walking by with ice-cream, dogs sniffing the open mandolin case, for whoever wants to stop and feel something. They book gigs as family, work life allow for space and aren’t concerned about politics or “being seen.”

*For more on how NPR lost it’s way, read last week’s Uri Berliner’s piece - it made every single national paper and then some… He resigned this week.