In Your Ear

This show spotlights the New England collective known as Crocodile River Music, a talented and diverse collaborative dedicated to preserving and celebrating traditional African culture.

This edition of the show featured a refreshing hour with Tarheel songstress and cellist Shana Tucker and her engaging accompanist Christian Tambur. Together they brought us a tasteful sampling of what’s been dubbed ChamberSoul, that weaves jazz, folk, acoustic pop, and a touch of R&B into melodies that might echo in your head for days.

The music you’ll hear on this show is hard to put in any kind of cubbyhole as it represents the attempt of two Texas born musicians to make some kind of musical sense of the world as we know it.

Guitarist, singer and interpreter of the music we call the blues, Elizabeth Wise was born in Virginia and currently calls RVA home. But she's traveled the world inhaling that music wherever she finds herself. Her career now spans more than a decade of performing professionally in bars, clubs, and living rooms as well as on festival stages up and down the East Coast.

It’s been a couple of years since JAMinc’s produced an In Your Ear radio show. The pandemic kept artists home and our Studio A sacred space was way too confined to allow any social distancing at all. We just shut down for a while, then tried live-streaming with no audience for a few shows and then began a great relationship with Hardywood Craft Brewery, giving us access to their Scott’s Addition Barrel Room. That’s where we recorded this loving reunion of members of Page Wilson’s band Reckless Abandon.

We’re excited to share with you some of the range, the creativity and the energy of Asheville North Carolina’s Fireside Collective. For a relatively new band, together since 2014, they’ve come a long way in impressing fans and critics alike.

The New York Times says, “the one thing certain about Nellie McKay is the size and range of her talent…a sly, articulate musician who sounds comfortable in any era.” Rolling Stone calls her a “renegade songwriter with an ultra-flexible Great American Songbook sensibility, who finds modern resonances everywhere.”

Now in his late twenties, Chesapeake native Eric Stanley began playing violin at age 12 in a very music-focused family. He, his sister and brother would sing along as their mom played piano. Taken as an elective in middle school, the violin soon developed into Eric’s passion, joining the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra while still in high school. At VCU, Eric began creating YouTube videos remixing popular songs, fusing improvisational violin with hip hop, pop, and classical.

This is a special edition of In Your Ear, paying tribute to the late Helen White, musician, educator and life partner to renowned Virginia luthier and guitarist Wayne Henderson. The two had met at a festival in the mid-sixties when he noticed her guitar had a loose bridge that needed repair…a chore he was more than willing and able to handle.

Aaron Burdett’s way with words is as prolific and genuine as the man himself. He grew up the oldest of three boys in the small town of Saluda, NC, where the Blue Ridge meets the Great Smokies. At age 10 he was introduced to the music of Cat Stevens, the first of many musical influences that include the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, and David Grier. During his teens, Aaron found his voice in a choral setting and performed in musical theater. In 1992 he went to the renowned Governor’s School of North Carolina for choral music.