Today’s Celtic Songlines brings you ‘wonderful Celtic fiddle energy’

Celtic Songlines launches its musical lineup for this week with a song from Dramagical, a brand-new release “inspired by nature and Scotland's magical otherworld” from fiddler Seán Heely (pictured).

Host Craig Reynolds follows up the song with more “wonderful Celtic fiddle energy,” and it's all ready for you now on this week’s show.

Community Harvest of Davis, on Imagining Yolo Davis, July 28, 2023

Join us as John Aubert and co-founder Greg Gibs talk about the truly awesome Community Harvest of Davis, a nonprofit run by volunteers that harvests fruit from residential trees and donates it to agencies that feed people in need. Both guests are members of the group's board.

Community Harvest donates to Davis agencies, primarily the Short Term Emergency Aid Committee, with any excess going to the Yolo Food Bank and local churches. Its mission "is to provide food for people who need it, promote sustainable use of urban resources, and contribute to a stronger community." As of fall 2017, the charity had donated more than 250,000 pounds of fruit, and had a donor database of 200+ homes and more than 400 volunteers, including including members of 11 UC Davis service groups.

Cowboy Tracks present songs from the big deep diverse wide open

Host Nancy Flagg titles her latest program “Big Country,” to convey “the wide open spaces and the breadth and the depth and diversity of our country.”

She plays a song by that name near the end, and starts this week’s Cowboy Tracks with a tune by cowboy musician Rod Taylor (pictured), “Bonita Canyon Drive.”

Clyde recalls seeing Tony Bennett in the early '50s, on Davis Music Connections

Show hosts Ned and Clyde open this week’s Davis Music Connections with an audio clip from American Movie and memories about legendary singer Tony Bennett, who died on July 21 at 96.

Each saw Bennett perform, Ned about 30 years ago, and Clyde in the early 1950s (!) — few performers had a career as long as Bennett’s. “He hadn’t quite got popular yet," Clyde says. "We were staying at the Statler in LA, and they have a small room there, and Tony Bennett was doing about three sets a night. He had a single guitar player behind him. It was really cool.”

Ned riffs on American Movie, a movie about a guy making a movie. The late film critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars, calling it "a very funny, sometimes very sad documentary.” And then we move on to the music, starting with “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons.

Davisville, July 24, 2023: Living in Davis, reporting from Ukraine for NBC

Ukraine is far from Davis, but we reduce the distance today on Davisville by talking with Vince Sturla (pictured in the KDRT studio), a producer for the NBC News program Dateline who has lived in Davis for years. He went to Ukraine last fall to report on the war with Russia, and tells us what he saw.

“These are tough, tough, tough people,” he says. “I was there in November. It was snowing, it was cold, and these relentless missile strikes had really had an impact as far as taking out the electrical infrastructure across the country. [In Kyiv,] folks were typically without power for 20 hours a day. That’s light, electricity, everything.

Pamela Cohen shares the story of the Purple Tree Cafe, on Imagining Yolo Davis, July 21, 2023

Pamela Cohen, founder and board member of Purple Tree Cafe, shares the story of the Davis nonprofit on the latest Imagining Yolo Davis.
Purple Tree Café creates community-based employment for people with disabilities and brings people with and without disabilities together through food, art, and music. It offers handcrafted vegan and wheat-free baked goods, and organic iced tea and other beverages, at the Davis Farmers Market and other events, often serving from its signature bicycle-driven coffee cart -- an icon in bike-friendly Davis.

That's Life returns with a new series about one of the most important things in Davis: trees

That’s Life has returned, and host Lois Richter has chosen an apt subject for Davis and especially for this time of year: trees. This week’s program is part 1 of 2 or 3 on the topic, or, as she says, “as many as it takes.”

Her guest is Don Shor, who co-hosts the Davis Garden Show with Lois every week. He owns Redwood Barn Nursery and is a member of the board of Tree Davis.

Among other things, Lois and Don talk about some noteworthy feats of volunteerism, like Tree Davis' staff hand-watering 200 newly planted oak trees along Russell Boulevard west of Arthur (see photo)  for the trees' first three summers. Don adds, "that's 200 of 1,000 trees, roughly, that we're doing that for throughout the city."