Radio Bristol is excited to share “The Root of It,” a blog series connecting today’s influential musicians to often lesser known and sometimes obscure musicians of the early commercial recording era. The sounds and musicians we hear today on platforms like Radio Bristol can often be traced back to the sounds of earlier generations. What better way to discover these connections than to talk to the musicians themselves about some of the artists that have been integral in shaping their music? These influences, though generally not household names, continue to inspire those who dig deep to listen ..read more

Record Store Day, celebrated on June 12, was established in 2007 to support independent and small business record stores, and it has become a highlight for the record-buying public. The height of record store popularity ranged from the 1950s to the 1980s, but wherever you purchase your music these days, it’s obvious that vinyl is having a resurgence in popularity. Taylor Swift recently broke a modern era record for vinyl sales in a single week. So, in celebration of Record Store Day, here’s a brief look at the history of recording records. Record Store Day 2014 at Drift Records in Totnes, Uni ..read more

Welcome to Radio Bristol Book Club where readers from BCM and the Bristol Public Library come together each month to celebrate and explore books inspired by our region’s rich Appalachian cultural and musical heritage! We invite you to read along and then listen to Radio Bristol on the fourth Thursday of each month at 12:00 noon when we dig deep into the themes and questions raised by the books, learn more about the authors, and celebrate the joys of being a bookworm! June’s book, Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers, is a memoir written by Charlie ..read more

For our “Pick 5” blog series, we ask members of the Radio Bristol team or our BCM staff to pick five songs within a given theme – from heartsongs to murder ballads and everything in between! Once they pick their “5,” they get the chance to tell us more about why they chose those songs. With a diverse staff of knowledgeable DJs and friends of the museum and radio station, we’re sure to get some interesting song choices, which might introduce you to some new music, all easily accessible by tuning into Radio Bristol! For this “Pick 5” post, we have a special guest blogger – Meghan Zuzolo, a stude ..read more

What a year. As I sit here collecting my thoughts, that phrase plays over and over in my head like needle skipping a record. What. A. Year. I mean, here I am, still working from my home office more than a year later – which is really just a desk shoved into the corner of my dining room – where I’ve been since March 2020 when COVID hit. Hubby got his second COVID shot in January of this year. I finally finished mine up in April. My 12-year-old daughter just got her first shot, and like on so many road trips I’ve taken throughout my lifetime, I can’t help but wonder, are we there yet? Are we fin ..read more

Radio Bristol is excited to share “The Root of It,” a new series connecting today’s influential musicians to often lesser known and sometimes obscure musicians of the early commercial recording era. The sounds and musicians we hear today on platforms like Radio Bristol can often be traced back to the sounds of earlier generations. What better way to discover these connections than to talk to the musicians themselves about some of the artists that have been integral in shaping their music? These influences, though generally not household names, continue to inspire those who dig deep to listen t ..read more

Welcome to Radio Bristol Book Club where readers from BCM and the Bristol Public Library are coming together each month to celebrate and explore books inspired by our region’s rich Appalachian cultural and musical heritage! We invite you to read along and then listen to Radio Bristol on the fourth Thursday of each month at 12:00 noon when we will dig deep into the themes and questions raised by the books, learn more about the authors, and celebrate the joys of being a bookworm! Trampoline is the story of 15-year-old Dawn Jewell, her life with her family in eastern Kent ..read more

Today is National Babe Ruth Day! Did you know that the summer of 1927 saw a whole host of important historic and cultural milestones, including Babe Ruth’s home run record and, of course, the 1927 Bristol Sessions? Author Bill Bryson’s book One Summer: America, 1927 explores that amazing summer in his usual charming and fact-fueled style, and – along with today’s celebration of Babe Ruth – serves as inspiration for this April 27 blog post, which goes down rabbit holes and tangents to explore other 1927 connections! But first, what does Bryson’s book cover? Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic fli ..read more

Bristol, Tenn.-Va. (April 7, 2021) – The Birthplace of Country Music Museum has once again teamed up with Music Maker Relief Foundation to host a new special exhibit entitled Our Living Past: Platinum Portraits of Southern Music Makers, scheduled to open on Sunday, April 18 in the museum’s Special Exhibits Gallery. Our Living Past is a collection of 25 framed photographs made with wet-plate collodion photography and printed with a platinum/palladium process that was invented in the 1850s. Subjects of the photographs include roots artists Derek Trucks, John Dee Holeman, Algia Mae Hinton, Captai ..read more

A Bristol Rhythm reunion for international visitors from Sweden, 2018. A mighty fun group! We always say that once we get someone to Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion for the first time, they’ll be back. We love hearing stories from visitors who tell us how they discovered our event and return every year, and how they tell friends and family about it so they can enjoy it together. A few weeks ago in the blog post Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion: The Road Home, I shared the first three videos in our 20th anniversary docuseries about the festival’s humble beginnings and how the event has evo ..read more