Music Highway: Six Months Old & Growing!

Though we never thought much about how long we would actually do Music Highway on the radio, we certainly had aspirations of the show growing, adding stations, and delving deeper and deeper into the music of talented musicians and artists from the Mid-South US region as well as other regions.

Here, six months later, Music Highway is going strong. We have a marquee sponsor (Budweiser) that recently signed up for a second round of sponsorship of the the show. Other fine sponsors in our local area are on board still and the prospects of adding sponsors continues to increase as the show becomes more and more popular.

Sunday night radio shows, traditionally, can sometimes fall into the shadows of a station's lineup. However, Music Highway has become a "destination" time slot for many musicians, artists, songwriters and music lovers in general. For this we are grateful.

Our mission with the show is to gain some well deserved exposure for the artists we feature each week and we have been able to accomplish this well. We have even noticed that radio stations in other markets are "getting on the bandwagon" by starting their own local/regional artists' showcase type shows. Whether or not they got the idea from us is irrevelant. The fact that other deserving, talented artists are getting radio airplay is the important thing.

In reality, there is room for dozens of shows like Music Highway out there across America and the world simply because there are so many artists that need to be heard. We are happy to be a small part of exposing talent to the airwaves every weekend (Sunday nights 9pm-10pm (CDT) over WYNU/Rock 92.3FM based in Jackson, TN) and hope to continue to do so simply because someone needs to do it.

Thanks to the efforts of people such as our friend, Daylle Deanna Schwartz, author of the great book, "I Don't Need A Record Deal: The Survival Guide For The Independent Music Revolution", we are receiving music submissions from across the US. We are certainly willing to expose these artists to our listening audience as well and appreciate the opportunity to do so.

Where do we go from here, six months into the show? Well, we are planning some exciting things for Music Highway including our own website where people across the globe can login and hear archive recordings of the show. Plans are in the making for possible syndication of Music Highway over more radio stations (stay tuned for news on this venture). We also want to create some Music Highway concert events in our original listening area as well and will let everyone know when this takes place.

As with many projects such as Music Highway, things can start to continually evolve, change and morph into numerous para-projects alongside the original idea. I believe this is a sure sign the original is working and doing its job especially when the main focus is on creativity and creative people. How else should a project progress?

There are many directions we can go in with the whole Music Highway thing. To be quite honest we don't really know where it will all go. The exciting thing for both Wes and myself at this juncture is that we have been able to promote the music and talent of many super talented individuals, bands, and acts. Talent unpromoted is talent wasted, in my opinion, so because of this I feel we are right on track.

Post your comments to this blog. We would love to hear from you. In closing, and as my friend Wes would say, "As you travel down the Music Highway, don't be a hitch-hiker...be a participant" Well, said Wes.