Human beings have made music and spun stories throughout our history on this planet. In many ways, these songs and stories tell us a lot about who we are, where we've been and where we are going.
Spinning Tales is a two hour weekly radio show that embraces both music--with an emphasis on archival early recordings and contemporary music performed in these traditional or "roots" styles--and stories ranging from the recordings of traditional storytellers to stories collected from local people.
In this day of multi-media presentations and multi-layered digital studio productions, we hope you'll enjoy this return to simpler fare; music often recorded live by a group of musicians gathered around a single microphone, stories shared over a cup of coffee with a neighbor.
The show is written and produced by Michael Pollitt, who hosts the show, broadcasting live from WMCB lp FM in downtown Greenfield, MA USA each week. Co-producer Lance Smith produces its website and YouTube channel and helps out with other production tasks. On occasion Michael gets lonely and drags Lance into the studio and puts a microphone in front of him. (Our research hasn't clarified whether this enhances or detracts from the show.)
Now that the show streams live (and is rebroadcast 3 times a week on the web), we've found that there is a keen interest in the roots of American music in Europe. So, in many ways producing this show has turned out to be a some sort of Star Trekky Space-Time Machine journey, taking us from the earliest days of the 20th century's fledgling recording industry through satellite internet feeds across the world in the 21st. Who could have imagined?
Producer and Host Michael Pollitt with Co-producer Lance Smith
