"Stay in the South, Stay in the South"*

Awwwww yeah for some killin' New Orleans funk this week!

Once again, I got to do the show by myself. And I got to pick all of the songs I liked and wanted to play. The power has gone to my head. Of course, it was a lot of fun! If you ever get the chance to have your own radio show, I highly recommend it. This was definitely my favorite show so far.

I finally got to relax enough to really listen to the songs as I played them instead of just focusing on working all of the equipment and I was definitely dancing and rocking out in the studio. A New Orleans-heavy show was perfect for that! All of these bands are phenomenal live. Make sure you check out the Show Notes posted below for performing dates and try to catch them live if you can. And then, DANCE! There's not enough dancing at live shows up here in the North/Midwest. Let us New Orleanians inspire you to change that! How can you not dance to these grooves?

The only down side was that the technical gods were against me today and there were ghosts in all of my machines. Something messed up with the board volume and it wasn't going out on the airwaves properly. Another DJ came in to the booth and tried to help me, but he couldn't figure it out either. Everything was set correctly; it just wasn't working. Thankfully, it came back on after a few seconds. Then, I couldn't get the phone line to go out over the airwaves. Simon Lott did call in and I talked to him - just not on air. We'll have him back on next week, probably, since we'll be playing some more of his stuff in the near future. He's an amazing drummer with several fantastic and greatly varied projects. Plus, he's a super-cool and nice guy and fun to talk to. So, we'll get him back on.

Adding to the mayhem, my iPod decided to shuffle itself when I played a couple of tracks so I started playing Simon Lott's Things when I meant to play the Hall Monitors, but I ended up working it all out in the end. No harm, no foul. Normally, I prefer to play off of CDs, so I can fade one track into another all pretty-like, but I had so much unreleased material to play this week that my iPod was the only way. Next time, I'll burn it all on individual CDs, if I have to. Much easier.

So, next week, Matthew will be back and we'll maybe play some of Simon Lott's stuff that connects with a bunch of cool music up in New York then work our way back to Chicago. After that, we'll be heading back to New Orleans via a touring Chicago band to coincide with the N.O. Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Rock it!

* Lee Dorsey