AARON HENKIN

The Signal’s Aaron Henkin recently hosted the first installment in a new, live, vaudeville-style variety-show called Vauxhall at The Creative Alliance’s Patterson Theater.  This debut production featured live music, sketch comedy, and experimental dance, among other things - all of it tied together into one theme:  LIARS.

Imagine you’re keeper of a family tradition that goes back 800 years.  You and your kin are tellers of history, spiritual counselors, and you do your work through the medium of music.  You’ve learned your art from your father – your father from his father before him.  You’re respected.  You’re venerated.  You’re essential.

Half a century ago in Taneytown, Maryland, a young couple – Dotty and Leroy Eyeler - started a bluegrass band together. Little did they know they’d become the matriarch and patriarch of a musical legacy:  The Carroll County Ramblers.  

Two centuries ago, in the tidewater regions of Maryland, traditional African worship practices merged with the beckoning Christianity of the Methodist Church.  Born of that cultural intersection was a new hybrid of spiritual and musical devotion, a movement that came to be known as The Singing and Praying Bands.

June 8th & 9th, 2012, on The Signal:  

Two centuries ago, in the tidewater regions of Maryland, traditional African worship practices merged with the beckoning Christianity of the Methodist Church.  Born of that cultural intersection was a new hybrid of spiritual and musical devotion, a movement that came to be known as The Singing and Praying Bands.

June 1st & 2nd, 2012, on The Signal:  

PHOTO CREDIT:  SHANE CARPENTER

May 25th & 26th, 2012, on The Signal

A special rebroadcast of OUT OF THE BLOCKS, an original coproduction of radio producer Aaron Henkin and electronic musician Wendel Patrick.  The concept is simple: one hour of radio - one city block - everybody’s story.

(Check out a special photo/video gallery from this project at:  www.wendelpatrick.com)

“You’d stand on a corner, and a guy would come up and say hey, there’s a guy on the East Side who could blow you guys off this corner, he can sing so good.  We’d say go get him!  Bring him down here!  We stopped fighting each other and started singing.”

-Orioles singer Diz Russell

It was a wintry Saturday afternoon, February 2011, in rural Cecil County, Maryland, at a one-room post office turned furniture shop near the town of Elkton.  Outside the old building, a January wind whistled over snow banks, through the bare branches of trees.  But inside this place, a warm camaraderie was emanating through the room.  Three musicians sat together, acoustic guitars on their knees, trading stories and songs, and bridging an age-span of three generations between them.