Lost Farm & Fun Time Recordings Broadcast
Bristol, Va./Tenn. (January 31, 2020) – In 2018 the Birthplace of Country Music (BCM) asked for your votes in the Virginia Association of Museum‘s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts competition. Each vote was a step towards the preservation of a classic Farm and Fun Time radio transcription disc containing live tracks that had not been heard in over 60 years. Your votes counted, and BCM received the funding they needed to send the disc off to the Northeast Document Conservation Center for the delicate task of putting it back together and extracting the sound.
On February 13 at 6:30 p.m. EST, BCM will broadcast this original recording on WBCM Radio Bristol for all the world to hear! What’s on the recording? Live performances of The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys from their time on the original Farm and Fun Time show.
The transcription disc listening party will be held prior to Radio Bristol’s regularly scheduled Farm and Fun Time variety show. Farm and Fun Time ticket holders are invited to come early and be part of the listening party in the Performance Theater at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum before the show; the public is invited to tune in to WBCM Radio Bristol at 100.1 FM in the Bristol area, through the free Radio Bristol mobile app, or online at ListenRadioBristol.org.
Another listening party is being planned for the general public at a later time, so stay tuned!
Farm and Fun Time is a throwback to the golden era of radio when families crowded around their consoles to enjoy live variety shows filled with music and laughter. The show pays homage to the classic WCYB Radio program that broadcast from Bristol in the 1940s and 1950s and helped launch the careers of The Stanley Brothers and Jim & Jesse McReynolds, to name a few.
Slated to perform at Farm and Fun Time this month is Wayne Henderson & Presley Barker and The Kody Norris Show. The show is currently sold out, but you don’t have to miss it! Watch Farm and Fun Time in its entirety on WBCM Radio Bristol’s Facebook Live.
Wayne Henderson is a National Heritage Fellowship recipient and world-renowned luthier and finger-picking guitarist. At age 14, Presley Barker is a prodigious flat-picking guitarist who has won the Adult Guitar Competition at the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention and has been named a West Virginia State Flatpicking Champion.
The Kody Norris Show is a retro, rhinestone-encrusted, bluegrass-rockabilly group steeped in the flashiness of vaudeville and the traditions of Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and The Stanley Brothers. The group earns its title as a “show” because the band is so thoroughly entertaining.
Farm and Fun Time is hosted by Kris Truelsen (writer and producer) and his band Bill and the Belles, a group that captures the freewheeling, lighthearted approach to music that has endeared them to listeners of every generation. Bill and the Belles’ music has been described as “the most innovative modern interpretation of vintage roots music” by No Depression.
Farm and Fun Time may also be viewed in its entirety on Radio Bristol’s Facebook Live at Facebook.com/WBCMRadioBristol. Radio Bristol can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on 100.1 FM in the Bristol area, online at ListenRadioBristol.org, and through the station’s free mobile app.