On Thursday, July 1st  Gang of Thieves out of Williston and CoMutiny from Mount Mansfield Union High School are holding a benefit show for Big Heavy World at the Jericho Community Center. The show runs from 7:30 till 10 pm, with tickets costing only 5 dollars. There will be band merchandise, along with baked goods and other food and drinks. All profits from the show will go to support Big Heavy World, in order to help promote and increase awareness involving all types of music and artists based in Vermont.  Directions to the center are simple. Take I89 south to Richmond (exit 11), and take a right off the ramp. At the light in town, by the Cumberland Farms, take a left.  After 4 miles, you will be in Jericho, and the Community Center is on the Right. This event is all ages, and is alcohol free. This will be a great show featuring two bands from our local Vermont area, and you won’t want to miss it!

The Addison Independent has printed an interview wih BHW crew guy Ryan Krushenick in yesterday’s edition, promoting the Screaming for Change hardcore punk rock festival he coordinated, happening this weekend at The Hub Teen Center & Skatepark in Bristol, VT. For information about the festival, visit bristolskatepark.com

Words by Julie Seger

Cheryl Willoughby, host of the Radiator’s World of Music program, presents a diverse array of music that aims to touch listeners in some way. World of Music airs Mondays from 3 to 5 PM, on 105.9 The Radiator.

Entering into her 25^th year in professional radio, Cheryl’s experience has culminated into a unique program that is certain to interest a wide range of listeners. “I want to somehow incite listeners to experience something. People hear things differently, and I learn from the people who might hate something as much as from the ones who love it.” Cheryl selects music that will “strike a beat with what’s happening in Vermont, in the world, it could even be the weather that day.” Though she admittedly plays what she likes, Cheryl consciously strives to “acknowledge other tastes, to strike a balance between different rhythms, styles, and textures to mix things up.” This week during her show, Cheryl offered the World Cup “for your ears,” a selection of music that embodies the games and international excitement about the tournament.

A lover of all genres, Cheryl says music comes from two places: the institution or the people. Growing up north of Denver, Cheryl was raised on the latter, country music like Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash. Her appreciation for classical music also came at an early age while playing on a playground next to KVOD, Denver’s commercial classical station and overhearing their broadcasts. Cheryl remembers, “One day when I was 12  years old I walked over there and asked them what I could do to help out.” She filed albums, swept floors, whatever she could to be a part. From there she acquired a thirst for music and an interest in radio. When she was 12, Cheryl got her first FM radio for Christmas and “could listen on the radio to the music I had been hearing leak out of the station’s back door when I was a kid on the playground. It was completely enchanting, and I became hooked on the Met Opera on Saturdays. That’s when I decided I wanted to be part of it, and made that first walk up the hill to start hanging out there.”

Cheryl continued to work in radio while at the University of Northern Colorado, where she graduated with a B.A. degree from the school of Performing and Visual Arts. “I began volunteering again but this time for my college radio station, KUNC. I answered phones during their pledge drive and spent time there until I got a student part-time position about a year later.”

In 1998, opportunity arose for Cheryl at the Classical Public Radio Network in Los Angeles, a position that provided valuable experience and wound up lasting longer than Cheryl had anticipated. It was just a regular day in 2004 when Cheryl got a call from Vermont Public Radio, saying they had a job for her. “I wasn’t even looking!” Curious, Cheryl came for an interview and has worked at VPR ever since, now serving as the Director of Music Programming. The switch from L.A. to Vermont was “very welcome.” With winter as her favorite season and nature as a rejuvenating force in her life, Cheryl was excited to come to Vermont for many reasons. Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and hiking are her favorite outdoor pastimes, which she most frequently enjoys in her own back yard.

After a long and successful career in public broadcasting, Cheryl notices that those who work in radio come from many different avenues, including music, art, technology, visual and graphic design, and communications. As the medium evolves, its capability to touch individuals remains an endearing constant for Cheryl. “When you’re on the air, you’re really only talking to one person. Yes, there are thousands of listeners, but I’m speaking to you, alone driving in your car on the way to work, or a mother, making dinner for her family, or anyone. It’s such an intimate medium. And that’s what I love about radio.”

In her work at both VPR and the Radiator, Cheryl is impressed by the mission-oriented drive of her peers and the relentless energy they put forth to keep radio alive. “The people and places can be so different, but it’s also a community, and there’s this vibe of everyone doing their best.”

Outside of radio, Cheryl is also an accomplished artist. She enjoys working with watercolor, metal, found objects, and paper. “I might use sheet music, used stamps, postage marks, old battered books, whatever really.” Collage and photography are the mediums Cheryl finds most expressive, particularly when looking at what she terms, “items reclaimed.” Recently while helping out at a friends garage sale, Cheryl called dibs on a green bucket of rusted junk that had been pulled out of a river, the contents of which are certain to become her next piece. “Now that I’ve settled into Vermont and my duties here, my life is full and happy. But as an artist there are things I would love to accomplish, and dedicating more time for my artwork is important.” Cheryl would love to show her work somewhere locally in Burlington, like The Daily Planet, a place she found refuge in a  wonderful meal and a great glass of wine after that fateful interview with VPR back in 2004.

On and off the airwaves, Cheryl approaches her work as a chance to express herself. This ideal comes from John Coltrane, one of Cheryl’s all-time favorite musicians and an admirable artist. “To me, he is representative of an artist who had so much to say that he couldn’t stop searching, I admire that kind and that depth of expression.” Big Heavy World and the Radiator too play their parts. “They work so hard to make sure that Vermont’s artistic voices have a place to be heard and to keep engaging the next generation of creators.” Be sure to strike a beat with Cheryl’s World of Music program on Monday afternoons from 3 to 5 on the 105.9 the Radiator.

Radiator programmers Jason Cooley and Jim Lockridge joined programmer and Queen City Social Club maestro Michael Carney at Radio Bean for Less Digital, More Manual! vinyl club this Saturday. Good music, good time - thanks to everyone who came!

Anaïs Mitchell talks about Creation, Mystery, and Literary Values in her Songcraft

Words by Anthony Parshall

1. I want to begin with the intersection of music and literature, as your songs often tell stories. Do you make a conscious attempt to bring literary values to your songs?

AM: I grew up in a literary household—my dad was an English teacher—and I was also into lyrics. We had a library full of books and also records, and they were both part of the same family—folk revival, psychedelic rock. My dad pointed out great lyrics, and songwriting and songs were part of a poetic world…I loved stories. Maybe there’s no conscious effort. But you can hit a wall; you say, then let’s go somewhere else, spin into something else

Songs were my literature; I don’t read all that much but I love songs.

2. Where does the literary spark in your music come from? Can you tell me something about your literary values and how they developed?

AM: I believe in beauty and poetry…I was raised, as a kid and at school—in academia—to be able to converse in a world of ideas that’s bloodless. But writing moves me because it’s about imagery and details—immediate things smelled, seen…in body, memory, emotions. Writing is a chance to not just describe the world but to see the world as it is—not to see the world as a videogame,[or] to see things in quotations

3. Would you liken your songs more closely to poetry or prose?

AM: Songs are a distilled version of writing; you can’t stretch out like with prose. What makes songs different—even if you’re telling stories—is that a song has repetition of melody…a circular nature, repetition…A doesn’t necessarily lead to B; certain things come around again..and they have to come out of your mouth, which is different from poetry. I like to write in bathrooms—the writing doesn’t get lost in the world; I like to watch myself sing in the mirror.

AP: Singing a song perhaps is an even more personal gesture than writing a poem or a story because you have to put your body into it.

AM: Yeah, yeah…

4. Your record Hadestown not only tells a story with each song but also tells a larger story across the album. Do you, in general, map out the story before you begin writing or does the story evolve out of the songwriting process?

AM: In Hadestown, there’s so much story, there’s so much I want to get across in terms of exposition and everything else. In operas, for example, there’s so much space given to exposition; and Hadestown was more abstract than some of my other stuff.

Hadestown was like following a maze—there was no grand plan for the opera—on the part of myself as well as my collaborators…we were trying to put one foot in front of the other. If I did it again, I’d like to make an outline—who are the characters, how to explain things more fully…There’s the mysterious part of songwriting, the fever dream part and then the crossword puzzle; neither one of them should have supremacy…I wouldn’t have the heart to put in the time if I didn’t feel there was still something mysterious to the process…

5. Who are some of your favorite writers and poets?

AM: Well I was named after Anais Nin, so I read her diaries. I liked Henry Miller…Lawrence Durell—the idea of telling a story from various different angles, different layers of a story from different angles.
Poets—I like Yeats, Marge Piercy.

AP: How about more contemporary writers?

AM: I like Cormac McCarthy—I love reading the classics…I don’t have time to keep up with the contemporary scene…I like Dostoyevsky…there’s a brutal honesty in the Russians…some people might think it’s super-pretentious. I did read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer—that’s a good book.

There’s something major that I read recently—a collection of British and Scottish folk ballads, compiled by Francis James Child, which became known as the “Child Ballads”…it’s 305 folk ballads collected from Scotland and England…he compiled all the different versions…the stories are folk tales, fairy tales a lot of them…these are the original literature which was sung…the syntax is different, kinds of words are different, lots of stock phrases—“coal-black seed” for example…you learn about how to get across what’s happening in a story…

AP: Do you ever lift turns of phrase like a musician might “cop licks”?

AM: I’ve been messing with syntax in a new way, turning words around, using more archaic words—the word “bonny,” for example…I use the phrase “lady say”.

In newer songs, you might find a turn of phrase, like the way the words are ordered…in Hadestown I could become dorkier, taking on the roles of the different characters…I could dork out on the structure of the song…

6. How does the community of musicians you work with contribute to the development of songs?

AM: With Hadestown, I couldn’t write it alone and in my room…the fact that we did shows kept the wind in one anothers’ sails…we tried not to lean on each other too much…the music wouldn’t have happened as it did without all the musicians who were willing to stand onstage and make it work…

In terms of the singers, a lot of them are my heroes…they legitimize the work…I’m grateful for their voices and personalities…they’re like ambassadors…

AP: It must be difficult to give songs you’ve written yourself to others…

AM: It’s almost always better to let people be who they are…[Hadestown] really was a lesson in collaboration.

7. Could you say something about local music? Is there something intrinsically more valuable or relevant about a song written or performed in Vermont to a local than, say, one produced on the West Coast?

AM: …what a great time to turn to the local scene to make it special—support the bard that comes to your house…there’s so much music out there—how to find what you like in a large ocean of stuff? There’s nothing quite like music…I moved to Montpelier four or five years ago; there’s always something happening at the Langdon Street Café, the Threepenny Taproom…I think of the muse as a shape-shifter—it appears in different ways in different people.

8. Are you ever entirely satisfied with a song?

AM: I do know when a song is done, but I feel like there’s always an element of dissatisfaction…a song is like a record of a moment in time…in terms of writing, when something clicks it becomes like a ritual that I’d like to come back to again.

I wrestle with my head a lot…my mind tries to step in and tie a ribbon too tight…the songwriters I admire have a looseness to what they do…it’s good to have something missing…

9. Finally, how does the compositional process work? What comes first for you—chords, melody, words? Do you have any model for how you write a song?

AM: It comes all ways—one change, a melodic change that may not have words will come—that may lead to a song…sometimes the lyrics [come first]…I’m driven by the detail world, not the image world.

Oftentimes, if you’re writing a song, it begins in the mysterious space of memory and then you write the song, and the song becomes [for example] about my father—then suddenly you put a bracket around it—then you go back into the sensual world—see if there’s another feeling back in there…

The Funkhouse Show

Words by Julie Seger

Eric Wright and Eric Spencer, also known as Iggy Whistletooth and Mo Staxx, co-host the Funkhouse Show on 105.9 FM The Radiator. I met up with the men behind the Funkhouse to see what their show is all about.

Spencer, who hails from Philadelphia, moved to Vermont to finish up school and got “sucked in” to the greatness of the place. As for Wright, moving from Chicago to Vermont was a random shot in the dark that luckily stuck.

After meeting at work nearly ten years ago, Eric and Eric bounced ideas for a TV show around. Then the duo decided to take their chemistry to the airwaves. Their show embodies what funk is all about; quality tunes and having a good time. Both look forward to their Saturday 6-8 PM slots as a chance to impress each other with songs, discuss the events of the week, and whatever else is on their minds.

For Spencer this week, it’s the omnipresence of Stevie Wonder covers he’s heard downtown where he spends his days working. For better or worse, Wonder seems to have become the bread and butter of various Church Street performers. During their show Spencer takes a moment “to cleanse my soul, and the soul of Burlington,” then turns up Wonder’s Golden Woman.

Each Eric brings his own character and tastes to the show while entertaining listeners with casual dialogue and spur of the moment commentary. Wright jokes, “Some people think we’re crass, but we think we’re just hilarious.”

Wright’s “gone digital,” and brings his iPod to choose songs, while Spencer totes a bag of assorted CDs. Each switches off playing what they’re feeling at that moment. They’re here to amuse themselves, and hopefully their listeners too. In picking songs, they usually stick to what Wright calls “the big three,” James Brown, George Clinton, and Sly and the Family Stone. Spencer, a huge jazz fan and self-professed lifelong “radionerd,” throws in some of his influences too, including Frank Zappa and Jerry Garcia. Wright also admittedly takes some fashion cues from his Temple University graduation speaker, Bill Cosby.

The differences between Wright and Spencer keep the show fresh. Spencer’s a deadhead, while Wright refuses to convert. Music isn’t the only topic of contention; “Come football time, it’s all over.” Despite each man’s love for the Bears or the Eagles, Spencer says, “we’re both just proud of where we came from, but we’re here now and we love it.” It’s obvious how much these guys enjoy doing the show.

The Funkhouse show is all about two happy dudes sharing the radio waves and keeping Burlington funky. Look for them at Penny Cluse or Sneakers, or checking out shows at Nectars, Radiobean and Parima. Future plans include a total takeover of downtown Burlington, complete with their faces on buses. But really, the Funkhouse is making moves on Saturday night slots for the Radiator. A friend of the Funkhouse, Bart, will soon start up a turntable show after their program and keep the good times coming. Be sure to check out that and the Funkhouse Saturday nights from 6-8 on 105.9 the Radiator.

The Wildlife

Words by Julie Seger

“I just love bizarre and strange animals, I have a personal affinity for odd creatures” says 105.9 the Radiator’s The Wildlife host, Laurel Neme. Airing Mondays from one to two pm, The Wildlife offers nature buffs an in-depth opportunity to learn about some of the our planet’s most fascinating creatures.

Laurel Neme, a greater Burlington resident and author of Animal Investigators, (paperback available this fall,) grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. She earned her bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in International and Public Affairs at Princeton. As an international resource consultant, she has helped various clients in building contracts to manage their land and natural resources and protect wildlife. More recently, Laurel has begun research and writing full-time for her next book, and dedicates much of her time to The Wildlife.

It was promoting for Animal Investigators that sparked Laurel’s interest in radio. After being a guest on many national and international radio and TV programs including NPR, Vermont Edition, CBS News,  ABC News Nightline, and Shelagh Shapiro’s Radiator program, Write the Book, Laurel discovered how much she enjoyed radio. “I loved the experience and I loved the people.”

As Laurel became involved in nature programming, she realized there was a lack of depth and specificity that listeners like her would appreciate. Hence, The Wildlife, a show that offers in-depth, hour-long shows on a particular topic. Laurel pools from her many research contacts around the world, and gets to focus on usually one creature a show. (Today it was dung beetles.) This way, Laurel can ask the detailed questions that interest her and the listeners, providing an overall depth that many larger programs lack time for. Her professional background also adds to the show’s expertise. “With my training, I can ask the questions that go deeper into the topic, without losing the audience. I can be technical but accessible.” One of the best parts of Laurel’s job is getting to discuss fascinating creatures with top experts around the world.

Feedback for the show has been great. Laurel is thrilled with its success and eager to keep going. Transcripts of her interviews are now posted on popular nature website, www.mongabay.com, a testament to their value as an educational resource for those interested about a particular creature or topic featured on her show.

Now a seasoned pro, Laurel once was nervous to take on the airwaves. It was advice from her elementary-school son, Jackson, that helped ease her nerves. His tips are pretty good, too; important ones like always tell the truth, if you mess up just keep going, and remember your family and everyone who loves you.

As for the future, Laurel hopes to gain exposure for The Wildlife, finish her upcoming book, and to continue to study and enjoy nature. She’s been approached by numerous TV outlets and programs, but has resolved to focus on preventing animal crime without the cameras, so as to be most effective in her work. She’s not here to sensationalize, she’s here to help.

Laurel’s integrity harkens back to her love for creatures, even the odd ones, like the Dung Beetle. During her dissertation research in Botswana, Laurel and her other fellow “ex-pats” formed a softball league. The team’s mascot was none other than the Dung Beetle, a reminder of the link between the many exotic creatures Laurel admires and how they’ve become her life’s work.

Hi! My name is Elana Horwitz and I am really excited to have the opportunity to work at Big Heavy World. I attend the University of Vermont and I am looking forward to supporting local Vermont artists. I am interested in sociology, art, and environmental studies. By interning at Big Heavy World I hope to bring my love for music, art, and community development together to contribute something to the team as well as learn a lot in the process.

The second annual ‘Screaming for Change’ hardcore punk rock festival is July 3 & 4 at The Hub Teen Center & Skatepark in Bristol, Vermont.  20 Bands will be playing the mini-ramp from afternoon through 10pm, with camping and a newly expanded skatepark. Come prepared for swimming in Lincoln/Bristol’s legendary Bartlett’s Falls and expect a weekend of immensely positive music on the Bristol Recreation Field. For more info, contact Ryan Krushenick, rkrushenick@gmail.com or http://www.bristolskatepark.com