Culture

This Week On Radio Free Athens: May 19, 2018


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(Almost) every weekend local music geeks unite to provide the region with (usually) 11 hours of creatively curated tunes on WOUB 1340AM, an endeavor that is entitled Radio Free Athens! Typically the program runs from 9 a.m. EST to 8 p.m. EST every Saturday, and can also be heard through this link

Get a preview of some of the groovy tunes that will be flowing through the airwaves this Saturday from a couple of our volunteer DJs.

NOTE! This is not a complete list of the folks who will be contributing to the Saturday, May 19 show! 


From Dave Baer, 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST May 19, 2018 

Listeners this week will experience new music by Guided by Voices, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, John Prine, Brandi Carlile, Janelle Monáe, Belly, and more. Also, we will be checking out lesser known bands performing at Nelsonville Music Festival (May 31-June 3) like Sunflower Bean, Colter Wall, The Weather Station, and Counterfeit Madison.

Plus, real vinyl from the vault with pops, hisses and skips! And, of course, a few guilty pleasures.

Dave has been playing music for others since he was 10 in 1965. Don’t do the math. Check out the show instead.

From DJ Arty Mac, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST May 19, 2018

After attending Ohio University for five years, Arden MacDonald (DJ Arty Mac) spent a year of decompression, living in the same town but doing things differently. Through playing violin open mic nights and joining the crew at Radio Free Athens, she has been given the gift of rediscovering her love for artistic, creative performance.

Initially shrinking away from a fine arts degree due to societal pressures of what’s “practical,” Arden MacDonald settled into studying the most scientific of the humanities, Linguistics. Soon into the program she understood that learning languages and teaching languages can be the exchange that brings her closer to connecting with people all over the world.

Her internationally geared education and oddball musical tastes for the intriguing, contribute to a  ‘frankenstein’-esque fusion of both traditional and contemporary music from different genres, places and times. Maybe you can’t grasp at the theme she’s going for, but that’s because it’s art! For example, one show may begin with Love Themes from Cleopatra and then be followed up with a bootleg recording of The Trashwomen’s rendition of Turd Bath. Another show, entitled Sand, Synth, and Birdcalls featured traditional Hawaiian Island Wedding songs, which of course begets the slide guitar of Santo and Johnny, which oozes nicely with the accompanying slide to Patsy Cline.

DJ Arty Mac has been doing radio since January of 2018. She loves Radio Free Athens because it’s run by a small group of caring and concerned music geeks that want to keep free-form radio alive. While she’s considering a career in busking with her violin in the French Quarter, for now she is playing Zydeco and Zeppelin side by side on the radio.