Notes by Northwest

This was a true variety show, with Country Joe McDonald kicking it off with his version of Roll On Columbia, to some groups I haven't played a lot, like Asterhouse and Mudhoney.   

We took a tour from early Woody Guthrie to some mellow sounds for the first hour, and then ramped it up a bit, ending with PJ and Nirvana, with selections from their 1993 releases Vs. and In Utero.  

The first hour of the show was on the mellow side, including Burl Ives (Anacortes, WA);  Louis Armstrong (from soundtrack to Sleepless in Seattle), and Bing Crosby singing about the iconic Black Ball Ferry line.   The second half was louder, as we were commemorating three grunge milestones on April 5:  the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain in 1994;  the death of Alice in Chains Layne Staley on t...

A mixture of music with a PNW connection, a bit on the mellow side this time.  And I'm continuing to feature songs from two iconic grunge albums released 30 years ago--Vs. by Pearl Jam, and In Utero by Nirvana.  Cue the angst. 

The first hour is a typical Notes by NW program, and the second hour was a tribute to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, on what would have been her 81st birthday.  And it was a celebration of the Diva Piano donation to KSQM radio.  The Steinway piano was donated to Jennifer Hudson's foundation, and she commissioned it to be painted by some famous street artists to commemorate her role as Ar...

Telemachus, archetype of the boy left behind, is portrayed in this novel by Bobby Bacca, whose father, M.M.Bacca, the famous poet, has died. Bobby, an artist who has gone in search of his father’s past, revisits the Bacca legend through stories told by those who knew him best, while his own memories intersect with the effects of trauma pervading the adult lives of his contemporaries. It was writte...

Telemachus, archetype of the boy left behind, is portrayed in this novel by Bobby Bacca, whose father, M.M.Bacca, the famous poet, has died. Bobby, an artist who has gone in search of his father’s past, revisits the Bacca legend through stories told by those who knew him best, while his own memories intersect with the effects of trauma pervading the adult lives of his contemporaries. It was writte...

Telemachus, archetype of the boy left behind, is portrayed in this novel by Bobby Bacca, whose father, M.M.Bacca, the famous poet, has died. Bobby, an artist who has gone in search of his father’s past, revisits the Bacca legend through stories told by those who knew him best, while his own memories intersect with the effects of trauma pervading the adult lives of his contemporaries. It was writte...

Telemachus, archetype of the boy left behind, is portrayed in this novel by Bobby Bacca, whose father, M.M.Bacca, the famous poet, has died. Bobby, an artist who has gone in search of his father’s past, revisits the Bacca legend through stories told by those who knew him best, while his own memories intersect with the effects of trauma pervading the adult lives of his contemporaries. It was writte...

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the Vadon Foundation. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues , receive...

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the Vadon Foundation. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues , receive...

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the Vadon Foundation. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues , receive...

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the Vadon Foundation. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues , receive...

Pete SeegerRoll on Columbia.  The KingsmenMoney Jelly roll mortonSeattle Hunch The wailersSeattle   Kenny LogginsCelebrate me home TimberboundMile and a half Merilee RushAngel of the morning The stoogesLouie Louie   Sunny day real estateSeven Crushwater Starry Skikes Dave lewisLittle green thing Built to spillBroken Chairs Enumclaw2002 Stevie Ray VaughnLittle Wing Robert crayDon't be afraid o...

A general mix of PNW music from Woody Guthrie, Ricki Lee Jones and Everclear. Woody Guthrie                                                Roll Columbia Roll  Kingsmen                                                             Shout The miracle workers                                      Psycho Diana Schurr & Jose Feliciano                 By Design Buck Owens                               ...

We are continuing to feature passages from Ken Kesey’s 1964 novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, which has been described as his “opus”.  It’s a story about an Oregon logging family led by a strong-willed father who fights with his family, his friends, and many in their small logging town. In this passage, we’ll hear some of his backstory, which actually takes place later in the book, about settling i...

This episode completes passages from the Ken Kesey book, Sometimes a Great Notion, which chronicles the story of a tough logging family, the Stampers, in a small Oregon logging town.  The patriarch of the family, Henry Stamper, has a motto, Never Give an Inch, and lives it in his actions with his family and the citizens of the small town. The passages we’ll hear today is about the backdrop of a sm...

Author David Guterson chronicles his love of the beauty of the PNW as a lifelong hiker.  In this excerpt from early in the book, he tells of some his first experiences as a hiker, and some of the colorful characters he meets. 

We continue with Guterson's sketches about hiking in the PNW which for the author is as much a spiritual journey as it is a physical one. 

The author of Snow Falling on Cedars chronicles his journeys in the wilds of the Pacific NW in these series of sketches about the people and the land.

Today’s segment is a poem entitled A Narrow Road to the Interior speaks not only to the interior of the PNW forest, but the journey to the interior of the soul as manifest by the very act of of hiking. David Guterson’s Turn Around Time was published in 2019 by Mountaineers Books.  You can learn more about the author, the book and his other words at his website, davidguterson.com.  

For the next four weeks, we will feature passages from Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, a story about an Oregon logging family set in the 1960s.  If the name Ken Kesey sounds familiar, he is also the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.   The passage we’ll hear today is the first few pages of the book, to the little logging town of Wakonda, where a union strike and an independent family...

Today we will continue to explore the passages from the Ken Kesey novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, published in 1964.   In the passage we will hear today, the underlying tensions of the Stamper family, loggers in a small Oregon town, become more tense, with half brothers Hank and Lee try to keep the family logging operations moving with the back drop of a union strike by other loggers in town. 

Seattle guitar legend Jimi Hendrix would have turned 80 on November 27 had he not died at age 27 in 1970.   This program features some of the musicians who influenced him, including Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan, Jimi's music from the three albums he released in his lifetime, and covers of Jimi Hendrix songs by other artists.  Also included is my interview with curator of the Museum of Pop Cultu...