KCSN Radio Strengthens Roots Programming With ‘Mountain Stage’

In a move that will bolster its standing as an outlet for seminal American music, radio station KCSN-FM (88.5) has added the nationally syndicated show “Mountain Stage” to its lineup.

The weekly program, produced by West Virginia Public Radio, made its local debut Thursday night and will continue each Thursday from 9 to 11 p.m.

The name “Mountain Stage” is something of a misnomer. While Appalachian music is offered occasionally, the fare is much more diverse. Next week’s show, for example, features New Orleans pianist and singer Dr. John and three performers from the jazz world: guitarist Larry Coryell, pianist Bob Thompson and singer Ann Baker.

The show records the performers before a live audience and has gained a sizable following, airing on 135 stations nationwide.

“I don’t like to call us eclectic because that doesn’t tell you anything,” said host and music director Larry Groce. “We bring you the roots of the world’s music in live performance. We do things that are very primitive and things that are very avant-garde.”

Producer Andy Ridenour said “Mountain Stage” has been in national distribution since July, 1986, and first aired in West Virginia in 1984. The show’s $275,000 annual budget is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, and corporate and private donations.

Guests in the coming weeks will include contemporary folk artist Jesse Winchester, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, blues man Clarence (Gatemouth) Brown and a Celtic band, Metamora.

“It’s diverse. We’ll have someone who’s not well-known, or someone who hasn’t performed in 10 years, or someone who is well-known,” said Groce, a singer himself who had a hit with “Junk Food Junkie” in 1976. “If it’s someone famous, we don’t insist on them doing their hits. When Maria Muldaur was on, we didn’t mention ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ and she thanked us.”

Groce performs on each show, as does a house band and a two-woman group called the Twister Sisters. The regulars accompany guests and do a few numbers of their own.

“We’re the one thread that runs through all the shows, but the show doesn’t depend on us the way that ‘Prairie Home Companion’ depended on Garrison Keillor,” Groce said.

The program is staged at a 76-year-old vaudeville hall in Charleston, W.Va. Eight stations in the state present it live. Others, including KCSN, air a digitally recorded version.

“It’s the best of these kind of shows and we’re glad to be carrying it,” said Mark Humphrey, KCSN music director. “What we’re trying to do that’s exciting is to have performance shows on in the evening at 9 o’clock.”

The lineup at the station, which originates at Cal State Northridge, includes: Mondays, “Pot Luck,” a folk music show produced by Seattle Public Radio; Tuesdays, “Barn Dance,” broadcast live by KCSN from the Palomino nightclub in North Hollywood; Thursdays, “Mountain Stage,” and Fridays, “Lonesome Pine Special,” produced by WPLN-FM in Nashville, Tenn.

The station is looking for a performance show to air Wednesday nights, Humphrey said.

“Mountain Stage” may prove a valuable addition to KCSN. The station adopted a “traditional country” format in June, 1987, prompting many on campus to say the programming was too narrow. At the same time, financial problems forced the station to drop its membership in National Public Radio and to lose the prestigious news shows “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

“Mountain Stage” may help, as it presents a broad range of music while staying within the notion of roots programming, and it has a national reputation.

The show is carried by six other stations in California, the closest of them in San Bernardino. KCSN pays a nominal fee to air it: “just a few hundred dollars, enough to pay for the legal paper work,” Ridenour said.