Shot and edited in a record less-than-24-hours, the latest episode of Radio Free Charleston is now online…ten days later.

That doesn’t make it any less cool, though.  This show is a departure in many ways.  First, it’s a road trip show.  Melanie Larch and I drove to Parkersburg and taped at John Radcliff’s house.  John was hosting a Songpull event, where songwriters gather and perform tunes that they’ve penned within 30 days of that event.  Visit the Songpull.com website to see and hear the results of these songwriting exercises held all around the country.  Later this week the Parkersburg Songpull tunes should be online. We’ll post an update when they are. 

Aside from the brand-spankin’ new Songpull tunes, we managed to finagle some older songs out of the participants, and that’s what you get to hear on the new RFC.   We have great songs from brothers Don and Daron Baker.   DonBaker is from Belpre Ohio.  His brother Daron is from Columbus, and performs with the band Rustic Bucket.  Each Baker boy gives us a terrific song.  We’ll have more from them on future episodes of RFC, and special apologies to Daron, whose name we mis-spell throughout the show. Them’s the hazards of editing a show in 24 hours.

John Radcliff sets a record by being the first musical act to appear on three consecutive episodes of RFC!  This wasn’t the original plan, but it worked out pretty great. 

Originally, John was going to have two songs on episode 16 of RFC.  When the song “Tears Fallin'” became available, we bumped one of those songs to the next show.  While episode 17 was coming together, John hatched the idea of holding a Songpull event, and asked if I’d tape it.  I agreed and asked if I could combine it with an RFC taping, and that’s where episode 18 came from.  

It was happenstance, but we got three great songs from Radcliff out of the deal, and we have a ton more in the can to use on future shows.  Rad’s pretty prolific.

Josh Buskirk was on hand with his 12 String Gee-tar, and graced us with a couple of tunes from his latest CD (which can be purchased at Taylor Books or at his website).  This time we get “The Adventures Of May K,” which we previewed here in PopCult last week.  We’re saving his other song for a special upcoming “theme” episode of RFC.   I’d planned to catch Josh at Taylor’s last Friday night (the performance that he plugs in this show) before I was waylaid by food poisoning.  He’ll be back in town in a few weeks, and we’ll let everyone know about it. 

The Animation and mind-hurting weirdness took the show off, for the most part, but they’ll be back in full force next time.  We are already hard at work on episode 19, and you can expect to see it in about two weeks.