Welcome to BlueRootsRadio, where you never know what you’ll hear next. BlueRootsRadio has been streaming an eclectic format since 2007. If there’s something you’d like to hear let me know using the contact link on the right. To find out some of the many ways you can listen to BRR click “How To Listen” above and to get your own BRR cloth bag while supplies last click “Bags”.
Thanks for listening!
Announcing the BlueRootsRadio Podcast
A podcast around 5 minutes on items of interest in music, news, tech and culture. Listen to the latest episode here
On This Day in Music History
2018
Paul Simon closes out his farewell tour with a show in his hometown of Queens, New York.
The venue is Corona Park, as in “Rosie, Queeen of Corona” from Simon’s hit “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard.” It’s an emotional farewell, but Simon keeps it upbeat, with crowd pleasers like “Mother and Child Reunion,” “Late in the Evening” and “You Can Call Me Al.” The last song is “The Sound of Silence,” his first hit with Simon & Garfunkel.
Over the years, Simon has reunited with Art Garfunkel several times, but not on this evening; the pair have been out of touch, and Garfunkel is playing his own show in Minnesota.
1985
The first Farm Aid concert plays in Champaign, Illinois, to benefit American farmers trying to survive amidst a national agricultural crisis.https://www.youtube.com/embed/0jaNHiJO4Xc?rel=0&showinfo=0
Farm Aid is held in the University of Illinois’ Memorial Stadium to raise money for American farmers whose livelihoods have been suffering for years due to a combination of droughts, interest rates, and rough economic conditions. The suicide rate among male, Upper Midwest farmers is twice the national average.
Organized by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young, the concert is inspired by Bob Dylan‘s onstage Live Aid statement that he hoped “some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa, maybe they could just take a little bit of it, maybe… one or two million… to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.”
Seventy-eight thousand people show up in rainy Champaign to hear 14 hours of performances by Johnny Cash, The Beach Boys, John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Lou Reed, Willie Nelson, Bon Jovi, Neil Young, and over 40 more top-shelf acts (all paying their own way). In the process, more than $9 million is raised for small farmers, and the problems associated with family farming in America are brought to the forefront.
Farm Aid becomes an ongoing, annual series that raises more than $45 million by 2015. It leads directly to the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, which is designed to provide financial relief to family farms. Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young remain on the board of directors, with Dave Matthews joining them in 2001.
Rhonda Perry, head of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center and Patchwork Family Farms, sums up the sentiment when she says, “The concert was one of those moments where farmers walked in and had… this feeling of elation and you just wanted to cry. It made us at least know that people are watching.”