Deeper Roots Radio

The sounds of New Orleans carry a mood that’s both jubilant and deeply human; it dances and mourns in the same breath. It’s the sound of the street parade meeting the juke joint: syncopated, earthy, and alive with horns, piano rolls, and that unmistakable backbeat shuffle. Unlike the more urban polish of Chicago blues or the rural cry of the Delta, New Orleans R&B has always felt like a conversation between the sacred ...

Halloween in America, on the anniversary of the first quarter century of the millennium. We celebrate the night by wearing masks, by flirting with fear, by turning the grotesque into entertainment. But here in 2025, you can’t help but feel like the masks didn’t come off this year. The trick-or-treaters will return home tonight, but the parade of make-believe monsters marched straight into the daylight this past January — a...

Friday mornings feature a two-hour journey through sound, soul, and even a dash of storytelling from the past century of America’s music. Tune in as Dave Stroud weaves an eclectic blend of genres that don’t always share a shelf, but definitely share a spirit. From the aching twang of country ballads to the velvet grooves of soul, as well as the thumping rhythms of rock…we’ve got it all. We’ll also be adding a touch of gosp...

 We’ll be rolling back our Hillbilly Wayback Machine to the year 1950 for romance in high pants at the barn dance. Country music really hadn’t yet caught on as a genre so a lot of the music we’ll share today had the misfortune of being coined “hillbilly music”; a blend of silver screen cowboy nostalgia for the lone prairie alongside swinging arrangements and occasional ballads of the heart. You even had yourself some down-...

We lost John Prine to COVID in 2020. We’re going to celebrate his 79th birthday along with the rest of his fans this morning as two new movies are on the horizon at just the right time. The two movies differ in their angles: one being a new tribute produced by his wife Fiona Whelan Prine called “You Got Gold” and the other is one produced by the Hello In There Foundation called “How Lucky Can One Man Get” which has its fir...

It’s a City (with a capital ‘C’ to locals) whose cultural history practically hums with musical possibilities. This is due in large part to how the city has always been a meeting point for restless ideas and diverse communities. From the Gold Rush boomtown that lured fortune-seekers from every continent, to the Beat poets of North Beach and the psychedelic counterculture that turned Haight-Ashbury into a world stage, it’s ...

The days are getting darker both by season and on the sidewalks of your town. Jackboot thugs with masks, clubs, and weapons are descending for you. Make no mistake. If you believe in your right to free speech and all that our Constitution affords you, think again. Know that you and your neighbor are in the crosshairs of this regime. This week’s show won’t break the spell but it will share with its language of comfort, joy ...

From the cool and sultry lounge sounds smothered in smoke to the soul venues that celebrated love and all its pitfalls, we bring you the songbirds this week. We’ll be exploring vocalists, known and unknown, that delivered the goods in the first few years of the 1960s. Rock ‘n roll was finding its foothold at the same time as soul music was beginning to bust out in a big way. You’ll be hearing some you know and some you don...

A whole new season of Deeper Roots lands on your doorstep…just like the Sunday paper: full of human interest stories (as told in song) and local gab (also told in song). It’s a free form collection of songs from the past century with performances from the usual (and sometimes unusual) suspects. Only minor themes and genre recaps today in a carefully crafted eclectic blend that runs the gamut from Jimmie Dale Gilmore to Mar...

We’re taking a slow walk back to the gospel well this morning, exploring a particularly expansive landscape of classic hymns, choir harmonies, and new-fangled secular reflections from the likes of Elizabeth King, Warren Zevon and Amy Helm. There are also the traditional pulpit pounders like Elder Charles Beck, jubilee and country groups including The Jordanaires (with and without Elvis) and The Golden Gate Quintet, as well...

Deeper Roots means just that…and this week we’re spinning some blues, gospel, r&b, and swing … all music that introduced the rhythm that would become known as rock ‘n roll. We’ll go as far back as the late 1930s with Joe Turner and Pete Johnson and make the picaresque journey across the alleys, juke joints, and house parties where tradition and urban electric blues became the foundation of a sound. We’ll share blues fr...

A little bit of twisting and a little bit of shouting…as well as some gospel rhythms, hand clapping, and some back beat rhythms from the gulf and whole lot more. This week’s show will be a free form extravaganza which means there’s a bright day ahead, as always. My springboard was an afternoon’s listen to the music of David Lindley who, in addition to being a fine musician, he had extraordinary taste in music. We’ll hear s...

In the long view, rock ‘n roll’s rise was no surprise as it’s sound had been peeking through the tall grass since the 1930s with some risque (and risky) rhythm and blues, gospel celebrations and fast-paced swinging country sounds. When Sam Phillips’ small operation in Memphis kicked off, who would have guessed that the fusion of all these sounds would somehow resonate with it’s blend of hillbilly, blues, rhythm and gospel ...

Join Dave Stroud for another encore edition of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music. With vacation from the show in full swing, he's taken the time to fill the airwaves with a free form blend of blues, hot rod rock, early century pop, gospel, soul and more. There will be some killer diller Memphis Minnie blues, some pop melodies from Annette Hanshaw and Mae West, gospel from the Blind Boys of Alabama and Sam Cooke…an...

The farmer, the farm, and songs of farming are at the core of this week’s theme show, an encore presentation from 2017. Whether the songs’ focus is that of the hard-working folk of the farm, the raw materials, or the nostalgic reminders of life on the farm, we’ll push forward the playlist plough and take you to the barn for an early morning celebration with performers including bluegrass from James King, gritty Americana f...

 Jukeboxes were not only cultural touchstones and vital engines for the music industry in the forties and fifties, but they also contributed to the democratization of music consumption in a way that radio could not: by allowing people to pay a nickel and choose the exact song they wanted to hear. Radio’s best effort was to feed the listener versus allow the listener to make their own choice. Over a half century later, stre...

Tune in this week for crimes, misdemeanors and general lawlessness as we lean on a theme that explores music that explores one hundred years of crime in different form. We’ll also ask law enforcement to step in as needed with pursuits, chain gangs, and K9 units. From Elmer Bernstein to The Crickets, Mel Tillis to The Byrds, and Bo Diddley, Red River Dave, and blues from Robert Wilkins as our show reminds listeners that Cri...

This week’s show will feature another journey celebrating the soundtrack of the past century. From the pounding rhythms of gospel revelations to the neon-lit evening sounds of Basin Street and Nashville, we’ll be sharing the music of George Strait, Etta James, The Temptations, Little Sugar and The Hightower Brothers among over two dozen others…all in an exciting and varietal run of Americana on a Friday morning. It’s where...

Someone once suggested that country songs about heartache and lost love sound the same as country songs about good times and happy days. Is it just the wailing fiddle intro often referred to as the “fiddle kickoff” that neutralizes the emotional jar of joy or grief that causes a reaction like that? Or is it just country songwriting is geared towards the simple task of expressing emotions in the terms of everyday life? No m...