TwangCity

Early tomorrow morning I will be moving TwangCity's "studio"  to another localtion, where I hope I'll have better connectivity.The contrant issues with the DSL at the current location are a real pain in the neck, so we'll try a different approach. Keep your fingers crossed.

 

 

Meet Heidi. She hates weed whippers, just goes nuts when she hears them. And tonight she got into the studio, running around and freaking out, because the neighbor was running a weed whipper. Pulled the DSL modem out of the wall. Voila! No TwangCity. But we're back, it's cool.

When I was a kid, listening to the radio, I fell in love with country music. Johnny Cash, Merle, Hank, Buck, Loretta. And on public radio I discovered bluegrass. Wow!

Then I found out from my classmates in high school that country wasn't cool. I guess I didn't care. But I started expanding my music and pharmacological and horticultural horizons. The first Grateful Dead record I ever heard was an epiphany. It was Bear's Choice. Not really representative, huh? But man, what a record!

And I discovered the blues, and good old roadhouse barroom rock n' roll. But country stayed cool for me. Real twangy heartachy country. And I got a gig as a country DJ. I worked overnights, and I would sneak in Gram Parsons records, and Dead records, and lots of Emmylou. And, well, maybe some Stones. Then maybe an hour of Jerry Lee Lewis just for grins. Around that time I was one of about three white kids at Edison High in Fresno, where my friends turned me on to Johnny Guitar Watson and Albert Collins. Fresno pretty much sucked, but I made some good friends and discovered great music.

A couple of years later I found myself living in Northern California. Discovered Village Music, now gone. Discovered Bolinas, my home for many years. Discovered Kate Wolf and Nina Gerber. Wow. Damn!   Worked at a funky little free-form station  in San Rafael that  let me play whatever the hell I wanted. Played a lot of Grateful Dead. . New management came in and said "no Dead" . . . but we kept playing it, just called it something else. Like . . . "here's a local band that used to be called the Warlocks." Heh.

And I have a whole library of amazing soul music, mostly 1966-73, most of which doesn't make it onto TwangCity except by accident.  Maybe I should play more of that? I dunno. Some of it is kinda overproduced for this thing we're doing here. Comes from my days working at yet another funky little radio station.  I'm too embarrassed to tell you what I called myself  at that gig.

Anyhow, just listening to the Dead playing right now, and really  enjoying the music. Thanks Jerry!

 









 

It was weird sitting down at my desk tonight. Listening traffic  on TwangCity dropped off to almost nothing sometime this evening, from a decent high earlier today. Our audience isn't what it used to be before the recent technical troubles, but it's rarly this low. 

So what the heck happened?

 I checked my logs, and it looks like connectivity was OK. Usually when we have trouble with the signal, I can find some indication in my logs. But nope, it LOOKS like  clear sailing all day. So what happened? Did we play something realy sucky? I don't see anything  on the playlist that would make a bunch of folks tune out.

If you have a clue, let me know!

Highway songs, and road songs, and leaving songs. That's the theme tonight. The dog on the left, Rowdy the Rescue Critter, has nothing to with this post, he's just along for the ride.

I've been doing themes the last several nights on TwangCity. Last night was whiskey. I did one about memory recently. It's a cool way to mix up the music a little differently. I hope you enjoy these sets.

No, I'm not necessarily drinking when I play a set of drinking songs. I just love country drinking songs. And train songs. And songs about old dogs, and broken hearts. You get the idea.

Back in the days when I did free-form radio for a living, we did a lot of theme sets. Sometimes a bunch of us would hang out in the  studio, and take turns coming up with the next song in the long theme set, digging it out of the library and cuing it up. That lead to some classic DJ anxiety dreams . . . the song is running out, and you can't find the next record. Whew!

Then the library got locked up, and we had to follow a list. So I embraced it. I got all excited about the "science" of radio programming, and research, and ratings. I got really good at manipulating the bad research that passes for radio  ratings. I got quite  cynical there for a while, playing the radio game.

Funny thing is, I came back the other direction again. I ended up working with a guy who reminded me that you really CAN build a successful radio station around ears, around respect for listeners, and respect for music.  We did it, and topped the ratings here in town until the evil empire bought us and my boss jumped off a roof. The guy who eventually replaced him, after a short-tenured interim dude, was a major asshole idiot, so I told him off and  bailed, and went into the Internet thing full-time.

Hmmm . . . songs about asshole bosses? Know any? Know enough for a theme set?

I think TwangCity needs DJs. Probably ain't gonna happen, but it would be cool.

Radio isn't a jukebox or an iPod. Radio, even Internet radio, needs a human touch to really make that amazing connection that I know is possible.

Or so I tell myself.

For a lot of years, creating that human touch was my art. I would get up every morning way the hell too early in the morning, and tell stories on the radio. Talk about the weather. Talk about the news. Talk about the music. Create, on a good day, a damned good illusion of a real one-to-one connection.

Then there was Bob St. Bob. On those mornings when I never really woke up, Bob would take over my mouth and run the show  and I would wake up and take over around 10am.  Bob got me in trouble more than once. Bob is still there. I'll be groggily staring at my coffee cup at breakfast, and I'll make some wiseass comment in my radio voice . . . and my wife Lark says "put Bob back where he belongs!"

We all have, I think, our autopilots. And to hear the doctors tell it, we have a bunch of different areas of our brain all talking to each other,  a clamorous internal discussion.  Ever get in your car and drive off, and end up somewhere different than your destination? Ever find yourself at work, daydreaming while your body and maybe even your brain goes through the motions?  Yeah, well, you have your own Bob St. Bob in there.

Funny thing is, in his own way, Bob St. Bob is even a pretty good radio guy. He got a lot of practice, because I had a lot of rough mornings over the years. He's kind of a puker, but nobody's perfect.

OK, you might say Twang City is somebody's nickname for Nashville.

Not this TwangCity. Nope.

If TwangCity were a place, it would be a bar. The original name of this web radio station was Dogtown Saloon. I really don't remember why I changed it. I love a good bar, a roadhouse with a killer jukebox, maybe a bluegrass band or some live roadhouse blues. Yes!

Ever been to Heinhold's Last Chance Saloon, at Jack London Square in Oakland California? Wow. I  love the gas lamps and slanting floor (and bar). And the history. And the regulars and excellent bartenders.

WHen I was a kid, I stumbled into a joint in Hudson New York at 4:30 in the morning. Johnny Otis playing on the jukebox, chicken frying in the back room, plentiful  bourbon,  a three-hundred pound blond hooker, and three or four older African-American gentlemen who for some reason took a liking to  me and my friends, and bought us drinks and told us stories until dawn.

I remember another after-hours night, in Bolinas California, at Smiley's Schooner Saloon, where I ended up on the pool table with a sweet but tough biker gal who later took me home and cooked me a hell of a breakfast. I stole her recipe for home fries. Secret ingredient? Lots of bacon.

I really miss Murph's, in Selkirk New York, on Route 144. Patty Murphy made sure everybody got along, so matter what color or class or age or politics. And the Murphburger at 3am ranks among the best burgers I've ever had.

Then there's a nameless place in the hills somewhere between Granville New York and Rutland Vermont. You have to know it's there. wood stove is running full bore, 24/7, from September to St. Patrick's day, and always a pot of soup on top. Don't want to ask exactly what that meat is in the soup, if you're squeamish about critters.

Vermont has some mighty fine bars. Maine too. Florida. Texas. Oh, I can't forget about McGrath's in Alameda, where I get my bluegrass fix these days. And Apple Jack's in La Honda. And that tiki bar on College Avenue in Oakland, the Conga Lounge. Try the blood orange martini.

I got some free dental work at the Old Mill in Mill Valley in the late 70's. Spent some of the best times of my life just down the street at Sweetwater. Hung out for hours after a show at Pauly's Hotel in Albany New York, swapping stories with John Hammond. Learned to play darts at the Mayflower in San Rafael.

TwangCity is not a tiki bar, but you might hear some slack key guitar.  We're not a pub, but we can probably rustle you up some Guinness if you're thirsty. The floor isn't slanted, but the porch is. No squirrel meat in the soup, but we do have a cookin' wood stove, a hell of a music collection, and some interesting characters hanging out.   Welcome!


 

We're back to the "real" stream after extensive and educational troubleshooting.  Fingers crossed!

Sure seems like TwangCity has been hanging on by a fingernail this year. Legal challenges, financial challenges, hackers, technical issues. And, more daunting, personal bandwidth challenges.

It  sounds so easy . . . start your own online radio station, play the music you love. Add more music all the time. Share it with other folks who might have similar tastes. Promote it.

Not that easy.

But this is really important to me. Radio has been very important to me since I was a little kid. I don't get to do live on-the-air radio anymore, I  "manage digital initiatives" for radio companies instead.  Whatever that means. Looks good on a resume, I guess, pays OK, and I'm damned good at it. 

But TwangCity is the only way I have to scratch that radio itch. 

Funny thing I've learned, though. For me, the itch is not about performing. I spent 25+ years as a morning DJ, telling jokes and waking folks up with banter. I don't miss that much. Usually. But I miss playing great records, talking to listeners, blasting the monitors while I smoke a number, digging through the library for another great tune, meeting musicians, previewing new releases, tormenting the management.

I miss the smell of radio stations. Old studios share a distinctive smell. Probably the asbestos in the wall tiles, the spilled coffee behind the board, the cat living under the rack with her kittens, the overnight guy's stale smoke. Smells like radio. At the top of the page, a photo of  the station where I got my first fulltime radio job. For trivia buffs, that station is now KIGS, Hanford, originally KNGS, and the inspiration for a Journey album cover.

Terrestrial radio isn't like that any more. Hasn't been for a while. Won't be again.

And TwangCity? It's a bunch of computers hooked up across the Internet. Our studio is my home office, and smells like woodsmoke a little, but nothing like a radio station.

But sometimes it FEELS like radio. And I love the music. That's why I do this. Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening. 

 

 

In our second day with the new streaming server setup, looks like we're in good shape. Our stream has been pretty consistent, with no dropouts that we've noticed.

I had to reload the whole library into our automation system, when I downgraded from SAM 4.3.3 to SAM 3.5. I have yet to find a stable version of SAM 4, on any machine, with any configuration. It's a real drag.

Anyhow, you may hear some tunes that shouldn't be in the system, until I get the new database cleaned up. Thanks for your patience.

 

 

We've moved to a new temporary streaming server, although your existing links should continue to work.

Not sure what's going on with the "old" server, but I believe the issue we've had recently with the stream cutting in and out is server-related, not DSL related as I had thought.

Check this page for updates.