So much happening in the Americana/Roots Music Scene and Diana Linn is trying to keep up! The Americana Music Association 2018 Award Nominees were announced this week – everybody is touring, releasing new music and going to festivals. It’s exhausting, but in a good kinda way.

This week’s in studio guests will be songwriter Wade D. Brown slinging some early morning tunes.  Wade D. Brown grew up in small town rural Kansas and describes having a “dreamers disease” from a very young age.  He quotes Kerouac, Woody Guthrie, and Waldo Emerson for developing his curiosity about being a “life long freedom seeker.”  The notion of “self obtained freedom” is the central issue at the heart of Wade D. Brown’s music. With primary influences from pre-war delta and ragtime blues, medicine show music, bluegrass, vaudeville, and country folk, Wade D. Brown’s music is a contrast of light and dark themes.  Songs like Home Country Pie and Summer Bliss paint pictures of simple happiness, while songs such as Old Habits and Paper Cups evoke a sense of complex loneliness.  Wade D. Brown says that his goal as a songwriter is to “use music rooted in traditional forms with a poetic lyric to create an original sound that challenges the listener emotionally and conceptually.”

Travis Fields, proprietor of the Westport Saloon will talk about and spin some tunes from folks on the Westport Roots Music Festival. 

WESTPORT ROOTS FESTIVAL UNITES​ ​PERFORMERS​ ​AND​ ​FANS​ ​OF​ ​ROOTS​ ​INFLUENCED​ ​MUSIC​ ​IN​ ​KANSAS​ ​CITY’S HISTORIC​ ​WESTPORT​ ​NEIGHBORHOOD.​ ​ ​FROM​ ​BLUEGRASS​ ​TO​ ​SOUTHERN​ ​METAL,​ ​HONKY​ ​TONK​ ​TO​ ​FOLK,​ ​THIS MUSIC​ ​FESTIVAL​ ​OFFERS​ ​A​ ​UNIQUE​ ​LINEUP​ ​IN​ ​AN​ URBAN​ ​SETTING.​​ENJOY​ ​65​ ​ACTS​ ​ON​ ​2​ ​STAGES​ ​MEMORIAL​ ​DAY WEEKEND,​​MAY​ ​25TH​ ​THROUGH​ ​27TH,​ ​2018.

Also scheduled on the playlist are tunes from Americana acts coming to Kansas City this week…Elizabeth Cook and Caleb Caudle appearing in support of the John Anderson show at Knuckleheads, nominees from this year’s Americana Music Association Awards and a slice of the John Oates conversation Diana Linn had at Folk Alliance International this year!  Whew!!!

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