Mountain Blog

We’re putting the last minute preparations together for this Sunday’s show at the Culture Center here in Charleston. We’re looking forward to hearing a lot of great new music from The SteelDrivers, Abigail Washburn, Gene Watson, Scott Miller and Whitey Morgan & the 78s. 

Tickets are still available online, at Taylor Books locally and by phone at 800.594.TIXX. Read up on each guest in our Setting the Stage Newsletter where you’ll find links to each artist’s website plus some news on upcoming shows in the area.

Country music living-legend Gene Watson was featured in today’s issue of the Charleston Daily Mail and Abigail Washburn had a chat with The Charleston Gazette. Gene talks about being traditional country-to-the-core while Abigail Washburn talks about her upcoming project and her summer so far.

This week on the radio you’ll hear an encore presentation featuring The Squirrel Nut Zippers with songs from their 2009 Live Release “Lost In Sea.” For a couple of previews you can see an interview with Jimbo Mathus from our YouTube Channel “Backstage at Mountain Stage” below and hear the band performing “Put A Lid On It” as our Song of the Week.

In addition you’ll hear white-trash rockabilly heroes Southern Culture on the Skids, indie-rockers These United States, Nashville’s guitar-driven trio The Coal Men and 2009 Mountain Stage NewSong co-winner Grace Pettis. Click here to find a station in your area and tell some friends to tune in!

As you already know, tickets went on sale this morning for our upcoming Live Show Schedule. We’ve just made another exciting addition to the schedule with Jenny & Johnny, featuring Jenny Lewis & Johnathan Rice. They will join us Sunday, October 24 at the Culture Center Theater here in Charleston. Tickets are already on sale for this event too, and we’ll be making some more announcements regarding other guests in the coming weeks.

You can pre-order the duo’s debut release, “I’m Having Fun Now,” via Amazon. It hits stores next Tuesday, August 31.

October 3 we head to the WVU Creative Arts Center in Morgantown, WV for a show with our friends at WVU Arts & Entertainment. We’ve just added immensely talented guitarist and soul singer Raul Midon and emerging New York-based duo The Paper Raincoat to the line-up. Raul has been with us once before and Alex Wong of the Paper Raincoat accompanied Vienna Teng on her latest appearance on the show.

We’ve added. Stan Ridgway, he of Wall of Voodoo fame, to the bill for November 7 in Morgantown, along with Hot Rize and Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers.

Tickets for both of these Morgantown shows are also on sale now via ticketmaster. Click HERE for tickets to all the other shows.

Here is a video of Raul Midon on the Making of Synthesis(Click to order on Amazon).

Don't forget that tickets for our upcoming Live Shows go on sale Monday, August 23 at 10am. Tickets for our Charleston shows (Oct.10 and Nov. 14) are available by phone at 800.594.TIXX or at Taylor Books in downtown Charleston, and Online.  

Tickets for our October 31 trip to Buckhannon, WV are available online and by phone at 800.594.TIXX.

Tickets for shows at the WVU Creative Arts Center (Oct. 3 and Nov. 7) are available at TickeTmaster.com, 304.293.SHOW, or at the Mountain Lair box office on the campus of WVU.

Visit our Live Show Schedule for more and get all the ticket information HERE.

This week’s radio broadcast is an encore episode featuring Regina Spektor, Yo La Tengo, Will Hoge, Great Lake Swimmers and Sonny Landreth. Check out the Playlist and head over to our Affiliates page where you can find a station and air-time in your area. 

This encore is dedicated to Daniel Cho, the cellist and quartet leader for Spektor’s band who passed away tragically July 6. He was an accomplished performer and in-demand studio player whose credits include Coldplay, Katy Perry and John Mayer. He was also a frequent ESPN Soccernet contributor and devoted family man. There is a memorial page set up in his honor and Mountain Stage sends our best to his young family. 

As always, we have a preview of the show on our Song of the Week page. This week we feature Regina Spektor’s thought-provoking “Laughing With,” from her CD “Far.”

Whadaya need when you’re 8,000 feet high on Mount Fuji, at a near-zero degree centigrade summit? Our friend Mike Kappus took along his Mountain Stage sweatshirt to help stave off the altitude chill on his second trip to the peak. Mike, who is the head honcho at the Rosebud Agency, made his first excursion up Mount Fuji 20 years ago to celebrate his 40^th birthday. We bet he’ll be doing this again in another 20 years-hopefully with a new Mountain Stage garment.

Thanks for taking Mountain Stage with you, Mike!

As you can see by our Live Show Schedule our fall is coming together nicely. We’ve got some exciting shows lined up and hope you can come watch us record the show before your very own ears. 

We’ve got two shows in Charleston, two in Morgantown with our friends at WVU Arts & Entertainment and one in Buckhannon, WV presented by West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Tickets for the Morgantown and Charleston shows will go on sale Monday, August 23. Check out each show on the schedule for ticket info. Stay tuned for ticket info for WVWC.

All Charleston shows are at the Culture Center Theater and tickets will be available online, by phone at 800.594.TIXX, or locally here at Taylor Books.

All Morgantown shows are available through ticketmaster.com, at the Creative Arts Center Box Office, the Mountainlair on the campus of WVU, or by calling 304.293.SHOW.

October 3 we welcome back our good friends The Holmes Brothers and Portuguese recording artist Deolinda to the WVU Creative Arts Center in Morgantown, WV.

October 10 we will return to the Culture Center Theater for a show with New Jersey rockers The Hold Steady and songwriter/ pianist Brooke Waggoner, who’ll make her second appearance on the show.

We’ll be spending Halloween in Buckhannon, WV at the brand new Virginia Thomas Law Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of WV Wesleyan College. We’ll welcome multi-talented singer/songwriter Carrie Rodriguez, The Chapin Sisters and legendary American songwriter Jimmy Webb.

It's back to Morgantown on November 7 for a show featuring our old friends Hot Rize, featuring Tim O’Brien, Nick Forster, Pete Wernick and Bryan Sutton. Look out for an appearance by Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers too!  

Some of the best in new-string bands and modern pop join us November 14 as we welcome The Punch Brothers, The Infamous Stringdusters, Trampled By Turtles and The Weepies.

Mark your calendars for Monday, August 23, when tickets go on sale and in the meantime, enjoy these videos below!

This Sunday we’re heading to Bristol, TN/VA, the Birthplace of Country Music, to record episode #724 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in downtown Bristol. Tickets are on sale online, by phone at 423.274.8920 or by stopping by the Box Office at 518 State Street. 

For more on the live performance read our “Live on Stage” Newsletter (PDF Reader required)

In other Live Show Schedule news, we’ve added Flint, Michigan’s country music heroes Whitey Morgan and the 78s to our line-up for Sunday, August 29 here in Charleston. Morgan sounds incredibly like Waylon Jennings and writes songs that fit right in the honky tonk hymnal. Look for their Bloodshot debut album, recorded at Levon Helm's studio in upstate NY, in October 12, 2010. In the meantime, you can still get their 2008 album "Honky Tonks and Cheap Motels."

Tickets for August 29 are available now online, by phone at 800.594.TIXX or locally at Taylor Books in downtown. Also on board are The SteelDrivers, Abigail Washburn, Gene Watson and Scott Miller.

Stay tuned to the Mountain Stage Blog as we have some exciting shows in the works that we plan to announce very soon. We’re looking forward to appearances by The Holmes Brothers, The Hold Steady, Hot Rize and The Weepies, among others.

This week's radio broadcast is an encore episode featuring The Indigo Girls, banjo-master Alison Brown, acoustic blues-man Chris Smither, songwriter Gary Jules and affable songwriter and actor Jill Hennessy.

Check out our Song of the Week page to hear the Indigo Girls doing “Sugar Tongue” from their Mountain Stage set, then go find a radio station in your area to tune in for the whole show.

Amy and Emily invite Jill and Alison on stage for a couple of their best known tunes, including “Galileo.” This is a nice preview of the Indigo’s new double-live album “Staring Down the Brilliant Dream,” which is available for order here.

Stay tuned to NPR Music for individual guest segments, which include songs that may not have made it on to the radio broadcast. Right now you can hear Colin Hay, Ben Sollee and Poco, among many others. Coming up are Amy Speace, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Cordis and The Proclaimers (above).

Don’t forget about the Mountain Stage Podcast which you can download from our ARCHIVES or subscribe to it on iTunes and Feedburner. The podcast also contains songs left off the radio and, whenever possible, the entire finale song.

This week’s episode of Mountain Stage features former Men at Work front man Colin  Hay, who brings some songs from his latest “American Sunshine” plus a classic hit from his catalog. He’s an entertaining storyteller and a captivating singer, which you can hear in our Song of the Week, as a primer.

Entertaining is a specialty of Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, too. The Austin-TX funk rockers do a set filled with blaring horns and retro-soul, featuring songs from their album “Tell Em What Your Name Is!”.

Instrumental chamber group Cordis is based out of Boston, but the band’s Richard Grimes hails from West Virginia originally, so we were happy to welcome him back home to Mountain Stage. If you like what you hear, download some mp3s from Amazon, and read up on that Cimbalom, the fancy instrument you hear during their set.

You know and love the music of Scottish pop-rockers The Proclaimers, who also perform some of their hits along with their latest material.

You’ll also hear a set by Amy Speace who records for Wildflower Records, the label of folk icon-Judy Collins. (Stay tuned in October to hear Judy on Mountain Stage). Collins recorded Speace’s “Weight of the World,” which you can hear performed by its author on this week’s episode.

Find a station in your area to listen to Mountain Stage on the radio, and remember to stay up on the latest on Facebook and at NPR Music. Thanks for tuning in.

We’ve completed the line-up for our trip next Sunday, August 15 to Bristol, TN/VA’s Paramount Center for the Arts with the addition of Irish guitarist and renowned producer John Doyle. Originally a member of Solas, Doyle has been with us once before as a solo artist and will return at the Birthplace of Country Music to add a little Irish heritage to the musical landscape.

He joins Doc Watson, David Holt, Justin Townes Earle, Laura Boosinger & Josh Goforth and Bob Livingston for an exciting line-up of country music’s roots and branches.

Tickets are still available but are selling at a hot pace. You may order by phone at 423.274.8920, go online to The Paramount Center’s website or stop by their box office on the Tennessee side of 518 State Street in beautiful downtown Bristol.

Our next recording here in Charleston, WV is August 29 at the Culture Center Theater featuring The SteelDrivers, Gene Watson, Abigail Washburn and, just added to the line-up, Virginia boy Scott Miller doing a solo performance. Scott’s latest is “For Crying Out Loud" and this will be his second appearance on the show.

Tickets for August 29 are available online, at Taylor Books locally, or by phone at 800.594.TIXX.

Today's live show featuring Josh Ritter & Royal City Band, Judy Collins, Serena Ryder, Megan McCormick and Mary Gauthier is SOLD OUT! Thank you for your support. We'll see you at the Clay Center. Doors are at 6:30pm, Showtime is 7pm.