Tag: public radio

Chris Thile Considers His Community and Christian Upbringing in ‘Laysongs’ (1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

For a while, Chris Thile might have been the busiest man in bluegrass. The former public radio host has snagged four Grammy awards and a prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant,” all the while maintaining his status as a founding member of Punch Brothers, the Goat Rodeo Sessions, and Nickel Creek, collaborating with plenty of other Americana firebrands along the way. But on his latest album, Laysongs, Thile slowed down.

A solo album in the truest sense — it’s just Thile and a mandolin, after all — the album was recorded by engineer Jody Elff at Future-Past, a studio housed in an old church in Hudson, New York. The setting was a perfect match for the religion-influenced album, which ranges from the biblical passages of Thile’s Christian upbringing to mythological ideas about gods and gathering from the Greeks and the Romans. Below, in the first of a two-part interview, BGS caught up with Thile about recording the new album, finding inspiration in memories from his adolescence, and the dearly missed joy of a packed concert hall.

BGS: You recorded this album in a church in upstate New York. What did that atmosphere lend to the album, whether purely sonically to the recording or more generally as inspiration?

Thile: That was such a stroke of luck in a time that felt like it was a little thin on luck overall. [Laughs] We were weathering the earlier stages of the pandemic in Hudson, New York, and someone told me about a church right in the middle of town that had been converted into a studio. I went and checked it out and played a few notes in there and absolutely loved it. It’s not the most awe-inspiring church, but there were stain-glassed windows and very odd paintings that all brought me right back to my childhood.

I never attended a grand, elegant church growing up. This was still a beautiful church, but it was helpful that it wasn’t, y’know, St. Patrick’s in downtown New York — that it had a whole lot of that whole human-beings-just-trying-to-do-the-best-with-what-they-have kind of a vibe. Getting to be there was really helpful in terms of getting into character for the songs that I was recording. So much of the record comes from solitude… Actually, the solitude of the pandemic felt a lot like the solitude of spending one’s adolescence in a church pew.

What do you mean by that?

I spent so much of my adolescent time in church wondering if I was the only person there who was doubting the existence of God, or who couldn’t not think about how attractive the girl two pews over was. “Wait, I’m going to hell now probably, right?” Or, “Wait, is there hell? What is going on?” The pandemic thrust me and a lot of other people that I know back into that sort of lonesome, existential monologue: “Has every single choice I’ve made up to this point been wrong, perhaps?”

The sort of strange dialogue that we have with ourselves late at night started reminding me of those weird dialogues I would have with myself in church. I could well imagine at 16 years old sitting in this pew at Christian Community Church in Kentucky. I could well imagine there was a little angel and devil on my shoulder kind of duking it out. The centerpiece of the record, “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” is very much a grown-up version of that feeling—but you know, also, how grown-up, really? I’m 40 now, and so much of the time, this felt like a rebirth right back into adolescence, smack in the middle of the most awkward period of our lives.

I loved being in that church for all those reasons. It was so easy to put myself in the headspace I was in when I had written the lyrics or when I discovered the power of those songs that I didn’t write that are on the record. It just lent a certain weight to those performances.

Why did it feel like the right time to approach religion specifically here? Was there anything you felt you had to tread carefully around?

If there’s a silver lining of this whole incredibly disorienting and distressing affair, it’s the chance to gain a little context: to have been forced to take a massive step back and to take a look at our lives, whether we wanted to or not. One of the things I saw, in the midst of missing the community that I’d inserted myself into, was that community often ends up acting in ways that are similar to my experience of organized religion.

How so?

A lot of people who grow up with religion and veer away from it at a certain point are veering away from what they — what we — perceive to be a poisonous exclusivity, or habitual exclusionism. I think that’s one of the main turn-offs for my generation on organized religion. You start meeting people who aren’t welcome in the flock, and you start wondering why. Having taken a step back, I see the same kind of exclusionary behavior in my current community. If you take a look at your own community, it’s probably full of people who think a lot like you do, and who feel very similar to the way that you do about whatever’s going on right now, and who live in a very similar way. I worry that we, as human beings, are trading one messed-up thing for another messed-up thing.

I adore community. I love it so, so much. For instance, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival: I feel like those are the high holy days of my acoustic music-making community, and to be deprived of them is so painful. You feel cast adrift, untethered. I can’t wait to get back and I’ll never take that for granted again. But I also want to go back there with my eyes wide open as to whom I have habitually not welcomed into that community. What barriers am I being a part of unknowingly placing between people and that community that I love so much? And what harm is that doing that community?

Tell me about how that harm appears on the record.

There’s a lot in the record about coming together, but there’s also a lot in the record about our compulsive need to compare ourselves favorably to other people. In an effort to feel better about ourselves, we look for someone to feel better than. That’s what “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” is about. I took a look at this thing that had been a big deal for me in my adolescence, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, and I was wondering: What would those demons be up to with me, right now? They would be preying on this compulsive desire to feel good about myself. One of the easiest, dirtiest ways to feel better about yourself is by looking at someone else and going, “Well, I’m better than that guy.”

In “Laysong,” the lyrics mention “drown[ing] out the enemy.” It made me wonder what it is that you consider the enemy — maybe it’s this comparison trap, maybe not — and how you drown it out.

When I wrote that lyric, the enemy was he or they that would talk loudest regardless of whether they had the best idea. “I’m gonna say whatever I have to say louder than anyone is saying anything else, and therefore it will be all that’s heard, and the discussion will be on my terms.” That felt like the enemy. And at that moment, in that lyric, I had to write it. It fit with the shape of the melody. The idea of drowning out the enemy — I couldn’t shake it, even though it’s not what I believe to be right. [Laughs] Hopefully you can get a sense of that in the performance, that it’s coming from an angry and not altogether balanced place. In that moment, I was pursuing the idea of drowning out the enemy with beauty, with restructuring, with anything, really. Let’s get a love song, let’s get a hard-times song, anything but a song about the front page of the newspaper.

The record starts there and ends with the Hazel Dickens song, “Won’t you come and sing for me.” When I get back into the concert hall, there’s no way I’m not ending my solo set with that song, the performance is going to be sincere—especially at the end of all this solitary music-making. [Laughs] But “Laysong” is very much like an altar call for the record. “Here’s what we’re gonna discuss.” Who knows where we’re gonna come out? I know that when I listen to a record, there’s a collaboration that starts there. I would love to imagine that happens when people listen to my records, too—that it starts a conversation. I can’t wait to feel that in the concert hall. No piece of music is done until you [the audience] hear it. And I am so dearly looking forward to that completion of this little bit of work.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of the BGS Artist of the Month interview with Chris Thile.

Photos: Josh Goleman

CBC’s Tom Power and BGS Partner on New Bluegrass Podcast, ‘Toy Heart’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A familiar voice across Canada’s airwaves, Tom Power hosts CBC Radio’s q, an all-encompassing public radio talk show that perhaps best compares to NPR’s Fresh Air or PRI’s Studio 360. Though it does air on some public radio stations in the United States, Power is best known to the north, not only as a radio personality, but as a musician — he’s an accomplished guitarist with remarkable prowess in Irish and traditional Newfoundland musics — and musical scholar.

As it turns out, he’s also a diehard, lifelong fan of bluegrass. As a teenager he picked up the five-string banjo and took lessons (which had a much broader reach than just banjo techniques) from once Blue Grass Boy and now Bluegrass Hall of Famer Neil Rosenberg, who just so happened to live nearby in Power’s native Newfoundland. Though his work as host on q reaches far beyond his home island and his favorite chosen folk musics, his ethnomusicological expertise still centers on bluegrass — and he is a devout and starry-eyed fan.

BGS is proud to partner with Power and his co-producer Stephanie Coleman to present Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass, a platform for bluegrass storytelling and an examination of the true narratives that gave rise to this singular genre. Over eight episodes in its inaugural season Power will interview Grammy Award-winning, IBMA Award-winning, and truly earth-shattering artists in bluegrass about their lives, their stories, and their songs.

At Folk Alliance International in New Orleans last week BGS and Tom Power unveiled the first five minutes of the first episode of Toy Heart, which features Del McCoury accompanied by his sons Ronnie and Rob. Listen to that trailer right here on BGS, and read our interview, where Power discusses the pros and cons of his status as an “outsider,” the never-before-heard stories he unearthed in his recordings, and much more.

Our BGS audience, being largely American, might not have an understanding of who you are already. Then the audience there in Canada will know who you are as an interviewer and on-air personality, but maybe not that you are a dyed-in-the-wool bluegrass nerd of the best kind.

[Tom laughs]

How does it feel being the person executing these interviews, creating this podcast, and being in the center of that odd Venn diagram between really traditional bluegrass and folks who love it, and your more outward-facing persona on the radio in Canada and, to a lesser degree, here in America?

Tom Power: I am a little apprehensive and a little scared, but I also know that the things that are making me scared about this are making our podcast good. I feel like I have a lot of bona fides in this music, in terms of my knowledge of it. I’ve been obsessed with it since I was about fifteen years old, studied it extensively, did a lot of work on it. When I went down to Nashville and met the community there I started to understand that I was an outsider, that I was not someone who was part of that community. I’m from a very different group, I play very, very different music.

I’m kind of a new member, [everyone has] been very welcoming, but it’s a little intimidating. That being said, I think the perspective I have allows me to ask different questions, or at least think differently about the music than someone who’s in it. In this case I’m on the outside looking in, which allows me to ask different questions, allows me to have different conversations. I wouldn’t know the history of say, Ricky Skaggs and Bill Monroe as well as others. I know the history of how they got together, but I was able to look at Ricky and say, “Hey man, I don’t remember a lot from when I was four years old. Do you actually remember him handing you that mandolin? How is that possible?” Which is a question that maybe someone who was a little more involved in this community may not have thought of. They may have just accepted it as part of the lore.

As you’re describing this apprehension I’m wondering, are you thinking about how to mitigate for folks being like, “What about my favorite Del McCoury song? What about my favorite Ricky Skaggs anecdote?” How much of that are you anticipating and/or how much of this is you specifically turning over stones that haven’t been turned over before?

The format of the podcast is largely autobiographical. Each episode begins with, “Where were you born?” Or, “What was it like growing up?” I try to let the guest [lead]. On the radio show, q, say I have twenty minutes and ten pieces I really need to hit. In this case I have an hour, I have an hour and a half. I’m able to let them guide me where they want to go and I can steer them back around.

One nice thing about my interviewing background, and I think the reason q has been in any way successful in Canada and a bit in the U.S. as well, is because we focus on what the listener might want to know most. When I’m doing an interview I’m always thinking about how it’s coming out in someone’s headphones, how it’s coming out over somebody’s car stereo. What are they shouting at the radio? What are they shouting at their phone? I’m always trying to keep that in mind.

When you imagine that hypothetical listener, the average person you’re trying to target with the podcast, is it a diehard who knows everything about bluegrass, or is it somebody who’s maybe a new initiate? Who do you hope will come into the audience of this podcast?

More than anything what I’m trying to do is trying to get a record of some of this music. I think the podcast format is a great opportunity to get these kind of biographical stories on record. I found myself listening to people like Marc Maron, Howard Stern, and Terry Gross thinking, “Why can’t I do this for the music I love the most? Who’s doing this work?” The music that Del McCoury’s making, the music that Ricky Skaggs is making, or Alice Gerrard or Alison Brown, is as valid to me as something nominated for an Oscar or nominated for the Booker Prize. Who’s treating this music this way? Who’s giving it this attention to detail?

In any kind of music there’s a lot of myth-making and a lot of legend-making. I’m really interested in what the actual story is. Even if it might seem a little boring to them. The eight-hour drive from Nashville to somewhere else, I want to know what they talk about on that bus ride! I want to know the minutiae.

Some of my favorite interviews have been with people who I didn’t know. I’ve turned it on and I’ve gone, “Who is this person? Who is this director? Who is this actor?” And I found myself engrossed in the story. Take Jesse McReynolds, who told me on this podcast about driving around with his brother Jim from schoolhouse to schoolhouse, taking the car battery out of their car, putting it on stage, plugging the PA into it, and seeing if they could just get people to come. Is that not just a beautiful, human story? Bluegrass is the story of the original DIY music, as far as I can tell. These people were living what punks thought they were living for the first time in the 1970s. [Laughs]

I am aware that I’m entering sort of a hallowed ground of music and music aficionados. I really believe that this is just a matter of getting it on the record and using the little bit of training that I’ve had on public radio. Being able to sit down with Del McCoury and go through his entire life, his entire career, and ask, “What was it like when you had to quit music and go work in the logging industry? What was it like working in a sawmill? Tell me about the actual moment. I know the story that you were playing banjo [in your audition] for Bill Monroe and then Bill Keith came in, how’d that happen? Didn’t that hurt? You lost that gig — what was it like playing in a band with a guy you lost a job to?”

You do have these moments with so many of these icons that we know and love. We know their “mythology” intimately, yet you get stories out of them that people like you and I have never heard before, let alone people who don’t think and write about music every day for a living. You mention Del and Jim & Jesse, but is there another story that you’ve uncovered in your recording so far that you were surprised to hear?

I spoke to Del McCoury about the time he [spent] in the military. I said, “So you were in the military, how did that go?” Pretty broad, right? He tells a story about being in the military, about a couple of things that transpired while he was in the military that were hilarious. We laugh about it, and on the way out Ronnie and Rob McCoury stopped me and said, “Tom, we’ve never heard that story before.” These were his sons! Not just sons, but his business partners, his bandmates, and they said they had never heard him tell that story before.

I can tell you, Alice Gerrard told me what it was like to sing at Hazel Dickens’ funeral. I felt so honored that she would even be able to tell me that. I asked Béla Fleck, “Where is Tony Rice?” And what his relationship with Tony is like these days. I asked Jerry Douglas about drug use in bluegrass, something that often gets overlooked. And I should be clear, the goal is not to be in any way sensational. The world I come from in public radio, I find stories about humans way more interesting than stories about legends. What I was able to do is have human conversations while finding out the history of how a bunch of people created this thing that changed my life and it changed the lives of people all around the world. How is that possible? It’s largely by an unglamorous industry, a hard life on the road, touring nonstop, playing small barns, having lean years — the story of what actually happened there is more interesting to me than anything else.

I’ll give you one more. Ricky Skaggs, for the first time ever, tells the story of how Bill Monroe almost hired him to be a Blue Grass Boy. Hearing Ricky’s tone when he told me that story — he says to me, “I haven’t really talked about this before.” I felt so honored that I saw not a bluegrass legend on the Opry, but I saw a kid still being blown away because his hero spoke to him.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about bluegrass and even folks with even the most casual relationships to bluegrass understand that the community is just as important a part of the whole thing as the music itself. The legends that you’re describing just so happen to also still be human.

And they have stories they want to tell! And maybe haven’t even had the chance to tell them. I want to hear about it. I want to hear the story of how Béla Fleck heard that Tony Rice was making records without banjo and he thought, “That’s not right, and I gotta be the banjo player.” So he leaves New York! These are the stories of ambition, of love of music, honoring a tradition, and wanting to further things. Of humanity. I find it fascinating.

Ideally, if enough people listen to it, this season will just be one of many. I want to get to everybody! I mean, my white whale is Tony Rice. If you listen to these interviews a lot of them close with, “How do I get in touch with Tony Rice?” [Laughs] Alison Krauss is another I’d love to speak to, because other than Bill Monroe she is maybe the most transformative artist in the music’s history. I want to know what it was like to be a twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-year-old child prodigy playing this music. I want to know what emails — I know there weren’t Tweets back then — or messages she got when she started adding drums to her music. I’m dying to talk to Larry Sparks! And the Osborne Brothers! These are crucial — I had to limit myself to eight people this time around and it was so challenging.

As someone who got a Bluegrass Unlimited subscription mailed to Newfoundland when he was fifteen, and a Banjo Newsletter subscription mailed to Newfoundland when he was sixteen, I still would not know anything about this if I wasn’t under the tutelage of, in my mind, the greatest mind in the history of bluegrass, Neil Rosenberg. It changed my life forever. When I first took this on the first thing I did was fly back to Newfoundland to see Neil. I told him, “I’m doing this thing, what should we talk about?” And he helped me out. If I can be a pebble onto the beach of the work he has done that would make me very happy.

Photo courtesy of Tom Power

Chris Thile Accepts Garrison Keillor’s ‘Prairie Home’ Torch

Posted on by Editor

In summer of 2015, Garrison Keillor announced plans to retire from his post as the longtime host of A Prairie Home Companion, the wildly popular radio show he created in 1976. With that announcement came another surprising piece of news: Keillor had chosen mandolin player and longtime BGS friend Chris Thile as his successor. Fans of the show — and critics, alike — were skeptical of the decision, The Atlantic going so far as to pose the question, "Can Chris Thile fill Garrison Keillor's shoes?" 

Flash forward a year-and-a-half and we're about to find out, as Thile's first day as full-time host is this Saturday, October 15. What began as a few guest slots on Keillor's incarnation of the show has since become something of a torch-passing, the radio veteran hand-selecting Thile — known throughout the roots community for his work with Nickel Creek, the Punch Brothers, and as a solo artist — and calling him personally to gauge the musician's interest in helping to write a new chapter for his beloved show.

"I listened to Garrison’s voice in my living room before I really could differentiate it from that of my father’s voice," Thile says. "It’s kind of all swirling around in the living room, and Prairie Home Companion was there with Where the Wild Things Are and my dad’s records and mom reading the Lord of the Rings to us. I might as well have been getting a call from Gandalf.  

"I let it go to voicemail. I was on tour and I figured, 'He probably wants me to play on the show next Saturday or something. I’ll just let it go to voicemail.' I checked it and he said, 'Uh, Chris, I have something I think might be of interest to you I’d love to talk about. Give me a call.' So I steeled myself and called him back and he started outlining the plan that we’re in the middle of implementing now and I was just uncharacteristically silent for a little while trying to process it. I talked to my wife and started daydreaming about the whole thing a bit, called him back the next morning and said, ‘Now did I understand you right?’"

Before he knew it, Thile was dipping his toes into the Prairie waters, hosting two shows in February of 2016 that featured guests like Ben Folds, Sarah Jarosz, and his band the Punch Brothers. During one of those shows, Thile and company debuted a new song, "Omahallelujah," in advance of that weekend's Super Bowl game between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos. For his permanent tenure on the show, he plans to write and premiere a new song each week and keep a steady roster of guest musicians. His October 15 episode will feature Jack White and Lake Street Dive. 

Evidence points to Thile's take on Prairie Home to lean more heavily on music than Keillor's did, although he has made it clear that he and his team will remain reverent to the variety show format that sets the show apart from its talk-based counterparts. He also, especially given the timing of his first handful of broadcasts, will touch on current events, including the November 8 election, although he doesn't plan to be too forceful in his politics. "That’s something that’s kept me up at night on occasion," he laughs. "I won’t shy away from it, but maybe my mystification will be comforting to people."

His biggest goal, though, is to follow Keillor's most-repeated piece of advice: to be himself. "It’s so tempting, being in front of that microphone and that audience, to start adopting not only Garrison’s demeanor but his outlook, the cadence of his speech, all of those kinds of things. I think that’s an important piece of advice to hear again and again — to make sure that I’m not doing my best Garrison Keillor," he says, then adds with a laugh, "Because I’ll only ever be a pale shadow of the real Garrison Keillor."

While Thile has his own plans for the show, fans of Keillor's needn't worry: They are in good hands.

"Garrison’s given us this world that we can poke around in," he says. "It’s not high-stakes like our world, but it’s fleshed out like our world. It’s the illusion of reality, the illusion of depth and an order of things that suggests reality. We’ve had that space to escape to for 40-plus years. It’s my job to make sure that people continue to have that space. I think it would be a tragedy if we allowed that space to disappear after Garrison says goodnight. "

COMING SOON: The Bluegrass Situation Radio Hour

Posted on by Editor

On September 2, WMOT-FM, Middle Tennessee State University’s public radio station, is changing its menu to one of Americana with the Music City Roots team stirring the pot. WMOT: Roots Radio will be Middle Tennessee's only channel programming the musical gumbo of bluegrass, folk, gospel, soul, country, and blues music that is Americana … andThe Bluegrass Situation Radio Hour will be one of numerous specialty spices, along with Music City Roots and Bluegrass Underground.

The 100,000-watt station, which first aired in April of 1969 and currently plays jazz on 89.5 FM, boasts the clearest and strongest radio signal in greater Nashville reaching from Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the north to the Alabama border in the south.

Rodney Crowell, for one, is very excited about the announcement: “Imagine, in our neck of the woods, a radio station with real people playing music they actually care about, even love. WMOT is bringing Middle Tennessee real music when we need it most. Miracles happen.”

The new WMOT will showcase and celebrate the past, present and future of American roots music with a focus on Nashville’s unparalleled track record of artistry and songwriting, while also highlighting regional and stylistic “roots and branches” from around the country and across the world.

Curated by the programming team of Music City Roots, the Roots Radio playlist will be deep and wide. Listeners can expect live radio hosts from 6 am to 7 pm on weekdays, including veterans of roots music broadcasting. Anchoring the team and directing musical programming will be industry icon Jessie Scott, the first roots music director on satellite radio and a founding board member of the Americana Music Association. Music City Roots’ founder, John Walker, will host morning drive. Grand Ole Opry veteran Keith Bilbrey will handle midday, tapping his expertise in country music. Long-time radio man Whit “Witness” Hubner will work early afternoons.

Beginning September 11, Chris Jacobs will host The Bluegrass Situation Radio Hour on Sunday evenings at 8 pm CT, bringing the music from the BGS website to life. From Sitch Sessions to Squared Roots, Artist of the Month to Song of the Week, The BGS Radio Hour will offer a whole new way for fans to engage with the music they love.

Those of us who grew up making mixtapes and watching WKRP in Cincinnati are pretty excited!

Video Network VuHaus Gives Emerging Artists a New Platform

Posted on by Editor

Public radio has long been one of the greatest advocates for emerging artists. From in-studio performances to the format's willingness to gamble on playing under-the-radar artists, a local public radio station is one of the best resources for discovering new music. 

In an effort to harness the power of the country's public radio stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting developed VuHaus, a YouTube-esque digital music video service that aggregates and curates the best in public radio video content — all on one convenient, free site.

"The public radio music stations around the country, for decades, have been at the vanguard of discovering new bands," Erik Langner, president of VuHaus, says. "They spin their records when no one else will and invite them in for in-studio sessions that are both audio and video. Some of the biggest bands out there — Death Cab for Cutie, Spoon, Beck, Vampire Weekend, Lorde, Adele — all of them got their start on public radio. The tradition at these stations of actively being in the music discovery space has been a long one. As the stations that made up VuHaus were becoming so prolific at creating video, we decided to collectively build a new nonprofit — which is VuHaus — so that we can let an even larger audience know about these great bands."

Langner and his fellow colleagues at CPB, a government-funded nonprofit that supports the needs of public broadcasting, came up with the idea for VuHaus a few years ago, with the site itself launching just over a year ago. Since then, VuHaus has grown from a network of five public radio stations to what the team hopes will reach 20 by the end of 2016. Content comes directly from each participating station and falls under an existing license agreement between CPB and performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI. It's then organized by the VuHaus team onto a user-friendly site that's built to encourage browsing and discovery.

It's no surprise, then, that curation is a huge part of VuHaus's focus. Program Director Mark Abuzzahab sifts through hours of video content to determine which artists will get homepage features, as well as fill recurring slots for Artist of the Week and Song of the Day. While VuHaus actively curates music for its own site, the network still leaves the task of booking artists to the stations. Stations also get to use their local expertise to put together VuHaus's city channels.

"We curate the main page, but all of our station affiliates curate their own city channels on the site," Langner says. "Those are really built to allow our audience to get a deeper dive into a particular music scene. It’s a fairly straightforward process when we add a new station."

In a short time, VuHaus's success has led to a number of exciting milestones. Their embeddable Song of the Day player, which automatically populates with new content each day, is now on NPR's website. They've also been part of exclusive premieres with higher-profile artists like Jason Isbell and case/lang/veirs. Recently, they expanded their live webcast coverage to include a number of music festivals and live events, like an upcoming stream of Local Natives performing on NPR's World Café in Philadelphia. Langner attributes VuHaus's success to the strong friendships between artists and public radio stations — a friendship buoyed by the same commitment to art and musicianship that is at the heart of VuHaus's mission. 

"We firmly believe that there’s a critical role for curation," he says. "That with so much content being available everywhere, to have these stations that are so focused on finding really great and talented emerging artists, we think the role we play, collectively, is to help identify and then develop those artists and introduce them to an audience that otherwise may not find out about them. When the stations created VuHaus, that was really the inspiration."