Diane Crumley's blog

Updated 12/1

For this week's show, Silver Nine Volt Heart host Rodriguez interviewed Jeff Sanford about his recent Cartoon Jazz Orchestra album, Playland at the Beach. This was as fun as it sounds!

Wildly creative cartoon soundtracks, heard on anything from the classic cartoons of the '40s and '50s with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to today's Anime, deliver an adventurous mash-up of classical, jazz, pop, folk, and everything in between. This music has a new home with Jeff Sanford's Cartoon Jazz Orchestra, a group of gifted, serious musicians who enjoy playing this zany, challenging music that swings like crazy.

Playland at the Beach was released by the Little Village Foundation, a California arts nonprofit that seeks to increase cross-cultural understanding by recording and producing underground artists whose music has not yet been discovered outside their community.

updated Dec. 10

THANK YOU for supporting your local grassroots radio by donating to KDRT! Our DJs enjoyed visiting their colleagues' shows during on-air fundraising, and seeing many of you at the variety of live music events during the past two weeks.  We're thrilled that your generosity so far has brought us to within 85 percent of our $7,000 goal. If it's slipped your mind, no worries, there's still time to donate.

The Davis Music Festival is back and celebrating its 10th year! The event runs from Friday, June 17, to Sunday, June 19, and hosts 40 bands in three days across six downtown venues. Opening night happens at Sudwerk Brewing, where KDRT will again broadcast live from the kickoff. This year Sudwerk will have two stages, and KDRT will be onsite for interviews and live audio from the north stage with The Big Poppies, Wolf Jett, and Royal Jelly Jive. The live broadcast begins at 5 p.m. Friday on 95.7 FM with audio streaming at kdrt.org. The Davis Music Fest benefits the Davis School Arts Foundation. For more information about all bands, schedules, etc., go to DavisMusicFest.com

Since its inception in 2004, Don Saylor’s Soup’s On event has raised more than $300,000 and increased community awareness for many worthy causes in Yolo County. In 2022, its final year, Soup's On will benefit Davis Media Access and will feature the live music of MUMBO GUMBO.

Our volunteer programmers are looking forward to a special week of programming Dec. 5 to 11 during our annual fall on-air fundraising.

This year's theme, "Creativity Runs in our Roots," is particularly appropriate because we've worked hard to discover new ways to support the vibrancy of our community radio station. Whether producing shows from home, or adjusting to new safety protocols and schedules while using the KDRT studio, our intrepid group of more than 30 DJs have kept the grassroots spirit alive this year! We invite you to support these efforts today.

Today we join with organizations in more than 75 countries to "unleash generosity" via Giving Tuesday donations for the nonprofit community.

It's taken a special kind of dedication from our KDRT volunteer programmers this past year to continue to create new shows to share, often from their homes, instead of from the inspiring, fun atmosphere of the KDRT studio. We've all felt that it's been especially important to keep the feeling of community connection going through the 24/7 programming at KDRT. 

We look forward to a time when the studio is filled again with live music and conversation from visiting musicians and local guests. 

Please consider a donation today to help support these efforts into the future.

We invite everyone to join us this Friday, Nov. 26, as we celebrate what we're grateful for on the day after Thanksgiving. We're calling it "Sip Local, Shop Local, and Listen Local" as we meet on the heated outdoor patio at Berryessa Brewing Co. in Winters, with the taproom open from 3 to 8 p.m. The live music runs from 5 to 8 p.m., featuring Robbie Thayer (lead singer for local favorites Bottom Dwellers) and a special guest.

As a grassroots organization, we support the "Shop Small, Shop Local" movement, and a fun variety of custom tie-dye t-shirts and swag created by the Berryessa Brewing crew, and the hyper-local handcrafted Amy Loves Mustard, will also be available.

Next week, we at KDRT, and our parent organization Davis Media Access, are joining groups in more than 75 countries that are participating in the international "generosity celebration" Giving Tuesday on Nov. 30. We hope you'll add KDRT to your donation list this year at davismedia.org/donate

Longtime KDRT programmer Don Shor is Davis Media Access' 2021 pick for Volunteer of the Year. He'll be honored as part of the National Philanthropy Day celebration, hosted by Yolo Community Foundation, at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 16, 2021 at the Davis Central Park Pavilion. For more information, see https://yolocf.org

Shor is probably best known in our community as the owner of Redwood Barn Nursery, and he modestly describes himself as “a guy who likes plants and jazz.” He produces two extremely popular weekly shows on KDRT, each with listeners across the country and globe. The Davis Garden Show, with co-host Lois Richter, is one of the longest-running shows on KDRT, and Jazz After Dark averages 6,000 downloads per week.