On the Road
Traveling to share our new presentation, "Binding Time: Inside the World of Dust-to-Digital."
I find traveling with a purpose to be one of the best feelings in the world. Over the next few weeks, Lance and I will be visiting and giving presentations at a university, a folk festival, and an art institute in Tulsa, Brooklyn, and San Francisco respectively. If you are in one of those areas, please come see us!
Today we’re on our way to the University of Tulsa for the exhibition, Musical Legacies of the Dustbowl presented by The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities.
Lance will be the keynote speaker at the opening event on Friday (tomorrow) at 5pm. If you are nearby, we invite you to join us for his talk, the gallery exhibition, and a series of panels that will explore the factors that shaped Oklahoma music and its legacies.
All of the events are free and open to the public.
In two weeks, we will be heading to New York to present at the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Located in downtown Brooklyn at St. Ann’s Church, the three-day festival will include 30 bands, several workshops, a square dance, and film screenings. There will be a tribute to Art Rosenbaum during the Dust-to-Digital presentation and a tribute to John Cohen in the form of film screenings and musical performances. Our talk will take place at 4:15pm on October 23rd. We hope you can join us!
On November 11th, we will be in San Francisco for a presentation at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. We are excited to be a part of the exhibition “Drum Listens to Heart” titled after the late percussionist Milford Graves. The exhibition reflects on the many ways percussion exists beyond the framework of music and imagines “the percussive” as a more broad aesthetic. Our presentation, which begins at 6pm, is free and open to the public.
Following Up on Recent Posts
We were touched to see so many thoughtful messages, comments, remembrances, and obituaries for Joe Bussard and Art Rosenbaum. We want to highlight a few in case you missed them.
In The Guardian, music historian Tony Russell described Art as “variously talented” as a song collector, musician, writer and teacher and possessing an “unbounded and inexhaustible curiosity.” Atlanta-based journalist Richard Fausset wrote Art’s obituary for The New York Times and included a brief history of Art’s artistic and personal life.
NPR writer and producer Lars Gotrich told the story of Joe’s life as a collector and described how that passion was shared with the world.
Fellow Substack community writers, colleagues, and friends Sasha Frere-Jones and David Katznelson conveyed their thoughts on Joe in recent posts. Sasha shared his view that the work of Dust-to-Digital is, “only possible because of record collectors like Bussard.” I agree, and that was especially true in the earliest years of Dust-to-Digital. David recounted his own journey as a record collector and the passing of Joe who he refers to as “the king of record collecting.”
Following Up on Recent Questions
Many of you have written to us about Joe‘s Country Classics radio show and podcast that Dust-to-Digital sponsored on Georgia Tech’s radio station WREK for over a decade. Thanks to WREK alum Chris Campbell for directing us to this mixcloud page that features 90 episodes. We plan to make all the shows available at some point, but for now we hope this collection will satisfy listeners.
We’ve also received inquires regarding the 2003 film about Joe, “Desperate Man Blues,” that we released on DVD. Our license for the film rights has expired, but we’ve been in touch with the director about the possibility of making the documentary available on a streaming service. For now, the 30-minute film “Joe Bussard: King of Record Collectors” that Lance and I made in 2005 for a DVD bonus feature is available to stream advertisement-free on our YouTube channel. We hope that you will enjoy it!
One final note: we have received a lot of insightful feedback and suggestions on our recent radio post. We’re still compiling a list of radio show and radio station additions, so please keep them coming. Thank you!