Ticket To Ride (TOTR 526)

 

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Wednesday, August 26, 2026
-episode audio archive posted after the live show
-in this episode, we dive immediately into the Teacher’s theme for the fall 2026 “American Mixtape” class, featuring the 1960s & 1970s, including the darker side of the counterculture, with a specific focus on how the 60s influenced the 1980s & 90s.
-photo by Vernon Merritt iii of the Barker Ranch, a temporary residence of the Manson family
-all views only represent the host, the guests, & the artists played, never the student managers or the Communication department or the university

Aretha Franklin - Jumpin Jack Flash (1986 recording of the 1968 Rolling Stones song)
U2 - Helter Skelter (1988 release of the 1968 Beatles song, recorded live on the Joshua Tree tour in Fall 1987)
Sonic Youth & Lydia Lunch - Death Valley ‘69 (a 1985 meditation on the brutal Manson Family murders of 1969)
Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun (1985)
Husker Du - Ticket To Ride (1985 version of a 1965 Beatles song)
R.E.M. - There She Goes Again (1983 version of a 1967 song by the Velvet Underground & Nico)
Bongwater - Just May Be The One (1988 version of a 1967 song by The Monkees)
The Cure - Purple Haze (1993 version of the a 1967 song by Jimi Hendrix)
Echo & the Bunnymen - People Are Strange (1987 version of a 1967 song by The Doors)
Sisters of Mercy - Gimme Shelter (1992 version of a 1967 song by The Rolling Stones)
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Dear Prudence (1983 version of a 1968 song by The Beatles)
The Cult - Brother Wolf; Sister Moon (1985)
Rain Parade - What’s She Done To Your Mind (1983)
The Gun Club - Eskimo Blue Day (1990 version of a 1969 song by Jefferson Airplane)
Jason & the Scorchers - Absolutely Sweet Marie (1983 version of a 1966 song by Bob Dylan)
Camper Van Beethoven - We Saw Jerry’s Daughter (1986)
Indigo Girls - Uncle John’s Band (1991 version of the Grateful Dead song that was released in 1970 on Workingman’s Dead)
10,000 Maniacs - Peace Train (1987 version of the 1971 Yusuf/Cat Stevens song)
Doctor & The Medics - Spirit In The Sky (1986 version of the 1969 song by Norman Greenbaum)
The Soup Dragons & Junior Reid - I’m Free (1990 version of the 1965 song by The Rolling Stones)
U2 - All Along The Watchtower (1988 release of a 1987 version of the 1967 Bob Dylan song)
U2 - Paint It Black (1991 version of 1966 song by The Rolling Stones)
The Lemonheads - Mrs. Robinson (the 1993 version of the 1968 song by Simon & Garfunkel from the soundtrack to the Mike Nichols’ film The Graduate)
The Dream Academy - Life In A Northern Town (1985)

Claire Vaye Watkins books (referenced early in the show)
Battleborn - short stories 2012
Gold Fame Citrus - novel 2015
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - novel 2021
Yellow Pine - novel 2026

Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Bishop, California in 1984. She is the daughter of Martha Watkins, described by Claire as "this incredible dynamo, a great bullshitter," and Paul Watkins, a former member of the Manson Family and a close collaborator of Charles Manson. Claire Watkins was raised in the Mojave Desert, first in Tecopa, California and then across the state line in Pahrump, Nevada. Photo by Dustin Snipes. 

Dolly Parton (1946-2026) - RIP - Pop-up episode

 

For Dolly & all who grieve her!
Aired on WTTU on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 from 5-6pm central time.

Guest poetry reading by P.A. Jones of Alabama.

Jolene
Joshua
Just Because I'm A Woman                                                                                                        9 to 5 - with Kelly Clarkson

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues - with Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt

Peace Train - with Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Long As I Can See The Light - with John Fogerty
Softly and Tenderly - with Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt

Rainbowland - with Miley Cyrus
Freebird - with Lynyrd Skynyrd

𝗗𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗔𝗬

Dolly Parton died today.

That sentence feels
too small for the occasion.

Too plain.

Like saying
the mountains lost a tree
when the whole damn ridge
has changed shape.

She had been here so long
I had placed her among
the permanent things.

Front porches.

Sunday dinner.

Old women snapping beans
with a radio playing
beside the kitchen sink.

Those Tennessee mountains
rising blue through the morning fog.

Some voices become part
of the country itself.

They settle into the wood.

Get carried through screen doors
and open truck windows.

Follow us down two-lane roads
past little churches,
abandoned filling stations,
and houses where somebody
is still trying to make
one paycheck stretch
all the way to Friday.

Dolly knew those houses.
She came from a cabin
full of children,
hand-me-down clothes,
old hymns,
hard winters,
and the kind of love
that learns how to multiply
when there is never enough
of anything else.

She carried that cabin
everywhere she went.

Carried the smoke from the chimney.

Carried her mother’s singing.

Carried the hills
and the worn-out hands
of people who worked
their whole lives
without seeing their names
written anywhere.

Then she walked beneath
the brightest lights in America
covered in rhinestones
and refused to apologize
for a single inch of herself.

Lord, she was something.

Hair piled halfway to heaven.

A laugh big enough
to fill a room.

A voice that could sound
like Saturday night
and Sunday morning
in the same breath.

People saw the wigs,
the dresses,
the impossible shine.

Dolly saw them looking.

Then she smiled
and went about the business
of owning the whole damn room.

She wrote songs
for women standing
on aching feet
while some fool behind a desk
counted their minutes.

Songs for people
lying awake beside somebody
they were already losing.

Songs for those who loved enough
to let go.

Songs for jealous hearts,
lonely beds,
empty pockets,
and anybody who ever stared
toward the mountains
wondering whether there was
another life beyond them.

She knew a song
could sit beside a person
when words from everybody else
had quit working.

She also knew
a child with a book
might discover a road
leading somewhere
nobody in their family
had ever gone.

So she mailed them books.

Millions of them.

Sent them into trailers,
farmhouses,
apartments,
cabins,
and little bedrooms
where a child opened a cover
and found the world
waiting inside.

She made more money
than the girl in that cabin
could have imagined.

Then she spent a lifetime
reaching back toward children
who were still there.

That may be the truest thing
any of us can do
with whatever light
finds its way to us.

Reach back.

Keep the door open.

Remember the road.

Dolly died today.

Tonight her voice
will come through speakers
in kitchens and trucks
and roadside bars
from Tennessee
clear down through Alabama.

Somebody will turn it up.

Somebody will cry.

Some woman working late
will sing along.

Some little girl
will stand before a mirror,
hold a hairbrush like a microphone,
and believe the room
is already hers.

And somewhere
a child will open
a book with Dolly’s name inside
and begin sounding out
the first sentence
of a life she helped make larger.

That is how a person stays.

In the songs we keep singing.

In the doors we leave open.

In the hands reaching backward
from whatever mountain
we have managed to climb.

The rhinestones will keep shining.

The books will keep arriving.

And the rest of us
will have to decide
what we are going to do
with all the light
she left behind.

- Paul A. Jones 

Cookeville’s Annual Backstage Series Begins a New Season with the Bold Love Potions of a Classic Play (local theater review)

 

This time last year, I had the privilege of attending one of the sold-out performances of Agatha Christie’s “Mousetrap” at the Cookeville Performing Arts Center. There’s something soothing about seeing a spooky show that foretells Fall when we are still trapped in the steamy dog days of late summer. This summer’s opening act to another season of the local Backstage Series is called “All Because of Agatha,” but it’s not about (or by) Agatha Christie. This stellar show does, however, bring the needed autumnal and occult ambiance to the sweltering conclusion of summer. 

Prepare to be surprised by the spicy chemistry of the characters and their campy interactions, all set against the surreal backdrop of a haunted house in Salem, Massachusetts. Portraying the real estate agent Mr. Van Buren, Brent Fleshman hides nothing from the young couple prepared to purchase the otherwise wonderfully furnished home, known for its annual hauntings by the martyred witch Agatha Forbes. (As an added thing, some of the attractive set pieces are available for purchase at the end of the run.) 

Caleb Grinder and Stella Land seem innocent enough as the leading couple, the O’Haras, but as the drama proceeds, their relationship gets more than tested by everyone’s anxiety about the upcoming annual haunting. Can Joan O’Hara’s interest in the supernatural sustain her and her marriage to Duff O’Hara through the ensuing craziness? 

For three brief acts, audiences will be awed by the laugh-out-loud chaos of the characters’ chemistry, all colliding joyfully in seemingly random romance, with everyone connected by their anticipation of ghost Agatha’s approach. While the O’Haras might have imagined settling peacefully into their new digs, Jonathan Troy’s script had other ideas, with those ideas involving nonstop comedic interruptions. While Reona Lee as Mrs. Boggs fails to get the couple invested in the Society of Psychic Phenomena, the O’Haras do seek a personal chef and housekeeper in Anna Stites as Ethel Hinkston, who brings so much sparkle and energy to an already energetic cast. 

By the second act, it’s become one big party complete with nibbles, as everyone awaits Agatha, everyone including Matt Kirby as Dr. Randolph and Paije Beaudry as Madame La Solda, the doctor’s mother and an over-the-top supernatural medium. Not to leave any angle untapped, Mrs. O’Hara’s aunt Thelma shows up to add yet more silliness and to impress the understated charm of Dr. Randolph, which Bre Brown does beautifully in that bold role. On party night, Travis Jay Wiggins is there as journalist Flip Cannon, to document the entirely delicious debacle for the local paper and to make eyes for Anna.  

In theater and film, when an actor becomes so strongly identified with a particular character they portray, that is sometimes called typecasting. For big stars like Jon Hamm, that means Don Draper from “Mad Men” has followed him around in every role since. While typecasting might have a negative implication in the film industry, I propose that every instance of it surely began with one director or producer doing an amazing job in casting a particular show. For Cookeville’s “All Because of Agatha,” director Jordyn Strilecky could not have done better than in casting local activist and store owner Montana Chambers as Agatha Forbes. What was already a great production becomes truly transcendent once Agatha enters the chat. Some naturally gifted performers were born for certain roles, and that is certainly the case here. 

Community theater productions carry the added benefit of bringing people together across generations for in-person inspiration in this increasingly online world. It’s always a thrill to see newcomers to the local stage mix it up seasoned veterans with decades in the scene. Cookeville’s new version of the older play “All Because of Agatha” is all laughs and love potions, a magical mystery romp and haunted hee-haw, a fantastic feel-good escape from the August heat.

-Andrew Smith (aka Teacher On The Radio) has been Cookeville’s theater critic for 20 years.
-photo of lead performer Montana Chambers courtesy of the Cookeville Performing Arts Center’s Facebook feed
-All Because of Agatha by Jonathan Troy runs on August 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, and 22 at 7pm, and August 15 and 16 at 2pm. The performances are all held in the heart of Cookeville at 10 East Broad Street. Tickets are available in advance and at the door, if a show is not sold out. You can call the box office at 931-528-1313. 

Packing Up My Sorrows & finding Euphoria with Detroit’s Don’t Look Now Jug Band

 

I got all tied up in the world

Sometimes the world got tangled up in me

but there was always this old music

the rocking of the song

sing loud & strong & you just can’t go wrong

-Maurice Greenia, Old Lost Jug Band Song, for Tim Knoll, from the Poetic Express

I was recently falling down a Mimi & Richard Farina rabbit hole online & I just could not get the gorgeous song “Pack Up Your Sorrows” out of my head. Where did I learn that song, though, not from them. I learned that song in the late 1980s from a local Jug Band in my feral bicycle-riding, cheap-apartment & group house & pre-Wayne State gap years in Woodbridge & the Corridor in the heart of Detroit.

You know, I love all the “I got to old-time & folk through punk rock” narratives, & I sometimes like to pretend I am part of it, because I kinda traced it with my mind, watching crusty travelers bust out banjos & fiddles & such back in the late 1990s & early 2000s. But if I am honest, I never entirely left folk music & never wanted to.

Even if my earliest roots were more Joan Baez & John Denver than my later passions for Utah Phillips & Ani diFranco or even later getting older, the folk was always in me, with later discoveries of songs hunted by Harry Smith & Alan Lomax, not to mention church camp campfires, molded later into drunk stoner campfires, everyone busting out their acoustic guitars somewhere along the way. Roots music (which includes folk but also gospel & blues) is my river & my ocean, with rock & pop & everything else coming from there ultimately, from some much deeper source.

There’s this one folk music junk drawer that I am only recently reminding myself of, with an old wheezy & warbly cassette tape, one profound folk music moment for me was simultaneously surrounded on all sides by punk & psychedelic, by garage & metal, by world beat & ska, as my Detroit neighborhood spawned such a diverse & creative cauldron. 

But the Cass Corridor I moved to in the late 1980s was a portal, a visionary village, gritty bohemian enclave inside a larger decaying & not-yet-gentrified city. There upon arrival at 20-years-old, I had a particular taproot between the Food Co-op where I worked stocking produce & shelves & ringing at the register, at Cass & Willis (formerly & later Cobb’s Corner), & at the Unitarian Church, a few blocks north.

The Unitarian Church had a sprawling attic loft that doubled as a caretakers’ collective where the building & custodial staff successfully bartered their labor for reduced rent, taking good care of some basic chores around the building. That was a whiff of heaven, a wild & weedy scene, from all I remember & it forever got its hippy aura & aroma in me. Like any boho outpost on our continent, they had the old-time music thing that loves to crop up in weird ways. The Don’t Look Now Jug Band were the Unitarian Church & Food Co-Op “house band,” that we would also find at our delicious neighborhood street fair the Dally In The Alley. 

When I wrote about the Jug Band in a rambling free-form psychotropic essay-review of the 1988 Dally, I saw their purely acoustic unplugged performances as a kind of statement about the primitivist aesthetic I was simultaneously learning from the neighborhood’s anarchist environmentalist crowd & our protests against the trash incinerator being built in our community. One of the only old Jug Band flyers I could find was one I made from a benefit for our civil disobedience defendants, the Evergreen 19, an all night affair hosted by the Community Concert Series, our neighborhood's convergence of all ages, all genres, & all flavors of local freaks. 

Putting on the weary old cassette, I am reminded that they introduced me to really important parts of the American songbook. I first heard all of these truly iconic American songs, some whose lineage I would only discover much later, performed live around the neighborhood & on that cassette by the Jug Band: 

“Mole In The Ground” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford

“Pack Up Your Sorrows” by Mimi & Richard Farina 

“Euphoria” by the Holy Modal Rounders

“Plastic Jesus” by Ed Rush and George Cromarty 

The Don’t Look Now Jug Band always had a large lineup & it rotated significantly over the years. 

In my earliest encounters with the Jug Band, I always considered the late Tim Knoll the ringleader & curator, but in some of these pictures I dug up, no Tim. Eden Winter, Maryann Angelini, & James Knoll were hardcore regulars. Surrealist pamphleteer & folk artist Maurice Greenia would join. My friends such as Mary Richards & Karin Friedemann would play fiddle. Then I see one with Ralph Koziarski on clarinet. There is another jug band lineage with early member Bill Carney who is still active today in the NYC jug band scene. Cobbling this together, I welcome any & all additions & corrections! 

I am also seeking more photos & old flyers & a copy of their CD that came out in the early 2000s that I am not sure I ever heard! Or tips or reminders or recordings of other adjacent Corridor folk music!

There’s not a lot extant regarding the unique Detroit contributions of Don’t Look Now Jug Band on the internet, & I realize the larger American jug band tradition is something much more vast we could talk about, with deep southern roots in places like Memphis. I was able to find a few old YouTubes of the Don’t Look Now Jug Band that surely brought me back, & I have ripped a sampling of songs from that old wheezy cassette!

By their own description in the 1988 Dally program, they were an:

"all-acoustic band playing any music fit for a juggy mood: traditional American folklore, blues, country, bluegrass, R&B, cajun, zydeco, & pop songs, & even yes indeed originals. The 15 member (size varied from show to show) provides a rich acoustic big band sound led by a vigorous rhythm section made of the traditional jug band 'instruments' such as washboard, washtub-bass, & jug, backed by bones & triangle..."

Listen:
Mole In The Ground in Don't Look Now Jug Band - Live In The Attic

Watch:

Getting Floral with Florence: May First at the Art-Rock Pop-up Goddess Commune

 -State Farm Arena, Atlanta, 5.1.2026

A Florence + the Machine show is a pop-up goddess commune in a basketball arena, a feminist flash-mob for the jumbotron. This feels like a different reality from the televised tyranny of throwback male chauvinism, & it’s an alternate reality with fashion, flair, & flowers. 

Florence is as floral as this first of May, & as for Florence, so for the fandom. It seems almost everyone is festooned in flowy skirts & scarves & decorative crowns. Florence has done her research & has lived the gender & religious references in her songs. She is fully channeling 14th century visionary mystic Julian of Norwich to confront the patriarchy with bloody facts. The facts are this: fiercely ferocious poetic vulnerability & healing honesty & loving intimacy will always redeem more deeply than the bad trad daddies, their bad authoritarian theology, & their terrifying Handmaid's Tale reenactment society.  

Female mysticism is such a fierce flame, especially in these outta sorts hypermasculine times. Whether these feral femmes are witchy witchy woo woo or old school Christian mystics matters not to the fallen Church of white nationalism, which is not seeking Christ but cosplaying Caesar. They don’t care if you are nice or a nun or a heretical heathen, they just want to legislate your lady parts. Just look how they did Bishop Budde. 

I think it also should be noted, other than an announcement on the big screens about the band’s support for Doctors Without Borders, the so-called “politics” of tonight were poetically implied, not overtly preached. (We are seeing Springsteen in this same room the next day, where from what I have heard, lots of political preaching will transpire). 

For the entire set, we are hers, this dervish twirling ginger Stevie Nicks, this high priestess of the poetic moan, this mezzo-soprano matron of the art rock high mass. Whether we are asked to jump & wave our arms or to put away our phones, we are more than overjoyed to synchronize & alchemize. The crowd are dancing like the choreographed collective of ensemble dancers, because we are all one bigger collective, one ever expansive ensemble. It’s amazing to me how fandoms fill the gaps when our traditional gathering places feel bereft of the very heft that initiated their existence in the first place & what a fandom this Florence framily is, one that defies & includes every genre in a deep catalog of relentless reverie. 

Confession: When 2025’s Everybody Scream didn’t instantly sweep me away like 2022’s Dance Fever did, I sort of set my Florence listening aside to make room for other deep digs in the vast array that’s always competing for the queue on my Bose headphone itinerary. But what I was ignoring was further exploration of deeply transformational & timeless story scriptures of sizzling revelation. Now, finally, opening up to this experience in person, songs like “Sympathy Magic” or “Perfume and Milk” or “The Old Religion” or the raw takedown of the music industry’s mediocre men in “One of The Greats,” these tracks left track marks in my body-mind-spirit. 

Mayday has always meant a lot to me. I am attracted to the history of the labor movement & the homage to the Chicago Haymarket martyrs of the late 19th century. I also love the bawdy springtime celebrations of the celtic holy day Beltane. It was tripping on booze & shrooms at the latter, that my addiction to numerous substances finally bottomed out in 2009, interestingly just two months before Florence’s debut album dropped that summer. 

Through lots of surrender & willingness & working with  others, I have not had a reason to drink ever since. So now, every May first, I not only acknowledge those larger traditions, I remember how I almost lost all connections to everything through daily self-abuse. So on this Mayday some 17 years after, it was these lines from “Never Let Me Go” on 2011’s Ceremonials that utterly broke me into a bawling dancing puddle of weeping gratitude. 

And the arms of the ocean are carrying me

And all this devotion was rushing out of me

And the crashes are heaven for a sinner like me

But the arms of the ocean delivered me

I know I am not the only person who cries at a Florence concert, & I know that the depth of connections we feel in such a bold communal experience are different for each of us. I know that my deeper gentler understanding of my own masculinity benefits from these brave expressions of femininity that I saw at this show all around me. It’s a multitude of gardens that we need, not a monoculture of conformity, so even as folks were communally vibey in their similarly sheer fabrics & flowery accessories, it is truly a garden where anything & everything that is loving & peaceful & good can grow. 

-Andrew/Sunfrog, Teacher On The Radio

-photos are from a previous show, from the artist’s official social media

Spinning Wheel (TOTR 525)

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, April 4, 2026
-Listen to the audio archive:

Stream episode Spinning Wheel - TOTR 525 by Teacher On The Radio podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
-in this episode, we revisit my 2015 oral history of Cookeville Christian counterculture, Banjo & Bread, with a new interview with the subjects, Calvin & Nelia Kimbrough, as they discuss life at Tennessee Tech & in Cookeville in the 1960s. We also tap a little of the Holy Week/Easter spirit, as well as a nod to the book Southernmost by Silas House & film adaptation of Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, as they, along with the Kimbroughs, were part of the American Mixtape class this past week

-photos courtesy of Calvin & Nelia Kimbrough
-all views only represent the host, the guests, & the artists played, never the student managers or the Communication department or the university

Peter, Paul and Mary - Early in the Morning
My Morning Jacket - Easy Morning Rebel
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Pt 1 - Acknowledgment 
Katie Herzig - I Hurt Too
Menomena - Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such a Big Boy
Blood, Sweat & Tears - Spinning Wheel 
-Interview with Calvin & Nelia Kimbrough
Bob Dylan - Blowin’ in the Wind
Pete Seeger - What Did You Learn In School Today?
Peter, Paul and Mary - Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Nina Simone - Turn, Turn, Turn
Sam Cooke - If I Had A Hammer
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Christ Climbed Down
Joan Baez - Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
-Interview with Calvin & Nelia Kimbrough
Malvina Reynolds - Little Boxes
Peter, Paul and Mary - If I Had A Hammer
Indigo Girls - Letter To Eve
Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack - Superstar
Richie Havens - Here Comes The Sun
Edwin Hawkins Singers - Oh Happy Day

Crowns Captures The Spirit of the Black Church, & We Are All Inspired Thanks To It

I will never forget the first time I visited an African American church. It was in Detroit, Michigan, and I was all of 17 years old. This moving time swept me off my feet and changed me forever from deep inside my being. 

For a mainline Protestant with a pale complexion like me, I had been raised to expect a somewhat reserved worship experience, a quiet and heady Sunday morning for a group that sometimes gets dubbed “the frozen chosen.” From that first time outside that comfort zone in the mid-1980s to my experiences in Black churches ever since, I am frequently moved and mesmerized by the musicality and physicality of the worship time, rooted in a deep and courageous message of hope, community, and resilience. Thanks to depictions and descriptions of this sacred space in popular culture, we can all encounter this specific power and reverence, regardless of our own social locations. 

Everything so reliable, reverent, and revolutionary about the Black church experience, especially in the American south, shines in an exquisite theatrical rendering with “Crowns: A Gospel Musical,” currently being produced by the Cookeville Theatre Company at the Wesley Chapel Theatre on the south side of 9th street, just east of the Tech campus and just south of the Collegeside Church.  

Written by Regina Taylor and directed by Michael Ruff from the Cumberland County Playhouse, our current offering features a fierce local cast as part of the Cookeville Theatre Company’s annual efforts to support and feature the creative talent in our local African-American community. As Black History Month in February gives way to Women’s History Month in March, this rousing celebration emphasizes the role of strong women in the Black community, and in the Black church, particularly.  

Whether it’s Regina Pullin’s incomparable interpretation of Mother Shaw or Raniece really bringing it as Velma, the voice, vernacular, and vision of strong Black women truly transforms the historic Wesley space into a genuinely sanctified locale. The strong singing on a songlist of mostly iconic classics had a way of getting into my soul, and I found myself fighting back the tears at many intervals throughout the show.

 

The storyline blends humor with serious topics, and everything spirals around the statements made by stunning fashion, especially the crowns, the gorgeous hats that adorn the heads of Black women in their Sunday best. Saneisa Savage as Yolanda highlights the contrasts between young and old, north and south, urban and rural, and this gives way to a special unity that brings everyone together through shared experiences. 

Many of the significant moments in family and community, from baptisms to funerals, from tragedy to triumph, all center in the shared stories of empowerment and expression by these amazing matrons of the Black community, from grandmother to aunt, from mother to daughter. Superb set design and costume design perfectly accentuate the spirit of the show. 

The backing music by Lucy Knowles on piano and David Klein on percussion really anchored the energy of the production, adding some serious flair to the sparkling dance moves by Sya Johnson, supported by the choreography of Shane Langford.

Cookeville is beyond blessed by the cultural diversity that is honored annually in these superb productions by Cookeville Theatre Company. In addition to being touched to the edge of tears more than once, I felt my body moving in my seat, feeling ready to join in with an arm waving or an Amen shouting. My opening night experience connected Friday night to Sunday morning, and you will have that strong feeling of worship and connection, no matter your background and no matter what show you attend. Just be sure to catch one before it closes.

-Andrew William Smith is a local poet, teacher, & DJ. He has been the theater critic for Cookeville for the last 20 years. 

As of this post, the remaining shows are:

Thursday March 26 @7:30 pm (Pay what you can night)

Friday, March 27 @ 7:30 pm

Saturday March 28 @ 7:30 pm (Matinee)

The venue is at 271 E. 9th St Cookeville

More info - www.cookevilletheatreco.org

Run to the River (TOTR 524)

 

image - Colin Cutler

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, March 21, 2026

-Listen to the episode archive here:

Stream episode Run To The River - TOTR 524 by Teacher On The Radio podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

-in anticipation of the Colin Cutler, Adeem The Artist, & One Eye Jack show on Monday, 3-23-26 at Mean Mel’s Uncle Presents: Adeem The Artist, Colin Cutler and One Eye Jack — Mean Mel's

-all views only represent the host, the guests, & the artists played, never the student managers or the Communication department or the university

Adeem The Artist - ruin me 

Colin Cutler - Swannanoa Tunnel 

One Eye Jack - Dangerous

One Eye Jack - Get Away Today

One Eye Jack - Give Me A Second
One Eye Jack - Let Me Live 

One Eye Jack - Stop Drop And Roll
One Eye Jack - It’s Been So Long

Colin Cutler - Bad Means Easy

Colin Cutler - A New Tattoo

Colin Cutler - Mama Don’t Know Where Heaven Is
Colin Cutler - The Cold That’s Forever

Colin Cutler - A New Tattoo (Parker’s Reprise)

Colin Cutler - Save Your Life and Drive

Interview with Colin Cutler

Colin Cutler - Parker’s Back

Colin Cutler - Temple of the Holy Ghost

Colin Cutler - Run to the River

Colin Cutler - Mama Don’t Know (Reprise)

Adeem The Artist - parka
Adeem The Artist - jason isbell b-side
Adeem The Artist - canvas to the frame
Adeem The Artist - st. todd (i grow lonely in new ways)

Adeem The Artist - impossible

Adeem The Artist - blueprints

Adeem The Artist - cowards together

The 40th Anniversary of “United Underground” (TOTR 523)

 

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, March 14, 2026

-listen to the audio archive: Stream The 40th Anniversary of United Underground - TOTR 523 by Teacher On The Radio | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

-most of the episode is a lo-fi cassette rip of my high school radio show on WSHJ 88.3 FM in Southfield, Michigan, from spring 1986

-all views only represent the host, the guests, & the artists played, never the student managers or the Communication department or the university

U2 - The Three Sunrises

R.E.M. - Green Grow The Rushes

United Underground - April 9, 1986 - WSHJ 88.3 FM in Southfield, Michigan

hosted by Andy Smith 

-This is a reconstructed playlist & a partial recording ripped from cassette to CDR to digital mp3; there are possibly songs played that are missing from the playlist; there are possibly songs listed that were played on the radio but are not played here; some songs may be excerpts. “United Underground” was a three hour program, & this is a 90-minute tape.

Cabaret Voltaire - Partially Submerged 

Salem 66 - Chinchilla

Salem 66 - Across The Sea

R.E.M. - Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)

[brief excerpt of public service announcement]

R.E.M. -  Can’t Get There From Here

Sonic Youth - Brave Men Run (In My Family)

The Pogues - Sally MacLennane

(Andy talk back; dedication to Ernst)

The Replacements - Here Comes A Regular

Rain Parade - Kaleidoscope

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Brand New Friend

Marc Almond & the Willing Sinners - Oily Black Limousine

Cactus World News - Skin and Dust

Tom Waits - Downtown Train

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking

The Men They Couldn’t Hang - The Bells 

The Housemartins - Anxious 

(Andy talk back; 8pm- ‘completely groovy music’; reading from the Black Poets anthology; “roses and revolution” by Dudley Randall)

Musing on roses and revolutions,

I saw night close down on the earth like a great dark wing,

and the lighted cities were like tapers in the night,

and I heard the lamentations of a million hearts

regretting life and crying for the grave,

and I saw the Negro lying in the swamp with his face

blown off,

and the northern cities with his manhood maligned and felt

the writhing

of his viscera like that of a hare hunted down or the

bear at bay,

and I saw men working and taking joy in their work

and embracing the hard eyed whore with joyless excitement

and lying with wives and virgins in impotence

And as I groped in darkness

and felt the pain of million,

gradually, like day driving night across the continent,

I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision

of a time when all men walk proudly through the earth

and the bombs and missiles lie at the bottom of the ocean

like the bones of dinosaurs buried under the shale of eras,

and men strive with each other not for power or the

accumulation of paper

but in joy create for others the house, the poem, the game

of athletic beauty.

Then washed in the brightness of this vision,

I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished

and suddenly

burst into terrible and splendid bloom

the blood-red flower of revolution…

Husker Du - Ticket To Ride 

Husker Du - Green Eyes 

Julian Cope - Kolly Kibber’s Birthday 

The Cult - Rain 

(Andy talk back; Kahlil Gibran - Sand and Foam)

Lou Reed - Street Hassle 

Boomtown Rats - Drag Me Down

Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Let Them All Talk

The Skids - Circus Games

(Andy talk back; “unlike those big corporate ones”; reading from the Black Poets anthology; “The Plight” - James W. Thomspson)

The Virgin Prunes - Ballad of the Man

Howard Devoto - The Rainy Season 

Mike Peters - Radio i.d. 

The Alarm - Across The Border

The Alarm - Absolute Reality 

(Andy talk back; calendar: anti-war events, “open stage” - community concert series, concerts, etc.; “I graduate from high school on June 12”; “Phillip Glass is playing....look around the papers for that”)

Philip Glass - ???

The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby

The Beatles - Love To You

Hair - The Flesh Failures

(Andy talk, poem; the security told us to sit down)

The Church - Unguarded Moment

Echo & The Bunnymen - Never Stop 

(don’t talk about it, “not meant to be a great eulogy” for Paula Ward)

U2 - Bad 

10,000 Maniacs - Daktari

Lone Justice - Sweet Sweet Baby (I’m Falling)

The Cure - In Between Days

--

To produce the weekly episode of “United Underground” each Wednesday night, we hauled two giant wooden crates of vinyl albums in the back of my shiny blue Subaru, from our suburban bungalow in the Ravines, to the industrial-looking high school at the corner of 10 Mile & Lahser. Some of those discs were found on weekly borrowing trips to Play It Again Records on Northwestern Highway. In exchange for an informal shout-out on the air, Alan lent me a stack of albums from his used stock for each show every week. My high school sat adjacent to the Presbyterian church I attended those four years; the same church campus where my Daddy’s ashes are interred.

Often I would bring friends with me to the live broadcast, to help write down in a log all the songs we played in our 3-hour shift. Friends also helped me answer the phones, which sometimes rang off the wall. I reckon I had way more regular listeners back then, than I do now on the college radio, where I have hosted a program for almost 19 years. Many of my friends would listen, & I also made friends with lots of the people, who began as listeners. Not all listeners were sympathetic fans, though.

The episode (from which I have recovered these portions from the cassette) was aired on April 9, 1986. Its immersion in 80’s indie is indicative of my eclectic tastes from those days. But we were also a punk & hardcore adjacent program. The following Wednesday, the day after the United States attacked Libya, I went all-in with my fiery activist passions. (The number of anti-war events mentioned between concert announcements on the calendar run-down in this salvaged 4-9-1986 episode is evidence of my activist yearnings of those days.) 

That concluding spring term on the air, the spring of my senior year, I invited the communist lead guitarist of a local punk band Forced Anger to be my guest on the air, to advocate for a national student strike called “No Business As Usual,” not unlike the student strikes of the 1960s, not unlike the current anti-ICE walkouts or the BLM activity among youth in 2o2o, though this 1986 event was much smaller. 

The day after that show, the day after the punk guitarist had me play some crunchy cuss-filled & n-word-laced callouts about “the pigs” by a band called The D***s & after advertising the student strike, basically promoting truancy to every high school listener in the metro area, I found myself in the Principal’s office. I sat in the hot seat for a meeting about the previous night’s episode. It didn’t go well.

(The implication of my worst iteration in the authority figure's eyes was that Reagan was a "pig" for attacking Libya & supporting the Contras & stoking Cold War nuke fears, among many other things, like demonizing the LGBTQ community during the AIDS crisis.)

As the principal leaned in to defend guns, cops, armies, Reagan, ‘murica, & the like, I found myself invoking Jesus of Nazareth & the Catholic-Worker-style pacifism I had inherited from my lefty parents. The Principal wanted to make sure, though, that I would renounce pacifism if someone raped my grandmother. That is the argument they always take. (I actually had a gun-nut here in Tennessee tell me that my pacifism basically proved I didn’t love my wife, because nothing says marital fidelity like owning a firearm to defend your castle. My wife agrees with me, though, about all that peace & love stuff. We are not stockpiling any second-amendment bunkers at our house.) 

Even though I got suspended & my radio show was summarily yanked from the airwaves, I did sneak back on the WSHJ airwaves a couple of times. Later that same spring, we were excited that the station got invited to do a remote broadcast at the local mall. With permission from our faculty adviser, I got to co-host with the younger sister of the Disoriented Rain Dance fanzine editor & on-again off-again sweetheart. 

Beyond that, I was still required to attend the radio class period each weekday. That class was always a joyfully chill affair, especially for folks like me with severe senioritis. One weekday after seeing the legendary Layabouts for the first time at Alvin’s by Wayne State, I snuck into the booth to broadcast tracks from the NO MASTERS album that I had acquired the night before. If anyone was listening, they were treated to the subversive ska-&-world-music-infused skank & dance rock of Detroit’s “laziest” band.

That night at Alvin’s would be a portal to my future. I met my lifelong friend & fellow radio guy Peter Werbe for the first time at the show. Peter’s Sunday night WRIF show Nightcall was a staple for young liberals & lefties across the Metro area. We would become intense collaborators for the ensuing decades. After the pandemic, Peter published his novel “Summer On Fire” about the Detroit rebellion of 1967 & the counterculture community of that heady heyday. That book would bring us full circle, as it would occasionally end up on my American Mixtape syllabus & was the focus of TOTR 395 back in 2021.