Back when I lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the mid-to-late 1990s, I was fortunate enough to serve as a DJ for the local radio station, KMTN 96.9 FM. One of my slots was the Sunday night jazz show, playing mostly-mellow jazz cuts from 6pm-midnight as a way to wind down the last hours of the week for the valley. I got a little restless with the straight-ahead jazz format and so invited my then-new friend DJ Edubious to sit in with me for a couple hours towards the end of the show.

We spun funk, hip hop, acid jazz, groovetronica, breaks and all manners of music that one could argue existed on the outher fringes of the jazz universe. We didn't have any format to follow, no commercials to play, probably not a ton of listeners either… so we just got irie and tag-teamed musical selections back and forth, whatever we felt like playing.

The station manager must've never tuned in during those late hours as I don't think we we're spinning what he intended for me to play. We always got a kick out of thinking "I bet this is the first time Pharcyde / Funkadelic / Groove Collective has ever been played on Wyoming radio." Some of these tracks sound rather dated now -- a time capsule from the acid jazz/Ubiquity Records/Greyboy-style 1990s -- but you can sure tell we're having fun and kickin' it loose 'n large across the vast airwaves of Jackson Hole, eastern Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone landscape.



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tagged: christafari * radio * jackson hole * KMTN * edubious

An wide-ranging interview with poet, essayist, environmental activist and philosopher Gary Snyder on NCTV: March 2, 2008. Lots of good conversation on his upbringing in Washington State and his current home in the Sierras.



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tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

A poetry reading by Gary Snyder on March 5, 2009 at the University of California - Berkeley.



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Photos copyright Christian Martin, 2009.

tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

A poetry reading by Gary Snyder on March 21, 1987 at the University of California - Berkeley. Enjoy!



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tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

Spoken word revelries from Tom Waits on his 2008 "Glitter & Doom" tour. Ain't nothin' else like Tom tellin' a tale...



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tagged: tom waits

I had the amazing opportunity to interview the legendary author and psychedelic spelunker Tom Robbins on stage at Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham, Washington on May 14, 2009. We gave a reading from his novel B is for Beer to a sold-out audience in the outdoor beer garden, accompanied by live music, skits and general revelrie.

At the end of the event, I joined Tom on stage for a conversation -- I had over 20 questions prepared and rehearsed, though got less than half-dozen out. He was particularly interested in me asking him "How did you get started as a writer?" This question set him up for a delectable riff involving Elvis, a dwarf in a green suit, a blonde-in-distress and secret underground lakes beneath Graceland. Photo by Scott Glackman!



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tagged: tom robbins * interview * bellingham

Just for fun, here's another recording from way back when I was the Saturday morning DJ for KMTN 96.9 FM in Jackson Hole, and had the special job of coaxing the town awake and out in to the day -- whether that meant using my music to get people out of bed and to the slopes or to their jobs, proper song selection and pacing was essential. I always loved the notion that I was spinning the soundtrack for thousands of people as they began another day in the Hole. I also had to handle the morning snow and weather reports, lost dog announcements, a 1-hour world beat show and an on-air garage sale-type-thing called Trash & Treasure.

The region reached by these radio waves is home to ski bums, cowboys, billionaires, spud farmers and movie stars. DJ'ing to the local musical tastes required reaching a careful blend of bluegrass, reggae, funk, folk, classic rock, jam band and other genres that don't typically sit next to each other. This episode shows me attempting to find the balance with the Allman Brothers, Allison Krauss, Blue Traveler, Morphine, Ani Difranco and Bob Marley. One other note -- I tried to talk and play commercials as little as possible, especially in the early hours, and tried to spin as many consecutive songs as I could.

This set appears to be from the springtime shortly before I moved on to other work -- I could take working every Saturday morning at 5 am for only so long-- and some of the song selections are now cringe-worthy to my ears, but still, it serves as a fun time capsule recording from my stint as a small town disk jockey in Wyoming in 1998.




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tagged: christafari * radio * jackson hole * KMTN

Podcast featuring Snyder interview on KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle, May 27, 2009 + Gary Snyder on Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" via NPR 2008 + "Poetry Off the Shelf" profile, June 2008

Poet Gary Snyder returns to Seattle for reading
By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

Back before all the asphalt, the cars and the strip malls, this was a forested glade, where Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, would beat a path into the woods to his secret camp, to snug down with the quiet night, dreaming a fifth-grader's skinned-knee dreams.

One of America's most celebrated environmental writers and a lifelong conservationist, Snyder returned to his boyhood home Tuesday in Lake City. He is in town for a reading tonight at Benaroya Hall, part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures series.

Known for his writings imbued with sense of place and love of nature, Snyder reflected on how the local landscape has changed since he first explored its tangled woods as a boy, and how loving and knowing a place is the first step to preserving it.

Long before he grew into one of America's most famous Beat poets and was immortalized as Japhy Ryder, the fictional hero in Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums," before he put down roots in California and crisscrossed the Pacific, over and over, to study Buddhism in Japan, Snyder grew up here, living with his parents on a subsistence farm.click for more...

tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

A recording from my archive collection of radio shows I did on KMTN 96.9 FM in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the mid-Nineties. Every Sunday night, I'd hunker down in the studio, a short bike ride from my log cabin on the compound, to host the long-running 6-hour Jazz Sessions show. As this mix shows, my definition of "jazz" was pretty loose. For this hour, I started out playing Africa-inspired jazz music, and then branched out from there. Lots of people liked the freshness and creativity I was bringing to the air waves, but I always remember one phone call from a listener very upset that I had deviated from the traditional jazz format and I was ruining his Sunday nights. Ah well. Had to keep myself entertained too.

Enjoy!



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tagged: christafari * radio * jackson hole * KMTN * world bear

photos by Chrisitan Martin, copyright 2009

A fundraiser for the Liam Wood School of Fly Fishing and River Soldiering featuring David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie and Jeffrey Foucault; WWU * 9.25.09 * Bellingham, WA. Part two. Download by subscribing to Radio Free Fundi via links at the top of the sidebar, or stream below.

tagged: david james duncan * sherman alexie * jeffrey foucault * bellingham * ecology * folk

A fundraiser for the Liam Wood School of Fly Fishing and River Soldiering featuring David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie and Jeffrey Foucault; WWU * 9.25.09 * Bellingham, WA. Part one. Download by subscribing to Radio Free Fundi via links at the top of the sidebar.

tagged: david james duncan * sherman alexie * jeffrey foucault * bellingham * ecology

Gary Snyder visited Seattle in May 2009 at the invite of Seattle Arts & Lectures and North Cascades Institute (my daytime employer). Without any new collection of poetry or essays to promote, Snyder read from a variety of books, notes and a letters in a warm, intimate presentation at Benaroya Hall. Asked by the Institute to speak a bit about his time as a fire lookout in the North Cascades in the mid-1950s, Snyder reminisced and read several poems written during that time period, including "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout" and "The Late Snow and Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-four" -- two of my favorites.

Snyder also discusses the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, his Wobbly grandfather soapboxing in Pioneer Square, learning how to cut wood on a stump farm north of Seattle and Finnish anarchist newspapers published near the mouth of the Columbia River in this very special appearance on his home ground of western Washington State. Another podcast will be released in the near future with the question & answers & conversation he partook in after this reading.

More Gary Snyder, along with Jack Kerouac and Edward Abbey, at www.PodcastCafe.org/RadioFreeFundi. Feedback: djfundi@podcastcafe.org.



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tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

Gary Snyder
Reading from “Myths & Texts,” "Riprap" and other poems at Reed College, Portland, OR
February 14, 1956

On February 13, 1956, Gary Snyder ’51 returned to Reed College with Allen Ginsberg for a poetry reading at Anna Mann Cottage. The next day, when the poets read again, the unscheduled event was recorded.

The reel of audiotape containing the Ginsberg reading, including his reading of “Howl,” was discovered in 2007 in Reed’s Hauser Library by John Suiter, a writer doing research for a biography of Snyder. Beside the reel was a note that contained disappointing news about the Snyder half of the reading: “Tape #1 Missing.”

Then, the morning after the “Howl” story appeared in Portland’s Oregonian, Steven Halpern ’85, a Portland-based photographer, showed up at the door of Reed’s special collections with an audiocassette copy of the missing tape. He had made the copy 25 years before as an English major doing research on Snyder’s friend and fellow-poet Lew Welch ’50. Tape 1 contained Snyder’s reading. Furthermore, Halpern had meticulously transferred from the original reel all the labeling information, which not only confirmed the exact date of the reading—February 14, 1956—but also included this note:

Poetry Reading made in the school year ’55–1956 at Reed College [when] Snyder was on a trip North from San Francisco that is briefly described in Dharma Bums trip with Allen Ginsberg. Snyder talks about his lookout experiences and early poetry writing.

Although the original reel has yet to surface, Halpern’s cassette is a superb copy—virtually equal in sound quality to the Ginsberg companion reel—and is more than twice as long, containing a lengthy selection of 46 Snyder poems.

--Copyright 2008, Reed College (for educational purposes only!)



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More info on this reading at The Oregonian and in this pdf story by Snyder scholar John Suiter.
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tagged: gary snyder * beat generation * poetry * ecology

From the vaults comes another classic late-90's episode of Planet Soup, a Saturday morning radio show on KMTN 96.9 FM in Jackson Hole, Wyoming that was once hosted by DJ Christafari, a good friend of the Podcast Cafe. "Women's Voices" features a wide variety of music stylings from some of the best female singers and musicians in the world...




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tagged: christafari * radio * jackson hole * KMTN

I am currently packing up my backpack for a forthcoming trip to the redrock country of southern Utah. Been pouring over topo maps of Canyonlands National Park, consulting hiking books and making plans with my two compatriots who will join me in the desert from San Francisco and Taos. And, of course, been brushing up on my Edward Abbey, to get in the proper spirit of the desert. To that end, I thought it's as good a time as any to post the second half of his "Freedom & Wilderness" readings -- I up'd the first half right here, along with some background info on these recordings.




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tagged: edward abbey * ecology * literature