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The New Faith band and Jake Blount, right, perform before a live audience in September.

Caption

WoodSongs’ founder Michael Johnathon holds a meeting with performers before a recent show. In the entrenched cultural ether of Lexington and the Bluegrass, a homegrown music show has earned some bragging rights. It’s not bourbon, horse racing, or basketball, but WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour has carved a niche in the local scene as it prepares to celebrate 25 years of life, stronger than ever.

Te show, perhaps a bit under the radar in its backyard, has an international profle, reaching millions of viewers and listeners nationwide on public and pay television and worldwide on radio, including American Forces Radio Network, and the web.

“It’s one of a kind,” said Michael Johnathon, a folk singer who created the show and is its jack-of-all-trades impresario. “It’s the comfortable rocking chair on everyone’s front porch.”

Recorded before a live audience, WoodSongs is built on performances by mostly unsung musicians from around the United States and the world — underscoring one of Johnathon’s marketing slogans, “You don’t have to be famous … you just have to be good.” But over the years it’s also featured high-profle acts — Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Bela Fleck, Bobby Rush, Sam Bush, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and others.

Clockwise from left, Bryan Klausing reviews the pre-show list. Stage manager Madison Sutton and Johnathon confer before the show begins. Instruments await the musicians. The show script provides the order of performance.

“WoodSongs is driven by content excellence,” said Johnathon. “Artists who come on the show are beyond special. Name recognition is irrelevant.” Tose artists aren’t paid for performing. “Tey’re getting the beneft of reaching audiences on over 500 stations,” he added, “and it’s free.”

Te show — there are 44 new ones a year — is organized as a non-proft corporation and is self-sufcient. Te crew — from stage manager to sound engineer, videographers to gafers — is entirely volunteer. “Passion drives people harder than payment,” Johnathon said.

Volunteers — from veterans to newcomers — prove Johnathon’s assessment. “I love everybody here,” said Isabelle Smith, a high school senior from nearby Winchester who’s been helping with the show’s audio since April. She wants a career in the music industry, and her volunteering has given her “a lot of hands-on experience. Tis is always an incredible show,” she said. “My grandparents used to bring me here almost every Monday night when I was young.”

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WoodSongs has a cult following, including a live audience fan base of avid long-timers that are integral to each performance. T ey of en packed the house until the COVID-19 pandemic triggered attendance restrictions. Although government indoor mandates have ended, WoodSongs has opted to continue limiting attendance.

T e show has been held for the past 10 years at the Lyric T eatre, a former movie house and performance center in Lexington’s historic East End now owned by the city. Before that, it was held a few blocks away at the State and Kentucky T eatre bi-plex, also owned by the city. (T e show’s f rst broadcast, in 1998, was in a small Lexington recording studio.)

T e format has been “surprisingly consistent” over the show’s lifespan, according to Johnathon. T at was in evidence on a recent Monday in late September. A 4:30 p.m. pre-show production meeting started things. Johnathon and the two main acts sat in an adjacent cluster of theater seats. He welcomed Jake Blount, an award-winning banjo player from Washington, D.C., and the New Faith; and the Sweet Lillies, a Colorado string band. He began by telling the two groups, “I believe love is the greatest transaction for an artist.”

T en the ground rules. “T e format is very simple: It’s a broadcast, not a concert. And we treat the stage as a recording studio.” He asked both groups to select four songs, each about 3½ minutes long. “We begin and end in 59 minutes. We front sell and back sell. Keep the conversation [between songs and with him] as evergreen as you can — each show has a two-, three-year shelf life. We’re focusing on the art.”

Af er the main groups lef , he met with that night’s WoodSongs Kids group — a trio of folk-singing brothers from Eastern Kentucky

Fans enter the Lyric Theatre, which has provided a welcoming venue for WoodSongs for the past 10 years. Many fans are regulars to the 44 shows that are produced on site every year.

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Right, Dorothy Edwards starts the show. Below, Jake Blount, who won the Steve Martin Excellence in Banjo Award, performs with his New Faith band.

called the Spencer Boys. (Each show includes one song from a young group — a popular segment that led WoodSongs to launch a new public television kids series in October.)

T e meetings were followed by a sound check at 5 p.m. T eater doors opened at 6 p.m. A halfcapacity crowd of about 250 took their seats. T e main performers positioned themselves onstage. A headphone glitch delayed the 7 p.m. start a few minutes, but cameras soon started rolling and WoodSongs broadcast #1059 began. Announcer Dorothy Edwards thanked the Kentucky Department of Tourism, city of Lexington, VisitLex, and other supporters. Voiceover sound bites goosed up the show and welcomed Johnathon, who sang and played guitar on a song he wrote, accompanied by Sharon Holler on f ute. Af er a few “grassroots music” and “front porch” remarks, he introduced Jake Blount and the New Faith. T ey played two songs, intercut by a A singer and chat between Johnathon and Blount. songwriter, Johnathon introduced Sweet Lillies, Johnathon performs early in the show. and they played two songs, with a chat intercut. T e Spencer Boys came on stage and played their song. T e main groups each played their f nal two songs. T en the close: “My name’s Michael Johnathon. I’m a folk singer. I’m a song farmer. We’ll see you next week on the” — now the audience joins in — “WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour.”

WoodSongs’ evolution and success ref ect Johnathon’s vision when he started the show in 1998. He built it on his own

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HELPING HAND

After the torrential rains and f ooding that devastated Eastern Kentucky in September, WoodSongs joined the international relief effort. Along with private companies, including Martin Guitar and Highbridge Springs Water, individual musicians, friends, and others, it collected more than a thousand instruments from around the country to distribute free to people who played music and were affected by the f ooding. “When things are built out of love,” Michael Johnathon said of the project, “you’ve got to do something loving in return.”

In December 2021, WoodSongs undertook a similar effort in Western Kentucky, distributing more than 700 instruments to people affected by tornadoes that devastated that region. Above, the Sweet Lillies entertain with their Americana/bluegrass music. Left, the Spencer Boys, a trio of folksinging brothers from Eastern Kentucky, are the evening’s WoodSongs Kids group.

experience performing at small concert halls, festivals, and colleges across the country and recording six CDs (he now has 19, as well as six books).

A native of upstate New York (folk legend Pete Seeger was a neighbor and mentor), Johnathon was 18 and working as a disc jockey in Texas when he had an epiphany while hearing “Turn, Turn, Turn” by T e Byrds (a song written by Seeger). “I was convinced I was going to be a musician,” Johnathon said. He bought a guitar and banjo and moved to an Eastern Kentucky Appalachian crossroads called Mousie.

He chose Appalachia because he considered it “the birthplace of America’s folk music.” In 1986, af er he had spent three years soaking up mountain music and culture in Mousie, his career began to take of , and he moved to Lexington and became a “folk singer with a staf .” In 1992 he created the Troubadour Concert Series, which still brings nationally known musicians to Lexington several times a year.

In 1999 he published “WoodSongs,” a book and CD subtitled “A Folk Singer’s Social Commentary, Cook Manual & Song Book.” Out of that publication — which mixes autobiographical accounts and original music with recipes for “Sexy Pasta Tomato Sauce” and “Kentucky

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Johnathon, introducing the Sweet Lillies to the audience, never misses a show. Korn Puddin’ ” — came the idea for the WoodSongs radio series. “It was a natural extension.”

He wanted “to reintroduce folk music to a new generation” and “give grassroots artists a chance to meet their audience.” T at those artists are unknown was central to his concept. “It’s the Vincent van Gogh theory of folk music. Fame and commercial success don’t have anything to do with good art.” (His latest book/CD, “WoodSongs 5,” subtitled “A Folk Singer’s Fireplace Compendium and Van Gogh Reader,” is dedicated to the Dutch painter.)

Johnathon, who said he’s “franchising folk music,” continues to pursue his own career apart from WoodSongs. He performs on the road about 40 days a year, but each Monday he’s in Lexington to host WoodSongs — the show doesn’t go on without him.

T e show he created has “gotten better” over the years, he said, but still ref ects “the exact same spirit” it had in its f rst days. “It’s turned into the global multimedia front porch that we envisioned from the beginning.”

From the start, Johnathon said he “wanted WoodSongs to be a modern, technically advanced old-timey show.” And he hoped it would become the next “Austin City Limits” for PBS. “T at’s what we were aiming for.” It hasn’t gotten that far… yet. But it is broadcast — in Kentucky, at least — Sundays at midnight, right af er the famed Texas performance show. KM