ARSC 2024 Re-Cap and Thanks

I just got home from another great Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) conference and I highly recommend this gathering to all of my music-loving friends. If you've never been, it's an annual summit of recorded sound collectors, institutional archivists, and audio preservation engineers and it's a musical geek-out fest in the very best way.

On Friday I gave a presentation about the Cuca Records collection at Mills Music Library and as it turned out, I wasn't the only one at ARSC who talked about Cuca (shout out to the Baylor University's Black Gospel Archive). I also thoroughly enjoyed the presentations from Justice Brokenrope on Wathéča Records, Seth Winner's Playback of 1930s non-commerical private recordings, the Möllendorff Cylinders chronicles, Ted Olson's Steve Young retrospective, and the always enlightening and entertaining copyright panel, to name just a few.

It was great fun spending a night out on the town with my pal Deke Dickerson which culminated in hanging out with Dave Hartman and Southern Culture on the Skids before their show and Deke joining them on stage for a tune. Loved having lunch and talking baseball and vintage music with Gail and Cary Ginnell and Mark Cantor (amazing video presentation, btw Mark) on Friday. And I had the most wonderful evening on the lake Saturday evening playing Finnish old-time tunes (and even some rockabilly) with my dear friends Ralph and Jaana Tuttila and their group Lauluaika. Thank you again for the invitation and amazing party! On the way home I even got to do some record digging with my Uncle Mark up in Balsam Lake and meet his precious pup, Precious.

Overall, it was a really great conference. I got to check out some amazing '40s and '50s clothes at The Cat and the Cobra with fellow fashionable archivist Chris Walker. And of course I checked out a few my favorite Minneapolis record shops: Vintage Music Company, Hymie's Records, and Cheapo Records. I got to catch up with many friends doing some really amazing audio preservation projects: Lance and April Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital, Steve Ramm, Filip Šír, Meagan Hennessey and Richard Martin at Archeophone Records, Michael Biel, Martin Fisher, Jay Bruder, and many, many more. Y'all are inspiring! And I owe a huge thanks to my buddy Patrick Feaster for sharing a room with me, chairing the ARSC program committee, and making such a fun conference possible. Hope to see you all again next year!

Recent appearance on Oliver and Jeb's You Seem Exceptional Podcast

Earlier this semester I gave a lecture about yodeling for Lowell Brower's Folklore 100 course and a short while later, one of his students emailed me and asked if I'd be a guest on his radio show. Oliver said that he enjoyed the lecture and that he and his radio co-host Jeb would like a private yodeling lesson.

Turns out, Oliver Gerharz and Jeb Blossom host a podcast on WSUM where they interview UW faculty and staff, community members, and local politicians, ask them about their life's journeys and what led them to UW, and then end each episode by saying, "We know we've said this a lot before, but you really do seem exceptional." It's a super sweet tagline and a really interesting podcast.

In case anyone wants to hear my story, how I learned to play music, why I studied folklore and ethnomusicology, what brought me to UW-Madison, and why yodeling is important to me, you can check it out here: https://youseemexceptional.transistor.fm/episodes/learning-to-yodel-with-nate-gibson I'd also highly recommend their other podcast episodes, as they really are exceptional.

Baseball Special on WORT 5/8/24

The Milwaukee Brewers are in first place (what a game last night!), the Madison Mallards start up  again this month, and baseball season is officially in full swing. 

A surprising number of professional baseball players sang and played country music (Dizzy Dean, Johnny Bench, Barry Zito, Charley Pride, to name a few), a TON of professional country musicians played competitive baseball (including Bill Monroe, Stringbean, Roy Acuff, Rudy "Tutti" Grayzell, Judy Lee, Roy Acuff, Conway Twitty, Jim Reeves, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Garth Brooks), and an even more surprising number of my favorite country songs are about the game of baseball. I've dug up my favorite 100 examples (with a particular nod to my former hometown teams of the Brewers, Boston Red Sox, and St. Louis Cardinals) and I'll get to play roughly half of them for you. 

Tune in to Back to the Country this morning to hear The Baseball Special. Show starts at 9am (cst) on WORT 89.9 and streaming via wortfm.org. And as an added bonus, if you listen to the whole show you just might hear my hours-old tribute song to my favorite baseball player, Andy Van Slyke!

Nate Gibson & the Stardazers w/ Marty Stuart & his Fabulous Superlatives 4/20/24 @Stoughton Opera House

I'm very excited to share that the trio version of Nate Gibson & the Stardazers will be warming up the Stoughton Opera House crowds tomorrow for my very favorite band, Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives! Tickets to both shows have been long SOLD OUT, but if you're one of the lucky ones who already purchased tickets, be sure to come out early!

Marty and the band have a new Record Store Day LP coming out tomorrow morning with Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds (it's a live recording from the 50th Anniversary Sweethearts of the Rodeo tour), so as soon as you get out of the Record Store Day lines, you'll want to head to Stoughton. For those with tickets to the first show, the Stardazers will get started at 1:30, and for those attending the evening show, we'll go live at 5:55.

It's sure to be an enjoyable afternoon and evening with a Country Music Hall of Fame legend and the tightest band in show business. R-a-w-k!

101 Hodag Jokes is now available online from The Hodag Store!

Do you love cryptids? Do you love jokes? If so, perhaps you would love some jokes about cryptids! 101, to be specific. And did I mention limericks? And cute hodag illustrations? A thorough description of hodags and a 10-page bibliography of hodag references?! We've got you covered!

Marcus Cederström, Anna Rue, Fred Chao, and I (Nate Gibson) have a new jokebook out, 101 Hodag Jokes, and it is now available for sale online from The Hodag Store in Rhinelander, WI.

https://www.thehodagstore.com/product/101-hodag-jokes/715?cs=true&cst=custom

And if you are in the Rosendale NY area, please visit our friends at Postmark Books, as they also have a handful of books available!

A Polka Party on Back to the Country 4/10/24

Thirty years ago, on 4/21/94, polka was adopted as the official Wisconsin State Dance. There will be all sorts of polka events throughout the state this month to celebrate (including the big Polka Party on Pinckney on 4/18), and tomorrow’s Back to the Country program adds to the polkabration!

It seems to me, there was a time when nearly every country band included polkas in their sets and tomorrow morning I’ll be playing three hours of my very favorites: Hot guitar polkas by Merle Travis, Joe Maphis, Chet Atkins, Hank Garland, Don Rich, Jimmy Bryant, Roy Clark, George Barnes, Biller & Wakefield, T.K. Smith, and many more! Vocal polkas about baseball, cocker spaniels, apple pie, beer, and marijuana! Swing Billy polkas from King Records! Yodeling polkas! Rockabilly polkas! One-man band polkas!

It’ll be a three-hour polkabilly extravaganza from 9am-noon (CST)! Tune in via 89.9fm in Southern Wisconsin or stream via wortfm.org and don’t forget your dancing shoes!

Nate Gibson & the Stardazers & Hot Club of Cowtown at the Stoughton Opera House 4/11/24

A lot of people gathered outside my office today because they heard that Nate Gibson and the Stardazers would be playing a concert on the roof of Memorial Library.

Alas, I'm sorry to disappoint, but our next gig is actually this THURSDAY evening (4/11) at the Stoughton Opera House, opening in the lounge for the legendary Hot Club of Cowtown. We're live at 5:55pm. Hope to see some friends there for what is sure to be a great night of honky-tonk and western swing!