Episode 27 of Radio Free Charleston is online now! This installment, titled “Trust Me I’m A Doctor Shirt,” is crammed full of a diverse assortment of excellent music, plus just a dash of animation and mind-hurting weirdness. We’re all over town in this show, at LiveMix Studio, The Sound Factory, The La Belle Theater, and on the South Side Bridge!

We have great songs from Stephanie Deskins, Doctor Senator, and Comparsa, plus a cartoon by Stephen Beckner and a really creepy toy commercial (about which we will not speak again). Hosted by yours truly from the South Side Bridge, the iconic gateway that leads from downtown Charleston to up where all the user fee money goes to pave roads.

Stephanie Deskins contacted me through MySpace, and that’s just one more reason for me to like MySpace so much. It’s a great way to discover new musicians. She’s a songwriter, working primarily in country music, and her work struck me as being pretty darned impressive. You can read an interview with Stephanie elsewhere here in PopCult, and on Thursday she’ll be profiled in the print Gazz.

We recorded her last week at LiveMix Studio, and if you listen closely you’ll hear an uncredited guest musician near the end of her song. An Amtrak train blew its horn across the river, and it can be heard, just faintly, in the recording. The performance was so good that the train didn’t take anything away from the song, so we left it in. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from Stephanie in the future. In fact, tomorrow I’ll be posting a bonus video by Stephanie here in PopCult. This is for a song that will be featured on a future episode of RFC.

I became a huge fan of Doctor Senator the first time I saw them open for Seven Minutes Till Midnight back in June. After months of scheduling glitches we decided to record them on location at The Sound Factory downtown. At some point in the future we’ll be bringing the band into LiveMix, but for now check out the rockin’ performance of their song “Jesus Fish” in this episode. Alan, Andy, Travis and Annie put on one of the best shows in town and I know they’ll be playing more and building a growing fan base.

Stephen Beckner is no stranger to Radio Free Charleston, having been a regular on the show going all the way back to the radio days as a member of Go Van Gogh. We’ve had Stephen on the show as a solo performer, a member of Go Van Gogh, and as an animator before, and here he is again with the SuperBastard cartoon, “Banditry.” I can promise that this is just the beginning of a wave of superhero and science fiction shorts that will be turning up on RFC in the coming months.

A few weeks ago, Sean Richardson staged a benefit concert for his cousin, Leigh Ann Bowlin, who has been fighting lung cancer. RFC cameras were on hand to tape a couple of the bands, and we’re going to be showing you some of those performances along with information on how you can contribute to the Leigh Ann Bowlin Support Fund. If you would like to contribute, call 553-4610 OR 546-1764.

Comparsa is West Virginia’s premiere Latin music band, and I’ve been trying to get them on the show since their leader, Eduardo Canelon, appeared on our third video episode. They graciously donated their time to perform at the Leigh Ann Bowlin benefit concert, and I was able to get them on tape. I only had one camera that night, so this video is not as slick as our usual RFC productions, but the music is wonderful and the audio was shockingly good. One of these days we’ll get Eduardo, Beth, Mark, Deron and Al to come into LiveMix, but for now sit back and enjoy this performance, recorded live at the La Belle Theater in South Charleston on September 9.

We shot host segments for the show on the South Side Bridge, which has some terrific views of Charleston. It also has some ridiculously loud traffic. If the host bits seem a tad choppy to you, it’s because they are. When the traffic noise wasn’t loud enough to drown me out, it was loud enough to distract me so I couldn’t remember the script. Still, it looked good. The shirt I’m wearing in this episode, “Trust Me, I’m A Doctor” was two bucks at Steve and Barry’s, and worked well with Doctor Senator appearing on the show.

Well, that’s the behind-the-scenes dirt on what is easily our most musically diverse show yet. We’ve got Country, Rock, Salsa and Bastards. What more could you want?