About

The main thrust of The Stoners' Serenade is to expose and promote bands that play local clubs and festivals, especially those regional acts that go virtually unnoticed on even the best radio station.

That is my mission, to boldly play those bands that have never been played in my area before.

I love brilliant musicianship and it does not matter to me whether it would be classed as blue-grass, jazz, jam bands, new-grass, rock, or reggae. Whatever you call it if it jams I will play it.

Some thanks are in order here. I could not do the show I do without the help of people who love to record live music. Some who stand out in their kindness to me are Tom Delage, "Tie-dye" Jim Montanya, Debra Jones, and most especially Joel Hudson of jamlive.org. In a separate category all together is long-time Smilefest archivist Kelly Breed.

My unindicted co-consprirator is, and always will be, Chris "Papa Bear" Kempf. Our saturday nights of getting drunk and listening to music real loud formed the backbone of the early days of the show. His dear wife Siobhan has been our DD to more shows than I can count. for that, and for so many other kindnesses, Siobhan, thank you.

There are only two rules I try (and sometimes fail) to follow; 1) some Jerry Garcia in some form every week. 2) close the show with something long and old and good.

A note about that last rule: as longtime listeners know, I often ended the show with 15-20 minutes of live Grateful Dead consisting of more than one song run together as they often did. The rules concerning webcasting, however, preclude me from playing more than one track by any one band in a one-hour period, so those days are over. I could still end with something that long, and will occasionally, but how many times do you guys want to hear Dark Star or Eyes?

The silver lining here is that, if I adjust my definition of "long" to include stuff as short as 7-8 minutes, I'll get to explore first-set songs I've always given short shrift to. The bad news is we'll never again hear the great set pieces like Sailor/Saint, St Stephen/The Eleven, China Cat/Rider, Help/Slip/Franklin's, et al. That truly breaks my heart.

Grady