Previous month: The Radio Conundrum, Part 1 - Questions

Last month we visited questions that are often heard at bluegrass festivals: why don’t we hear more bluegrass on the radio, and how does a local bluegrass band get airplay? We examined the peculiarities of the music industry and obstacles facing local independent artists.

Bluegrass Radio

At a recent concert co-sponsored by CBMS and Swallow Hill the host stepped up to the microphone to introduce the Stanleytones. After getting a round of applause for the popular Colorado bluegrass band, the MC added the caveat, “This is one of the finest bands you’ll never hear on the radio.”

While it’s true you probably won’t hear the Stanleytones on KYGO or any other top forty, red-neck rock station, you can indeed hear the Stanleytones, along with Open Road, Pete Wernick’s Live Five, Quickdraw Homegrown Music, and most other professional quality Colorado artists, nearly every week on broadcast radio if you know where to look and listen. This very publication, Pow’r Pickin’, features a section entitled “Bluegrass Radio” that lists over fifteen bluegrass shows heard on broadcast radio in the Rocky Mountain west every week.

Let’s face it, bluegrass is a niche market. If we get a couple thousand screaming bluegrass fans to a concert it’s considered a smashing success. If Shania Twain played to a crowd that small she would pack up and go home – and probably fire her booking agent on the way. Few radio stations, even in a bluegrass hotbed like Denver CO, can justify playing bluegrass for more than a few hours a week. There just aren’t enough of us rabid fans tuning in to pay the bills seven days a week.

Jerry Mills, host of KCKK’s Rocky Mountain Bluegrass show tells us, “Jefferson Pilot (owner of KCKK) recognizes the value of bluegrass and has supported this show for years. They respected my (play list) choices. They said, ‘Have fun and do a good show.’”

Yet the commercial stations are ultimately driven by the advertising dollar, and they must answer to stockholders with a reasonable return on investment. The station remains profitable by producing entertainment that will attract as many customers as possible to hear the advertisers’ messages. KCKK schedules two hours of bluegrass a week.

Denver CO also has a commercial free bluegrass alternative: the Old Grass, Gnu Grass program on community radio KGNU . Three hours every Saturday morning.

So you’re one of those true believers who wants your bluegrass every day all day long. You could buy your own radio station and be your own program director if you are rich enough and don’t mind losing a lot of money. You could even buy the air time on an existing station, but that’s probably going to be a major drain on your savings account, too.

You could gather all your bluegrass buddies to go volunteer at KGNU and overwhelm the programming staff so they play bluegrass all week, but a lot of long time KGNU listeners and fans of reggae, alternative new age, U.U. Philips, or E-Town might gather outside your door with a collection of tar and feathers. That seems to be a high risk approach.

There are cheaper alternatives.

Get yourself a satellite TV dish. There is an option available for a nominal fee where you can get a bluegrass channel that plays nothing but hard core bluegrass all day, all night, all week.

Tune in to the Internet. You can still tune in to www.bluegrasscountry.org and listen to all the bluegrass you could stand without spending a red cent or hearing a single commercial. Recent moves in congress to ensure artists get their just royalties, however, is jeopardizing this freebie. If you have high speed broadband access, though, you can still tune in to services like Sirius.com and hear all the bluegrass you could want.

Sirius also offers subscription satellite radio. Monthly fee, no commercials, 100 channels, enough bluegrass to curl your toes.

The best solution, though, has to be to go to the festivals and concerts and buy as many CD’s as you can get your hands on. Eliminate the middleman. Be your own program director. Support your local artists.

Local Artist Airplay

We established above that many local artists are getting airplay on stations with bluegrass programs. It only seems like a difficult thing to do. Actually it’s no more difficult than any other part of the professional music business. The operative word here is “professional.” No matter what else you do, if your recording is not professional in format and execution, nobody will play it. Nobody will want to hear it.

Joan Leonard Wernick, of KGNU, tells us, “(Old Grass, Gnu Grass) is the most popular program on KGNU.” For a local band to get their music on the air, she advises, “The best thing a band can do is wait until they are good enough to record a CD and then submit it to individual DJs for their review prior to the program. Be sure the singing and playing are in pitch and that the words can be understood.”

Cassette tapes are not advised. Cassette tapes are about as useful to the broadcast studio as the eight-track tape player in the dashboard of a Studebaker Lark. If you can’t produce a digital CD you probably aren’t ready for the big time anyway.

Of cassette tapes, Pete Wernick writes in his book How To Make A Band Work (Mel Bay, 2001), “Aside from sound fidelity aspects, there are two commercial negatives:
1. Most importantly, they are unlikely to be played on the radio. Cassettes are hard for disk jockeys to deal with because they are hard to cue to the exact beginning of a desired cut.
2. Having only a tape available is also a sign that you’re not big enough yet to have a CD.”

“We have 5 different DJs,” Joan Wernick adds, “with five different ideas of what they want to play and they do it once a month on their show.” So it’s a good idea to get a feel for what each of them plays and approach the one (or more) who is attuned to your music. If your CD is up to professional standards, you can submit it for consideration to:

Outside the Denver CO area, contact the DJ of your favorite local bluegrass program. See this issue of Pow’r Pickin’ for a listing of stations playing bluegrass in your area.

TOP