Hidden Gems

Before I get to the meat of this post, can I just vent for a second? Of course I can, it's my blog. I watched Johnny Cash from San Quentin on CMT tonight. And what to my wondering ears did I hear, but of course, the ever so distinctive voices of The Statler Brothers, who spent many years on the road with Johnny. Barely in the mix, but I can pick out Don Reid's voice anywhere. Do you think I caught a single glimpse of them during the hour? It's kind of like Walk the Line... they've somehow completely been cut out of the Johnny Cash history. Grr.

Now on with our regularly scheduled rambling.

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks digging for hidden gems. Mining audio, if you will.

As part of our programming as the Satellite Radio Home of the Grand Ole Opry, (a title so grand it has to be capitalized) the Opry has been sending us select performances from their archives. Basically they send us hard drives full of songs they've cherry picked from 2000-2007. So once they get ripped into our system, I get to dig through them and find things that fit on my channel, US Country.

So far I've made three passes through the folder, doing my own little cherry picking. (Because I don't want to get 9 Alan Jackson songs ready for air and not get to Vince Gill. So I go through and find some girls, some guys, some groups and do a batch.) It's time consuming to build the waveforms for each song (which has to be done at the fast studio or Marty cuts off my chocolate) and then put on all the metadata and display information, and then there's the minor detail that you really have to listen to at least part of the song to make sure it's something you want to put on the air. Because here's a little secret you may not know about entertainers. Not all of them sound good singing live.

Sometimes it's just a matter of someone sounding like they have a cold or something, and there was one group's performance where the lead singer was just buried by the band. There was an Achy Breaky moment that was just... wrong, on so many levels. My favorite (or not!) though was the female singer that sounded SO terrified, her voice was completely shaking. Those are the ones that didn't make it on the air. Most of them are stellar though, like Garth doing "The Dance" on the Saturday late show, and every single thing I've listened to so far by Diamond Rio.

Along the way I've uncovered some really neat things, although not all of them necessarily fit on US Country. Craig Morgan and Ray Price singing "Crazy Arms." Keith Urban and Ricky Skaggs joining together for "Highway 40 Blues." Big & Rich doing "Save A Horse" in a swing style. Garth at the 80th Birthday celebration doing the cutest (8 minute!) version of FILP. Vince Gill talking about Ray Charles the day he passed away. Historical moments, captured forever.

These have been on the air since US Country came back from Christmas vacation, but I've upped the frequency of them now that I've got a pretty good pile of them ready to go, they're hitting about every four hours. They're a pain in the butt to schedule - and even more of a pain to mix in the logs - but I think they're totally worth it, and are going to add a lot to a channel that really is not much more than a Jukebox. (If I had my way, XM17 would be renamed The Jukebox.) So be listening for them and let me know what you think.

Tomorrow we discuss how NASCAR, an Earnhardt, and talking vegetables fit into my week.