American Routes 10th to Feature Feufollet

Folklorist and Tulane Professor, Nick Spitzer, hosts American Routes

Feufollet will be performing along with a host of other Louisiana Jazz and Blues sounds in New Orleans at the House of Blues on January 16th for the 10th anniversary celebration of American Routes.

The show will air on NPR stations that play American Routes on February 18th, 2009.

Read the full press release below:

American Routes at Ten!

NEW ORLEANS – American Routes, the weekly nationally-syndicated public radio program devoted to music and musicians, stories and cultures from New Orleans, the Gulf South and America beyond is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a blockbuster concert at the House of Blues in New Orleans on January 16, 2009.

Produced and hosted by folklorist and Tulane University professor Nick Spitzer, American Routes reaches up to a half million people on over 200 stations nationwide. Launched in 1998 from its studios in New Orleans’ French Quarter, the program started modestly with national carriage on only seven stations. “A lot of people said the program,” which presents blues and jazz, roots rock and soul, country and gospel, zydeco and Tejano among other styles of American vernacular music, “was too eclectic and roots-oriented to succeed at a network level,” noted Spitzer.  However, “within two months we had thirty stations, sixty stations by year’s end, and within two years we’d reached a hundred.”

American Routes’ success has occurred even as public radio stations—long presenters of classical and jazz—were abandoning music formats in favor of news. “The audience for Routes is very loyal,” said Spitzer. “They write us a lot of letters from New York, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, Nashville and Austin, and even a lot of smaller places like Indian reservations, rural Alabama, and Midwest college towns. A lot of people don’t think you can find this kind of music on public radio,” Spitzer added. “Recently we added stations in Ft. Myers Florida, all of Oklahoma and eastern Washington State. Also, XM satellite radio has carried us for several years.”

To celebrate a decades worth of great programs, American Routes is hosting a 10th Anniversary Extravaganza in front of a home audience at the New Orleans House of Blues, 225 Decatur St, on Friday, January 16 at 8 p.m. The show, to be recorded for network broadcast during the week before Mardi Gras, will feature the spirited R & B of Deacon’s John’s big band, neo-traditional Cajun music from Feufollet, and Dr. Michael White’s Original Liberty Jazz Band. Additional guests include vocalist Topsy Chapman, Trombone Shorty and Al “Carnival Time” Johnson. A national travel contest will bring winning out-of-town listeners in from public radio markets across the country.  Tickets are available at the door, or from the House of Blues website, www.hob.com.

“We have been hoping to do more live events,” said an enthusiastic Spitzer. “Last year we did a live show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul MN, and this year several shows here and around the country are planned. Personally, I prefer the spontaneity of a live stage with interviews, humor, and whatever else happens with great players and audiences like ours. It makes for very listenable radio the old school way.”

American Routes is heard locally on WWNO-FM 89.9 Sunday nights at 6 p.m., and on the station’s HD-2 channel Sundays at 2 p.m.

Information about the concert at House of Blues can be found at www.americanroutes.org. American Routes is produced in collaboration with Tulane University, and co-produced and distributed by American Public Media. Major program underwriters are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and the Louisiana Office of Tourism. Additional support is provided by the University of New Orleans and Offbeat magazine. The anniversary concert and broadcast are underwritten by Louisiana Entertainment, in the state Department of Economic Development; Lafayette: Louisiana’s Crossroads; and the W Hotel of New Orleans.