Tasty Brew Music features Steve Forbert and John Prine

The 6 am hour of this week’s Tasty Brew Music Radio Show is sponsored by listener Dwight Stanford, formerly of Kansas City, now of Offida, Italy.  Dwight’s artist pic for this hour is troubadour Steve Forbert.  Steve Forbert traveled to New York City from Mississippi in 1976 and played guitar for spare change in Grand Central Station. He vaulted to international prominence with the folk-pop hit, “Romeo’s Tune,” during a time when the singer-songwriter era had all but ended and Talking Heads, Blondie, and other New Wave and punk acts were moving into the public consciousness. Still, critics raved about Forbert’s poetic lyrics and engaging melodies, and the crowds at CBGB’s in New York accepted him alongside those acts. “I’ve never been interested in changing what I do to fit emerging trends,” Forbert observes. “Looking back on it, I was helping to keep a particular tradition alive at a time when it wasn’t in the spotlight”—a tradition that has since seen a thriving resurgence as the Americana genre.  Forbert has amassed a catalog of well-crafted, unforgettable songs on such albums as Streets of This Town, The American in Me, Mission of the Crossroad Palms, and Just Like There’s Nothin’ to It. His tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, Any Old Time, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004. He was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2010.

The 7 am hour of this week’s Tasty  Brew is sponsored by Manny Curiel of Kansas City who has chosen John Prine as his feature artist.  Back in 1970, Prine was playing at the Chicago folk club The Fifth Peg when the young journalist Roger Ebert dropped in for a set. At the time, Prine was a 23-year-old mailman who had been singing his original songs every Thursday night for about two months. Ebert wrote a glowing review for the Chicago Sun- Times, essentially launching Prine’s music career. Kris Kristofferson became one of his earliest advocates; their friendship has lasted decades and they have toured together extensively over the years. In turn, Prine has invited a new generation of songwriters, such as Jason Isbell and Margo Price, to open his concerts. His 2018 tour schedule includes select dates with Sturgill Simpson. The highly-anticipated album, The Tree of Forgiveness, is Prine’s first collection of new material since 2005’s Grammy-winning Fair and Square. Rather than going out on a limb, Prine cultivated the themes that have brought international acclaim since the 1970s.  Music from Prine’s early career and brand new music from The Tree of Forgiveness will be shared.

Rounding out the show will be new music from artists coming to play in Kansas City this week (Courtney Patton, hometown girl Samantha Fish, The Lone Bellow). The bountiful haul from this year’s Folk Alliance International continues to yield great finds like Joe Jencks, Heather Styka, My Girl the River, Matt Cox and ESOEBO.  Tune in to see if host Diana Linn can get it all in!

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