Radio. Does anyone listen to radio anymore? I still do, albeit less than before. What an influential medium, even in the 21st century. I, like many of you (especially if you’re of the ‘older’ persuasion like myself) grew up on radio from a very young age.

As I grew older my interest developed into rock music. One of my favorite bands, Journey, even had an album called “Raised on Radio”. It rings true.

Flash forward thirty years and now this blogger is more involved with Celtic music (but still is a closet metalhead). In this age of internet, iPods & mp3 players, soundcloud, spotify, videos, television and everything else bombarding our senses all day long it is nice to know that radio can still be a very relevant medium and source for music.

It is reassuring then, that there are the purists and stalwarts who aim to keep the radio medium alive with whatever program they may offer. There are scores of channels, topics, themes, podcasts and broadcasts out there to choose from. In our area we are fortunate to have and are featuring “The Celtic Music Hour“, on KMUZ Radio, out of Salem, Oregon.

Enter Ann McBride and Beth Nevue, from a local organization called the Ceili of the Valley Society, also out of Salem. Through a comedy of errors of sorts, Ann and Beth have landed smack-dab in the lap of radio with little experience and have embraced it with full enthusiasm. After working out the bugs and gaining some knowledge and knowhow, the duo have been broadcasting their theme-based Celtic radio broadcasts every Friday night at 7pm here local time.

The Celtic Music Hour is a relatively new radio program, (at this writing about eight months of age), broadcast from KMUZ Community Radio, based in Turner, Oregon. The station is almost as young as the program itself. They are a burgeoning, pure, community based radio station that thrives on the passion of it’s volunteers and community spirit. As they are so new, and comparatively underpowered, their broadcast range is somewhat limited, but one bonus up their sleeve is that one may listen to their programming streaming on the internet, at kmuz.org., all over the globe thanks to the wonder of internet.

skOt and I sat down with Anne and Beth recently to talk about how they got together and how their radio program came to be. Check out our interview with them here:

Beth Nevue, Ann McBride

Just like in the good ‘ol days, grab a chair & scootch up to the radio each and every Friday evening at 7:00 pm local Pacific time here on KMUZ 88.5  on the FM dial, or if you’re abroad or out and about, click on the “listen live” tab to enjoy the Celtic Music Hour!