Across the Prairie is Back!

After a long hiatus, we are thrilled about the reboot of the radio show Across the Prairie! The show originally aired for 16 years on WUFT-FM, and we are so happy and honored to be back, now on The Wombat, WMBT-FM 90.1, Sundays at 7 pm.

Florida’s locally-produced folk and Americana music program, the show combines recorded music with live studio performances and interviews. One thing that makes ATP unique is Cathy’s ability to join her guests in performance, adding harmony vocals or rhythm guitar. ATP’s mission is to introduce you to both legendary and new talent, up close and personal, and to let you know about the many local and regional events that occur in our listening area.

On the previous incarnation of Across the Prairie, we featured interviews with local and international musicians, including a story we produced about Riders in the Sky. And I was honored to produce a feature on the great Stetson Kennedy, who was honored at Florida’s capitol and named to the Florida Artist Hall of Fame for his body of work as an author. Stetson is most famous for his bravery in infiltrating the Klan in the 1940s, and exposing their activities in his book “Unmasked.”

On Across the Prairie we have had many great moments, including:

• • Tom Paxton live on the air and me singing a duet of “Last Thing on My Mind” with him
  • Interviewing Arlo Guthrie and producing a 4th of July special about the Guthrie family
  • An intimate conversation with Pete Seeger in Beacon, New York, during the sloop Clearwater’s annual Pumpkin Sail, about Pete, politics, pollution, and the Clearwater
  • Interviewing David Roth, Carla Ulbrich, Mark O’Connor, Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Acoustic Eidolon, and many others at national folk concerts and events
  • Interviewing “Prairie Home Companion” host, Garrison Keillor, along with Robin and Linda Williams
  • Creating a special Tribute to Don Grooms program that included our home recording of Tom Shed’s song about Don, “Just a Soft Echo”
  • Exceptional in-studio pickin’ with Mark Johnson’s clawgrass banjo accompanied by members of the Rice Family.
  • Interviewing producer Margaret Longhill and performer Sue Grooms about the Will McLean Festival.
  • Dueling dulcimers (and didgeridoo!) with Jon Kay and David Beede.
  • Sharing songs and conversation with some of Florida’s finest musicians, including Tallahassee’s Doug Gauss and Carrie Hamby, songwriter Joe Mark, fiddler George Custer, Tammerlin’s Lee Hunter and Arvid Smith, South Florida’s Grant Livingston, Guatemalan “ex-patriot” Jack Schuster; travelin’ folks like Jack Williams, Wendy Beckerman, the Bills, dancingLight and the Short Sisters; as well as Gainesville’s own Lloyd Baldwin, John Chambers, Dale Crider, Mark & Monica Leadon, Art Crummer, Elaine Mahon, Anna Moo, Megha Morganfield, Tammy Murray, Barry Sides, John Stephens, Allen Stowell, Rudy Young, Frank Whitenack, Quarter Moon, Hamhock and Jane Yii.