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I was pleased to receive a very encouraging e-mail this week from Jim at Whole Wheat Radio. I've mentioned WWR on this blog before, but I'm sure not to the extent that it deserves.

Whole Wheat Radio is doing radio for adults right. They play a wide variety of singer/songwriters and folk artists, and they have built an impressive community of like minded folks who love the music. They also have regular "house concert" appearances from singer/songwriters appearing live in their sturios. If you like what I do with the Online Folk Festival, you'll like WWR. I encourage you to check them out, and take part in their community. Come back and listen to the OFF every once in a while, too. I listen to WWR occasionally and if you see "woodsmeister" in their chat room, please say hi.

Whole Wheat Radio is one of several streaming folk stations that I admire: others that are worth your time to check out would be WUMB, WKSU/Folk Alley , radiowayne and WGCS.

• WUMB is, to the best of my knowledge, the only full-time over-the-air folk music station in the US. They have folk music with live DJS during the daytime US and syndicated programming in the evening and often have folk singers live in studio. They are out of Boston.
• WKSU/Folk Alley. I have been spoiled somewhat as far as folk radio goes by (until recently, when they retired to Florida) having parents in Northeast Ohio, because when I visit them on the weekends I can listen to the great Jim Blum do his folk show on WKSU. They were one of the early adopters of Internet radio, and one of the first to stream using Real Audio as well as to archive their shows to be played back on demand if you missed it. The folk show was so successful that they begin a 24/7 stream playing folk music, all of it voice tracked by Jim Blum as he shares his love and knowledge of the music.
• radiowayne is Wayne Greene, a singer/songwriter now in Shreveport, Louisiana, whose station claims a "Folk and more" format. radiowayne plays a wide variety of traditional folk, cajun, old-time, folk/rock and blues. Wayne, a native of Louisiana who has spent much of his adult life performing as a singer/songwriter around Texas (and who will casually drop in the live365 chatroom that he opened for Nanci Griffith back in the day) has a live show on Sunday evenings from 6 to 9 pm Central Daylight Time and is particularly knowledgeable about the Texas music scene and the Kerrville Folk Festival. I generally listen on Sunday evenings when I can, and can usually be found hanging out in the Live365 chatroom during his show.
• WGCS is out of Goshen, Indiana and related to Goshen College. During the day, they have live folk/acoustic music programming as well as World Cafe. During the evening they have a more progressive folk/singer/songwriter programming, and late at night they have edgier student programming. My online pal Thomas Bona broadcasts a regular show on both Sunday and Monday evenings. He beat me in fantasy baseball last year, but it's not going to happen this year.