Last Thursday night, I had an opportunity to fill in for KDHX’s music director, Nick Aquisto, guest-hosting his 7 to 9 p.m. show The Space Parlour. Prepping for the show, I noticed that Ron Edwards, the station’s longtime, Sunday night blues linchpin, was walking towards the on-air studio, though it was a couple days before his own gig. He walked in and within a minute or two was on-air alongside two of the station’s other longtime blues music champions, Denny Clancy and John McHenry.
Edwards was on-hand for an impromptu, on-air “hail-and-farewell” moment with the two, who’ve hosted Blursday for many a year. Last week was their penultimate show, and they’d just made clear to their audience that the longtime program was heading for the great playlist in the sky. With McHenry handling the basics of the sound board, Clancy was answering the phones, taking congratulatory and saddened calls in equal measure.
Get a guide to the region’s booming music scene
Subscribe to the St. Louis Music newsletter to discover upcoming concerts, local artists to watch, and more across an eclectic playlist of genres.
Tonight, from 4 to 7 p.m., will be Blursday’s last live broadcast.
Gathered in the KDHX in-house bar/coffeeshop, The Stage, dozens of folks were on hand last week to say “goodbye and good luck” to the pair, including fellow programmers, past programmers, family and friends. Clancy will be moving out of the country, and McHenry, who’d be doing a number of shows without his longtime partner, decided to hang up the headphones with the official nature of it all.
In a break from the afternoon drive time’s blues-bent, Christine Sanley will be taking on that timeslot’s reins, essentially bringing a brand new, new-music show to the slot, after not previously hosting a regular show on the community station.
Best of luck to all parties, in all their new guises.
Sights & Sounds: While North County’s Paul Artspace (which we featured a li’l while back) isn’t especially given over music, it’s good great pedigree as a supporter of local, regional, national and international visual and lit artists. The collectively run space was recently featured on the Strong Towns website, alongside some other, similarly-themed locations around the country…
Anthony Lucius, whom we’ve frequently featured in video collaborations with Mike Roth, has recently been given the Q & A treatment at Art Bae…
It’s been almost a year since the 25th anniversary of the famous Riverport Riot, featuring Guns n’ Roses and this publication, among others, will soon be featuring content about the band’s upcoming show in St. Louis, their first since the night of July 2, 1991. If you didn’t have a chance to read Christian Schaeffer’s oral history of the night’s events in the Riverfront Times, find it here and invest a few minutes. Time does fly…
A while back, we mentioned an upcoming concert by the St. Louis Free Jazz Collective. The group recently played a a gig in Old North St. Louis and have a bandcamp recording of that gig’s second set available now…
Try to be upfront about conflictual stuff and so: I work with Stan Chisholm, aka 18andCounting, aka the prime catalyst of the percussion-driven act TheOnlyEnsemble. But they’ve recently recorded a real burner of a live session with Columbia’s KCOU, so I’ll just leave this video right here:
Pokey LaFarge, who releases a single, video, or signature beer every few weeks, it seems, has seen his latest video debut with NPR. It’s called “Must Be a Reason,” and it’s right here:
