LITTLE ROCK — Sometimes a music fan must travel long distances to see a memorable show, and sometimes the music comes to the fans. Such is the case with Michael Johnathon’s WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, coming to the University of Central Arkansas this weekend.
The show will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall at UCA, as part of the school’s Public Appearances’ Night Out Series.
In a format similar to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, Johnathon will host two one-hour broadcast recordings Saturday night, featuring several Arkansas musicians. The show will be webcast live and later rebroadcast as two one-hour shows on 506 radio outlets, plus the American Forces Radio Network in 173 nations, every U.S. Navy ship at sea, the Bluehighways TV network, public television and online.
Johnathon, a singersongwriter and author/ playwright, grew up along the Hudson River, and in the early 1980s at the age of 19 he moved to Laredo, Texas, to work as a DJ on a radio station. One night, his life reached a turning point: when he played The Byrds’ version of “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and thought about the time he attended a concert by his upstate New York neighbor, Pete Seeger, who wrote the song.
After a couple of months of thinking and saving, Johnathon bought a guitar and a banjo and moved to Mousie, Ky., to absorb the sounds and lifestyle of the Appalachians. As he learned songs on the front porches of his isolated neighbors, he in turn performed at schools, colleges and fairs. He toured with Judy Collins and performed thousands of earth awareness concerts, plus benefits for farm families, the homeless and battered women’s shelters.
In 1998, he created his WoodSongs radio program, which he regularly presents from the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington, Ky., when he is not on tour. While at his home base, he has presented guest artists that include Emmylou Harris, Hot Tuna, Richie Havens, Janis Ian, The Blind Boys of Alabama and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He has released 12 albums, some of which are combinations with books or DVDs.
His 2007 play, Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau, about the final two days Thoreau spent in his cabin on Walden Pond, has been translated into four languages and has been performed more than 8,000 times in 42 countries. His latest CD, Front Porch, and his third book, Wood-Songs III: A Folksinger’s Social Commentary and Front Porch Manual, will be released this year.
“To me, the Front Porch has three meanings,” Johnathon explains. “The literal, actual front porch on a home, the emotional front porch of finding the love of your life and having her near and the global, universal front porch between nations in the world. The songs on the Front Porch album are mostly about family, love and the powerful key that makes it all work: forgiveness. The entire album looks at the emotional front porch we all desperately search for.”
Johnathon performed previously in central Arkansas at the now-defunct Acoustic Sounds Cafe.
Johnathon’s opening acts have Arkansas backgrounds. The Cleverlys call themselves a family bluegrass band from the remote area of “Cane Spur” in the Ozarks (although the band’s biography seems to suggest some “clever” stretching of the truth regarding their background).
Blue Rain Bluegrass Band, from Mountain View, won the 2011 Youth in Bluegrass band competition at Silver Dollar City in Branson. Bonnie Montgomery, from Little Rock, is a classically trained opera singer and an “old timey music queen by night” who will showcase both aspects of her voice. Nathan A., a high school junior in Northwest Arkansas, has been playing multiple instruments since he was 13 and now specializes in the harmonica.
Tim Crouch and Gary Rounds are a duo, with Crouch on fiddle, mandolin and guitar and Rounds on vocals. Crouch is from Strawberry and Rounds is from Batesville. Still on the Hill is also a duo — husband and wife Kelly Mulhollan and Donna Stjerna are from Fayetteville and play various instruments. Scott Odena, a Little Rock resident the past 15 years, is a national champion on mountain dulcimer. He will perform with Peterson’s Original Ragtime Band, which features David Peterson, a retired professor of math and director of the Ozark Institute at UCA, and Peterson’s wife, Donna.
For more information, see www.woodsongs.com or www.kuar.org.
Michael
Johnathon’s
WoodSongs Old-Time Radio
Hour
Featured performers: The Cleverlys, Blue Rain Bluegrass Band, Bonnie Montgomery, Nathan A., Tim Crouch and Gary Rounds, Still on the Hill, Scott Odena
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, Conway
Admission: $30-$40; $27-$37 senior citizens; $25-$35 UCA alumni; $28-$33 UCA faculty/staff; $10 students
(501) 450-3265, (866) 810-0012
www.uca.edu/reynolds
Weekend, Pages 30 on 03/29/2012