Welcome Aboard

Thanks for checking out this blog... not much here yet, but once my show gets going I'll have some playlists to share and will do my best to post some links to various bands' websites and share some basic info about bands and songs.

I've lived in Boise for almost 14 years and lived in Lewiston, Idaho for another 7. In 1994 I was living in Montana and debating on where to transfer after completing two years at a community college. I hadn't spent anytime in Boise, but applied to BSU and a handful of other western universities. I ended up getting a decent Comm. scholarship to BSU in addition to an out-of-state tuition waiver, but the deciding factor was that my favorite album of recent memory, Built to Spill's Ultimate Alternative Wavers, came from Boise. I figured if that music came from here there must be something good going on. I went to work at the college paper and was blown away to find Pat Schmaljohn (aka known as Pat Brown) serving as editor-in-chief. Pat was the original bassist for the Treepeople, Boise/Seattle underground rock legends. His brother Scott who played guitar and sang for the band also worked at the paper as a designer. With Pat's encouragement I wrote an all-vinyl music review column that he titled "The Vinyl Solution" and interviewed many local acts. When I conned my way into an telephone interview with Pavement's Steve Malkmus, Pat took the article for his underground rag, Streetmag, rather than letting it run in the university paper. Pat passed away in 1999, but his spirit lives on in many of us he inspired (musicians, designers, writers).

In the late 1990's I published a local zine called Antfarm with Debra Curry and Jeff Albertson, some high school friends from Lewiston who arrived in Boise after graduating college at U of I. Jeff had been a member of many Lewiston-Clarkston and Moscow-Pullman bands and in Boise he played in The Left Coast as bassist/singer. Our zine featured a lot of local music-related content from giddy reviews of our favorite local albums to too-candid interviews with the likes of Caustic Resin. The zine got shelved as many friends moved and I went back to college. During my college years I started making animations for local bands and friends like The Suffocation Keep, Pajama Party in a Haunted Hive, G. America and Lovey. I continue to make videos, but finish them very slowly because of my family, job and other things that compete for my time. I also try to snag an occasional poster or cd project for local artists.

This show came about because I was put in touch with Jeff at Boise Community Radio to do some event posters a couple of months ago. I heard that BCR was looking for DJ's and jumped at the chance to play a show of my favorite music. As I was deciding on the focus for the show the idea to make it a Boise-centric show became more and more appealing. As I started making stacks of local CD, tapes and records from my music collection I realized just how much good music has come out of this town in the years since my arrival. In addition to Boise bands I have some great stuff from friends up north... many of whom eventually ended up down here in bands at one point or another. (On a programming note: we'll bend the state lines a little bit to include Clarkston and Pullman, Washington because of their proximities to Lewiston and Moscow, respectively, and all the musical inbreeding amongst those towns).

As I compiled this show I enjoyed rediscovering some old favorites and discovering a few that I missed along the way. I hope that you'll enjoy listening and we can discover some local classics, new and old, along the way.