Osiris Podcast Profile: Southern Songs & Stories

Rob Turner co-hosts the Osiris Media podcast Inside Out with Turner and Seth. Below, Rob prolies fellow Osiris podcast, Southern Songs And Stories.

I first moved to the South just under 30 years ago. One of the many joys of doing so was the fact that there were so many special and/or unusual small music venues for me to discover. Perhaps best of all of these was the Green Acres Music Hall in rural North Carolina. I had for many years completely forgotten about this special place at which I had seen many Flyin’ Mice shows, as well as scattered performances from the John Cowan Band, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and others. Just a couple of years ago a podcast I had discovered, Southern Songs And Stories, offered up a three-part series on the venue. These were so well done that I was transported in time back to the days when I was able to experience this special place. I even more than once got emotional while listening. This is the sort of thing that I generally do NOT get from traditional media outlets. This is podcast excellence.

Host Joe Kendrick didn’t with this series just bring forth all of the reasons why Green Acres was the quintessential, retreat-style, arborous camping/performance venue. He also used interviews with, and recordings from a wide variety of veteran musicians, music fans and music industry professionals to properly contextualize the eclectic history of this venue. This is no surprise to those of us familiar with the North Carolina native Kendrick. He is so esteemed in the Carolinas region that the musicians he features on his podcast happily allow him into their home for interviews. In fact, Green Acres Music Hall founder Steve Metcalf invited Kendrick to comb through Metcalf’s personal memorabilia in order to find whatever he needed to help tell the Green Acres story. Clearly Metcalf knew Kendrick would do the venue justice. Kendrick did exactly that through words, music and his own insight. Two of the musical segments he shared from The Flecktones and Acoustic Syndicate were not just songs those bands had in their repertoire at the time. Rather, they evidence Metcalf’s enigmatic band introductions and some of the free improvisation in which each of these bands were comfortable engaging while playing at this idyllic music paradise in the woods.

https://www.southernsongsandstories.com/blog/2018/3/20/green-acres-music-hall-part-one

Joe Kendrick got his start at one of our nation’s finest college radio stations, WXYC (located at the main Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina). Kendrick would upon graduation end up periodically volunteering at the outstanding WNCW in western North Carolina, making a name for himself in Wilmington radio across the state and starting a successful landscape lighting business. It was a great day for radio listeners when he ended up leaving this lucrative business to aggressively pursue a radio career full time. He ended up back at WNCW, first as a night time and fill-in DJ, but then he was offered the morning show.

“Even though I had been a volunteer and then part-time staffer for more than 12 years at the time,” Kendrick said. “I was still a bench player, and this move would bump me up to a starter. It was a big deal, and not everyone was sold on the guy who had always been known as a torchbearer for the alternative and progressive side of programming here. But Kim Clark, the former program director and the morning host who was then moving on, had great confidence in me, and it was her endorsement that sealed the deal. I will always be grateful for her vote of confidence.”

Clark was just exactly correct as Joe crushed the morning slot, and he would ultimately take the mantle of program director. Experiences and conversations he had on and off air in North Carolina are essentially the genesis of Southern Songs And Stories – as Kendrick wanted a platform where these thoughts could be presented in a non-truncated fashion.

In 2007, Kendrick also began hosting What It Is. This brief, weekday morning show featured various writers, artists, DJs and music industry professionals to tackle a wide variety of topics. Kendrick’s conversation facilitation skills were greatly nurtured by this program. When 2010 rolled around, Kendrick had begun working with videographer/producer Tony Preston on Lingua Musica separately from WNCW. This video series evolved into an interactive live music series, some of which are still viewable on the program’s YouTube channel.

Southern Songs And Stories would begin as a video series in the spirit of Lingua Musica, but with a more conventional documentary series approach. Kendrick and crew went to the SpringSkunk Music Festival in 2017 in order to feature Jon Stickley, and this is where Kendrick schemed the idea of having an audio version of the show. Kendrick was working with Aaron Morrell on a video piece, which included recording audio as well.

“While at the Albino Skunk Music Fest, I started getting audio from festival-goers and staff as an adjunct to that primary goal,” Kendrick said. “And that audio, along with music from the festival, became the foundation for my first podcasts.”

Southern Songs And Stories was born, and with his Stickley and Acoustic Syndicate episodes we the listeners learned that Kendrick didn’t just want to tell these musicians’ stories, but he also wanted to bring out how said stories fit into, and had been artistically influenced by Southern music and culture. Kendrick’s artful way of doing so started revealing itself more and more with subsequent episodes. His profiles of Jim Lauderdale, Marcus King, The Steel Wheels, and The War And Treaty are meaningful windows into the life and artistic decisions of southern musicians. Sometimes the artists answer first with “I’m not sure how the South has influenced me,” but then go on to relate quite the opposite. Kendrick has a way of eliciting insight that even artists themselves seem to have not considered. Kendrick also speaks with broadcast professionalism, with carefully chosen words and few of the extraneous (and sometimes repeated) words that pollute other podcasts. He also peppers the shows with carefully chosen music, including adeptly-placed, unreleased live musical segments. These are more of the things that are exactly what I look for in quality music podcasts.

It is no surprise that he would catch the savvy ears of Osiris co-founders RJ Bee and Tom Marshall, and the show has gained thousands of new ears thanks to becoming a member of Osiris Media. And now as if to come full circle once again – a capsule version of the show also airs on WNCW. While Kendrick’s Southern Songs And Stories most certainly stands on its own, I also consider it to be essential listening for any fellow rabid WNCW listener, or for anyone with a sincere interest in the rich historical legacy of the South.

There are many more examples of Kendrick at his best – for example, the episode on South Carolina bluesman Mac Arnold. Truly a piece of history, this episode finds Kendrick evidencing how a sense of place can greatly influence a wide variety of musicians. Arnold’s words are featured, and we learn that he worked for a while as a producer on Soul Train. Very much in the Kendrick style, Joe also shares the words blues veterans Max Hightower (founding member of Plate Full of Blues) and Freddie Vanderford (longtime associate of the legendary South Carolina comedian/blues musician, Peg Leg Sam) to bring us deep into the musical world of the northern South Carolina region from which Arnold came. Whether it’s the moonshine that was consumed, the way musical genres melded when music was performed or the subtle ways attendees were “kept in line” – Kendrick’s work reminds us that these all serve to mold musicians into what they become.

Another episode traces the roots of the song “Wagon Wheel” from Big Bill Broonzy to Li’l Son Jackson to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup to Bob Dylan to Old Crow Medicine Show (with other stops along the way). This song can be immediately unifying live and strikingly polarizing in conversation….so much so that Kendrick accurately refers to it as, “a third rail kind of song for a lot of people.” Still, other episodes find Phil Cook and MC Taylor letting us peek behind the Hiss Golden Messenger curtain, a revelation with regard to the authenticity behind and in his most recent episode we learn why Dolly Parton remains one of the most enduring icons in country music.

As fun as it was many years ago to find new music venues upon my arrival to the south, these days I find great joy in discovering new podcasts. Southern Songs And Stories is not only a fun listen, but it continues to educate me on this part of the country which I proudly call home and many of the musicians who have been impacted by it.

.panel-article .list-posts > li {
border-style: dotted;
}
.panel-article .list-posts > li:last-of-type {
border-bottom-width:0;
}
.panel-article .list-posts .excerpt {
margin: 3px 0 0;
}
.panel-article .list-posts .btn-sm {
margin-top: 10px;
padding: 3px 10px;
}

Source: JamBase.com