The love of listening to music on the radio began for me, when I was just a young boy growing up in Detroit.  I would listen to WXYZ, CKLW, and the wonderful R&B stations (WCHB)  in the Motor City area.  At night I would hide under my sheets in my bed and listen to stations as far away as Chicago and Memphis.  I remember DJ's like Butterball Fats and Ernie Durham.

Sometimes late at night I could pick up Rufus Thomas and he would play songs I wouldn't be able to hear on the stations in Detroit.  The first time I heard BB King was on those great radio shows zinging across the airwaves through the darkness of the night.  What a thrill it was to hear BB King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker. 

Than on Friday afternoons after school my Mom would drive down to Melody Records on Jefferson Avenue each week and let me pick out one record.  Most of the time I would request the records that were not being played on the stations in the Detroit area.  The woman who owned the record store would ask me "how do know about these records"?  Pretty soon my Mom caught on, but as long as I was getting my homework done and getting enough sleep to pay attention in school, she let me go ahead and listen.  I think even then she understood how much it meant to me!

Those records, those songs, and those DJ's helped form a foundation that carries over into my music even today.  As the years would go by other DJ's and a new format of radio air play would come to be.  They would call this "freeform music", but no matter what label they put on the music or the stations I just always thought of it as great music. 

When the Catfish Band formed and began recording albums and touring, I discovered great radio stations all over this country.  One of the great gifts of being on the road was being able to listen to jocks and stations in other parts of the country.  In the late 60's and through the 70's these freeform stations were everywhere.  And of course being on the road playing gigs and promoting a new album, I got to meet and greet these folks.  It was indeed a great perk of my job. 

The 1980's brought about a big change in radio format.  The large corporations started buying up all those freeform stations, and began to program them from corporate headquarters.  By the end of the 80's, independent radio stations, who allowed jocks to play what they liked and wanted to hip the listeners to was nearly all gone.  There were still a handful of these stations that did not sell out!  They had developed a audience that would support them and wanted to hear a freeform format of music.  Some of these stations still are on the air today.  The two that come to mind are KPIG in Watsonville, California and WRNR in Annapolis, Maryland.  Of course the NPR stations have picked up some of the slack and this is how most music fans find out about new music today. 

KPIG on the west coast has been doing it for over thirty years now.  At one time their call letters were KFAT.  Then they changed it to KPIG, but always over all these years they have kept DJ's on the air that were able to play whatever artist and music they thought the audience might be hip too.  On the east coast WRNR  provides the same service.  Great radio jocks like Daimian Einstein and John Hall have such a great wealth of experience, that they can mix old with new with everything in-between and make it flow for the listener.  They have artist stop by and play live on the air.  The folks listening on the radio at home or in their cars or at work connect with them.  They count on them to hip them to new music and to remind them of the great library of music that has come down the airwaves highway over the years.  Whenever I'm on the road and in their town I try to stop by and say hello to them.  Not only to promote my music or gig, but to pay respect to them for the wonderful service they have provided the radio listener over all these years.

I live in the rural countryside among the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia today, but because of the Internet I can still hear my favorite radio stations and DJ's everyday.  Coast to coast from KPIG to WRNR I get to tune in and hear the kind of radio format that is all but gone in America today.  It seems to be like my old blues friend has always told me, "where there's a will there's a way"!  Safe journey fish heads and happy listening when you find it!

CATFISH HODGE/BLUE MOUNTAIN VIRGINIA