Ok, I volunteer at KASU and part of the deal is all the actual employees get a long vacation over Christmas Break. Which means I have to get all my Something Blue shows produced and turned in at the station early. Which is nice in a way because now I've got everything done and I don't have to worry about producing shows during the holidays. But it's naughty in a way because I missed Protest Tuesday.
Then last night I got to record Sonny Burgess and The Legendary Pacers at the KASU Bluesday Tuesday show in Newport, Arkansas. This is actually the second time I've seen The Pacers in a week. I also saw them when I took Joe Lee to Scotty Moore's 80th birthday party in Memphis Saturday night. Now Newport is a dancing crowd and by the end of the show they had everyone on the floor. The music was great and I hope I have good recordings for a future Something Blue show.
Mike Doyle, station manager at KASU, went to Newport early so he could talk about Dealing With The Media at an economic development seminar. After that we visited with Henry Boyce and spent a little bit of time talking about music at his Rockabilly Museum that heavily features Newport native, Sonny Burgess. Henry Boyce puts on the Depot Days Rockabilly festival in Newport and since Mike and I are both heavily involved with promoting Northeast Arkansas and other Delta musicians that's where the conversation went.
Arkansas Highway 67 has just been dubbed the Rock and Roll Highway and towns up and down the highway are promoting a variety of events and permanent exhibits. Also the ASU Museum is adding a rockabilly exhibit with a center exhibit being a recreation of Joe Lee's Alley Records studio.
So you can see there is a major push from all quarters to promote and preserve the music of Northeast Arkansas and to bring music tourism into the area. After all the closest big city is Memphis, Tennessee, the music tourism capital of the world, so we already have people visiting the area from all over the world. And our state capital, Little Rock, also has a rich musical history and a thriving current music scene.
The takeaway from this is no one person can make this happen. We need people invested in their own communities putting on events and establishing permanent exhibits and we all have to cooperate and support each other. We need NPR personnel, museum curators, volunteers, and most of all musicians all on board. We share a dream and we are working to make it come true.
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