Washington, DC — May the Fourth Be With You!

Washingtonians: Hear the American Routes 4th of July Special on the WAMU-FM 88.5 main broadcast frequency from 2 to 4 PM 6 PM this Friday, July, 4 2008.

The show, Red, White and Blues: The Sounds of Patriotic Pluralism, is not the same old Sousa. Hear guests from Merle Haggard to Joan Baez talk about patriotism and protest with host Nick Spitzer as well as blues and New Orleans jazz versions of classic freedom songs, American anthems from James Brown, the Staple Singers, the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Martin, and more.

Cool off with a summer road trip to Ted Drewes’ Frozen Custard stand on Route 66 in St. Louis, and play “Drown the Clown” at a Massachusetts county fair. May the Fourth be with you!

American Routes, now in its tenth year, is produced on New Orleans’ Basin Street and distributed nationwide by American Public Media. This award-winning weekly program about America’s many musics blends thematic musical recordings with interviews, documentary features, and informed cultural narrative. The show is usually heard in Washington on WAMU’s HD2 channel, so this is an all-too-rare chance to hear it on “real radio,” WAMU-FM’s main frequency, 88.5.

Nick Spitzer, host of the American Routes radio program, also lived here, on Capitol Hill, while producing his earlier Folk Masters program of live Wolf Trap concerts and interviews.

Nick Spitzer (Photo: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

“In the history of American radio, no series has come close to Nick Spitzer’s American Routes in exploring the many streams of this nation’s music.”

– Nat Hentoff, Wall Street Journal

[Full disclosure: Nick and I were at school together and worked at Austin's KUT-FM.]

Top Image: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com