This week's Celtic Songlines features fiddler Gerry O'Connor, Cherish the Ladies, Ian MacInnes, from Scotland The Shee (pictured), Ashley Davis, Anúna with Michael McGlynn, Martin Hayes with The Common Ground Ensemble, from the UK the band Salt House, The Furrow Collective, Runa and the trio Molloy, Brady & Peoples.
Are high schoolers too old to go trick or treating? On this week’s News Cycle, students from Davis High School’s Blue Devil Hub "dive into the spooky season":
• Rowan Reising interviews Spanish teacher Carlos Diaz about Dia de los Muertos, and how he celebrates with his class
• Marion Delarue reports on Halloween traditions
• And Alessandra Trask investigates whether or not high schoolers are too old to trick-or-treat.
Dead Tracks.
It's Alive! It’s Alive! It’s Alive! Tracks.
Live Tracks That Head Off Into the Snow and Inexplicably Vanish.
It’s difficult to come up with a proper title for this week’s Live Tracks, the KDRT program nearly as old as that derelict house in the woods that has been empty for decades but where a faint light sometimes flickers in the attic window after midnight.
Songs, skits, Vincent Price recordings, atmospheric sounds ... as host Jim says, it’s one heck of a Halloween program. “Turn out the lights and grab a recreational beverage. A lava lamp is sweet, also.”
The autumn sky, with its earlier sunsets and stars made visible by the clear fall winds, feels like a good background for this week’s Cowboy Tracks.
Host Nancy Flagg starts with the title track from Throw a Saddle on a Star, the latest and 42nd album from Riders in the Sky (they have some NorCal shows in November, by the way — the closest to Davis is in Grass Valley Nov. 9). She follows with Barbara Nelson’s version of “They Call the Wind Mariah” from her 2023 release, Pick of the Litter.
“Listen for the flutes,” Nancy says, “making wind kinds of sound during the song.”
And then head deeper onto the trail for songs including the Timberline Cowboys’ “Where the Wildflowers Bloom,” “Annie Oakley” by the Biscuit Burners, and “Goodnight to the Trail” by Eli Barsi. The territory is wonderful, and Nancy will have you back home when the hour is up.
The latest Sometimes Folk “is informed by David Byrne’s music,” says program host Bill Wagman on today’s show. “The other night I went to see the Talking Heads’ concert movie Stop Making Sense,” he says, “and while I was watching I was thinking of David Byrne’s album Rei Momo, in which he investigates a lot of Latin music.” (The photo, from David Byrne’s website, was taken during his 1989 tour for the album.)
So Bill starts today's show with "Independence Day," a song from Rei Momo featuring Kirsty MacColl, then follows with her song “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis” and the Tom Tom Club’s version of “Under the Boardwalk.”
“I think that’s my favorite version of ‘Under the Boardwalk,’ he adds.
Grace Garden (pictured), created by neighbors to help neighbors, is a formerly weedy plot at the back of the Davis United Methodist Church at 1620 Anderson Road that has blossomed over the years into a prodigious produce patch. It has yielded thousands of pounds of vegetables and fruit, all grown by volunteers and given away.
Program host Lois Richter tells this great Davis story on her latest That's Life.
The Unitrans vintage red London double-decker bus is a familiar sight in Davis. Riding on the top deck as a little kid was a big thrill! On the latest Timeout Radio with Rohan Baxi, learn how public transit started in 1826 as an omnibus that shuttled people to a public bath. Also on today's show, Unitrans General Manager Jeff Flynn tells us that the student-run service logs over 1 million miles a year and carries over 22,000 passengers each day.
Then travel to India — home to 92,000 animal species, the wettest inhabited place on Earth, a Guinness world record-holding bus fleet, a 42,000-mile rail network, and cricket matches that draw 100 million viewers each.
“I love the fall,” says Sara TAPS, host of The Awesome Patrol Show. “It inspires the best playlists from me, and I love being able to witness nature’s physical transition of the colors, of the leaves turning, because it means we’re almost done with another year and hopefully we’ve changed a little bit too -- and so maybe our landscape is looking a little more colorful, or maybe we’ve simplified and gone monochrome and we’re just like totally in this favorite hue of whatever we want to be, and be doing.”
Sara starts this week’s program with “Nox Lumina” from Lux Prima (the picture shows the album cover) by Karen O and Danger Mouse, “one of my favorite records, and from there, we’ll ride a roller-coaster of sound.”
3rd Streaming presents 20th and 21st century classical, jazz, and motion picture music, and DJ Gary Chew has songs from all of the genres on this week’s show.
He starts with songs from two musicians from different eras who were born this time of year — “I Want to Be Happy,” by the Chico Hamilton Quintet, recorded in 1955, followed by “Blue Nude” by Aaron Diehl, released in 2013. (The photo shows covers from their respective records.)
Hamilton would have turned 102 on Sept. 20, Gary says. Diehl was born on Sept. 22, 1985. “He’s just a kid, only 38 years old,” Gary says, “but God can he play the piano.”
Each week on A Constant Grin, DJ Chris Mussen delivers indie rock — serious indie — plus Dada show descriptions, like the sentence on this week’s playlist: “Sweet blood bribing my reckless tuxedo egg enemies all winter.”
Chris says A Constant Grin, which has been part of KDRT for years, “is a home-recorded 30-minute maelstrom of mischievous miscellaneous music that can be heard every Friday at 2 p.m.,” plus via repeats and streaming. The current program starts with “Egg in a Frame,” by Palm, from its 2015 release Trading Basics (pictured).
