Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio
with John Weingart
Sunday Evenings from 7:00-10:00 PM
WPRB in Princeton, New Jersey
(103.3 FM & WPRB.com)

Summer 2008

I have forsaken the radio for the summer, a practice I began in 1991. It was harder to stop this year than last. I had tremendous fun this season thinking about, constructing, and reconstructing parts of shows in advance and then using them as jumping off points for variations small and large that would arise each Sunday evening. And it seemed to me that I heard from more people who were listening which is a major plus. I hope you enjoy the various substitute hosts who will be spending some of their summer Sunday evenings in the modern, windowless, basement that is the WPRB studio: Dr Cosmo (June 22), Garrett Broad (June 29, July 27), Kevin Connell (July 6), Bob Schremser (August 10) and Pete Labriola (July 13, 20, and August 3, 17, 24 and 31).

Please check out the Concert Calendar section of this webpage for information about some of the great concerts in the WPRB radio area this summer. Also, I have added some of my favorite new CDs to the Recommended Records section. I'll be back on the air on Sunday, September 7. I hope you have a wonderful summer.

April 2008 - Two Great Shows At the Prallsville Mill

Saturday April 12 at 8 pm: HARVEY REID and JOYCE ANDERSEN Quite simply, there is no better musician and performer in folk music today than Harvey Reid, and no better place to hear him than at the Prallsville Mill. This great singer, songwriter, humorist and master player of the guitar, autoharp, six-string banjo, and other instruments has a mystical connection with the Mill. He travels the world but his concerts here - this will be his 7th - are always particularly magical for him and for the audience. For the first time, Harvey will be joined by Joyce Andersen, a fine singer and guitarist who is also now his wife. Her voice and their fine harmonies should make this evening even more memorable.

Friday April 25 at 8 pm: JIMMY TINGLE FOR PRESIDENT! "Jimmy Tingle for President" may seem a surprising listing for a folk music concert series, but Jimmy Tingle is too good to miss. He is a wonderfully funny, smart, compassionate performer and social commentator about politics and modern life in general. His previous one-man shows have been held over for weeks in Boston, Los Angeles and elsewhere. His frequent television appearances have included David Frost's show on the BBC, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, and two years as a regular commentator on 60 Minutes II. He also recently played a TV talk show host in the film Head of State with Chris Rock. This new one-man show, presented at the Prallsville Mill in two acts, will draw from his 25 years of comedic insight, outrage and commentary to focus on politics and life in 2008.

The Prallsville Mill is a wonderful place to become a fan of musicians and comedians you may never have heard of before. Performers particularly love appearing in this beautiful historic building and quickly captivate both old friends and new listeners.

TICKETS are $25 each and can be purchased online HERE or by sending a check payable to Mill Folk Concerts to Mill Folk Concerts, 79 Rittenhouse Road, Stockton, NJ 08559.

RESERVED SEATS: If you are among the first 30 people to buy tickets to both concerts, seats in the front center section are set aside and held as long as you arrive by 7:50 pm.

This series of folk music concerts at the Prallsville Mill has been produced since 1985 by Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio as a benefit for the non-profit Delaware River Mill Society which works to restore, maintain and make publicly available the Prallsville Mill.

Saturday December 29, 2007

I'm very much looking forward to being on the radio tomorrow night. In recent years, or maybe it's decades, I've usually been away or otherwise busy on this Sunday in the midst of the holidays and someone else has done the show. So, I'm happy that this year it will be me. I've been thinking of playing Mike Agranoff's "Ballad Of The Sandman." It's a great story that takes place in this season - on New Year's Eve in fact - and at a radio station. When Mike was writing it, he talked with a few folk music DJs including me and ended up incorporating some of our thoughts, experiences and fantasies about radio. I'm proud to have contributed a small piece of the puzzle. I'm leaning toward playing it near the beginning of the show, probably between 7:00 and 8:00 pm, and then seeing what flows from there. I hope you can hear at least part of the program.

December 2007

I hope you will check out the "Best of 2007" list by clicking on "Recommended Records." The list, of course, does not reflect the "best" in any objective sense and for that matter doesn't actually refer to "records." But it is a group of albums I heard for the first time this year and particularly enjoyed and recommend.

All three of this year's concerts at the Prallsville Mill were, I thought, quite spectacular. Beppe Gambetta and Geoff Muldaur each gave great shows continuing the Mill's record of creating magical musical evenings. In some ways, they are similar: Singer-songwriters with an acoustic guitar, passion and deep, infectious knowledge, curiousity and inventiveness about the music they love, and great stories to go with wonderful songs and tunes. Their music, of course, is very different but both are performers who delight new listening audiences as well as serious musicians and their old fans.

Perhaps the nicest folk music surprise of the year, however, was the reemergence of Ginny Reilly & David Maloney as a duo once again well worth going out of your way to hear. Their show had a vibrancy and warmth that captivated and enveloped the folks hearing them for the first time as well as the longtime fans like me. Their fine voices and magnificent harmonies remain stunning as does their choice of material. More than half the concert was new songs, some from mostly little-known songwriters as well as several fine new songs of their own. Now, when people ask me what new music I'm excited about, I find myself recommending Reilly & Maloney. Unfortunately, they are still giving very few shows away from their home turfs in California and Seattle, but with a little luck maybe word will start to spread to the people running festivals and other venues around the country.

My radio show goes on year after year, but 2007's been a little different. First, I had the honor of having two hours of my show rebroadcast on XM Satellite Radio on XM-15-The Village. I was very excited about this opportunity to reach a larger audience and fully enjoyed the process of thinking about what I would play for those hours to try to cast my show in its best light and to honor and help promote musicians I most admire. But then it aired on XM, repeated three times during one week, and that was that. I received very few comments and began to wonder if XM's audience, or at least XM-15's audience, is no bigger than WPRB's.

Then, there was WPRB's first membership drive which showed that a lot of people care enough about the station, and my show in particular, to contribute financially. That was neat and and breathed new life into the station as a whole.

I used to hope I could keep doing a radio show forever, but now I do worry about how much of an audience remains for what people like me do - people like me being people who believe we have musical knowledge, taste and a sense of juxtaposition and sequencing that should be imposed upon others. I've begun to notice that some of the people I run into who comment on my show will say, meaning it as a complement, "That's a great show. I used to listen all the time." But then I will get a note or a call from one person who raves about a particular set of songs I played on a recent Sunday, and I am restored.

So, if you listen to my show, I thank you and hope you will continue to be interested and entertained by it. And, anytime you want to let me know you are, or were, listening, please have no doubt that I will be happy to hear it.

September 2007

I have mixed feelings about the end of summer but am happy to be returning to the radio this Sunday, September 9th, after 11 weeks away from Music You Can't Hear On The Radio. Some of the new recordings I've been enjoying this summer and will therefore be playing on the show in the weeks ahead come from the worlds of bluegrass (Russ Barenberg, Peter Wernick, Charlie Sizemore), folk (Bill Morrissey, Christine Lavin, Michael Black, Bob Franke, Suzanne Vega, Tom Russell), blues (Marie Knight, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz & Stephan Grossman), rock (Great American Taxi, The Subdudes, Steve Forbert), jazz (Chick Corea & Bela Fleck), rockabilly (Starline Rhythm Boys, Honky Tonk Confidential, The Derailers), and Nova Scotia (Gypsophilia, Rose Cousins, Cori Brewster and David Myles).

We'll be hearing a few live guests this fall starting with SPOOK HANDY on September 16th.

In other radio news, WPRB will be holding its first-ever listener fundraiser starting on Sunday, October 7th. Details to follow but if you ever listen to the Music You Can't Hear On The Radio, I hope you will be able to call in that night to support the show and the station. The entire week will provide an opportunity to show support for this unusually diverse aural resource that is the nation's oldest college FM station.

Finally, the big news about the concerts at the Prallsville Mill this fall with BEPPE GAMBETTA (October 13th), REILLY & MALONEY (November 3rd) and GEOFF MULDAUR (November 17th) continues to be that you can now PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE at www.veryseldom.com. Buying soon is recommended since chances are that at least one or two of these shows will be sold out in advance.

June 2007

I am taking an 11-week summer break from the radio to remember how to listen to recorded music like a normal person. Some great guest hosts with a variety of musical tastes will jockey the discs each week. I plan to be back on the radio on September 9th, the Sunday after Labor Day, once again excited to spend three hours each week in the windowless basement of a college dormitory.

In related news, I believe the two three-hour shows I recorded in the spring for satellite radio will air on XM-15-The Village sometime this summer. As soon as I learn the dates, I will quietly publicize them perhaps on banners dragged by planes up and down the Jersey Shore or through an announcement here. Let me know if you would like to be added to the e-mailing list to receive occasional announcements of news about the show and about the concerts at the Prallsville Mill in Stockton, NJ.

I hope you have a great summer.

April 2007

XM and ME - XM Satellite Radio is going to broadcast two weeks worth of Music You Can't Hear On The Radio on XM-15-The Village. I am very excited about this though I don't know quite what to make of it. I have XM in my car but I know very few other people who listen to satellite radio at all. And then those that do are divided between Sirious and XM listeners and then by the literally hundreds of stations on each. The good part of what seems to be so few people dispersing among so many stations is that satellite does feel in some ways like FM felt in the late 50s-early 60s with lone listener-wanderers finding the occasional great program and feeling they were the only listener or certainly the only listener they knew. This is an observation that I think I appropriated from a great new book about radio by Marc Fisher called Something In The Air. I recommend it highly.

The process will be that I will record two of my shows and they will be played on XM-15 at another time. So this means I need to have my PRB shows for those two weeks be suspended in time - no weather reports, no ads, no mention of The Worried Waltz or other programs on PRB, no musical references aimed at birthdays or other very current events, and no concert announcements. The final restriction and the only one I'm worrying about is that I will have to remember not to say "Good Evening" or to mention "Sunday." But, I am really looking forward to it.

So if you know anyone who subscribes to XM, please let them know about this.

March 2007

Nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize: To learn about a campaign to persuade the American Friends Service Committee to nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize, go to: http://www.petitionthem.com/default.asp?sect=detail&pet=3774

January 2007

Nice comments about Music You Can't Hear On The Radio came in from two musicians in recent weeks. First, Christine Lavin wrote that, "John Weingart is one of the best, most respected, most dedicated folk music djs working today." Then, New Jersey singer-songwriter Dave Kleiner wrote, "I was thinking about how actively engaged in your show I am when I listen, trying to predict what song you will play next, or who the artist is that is covering that Phil Ochs song. There is an unspoken dialogue between you and your audience, which makes listening an enriching and entertaining activity."

Fall 2006

I hope you can listen to Music You Can't Hear On The Radio this Sunday from 7:00-10:00 pm and also recommend it to any of your friends who happen to own a computer (www.WPRB.com) or live in central New Jersey, Bucks County or Philadelphia and have access to an FM radio (103.3).

We have an unusually large number of really good new albums to draw from on Music You Can't Hear On The Radio this fall including CDs from BEPPE GAMBETTA, DAVID GRISMAN, OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW, OLABELLE, CHRIS SMITHER, BOB DYLAN, JOHN GORKA THE DUHKS, SHERRY AUSTIN, PAT WICTOR, LAURIE LEWIS, SAM BUSH, TODD SNIDER, CATIE CURTIS, GUY CLARK, HAMEL ON TRIAL, STEVE GOODMAN (!) and others that don't immediately come to mind. And there are still all those ancient and more recent records with lots of great music that would, I think, be fun to hear on the radio. Also, in an evolving Endangered Record Project, I am trying this year to pull out some great songs originally released on LP that I don't believe have been reissued on CD.

September 2006

Thanks to Garrett Broad, Pete Labriola and Bob Schremser for hosting the show this summer while I took a break from the radio. This month, I will be on the air Sunday, September 10th and 24th. On the 17th, I will be attending a wedding and Pete Labriola will return to host the show. I will be mixing in some new music I've heard this summer with other older songs and tunes that are old favorites, unjustifiably neglected or otherwise interesting. I may begin to grapple with this idea I mentioned in my August entry to semi-systematically pull out great songs from LPs that have not yet been reissued on CD. My plan is to do it alphabetically, starting with songs from artists whose name start with "A." I'm still not sure if this will make for good radio, but I will probably try it, if not in September, then soon thereafter.

If you are reading this, you must have seen the new format and added information on this website. Thanks to Don Arrowsmith for all his creativity and work in making this possible. I would welcome your reaction to anything posted here and suggestions for ways to make the site more useful.

August 2006

I welcome your advice and suggestions on whether Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio should change in any way when I come back on the air on September 10th. I give this some passing thought each summer and then usually keep everything pretty much the same. But this summer it does seem that the ways in which people learn about and listen to music are changing pretty rapidly. As folks move into their iPods, add satellite radio to their cars and maybe houses, and download music of interest, just who is it who is listening to the radio both in general and to WPRB on Sunday nights in particular? And why are they (you) listening and what do you want to hear?

I wonder about myself too. What do I want to hear? I continue to receive and listen to up to about 20 new CDs each week, but very few of them grab my attention and gain my affection the way many of my older CDs and LPs did and still do.

One thought I’ve had for the coming year on the radio is to revisit my record collection and pull out LPs with great songs that, to my knowledge, have not made it onto CD. I might do it alphabetically, focusing the first show on performers whose names begin with “A” and then move through “B,” “C,” etc. so that by the spring I would be playing songs from the soundtrack of the movie “You Are What You Eat” as well as recordings of folksinger Bob Zentz. This could fill the entire show (except for taking some time to highlight musicians coming to the area in the near future) for 26 weeks, or maybe I should try it for just an hour a week or just an occasional show or ….

So, send me an email. If you like Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio, let me know why that is and what are you hoping to hear in the fall?

Summer 2006

I think it was in 1990 that I first took the summer off from the radio. I had already been doing the show for 15 years and my wife and I decided that we would like to have summer weekends that were not always truncated by my passion for spending Sunday nights in a windowless dormitory basement. Over the years, I found the summers off also led to enjoy listening to music somewhat differently than I do the rest of the year, feeling less compelled to always be moving to the next new CD in the hope of finding the perfect song for next Sunday’s show. So, I have done it again and will return to the airwaves the Sunday after Labor Day, September 10th.

Fortunately, we have three great guest hosts who will each host the show for four weeks this summer: Pete Labriola (June 18, July 9, August 20 and September 3); Garrett Broad (June 25, July 16 and 23 and August 13); and Bob Schremser (July 2, July 30, and August 6 and 27). Pete, of the Pennington Players and countless other cultural and otherwise worthwhile endeavors, and Bob, who has his own good show on WTSR in Trenton and also is part of The Yingling Brothers, a fine old-timey string band, have hosted the show frequently in the past. Garrett made his first appearance on WPRB this spring when he was one of the Rutgers University students who came to the studio to talk about the NJ Folk Festival.

Spending some focused time thinking about what I might want to play on my final show of the season on June 11th led me to sit amongst piles of records and CDs that have accumulated on the floor in the room I am lucky enough to have just for this purpose. They earned their place on the floor in one of two ways. Either they were new ones I had recently heard for the first time that I wanted to listen to with you, or they were older – anywhere from early in 2006 to early in the 1920s – and for one reason or another they had jumped off the CD shelves or out of the LP cabinets sometime since I had last put them all away – and that, I think, was last year when I took a break for the summer.

As I started separating out what I would take with me to the studio that Sunday – 2 bags holding a total of 80 CDs and an L.L. Bean bag that holds probably 50 LPs - from what I would add to the piles to be refiled, a large stack started to emerge of albums that I am intrigued by and want to listen to more this summer. When I was done, there were 27 of them. I think I’ve played all of them on the radio, but in some cases only one or two songs. These are the albums I would put in my iPod this summer if I had one and that I decided constitute my initial thoughts for the initial list of best albums of 2006. So, you will find them listed under that heading on this website.

I thank you so very much for listening to me on the radio and hope you will return again in September. I wish you a great summer and encourage you to check out the music that Pete, Bob, and Garrett will unearth each Sunday until then.

- John Weingart