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This week's (1/30 - 2/6) Featured Artist of the Week is Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady. If you've listened to pop or country radio at all over the last 20 years, chances are you've heard something Paul Brady wrote, but not Paul Brady. A partial list of artists who have covered Paul Brady songs includes:

• Cher
• Bonnie Raitt
• Brooks and Dunn
• Lucy Kaplansky
• Tina Turner
• David Crosby
• Phil Collins
• Trisha Yearwood
• Joe Cocker

This week you'll hear the man himself singing some of his great songs, both folk/pop and traditional (in his early career, he was a member of Planxty).

Back to the folk music, because, after all, that's why you came.

New Adds:

Rhonda Vincent and the Rage: Ragin' Live
It's no wonder that Rhonda Vincent has won boatloads of International Bluegrass Music Association awards. Her band is tight, and on top of their game for this live recording, and everyone in the band gets a chance to shine individually as Vincent rips through a collection of tunes primarily drawn from her most recent CDs. Scheduled for release in late March, this concert will be released as both a CD and a DVD.

Kathleen Edwards: Back to Me
Kathleen Edwards took the alt-country world by storm with her debut CD, Failer. Her followup CD proves that the success of the first one was no fluke. " I got plots you've never seen/ I got moves I've never used/ I've got ways to make you come back to me" she sings on the bouncy title cut, and like the narrator of this tune, this album is brimming with confidence and swagger.

The opening track, "In State" features a narrator who sees through the man who's trying to put the moves on her: "I know where the cops hang out/I know where you'll be found/I know what you're all about/I know when you're going down" sings the narraror, then adds, "maybe twenty years in state will change your mind." The best tunes here are clearly the up and mid-tempo rockers, full of attitude, crunchy guitars and feedback. The slow songs are not nearly as successful, as Edwards' doesn't carry them as well vocally.

Dry Branch Fire Squad: Live at Newburyport Firehouse
This double disk set is as much worthwhile for what the band plays as for what Ron Thomason says between songs, as he tells some funny stories and makes some pithy observations about music and its place in society. The band is of course, outstanding, straddling the line between bluegrass and old-time with great proficiency and grace. It is particular notable here that of the 15 songs in this set, three are by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. This set truly characterizes what a Dry Branch Fire Squad concert must be like.

James Keelaghan: Then Again
One of Canada's national treasures, James Keelaghan is virtually unknown in the States outside of the folk music community, which is a shame. On this CD, Keelaghan goes back to some of his best-loved songs and re-records them. Any collection of James Keelaghan is worthwhile, and as this one functions as a self-selected greatest hits, essentially, it's a great CD to pick up to acquaint yourself with a really fine artist.

Pat Wictor: Waiting for the Water
If this album had only "Love is the Water" on it, I'd recommend that you plunk down the money for it. This tune is a mostly a cappella (some harmonica coloring and hand claps) gospel-flavored vocal throwdown: "Love is the water that wears down the rock/Love is the power that won't be stopped." Preach it, brother!
But that's not all - Wictor wraps his fine voice and some spiffy lap slide guitar work around 9 more tunes, mixing originals with well-chosen covers and traditional tunes in a really fine collection of old-timey acoustic and acoustic blues. This is the whole package.

Mark Abis - Changing Inside
I got this CD from the UK with a note that said "Dear Greg, Discovered you while looking for festivals. You play a wonderfull selection of music. Now you're on all the time. Best regards, Mark." And the press letter indicated that he'd written a song covered by Emiliana Torrini that appeared as a backing track on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Hee likes my little radio station, and he's had a tune on one of the hippest cult TV shows of the last decade. So he's got that going for him. And he also has an album that's a well-priduced folk/rock gem that is well worth tracking down. I hope Mark hears me playing his songs, because the rest of you deserve to be let in on this.

Also Added
All She Wrote: All She Wrote
Various Artists: Come to the Mountain - Old Time Music for Modern Times (Rounder)

I don't pull out my jazz recordings much anymore, primarily because they're all on vinyl and it's such a hassle. I was reminded once again yesterday what I'm missing. While killing time at City Center Mall before Symphony Chorus rehearsal, a CD caught my eye on the 2 for $10 display - Chase the Clouds Away by Chuck Mangione. This is far and away my favorite Chuck Mangione studio album, followed closely by Main Squeeze. (Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the gold standard for Chuck Mangione albums. No other album approaches its lofty heights.)

In the early 1980s, I was a high school jazz band geek. I played trumpet, and I was pretty good (first chair at both high schools I attended, and one summer in the All Ohio State Fair Marching Band). We worshiped Chuck Mangione. We played tapes of Live at the Hollywood Bowl on the band bus on the way home from away games. Band geek couples would try to make out to the slow tunes in the back of the bus, particularly the extended version of "B'bye." I suspect that three quarters of the high school marching bands in North America have played the "Children of Sanchez Theme" at some point between 1978 and 1985.

Chuck Mangione had a sort of urban semihippie, semihipster cool about him. Those brimmed hats were hip - somewhere between Gilligan's floppy rollup and the hat worn by Mr. Poorman the Driver's Ed teacher. On the cover of Chase the Clouds Away, he's pictured in the top left hand corner of the record wearing a short sleeved shirt and one of the trademark felt hats (blue), back arched slightly, cheeks puffed out and blowing on his flugelhorn. To the right of Mangione, there is a picture of a house, taken straight up from the ground so that the roofline and a window stand out against the deep blue sky -- except the sky is not entirely blue, since there is one lonely cirrus cloud. This cirrus cloud is already half out of the picture frame due to the sheer force of Mangione's flugeling.

And, oh could he flugel. The flugel was cool, so cool. It was even cool just to say: "floooo' gull." Because of Chuck Mangione and only because of Chuck Mangione, every high school band in America had one flugelhorn. Just one. It was cool to play trumpet in the jazz band, but it was even more cool to play the flugelhorn, because it was a trumpet with the phaser set to "mellow." Besides, chicks dug the flugelhorn. At least we thought they did, or perhaps more precisely, we thought the band chicks dug the flugelhorn, and really, they were the only ones with which us band geek guys had even a slim hope of a chance with.

So, anyway, I found a copy of Chase the Clouds Away and I needed something else to go with it to get the 2/$10 price (otherwise $7.99 per) and then another CD jumped out at me: Maynard Ferguson: Master of the Stratosphere, a compilation of some of his more popular tunes from the '70s. There was of course, no question that this was the other CD I was destined to purchase, since Maynard was the other jazz trumpeter we all worshiped.

To understand the appeal of Maynard Ferguson, it is necessary to understand that the pecking order of a high school trumpet section was determined not necessarily by how musically you played (though being able to double tongue or triple tongue was a clear step up on the ladder). It was all about the range. Hitting the high notes. Taking it up. And since it was mostly guys in the trumpet section, it became a clear way to demonstrate one's manliness.

Maynard (like Madonna, Maynard needed only one name for those of us who were there at the time) could play notes so high that dogs down the street would howl, notes that the rest of us mere mortals could only dream of playing. He was the top dog, or as one of his album titles proclaimed, the "Conquistador."

So I brought them home and listened to them again, and they were both as good as I remembered. Whenever I would run into people who were dismissive of Chuck Mangione as being too mellow or not jazzy enough, I liked to play them "Song of the New Moon" from Chase the Clouds Away. This tune begins with a syncopated Fender Rhodes organ riff, and builds slowly with instruments coming in one at a time on the same riff, until Mangione comes in with the main theme, a variation on that same syncopated riff, doubled by the saxophone. Then, something totally unexpected occurs about a minute and a half into the song -- the French horns enter boldy in harmony on a countermelodic bridge leading into a ripping Gerry Niewood sax solo.

It's dynamite - syncopated and urgent and driven. When most people think of Chuck Mangione, they think of the hits they heard on the radio: "Feels So Good" and "Give it All You Got,"and the title cut of Chase the Clouds Away - the more melodic, downtempo stuff. But when I think of Chuck Mangione, I still think of that "wow" moment the first time I heard those french horns coming in out of nowhere in "Song of the New Moon," It is this full use of an orchestra that differentiates what Mangione was doing at his best from the standard big band recording where they might throw some strings in for texture.

And it is this careful texturing and balance between the orchestra and Mangione's combo that is the heart of what was great about this album. The latinesque flavor of the extended "Bolero"-like "Echano", building slowly in intensity into another ripping Gerry Niewood solo, punctuated by trombones. The calm flute of "Chase the Clouds Away", and, finally, Esther Satterfield winding the album to a close with the closing vocal tune "Soft" and its flute and Fender Rhodes backing: "Send me love that's soft..."

And then there's Maynard. I suspect that the reason Maynard was popular with us young'ns was the same reason that the purists didn't think much of him. A typical Maynard album was jam packed with a combination of covers of recent popular hits, with maybe an original charted by one of his band members (usually Jay Chattaway) and maybe a chart of something recent from one of the jazz fusioners like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea or Weather Report. This was important because what it meant was that Maynard was taking the tunes that we knew and making jazz out of them. It was starter jazz, with the added testosterone boost of Maynard squealing away on those impossible notes.

And the covers on this CD sound, in retrospect, like starter jazz. "Gonna Fly Now" and "Spinning Wheel" and "Theme from Shaft" sound dated, particularly the swirling disco beat of the Rocky theme. However, the arrangement of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" and Chick Corea's "La Fiesta" have worn well, primarily because they still have more of the classic jazz fusion edge to them.

So, it's been fun indulging in this nostalgia trip. The only thing that would have made it even better is if there had been a copy of Herb Alpert's Rise on CD as well. I've also been thinking: when was the last time that an instrumental became a certifed top monster smash pop hit? The days seem long gone when someone like Mangione, Herb Alpert, or Spyro Gyra could chart a jazz instrumental, or for that matter an instrumental of any kind. It just seems wrong to me that the last artist I can remember with an instrumental hit song is Kenny G.

New music from Kathleen Edwards has been added to the Online Folk Festival.

Since I am a stat geek, I thought it might be interesting to disclose the worldwide reach of the Online Folk Festival radio juggernaut.

Based on listener IP statistics generated by Live365.com, in the last 30 days I had over 30 minutes of listening from people in the following countries:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Spain
• Germany
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• France
• Australia
• Belgium
• People's Republic of China
• Turkey
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• India
• Denmark
• Republic of Korea
• Argentina
• Malaysia
• Czech Republic
• New Zealand
• Poland
• Finland

Listeners from 12 additional countries stopped by less than 30 minutes total.

Of the 51 state equivalents of the US (counting DC), again using the 30 minute cutoff, there were listeners from 41 states, with an additional 4 states providing less than 30 minutes listening.

Top States: California, Ohio, New York, Iowa and Maryland.

States missing in action: Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming. Call or e-mail your friends in those states and tell them to listen. Right now. ;)

By metro area, there were 86 metro areas represented with over a half hour of listening, with the largest being Columbus, of course, driven by my own listening, followed by Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Dubuque (IA), Rochester (NY), San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose (CA) and Baltimore.

I live in downtown Columbus, Ohio on a relatively busy street. There is a bridge over Interstate 71 a half block east of my apartment that links downtown with the Near East Side, one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city. As a result of the bridge, much of the pedestrian traffic between the Near East Side and Downtown goes right past my apartment building.

Earlier today I needed to unload a lot of stuff out of my car, so I parked it on the street in front of my apartment, rather than in its normal off-street spot, which is much farther away. I just went out to move it back to the regular parking spot, and I saw a guy walking down the middle of Town Street. Not on the sidewalk. Down the middle of the street. In the middle of one of the lanes of traffic. After dark. Wearing dark clothing. I suppose there is a case for walking down the middle of the street:

• Not many cars out downtown on Sunday night
• The street is clear and most of the sidewalks still have a couple inches of snow on them
• The street is relatively well-lighted

Still, this is not a risk I would take, when I think about it being 16 degrees F outside and the possibility of a car not seeing me, or hitting a patch of black ice and being unable to stop or slow down. I would rather brave the sidewalk and get my shoes wet. I suspect there is a folk song in here somewhere about the risks we choose to take. I'm not the one to write it, but one of you might be.

The new Nanci Griffith, Hearts in Mind, is really outstanding. There's a little homespun wisdom, a little folk, a little country, a little folk/rock, some protest and politics, some strings, and some hopefulness. It's everything I like about Nanci Griffith all rolled up into one album. Clock Without Hands did not resonate with me like this album does. I think it is her best collection of originals since Flyer. It comes out in the States on February 8 (it's been out in the UK for a couple months).

Two Time Polka : The Very Best Of - Two Times Polka is a cajun/American roots rock band from Ireland. Really. Not surprisingly, even their cajun tunes have a little bit of a Celtic edge to them, making them an extremely fun listen.

I've added several tunes from the Winona Folk collection. Finally. Sorry it took so long. I'm making up for it with the link, I hope. Anwyay, there are some really excellent tunes on this CD. I was struck by the musings of Kathy Moser on shopping malls and opossum in "Shopping Mall Redemption" and a tale of paternal wisdom by Kevin Briody entitled "Walnuts & Rice."

I'm glad Cynthia Summers sent me a copy of her upcoming CD, Big World/Small House. Ms. Summers has a really fine voice, and writes seemingly simple songs about domestic life that explore larger truths. If she told me when the release date is going to be, I've forgotten it already. I've been playing tracks from her demo disk (if you've been listening regularly, you'll recognize her as the singer who does that great rendition of "Buttermilk Hill" you've heard for awhile on the Online Folk Festival).

New tracks from the Oasis Acoustic Sampler #51, include tunes from Ann Zimmerman, Greg Vickers, Janet Feld, Dave Miller, Emily Higgins and Jeffrey Todd in the rotation right now, and later you'll probably hear tracks from Darin, Cory Stone and Flip Frisch.

Kim and Reggie Harris have combined with Rabbi Jonathan Kligler to produce an extremely interesting CD. Entitled Let My People Go! A Jewish & African American Celebration of Freedom, this project explores the connections between the Jewish people and the African American community in their searches for freedom. The Jewish community was extremely active in the Civil Rights movement of the 5os/60s, and the African American slaves long held the story of Moses leading the Jewish people to freedom as an inspiration and "code" for their own struggle. This disk mixes Jewish traditional/ceremonial music with songs of the Civil Rights movement, and includes several spoken recollections of the movement from prominent activists of the time. On Appleseed Records, this is an intriguing cross-cultural exploration and those with an interest in the Civil Rights movement will want to pick this up.

I've also been busy on emusic.com. I finally broke down and bought a susbscription - 65 songs for $14.99/month. Seemed pretty reasonable to me - the equivalent of 5 or 6 albums at about $3/per. I downloaded some great catalog music from Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, the newest Steve Forbert (Just Like There's Nothin' To It) and The Innocence Mission's new album of lullabies. Plus, some tracks from Cleveland's own Lynnmarie Rink ("The Dixie Chick of Polka") as well as from Carla Ulbrich's first CD. There is some really choice music there, including the music of The Schramms and the Okra All Stars, Oysterband, Danu, Jeffrey Foucault and many many others.

I also found a big package of bluegrass in the mail from Rounder this week, including live CDs from Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, and the Dry Branch Fire Squad, plus a couple promising compilations and a studio CD from James King, so look for some choice bluegrass very soon, and it will be good to have an excuse to choose Rhonda Vincent as Featured Artist of the Week closer to the CD's release date. I'm still going through this pile.

I finally got to the Elko Cowboy disk, also (well, at least Disk 1). This collection alternates between spoken word performances, some of them very funny, and cowboy music, all of it well done.

I wore black yesterday as a nod to Johnny Cash and and as a small personal protest of the excessive Inauguration festivities celebrating the continued power of our Corporate Criminal in Chief and his Now Legitimated Junta. Nobody asked me about wearing black. I was kind of disappointed.

I'm having a hard time getting the new CD from Pink Martini, Hang on Little Tomato, out of my CD player. Even by my increasingly widening definition of folk music that I use to determine what I play on the Online Folk Festival, it's not really folk music. But, gosh darn it, it's my station and I'm going to play it anyway.

The best description I can come up for it is "Eclectic World Neo-Lounge" This is wildly eclectic music, with influences including Latin dance music, American lounge and jazz, French chanson, with songs in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. The female vocalist, China Forbes, has a rich smooth voice, even if she doesn't take much opportunity to show her range, and the male vocalist, Timothy Nishimoto, has a voice well adapted to a variety of world styles, even if it's not as rich in quality as Forbes'.

Somehow they manage to blend all of this, make it all sound coherent together, and it comes of less like homage and more like something truly original, and I think that's by far the best thing that I can say about this record. It makes me want to track down their first CD, Sympathique.

http://kgsr.com/iTOOLIncludes/buddymiller.htm

Singer/songwriter Vance Gilbert will be this week's Featured Artist of the Week on the Online Folk Festival. Vance's new CD, Unfamiliar Moon is a nice blend of folk and jazz stylings, all highlighting Vance's big voice and his under-rated songwriting skills. Standout cuts include the title cut, which he has finally recorded after doing in concert for a long time, "Unforgivable," a jazzy standard-like song of infidelity, and "The Front Porch Song," which has a gospel feel to it.

Recent adds with some comments:

• Various Artists : Signature Sounds 10th Anniversary Collection -Two disc collection featuring highlights from the first ten years of Signature Sounds Records. The coolest stuff is on the second disk, which features unreleased tracks from their core artists, including tracks from Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, Mark Erelli, Lori McKenna, Erin McKeown and others
• Kate McDonnell : Where The Mangoes Are - This is a strong collection of outstanding songs, mostly original with a couple well-chosen covers, especially once you get past the really weak opening track. Highlights include the smoldering sensuality of "Lemon Marmalade" , the anti-Bush song "Mercy" and "Mayday", a coming of age story: "If you take me like a river/then what will be left of me?/Will I slip and lose my footing/And be washed out to the sea?"
• Simon and Garfunkel: Old Friends: Live on Stage - A Simon and Garfunkel live album is cause for celebration, and this one is no exception. The arrangements are often a little too slick for my liking, but it mostly works. Garfunkel has clearly lost some of his range, and it's clear that they have rearranged some of the vocal parts to compensate. However, it's nice to have a full-out rocking version of "Baby Driver", a goofy song but one of my favorites, and the bonus track is pretty good, though not in the top rank of their tunes.
• Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum: Guest House - Great bluegrass from a couple master players at the top of their game
• Paul Brady: Say What You Feel - This is Brady's first collection of new pop tunes in a couple years and it's been worth the wait. With a couple exceptions (particularly the unfortunate "Love in a Bubble"), Brady displays the songwriting skill that have made so many hits for other artists. This CD is a lot less slickly produced than some of his recent efforts, and the songs breathe a little better as a result.
• The Waifs : A Brief History - This two-CD live set from Aussie folk festival favorite The Waifs displays just what a great live act they are. If you've not heard this group, this is a great CD to start with it, since it includes most of their best songs from their first four CDs.

Also added:

• Various Artists: Oasis World Sampler #9 .
• Arranmore: The Collection
• Rich Simmons : Flesh, Blood & Bone
• Mark Geary: Ghosts
• Various Artists : The Independence Suite: Traditional Music from Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton
• Christopher Williams: When I Was Everything

Added to the Review Queue:

• Oasis Acoustic Sampler #51
• Cynthia Summers: Big World/Small House
• Pink Martini: Hang on Little Tomato
• John Minton: Going Back to Vicksburg
• Kim and Reggie Harris & Rabbi Jonathan Krigler: Let My People Go - A Jewish & African Celebration of Freedom

Apparently, one of the recent fads in the blogosphere (at least among my friends in the blogosphere - your mileage may vary) is to post song lyric snippets and get people to guess the song/artist. So, here goes, with a warning: many lyrics come from way beyond the folk music world.

1. "Everybody look at your hands!"
2. "Tulsa burns on the desert floor like a signal fire."
3. "I got a double-o-eighteen Martin guitar in the back seat of the car."
4. "Watch what you say, they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh fanatical, criminal"
5. "Here is a key to a house far away where I used to live as a child"
6. "We were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife."
7. "The last square mile of terra firma gaveled in the mail."
8. "Thank God for the man who put the white lines on the highway."
9. "My charade is the event of the season."
10. "My love is jazz licks improvised by toddlers."
11. "Architects may come and architects may go and never change their point of view."
12. "Let me smell the moon in your perfume"
13. "I freeze myself in fire and I burn myself on ice. I can't count to one without thinking twice."
14. "My hair points to the sky, the place I want to be."
15. "Hummalababy la zeeba la humma la humma la baby la zeeba la bop"
16. "I have sunk so low. I messed up. Better I should know."
17. "In my house we see by Christmas light and your TV and that seems to be enough."
18. "She danced on my head like Arthur Murray/The scars ain't ever gonna mend in a hurry."
19. "Every psychopath has his own magazine these days/I just read about how I can kill in a hundred ways."
20. "Things fall apart. It's scientific."
21. "He's lookin' down kinda funny, pokin' that dog with a stick."
22. "Oh the night came undone like a party dress/and fell at her feet in a beautiful mess."
23. "It's the proud tribe in full war dance/It's the slow smile that the bully gives the runt."
24. "It was a lawyer for the Lord/He said 'Don't do this no more!'"
25. "She saw Tuesdays and forgetfulness, and a little money saved."
26. "Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies!"
27. "Taste a little of the summer/Grandma put it all in a jar."
28. "Beware that hooded old man at the rudder"
29. "The lovers, the dreamers and me."
30. "Here's to the workers in their fields."

Update 1/16/05

The answer page is at http://www.onlinefolkfestival.com/lyrics_quiz_answers.html

Greg Grant's Top 10 Albums of 2004.

My favorite albums of the year are listed below in alphabetical order by artist name. If you feel that it's a copout by not ranking them, well then that's too bad. Get your own blog.

• Anonymous 4: American Angels - stunning shape note singing
• Chuck Brodsky: Color Came One Day - his best yet, even without a baseball song
• Iris DeMent: Lifeline - finally, a new release from Iris, and she excels at singing the old-time gospel
• Eddie From Ohio: This is Me - their best in several years. New producer LloydMaines made a big difference for this CD in their sound - it's much more polished.
• Hem: Eveningland - lush arrangements and beautiful vocals
• Peter Himmelman: Unstoppable Forces - it would truly have to be a stunningly fantastic year in music for a new Peter Himmelman release not to make my Top 10. Thoughtful, with consistent quality andpassion, plus a rarities bonus disk.
• Lori McKenna: Bittertown - she just keeps getting better. The new female poet of small town life.
• Tift Merritt: Tambourine - not what I expected given her first CD, but I still love her voice, and dig the Memphis soul feel. This is the best Lone Justice CD not made by Lone Justice.
• Buddy Miller: Univeral United House of Prayer - Buddy's best yet, and the combination of the alt-country instrumental feel with the gospel background singing is inspired.
• Susan Werner: I Can't Be New - I've thought since hearing her live several years ago that she should do an album exactly like this, of standard-like tunes performed primarily on piano, and now that she has and it's so good, I feel vindicated in some small and trivial manner.

Honorable Mention (also in alphabetical order by artist)

• Greg Brown: In the Hills of California
• The Clumsy Lovers: After the Flood
• Grey DeLisle: The Graceful Ghost
• Patty Griffin: Impossible Dream
• John Wesley Harding: Adam's Apple
• Kate Jacobs: You Call That Dark
• Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch: You Can't Save Everybody
• Alison Krauss and Union Station: Lonely Runs Both Ways
• Bill Mallonee: Dear Life
• Eleanor McEvoy: Early Hours
• James McMurtry: Live in Aught Three
• Carol Noonan: Somebody's Darling - Songs of War, Loss and Remembrance
• Railroad Earth: The Good Life
• Todd Snider: East Nashville Skyline
• Tempest: The 15th Anniversary Collection
• U2: How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb

This week's Featured Artist of the Week is Australia's The Waifs, to celebrate the release of their new 2-CD live set, A Brief History, tomorrow in the US on Compass/Jarrah records. Bob Dylan hand-picked this group to open for him, and he knows a little bit about music. Find out how good they are for yourself this week.

The FOLKDJ-L (Folk DJ List) released last week its top albums, songs and artists of 2004 based on airplay reported to the list. If you were listening to the Online Folk Festival in 2004, you heard the following:

Top Albums:

• 56 of the top 100
• 119 of the top 250

Top Songs:

• 5 of the top 10
• 12 of the top 20
• 23 of the top 40
• 60 of the top 100
• 76 of the top 135

Top Artists:

• 9 of the top 10
• 17 of the top 20
• 26 of the top 30
• 36 of the top 41
• 42 of the top 50
• 76 of the top 100
• 107 of the top 150
• 128 of the top 200
• 150 of the top 255

I don't generally spend a lot of time blowing my own horn about this station, but considering the scale at which I broadcast, the fact that I do this as a hobby, and the fact that I don't get serviced by several of the major folk labels, and therefore I'm buying a lot of this music myself, I think those numbers are pretty darn good and stack up favorably against anything you would find from any of the "professional" folk stations or shows, WUMB, Whole Wheat Radio, and Folk Alley excepted.

The year-end lists will be posted soon at http://www.folkradio.org shortly.

The playlist has been nearly completely turned over, and I found some really cool tunes in my mailbox.

In the Review Queue

• A double live CD from The Waifs, scheduled for release next week. The Waifs are currently the front runners for Featured Artist next week.
• Arranmore: The Collection
• Independence Suite: Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton, a compilation of traditional music.
• Christopher Williams: When I Was Everything
• Cheryl Wheeler: Defying Gravity - I still can't believe I found a promotional copy of this
• Paul Brady: Say What You Feel
• Winona Folk: still in the queue. I didn't have much time over the holidays to get to this one
• Oasis World Music Compilation #9
• Rich Simmons: Flesh and Blood. Another copy of this came before I left for the holidays. It looked familiar and sure enough, I had a previous copy that got buried under some other pile of CDs and never got reviewed. Sorry, Rich.
• Elko - A Cowboy's Gathering: 2 CD set of tunes and stories from the National Cowboy Poetry Festival in 2004.

The other big news from Columbus, Ohio is that after two weeks away, my car wouldn't start this morning. It was sluggish in starting yesterday, and I only ran it around downtown to cash my check, get some dinner and go to the grocery store . It wouldn't take a jump, so I suspect it's not getting spark, so I'll replace the plugs and see what happens. Luckily I work within walking distance of my apartment, and can walk to Symphony Chorus rehearsal this evening if I have to.