Soundways 61 Revisited

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South Side 

“The Next Seattle.” “The New Athens, Georgia.” “Like a Mini Austin, Texas.”

When the music industry pulls out its map of America, you can bet good money it doesn’t correspond to any logical semblance of geography or demographics: Sure, New York City and Los Angeles, Nashville and Chicago possibly deserve to be state-sized blobs to Music U.S.A. cartographers. But insiders to the biz live in a world wherein the Last Big Thing is the watchword, so Seattle’s ‘90s grunge or Brooklyn’s post-punk hair rockers get more attention than forgotten byways through, say, Fort Worth.

To Internet-bubble marketing executive turned radio host Tripp Clarke, that doesn’t make any sense. When Pittsburgh-based Clarke, a long-time volunteer host on WYEP-FM, thinks of the likes of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Pittsburgh, PA, he sighs and figures, “If you can make it there …

“I’m very interested in emerging musicians,” says Clarke. “And one of the things that I’ve always been astounded by is the volume of artists that are out there, great and talented artists, that you’ll never even get the chance to hear – because, we all know, the music business is all timing and ‘who you know.’ So I thought, maybe I could create a venue that looks at a town, at some of the great musicians that have come from that town and aren’t as well known.”

A new showcase
Clarke’s idea quickly became American Soundways (changed from its original title, American Soundcheck), a series of one-hour radio programs, each focusing on a different oft-ignored city’s musical heritage and current music scene, as well as the historical elements that impacted, and were impacted by, that music. To tell the tale of his cities – which, so far, have included Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Ft. Worth, Jacksonville, and others – Clarke employs local music historians, musicians on the current scene, and high-profile interviewees with a take on some aspect of that city’s sound. (For example, blues-guitar disciple and former Jefferson Airplane founder Jorma Kaukonen commenting on the Piedmont blues icons from the Charlotte region.)

To test the waters, Clarke – recently laid-off from his position as director of marketing for Stargate, and in, as he puts it, “career decision-making mode” – took a shot at putting an episode together. With nothing but his background from WYEP and a very patient friend in Right Track Studio boss Pietro Notarangelo, Clarke began researching that bastion of musical heritage, Cincinnati, Ohio.

“I didn’t want to start with Pittsburgh,” says Clarke. “If I was going to replicate this process again and again, I didn’t want to start out with my research be biased. So, I thought, ‘well, I can drive to Cincinnati,’ and I started researching, and that lightbulb went off: Holy – I had no idea this many talented people came out of Cincinnati!”

Clarke knew he had something interesting, doable, and replicable – after all, if Ohio could form a show, anyplace can. Clarke isn’t one to think small, and his instincts took him to WYEP Program Director Rosemary Welsch, who has experience within the public-radio world – the only realm likely to be interested in such a program – and specifically the so-called “triple-A” format – Adult Album Alternative, which concentrates on rootsy music like that into which Clarke was delving. Clarke wanted WYEP to play his programs, when they were ready, but he also wanted Welsch’s advice on pursuing a broader audience – a nationally syndicated, Pittsburgh-produced, series.

“When he first came to me, I certainly wanted to be supportive, but I also wanted to be honest about it,” says Welsch who aired all seven shows on WYEP. “You’re up against really tough competition,” in seeking syndication, she says. But more than just competition from established nationally syndicated shows such as WXPN Philadelphia’s World Café, or KCRW Santa Monica’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, the competition comes in the form of localized programming. According to Welsch, as public radio stations have felt the pinch of fewer member and government dollars, as well as the audience erosion caused by Internet radio, stations have turned more and more to very localized, market-specific programming. But that’s not to say that American Soundways couldn’t be the one to break through.

Express yourself
“What makes the show unique is that he’s going beyond just the music,” says Welsch. “It’s the history of the city, how that music fits into it. Music is just one way that people express themselves, but what he’s looking at is the way a city expresses something about itself, and I think everybody loves it when [those] little cities get a light shined on them.”

“It’s guerilla tactics,” says Tripp Clarke. “I usually start out by going the proper route, but expecting to get a ‘no.’”

Halfway through the first American Soundways series, Clarke has learned to navigate the music biz a little bit better. Rosemary Welsch – and conventional radio wisdom – tells Clarke that, in order to even talk about syndication, he needs 13 episodes, 13 weeks equaling one quarter; he’s got seven finished. In the beginning, Clarke was hesitant, almost bashful, about calling superstars for interviews – now, he’s resorted to his self-described “guerilla tactics,” like those which got him on the phone with Allman Brothers Band guitar prodigy Derek Trucks for the Jacksonville episode.

“His publicist asked me, ‘how many stations are you on,’” says Clarke, “and I never heard back. So I started calling the ‘D. Trucks’ in the Jacksonville phone book, and got his Mom on the phone – she gave me the cell phone number for his tour manager!”

Pittsburgh's turn
As an example of the historical twists and turns that can impact a city's music, Pittsburgh is certainly as good a choice as any. For the new Pittsburgh episode of American Soundways, Clarke discusses the impact of European immigration to the city, and the emergence of Stephen Foster as America's most popular 19^th-Century songwriter, including songs from the Beautiful Dreamer album. There are interviews with current local acts such as The Hi-Frequencies and blues guitarist Ernie Hawkins, as well as the cultural icons that came in between.

"I took a bit of liberty in terms of artistic influences," on the city's music, says Clarke. "Playwright August Wilson, artists Mary Cassatt and Andy Warhol, and of course I'd be negligent in my duties if I failed to mention the great jazz artists like Art Blakey and billy Eckstine that came from here. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, Pittsburgh was every bit as big as Chicago or New York."

Clarke’s latest high-profile interview score is a conversation with singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked about Steven Foster, the seminal Pittsburgh-born 19^th-Century songwriter whose work Shocked recently covered as part of the Grammy-winning Beautiful Dreamer album of Foster songs. That interview will serve as part of Clarke’s current American Soundways project: A revised Pittsburgh episode, to serve as something of a showcase of the show’s potential, funded by Clarke’s recently secured Sprout Fund grant. But Clarke’s – and American Soundways’ – situation remains very much a case of so near, yet so far.

“It really is just money at this point,” says Clarke. “I just need a foundation that says, ‘we’ve got a fairly decent amount of money and we want to support the musical legacy of these towns that don’t get the dues they deserve.’”

“The budget is very conservative – it’s very possible. And all the reviews have been so positive – five stars from a San Francisco producer. Our most recent review came from a 30-year veteran in public radio, who said, ‘would we carry it? Yes, absolutely.’”

Justin Hopper is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer whose last feature for Pop City was on the Appalachian  School.

Mixer and recording equipment

Tripp Clarke in his neighborhood in Aspinwall

All photographs copyright © Jonathan Greene