Host of Sweeney's Gumbo YaYa - a two-hour radio show that featured the music of New Orleans. It aired from September 2014 through March 2022, broadcast live on KAOS in Olympia and as a recording KMRE Bellingham and some Pacifica Network stations. Currently hosting an afternoon drive time show.
When the KAOS studio closed along with the rest of the world in March 0f 2025, I think most of us thought it would be a short break. But it would be 14 months before I got back to doing live shows.
Now looking back five years ago, I really enjoy listening to those first shows that I did from my upstairs spare bedroom, using a Zoom recorder and free editing software. Unlike the live recorded shows in the studio, I found I couldn’t speak extemporaneously so I wrote out my radio script which makes me sound a bit wooden.
But the beauty of the shows was not my voice, but those of the 25 musicians who responded to my request to record a little about how they were doing and to introduce a song for the show. For instance, in the April 9 show, you’ll hear a poetic intro by Antoine Diel, a description by Alex McMurray of his quarantine activities such as making kimchi and Kelcy Mae’s adventure in backyard birding. It’s a window into a time of deep uncertainty characterized most beautifully by Marla Dixon’s humorous yet angsty intro to her music in the April 30, 2020 show. And of course, the music is exquisite.
Here are links to the show pages and the recordings. I hope you enjoy them.
On the April 9th show, you will hear from Alex McMurray, Robert Snow, Antoine Diel, Abigail Cosio of Bon Bon Vivant and Kelcy Mae as they talk about their COVID lives and their music.
The April 16 show featured: Sonny Landreth, Lynn Drury, Mark Mullins (of Bonerama), Mike Doussan, Paul Sanchez and Jeremy Davenport.
April 23rd show included: Tiffany Pollack, Charlie Halloran, Louie Ludwig and Noah Young
April 30 Show featured Marla Dixon, Craig Klein, Billy Iuso and John “Papa” Gros.
May 5: Debbie Davis, Lena Prima, Sierra Green, Davis Rogan
May 13: Helen Gillet, and Shawn Williams, and included a very brief part of an interview I had with Ronald Lewis who founded the House of Beads and Feathers celebrating African American Mardi Gras culture. Ronald Lewis had just died, a victim of COVID.
As you know, I no longer produce Gumbo YaYa show. Instead I host a live drive-time freeform show on Thursdays on KAOS. You can catch me and the tunes I sling from 4 to 6 p.m. (PST) at 89.3 FM and you can always listen to my latest two shows anytime (including now!) on Spinitron.
Welcome to this site on New Orleans music. There are four posts about New Orleans standards that are attracting more attention now than when originally posted. Since these posts are accompanied by one of my shows, I thought I would make it easier to read and listen to them..
Recently, my number one visited page provides the back story on “Darktown Strutters Ball.” When I prepared for this show a few years back, I was conflicted over the use of a racist term for African-American neighborhoods and yet there was this amazing song that used it. The post and the accompanying show delves into the context of the song written by African-American composer Shelton Brooks and how various artists handle the song. If you listen to the show, you will hear five versions of “Darktown Strutters Ball.”
Next on the resurgent reading list is my post and show about Basin Street Blues. Composed by Spencer Williams who lived in Mahogany Hall on Basin Street and originally recorded by Louis Armstrong, who grew up in that neighborhood at the height of its notoriety, the song has evolved over the years including the addition of an opening musical phrase and lyrics (with a Glen Miller assist). You’ll get the full story and listen to the show here. The street has evolved too.
My post on Lil Liza Jane scores the next top spot in recent views. The post and show explores adaptability of this minstrel era song which has been updated and adapted by a variety of artists, including groups who follow in the tradition of the Black Indians of Mardi Gras. If you read this post (and listen to the show), feel free to leave a comment in a call and response style as one reader did.
Finally, the New Orleans standard (without a New Orleans back story) “St. James Infirmary” continues to get attention from readers and listeners. This was actually the first post and show I did focusing on a particularly standard. And I loved the history of it. Here it is.
A reminder that I’ve retired Gumbo YaYa and replaced it with a non-recorded live drive-time show on Thursdays on my community radio station KAOS. I play uptempo music and often draw from my New Orleans library. You can stream the show live and listen to the most recent shows using Spinitron (just type in the date and time into the ARK player that corresponds with my most recent show time adjusted for your location)
Three Gumbo YaYa shows from the past will be airing on KAOS in the next weeks so I’m creating this page so listeners can be easily directed to the corresponding show webpage.
If you’re listening locally, I hope you are continuing to tune in to my current show, the Thursday Happy Hour which airs from 4 to 6 p.m. (PST) It’s a live show where I focus on a wide range of uptempo songs AND I take requests. I intentionally do not record this show. It’s meant to be enjoyed live. . . except when I can’t do it live.
So for the next three weeks I’m dusting off some of my later Gumbo YaYa shows and putting them in that slot. As always with Gumbo YaYa shows, there’s a corresponding post about the music I spin.
Hello. I couldn’t stay away. New show. Same day, different time. I’ll dip into the Gumbo YaYa bag but I’ll be playing lots of other music. No recordings so you have to stream it live. However, you can listen to past shows of Gumbo YaYa.
Thursdays, 4 p.m. (west coast time) to 6 p.m., the KAOS Thursday Happy Hour. Catch the stream live. Call me when I’m in the studio 360-867-5267.
For the record, I’m done posting up radio shows, though I still deejay at KAOS (lately as a substitute morning host).
And I’m pretty much done adding any news posts here. You’ll find a few below that I did after shutting down the radio show but they were designed to wean me off of my eight-year habit of posting weekly. . . . I’m clean now.
Over 300 shows of Sweeney’s Gumbo Ya Ya are posted and can be streamed right now. This website is a good way to find a particular show and get a little more information on them. In most cases, you will be able to listen by using the player that is included in the article.
And you can always leave me a comment. I’m still checking in on the site.
. . . without African Americans, there would be no New Orleans music.
June not only holds the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States (Juneteenth or June 19), it is also African American Music Appreciation Month. Though my show is no longer airing live, you can still listen to recordings of the series of shows I made in 2021 in honor of this month. (Use the links below to go to the page then activate the embedded player on that page.)
The June 3rd, 2021 show covers the post World War II music scene in New Orleans where Jump Blues evolved into R&B and then later got called Rock ‘n’ Roll.
The June 10th, 2021 show is about Jazz with references to stories about Basin Street, Danny Barker, Storyville and New Orleans dancehalls.
The June 17th, 2021 show makes a pretty solid argument for why New Orleans should also be considered the birth place of Funk.
Finally, I really enjoyed doing a Black Music Month appreciation show the year before where I provided some history on the month’s recognition and some great music. But for the record, every show is a celebration of African American Music because without African Americans, there would be no New Orleans music.
Kim and I are still driving around the country. And I thought I’d share a few shots with you all. (A reminder that I’m not doing the show anymore but I’m in reruns and you can find past shows here.)
Since Lafayette, we’ve been to Mobile, Tampa, Savannah, Atlanta, Asheville, Nashville, Memphis and we are now headed back home.
My favorite music experience to date has been at Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta where we heard and saw Lulu the Giant. First, the attic is a great place to see music. A genuine listening room with a back patio with a video feed for the loud partiers and talkers. Second, Rachael Shaner delivers her original music with an amazing voice. Third, she has excellent taste in band members, especially Daniel Malone who is not only a fun personality, but a drummer with a unique style. They are based in Savannah. Check them out and you will thank me.
Rachael Shaner, leads Lulu the Giant who often works with the entertaining Daniel Malone.
Asheville is a wonderful music town but I don’t think I quite hit it at the right time. Still, we were able to see several live acts on the street and in no-cover venues such as the S&W Market and we saw Ash & Eric at the Isis Theater upstairs loft.
Later, we cruised the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping at the music center to catch their daily performances in the center’s breezeway. I liked the exhibits at the center too.
At the Blue Ridge Music Center
Nashville was a bit overwhelming particularly downtown. But we got up into Midtown and found a few neighborhood bars, most notably Bobby’s Idle Hour where we were pleasantly surprised to see and meet Annie Ford who has lived and performed in New Orleans and Seattle. We caught a review of songwriters at Third and Lindsley and fell in love with Ray Stephenson and Byron Hill, particularly when they performed together.
Ray Stephenson (left) and Byron Hill at Third and Lindsley (Backstage Nashville)
Annie Ford backing up Tommy Luke at Bobby’s Idle Hour in Nashville.
Of course we toured the Country Music Hall of Fame and did the RCA Studio A tour and then rolled to Memphis and immediately stopped at the Stax Records Museum. We hit Memphis on a Sunday and Monday so music was a bit light. Beale Street was actually pretty tame which was nice. Memphis reminds me of Olympia, just bigger. Lots of potential with some great steps forwards but still struggling with empty storefronts. The Civil Rights museum consumed most of our day but we did have a nice evening at B.B. King’s Club on Beale Street.
But we had to keep moving and it was in Ste. Genevieve, the oldest permanent European settlement in Missouri, that we stumbled into our Rockwell moment. After the urban experience of Nashville and Memphis, walking about an historic, rural town on a slow night was quite pleasant, despite the banker hours of the shops. I did find a collectible shop open whose owner had his radio tuned loudly to KDHX St. Louis. A big blast community radio station that was like a hybrid between Seattle’s KEXP and Olympia’s KAOS. Professional (but volunteer) deejays dish up a great variety of tasty music. That station carried us almost to Kansas City the next day.
After dinner while looking for a tavern, our ears led us to a community band playing in the parking lot of the local school at sunset, performing music by W.C. Handy and others. They even had a cart selling snoballs. The fireflies sparking up around us, dancing to the music was pure lagniappe.
Apparently during the summer, this is an every Thursday evening event in Ste. Germaine.
To mix it up on Gumbo YaYa, I often played music from acts from Baton Rouge and Lafayette. But until this week, I had barely passed through those towns. A musical evening in Lafayette and a quick blues festival stop in Baton Rouge began the process of remedying that experience gap.
Kim and I have been driving about a bit since the last show and we’ve caught music in Bend, Oregon (The Pinehearts), some stray live tunes in Moab, Utah and Santa Fe, and a hoedown at the Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin. But we hit the main music vein when we got to Lafayette.
Fingerpistols at The Little Longhorn Saloon, Austin, April 19, 2022
We caught a few bands downtown and at the Blue Moon Saloon but the big strike was the “Medicine Show” a showcase of student and faculty performances from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Traditional Music Program. The program was celebrating 25 years of providing guidance to young musicians in the history and practice of Cajun music, zydeco, bluegrass, blues and other root styles.
Accomplished students with famous last names such as “Benoit,” “Sonnier” and “Guidry” offered up songs such as “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” “Give Him Cornbread,” and “Zydeco Stomp.” In all, five distinct student groups took the stage led by some of the all-star cast of this amazing music program.
The faculty includes, among others, Nathan Williams Jr. of Lil Nathan and the Zydeco Big Timers, Chas Justus of the Revelers, Chad Huval with Beausoleil, Blake Miller of the Red Stick Ramblers and Pine Leaf Boys, Gina Forsyth solo fiddler/songwriter and Lee Allen Zeno who played with Buckwheat Zydeco. All of the faculty performed, including coming together for an “Instructor All-Stars” performance. That was followed by another long set by an ad hoc group that included Zachary Richard, Sonny Landreth, Henry Hample, Ward Lormand, Gary Newman and Danny Kimball.
From left: Sonny Landreth, Gary Newman, Ward Lormand and Zachary Richard, Angelle Hall Auditorium, Lafayette,
The next day, Kim and I drove into Baton Rouge, hooked up with Bill Boelens who co-hosts Dirty Rice on KRVS in Lafayette and Back Down the Bayou on WPVM in Baton Rouge. We got on downtown for the blues festival and caught Roddie Romero and Michael Juan Nunez as they were performing Romero’s “The Creole Nightingale Sings” from his excellent Gulfstream release from 2016 (Show featuring my interview with him.) This fan boy moment of meeting these two musicians after their set (and getting Nunez new record) was made even greater when Bill introduced me to Larry Garner who was sitting in the audience preparing to catch the next act. This Louisiana Blues Hall of Famer has three of his records on the KAOS blues shelf and I’ve drawn from them regularly over the years.
Wrote more than I really wanted to do, just needed an excuse to show off these pictures.
Me, Roddie Romero and Bill Boelens
Me and Larry Garner
Roddie Romero and Michael Juan Nunez at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival, May 23, 2o22
I have retired the show with this week’s farewell program. I’m healthy . . .just hewing to my philosophy of ending activities when they are still fun to do. I’ll explain this a bit more but first go ahead and demonstrate your multitask abilities by starting the show while still reading. (I have returned to the air with a Thursday drive time show from 4 to 6 p.m. PST in which I focus on up tempo tunes, liberally lacedwith New Orleans music. But I don’t record the show, you have to catch it live. )
Since September 8 2014 (until mid-March 2022), I produced a weekly radio show that features “Just a Little Bit of Everything ” which is the title of the Herb Hardesty’s 1961 single that kicks off the first full set of music. However, the common element has always been a strong connection with New Orleans and Lafayette.
The show broadcast live from the KAOS studio on the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, first on Mondays and then later on Thursdays. A few years back, community station KMRE (Bellingham) began running edited versions of the show on Fridays. More recently, the show has aired on KOCF (Fern Ridge), WPHW (Hartwell) and occasionally other stations that participate in the Pacifica Network. In all, I produced about 380 episode with over 300 of them available to listen through this website.
Doing a post-Christmas show featuring my top 10 of 2019 with my sons — one of the highlights of my time doing the show.
When I first started as a volunteer deejay with KAOS , I considered a show featuring exclusively New Orleans music. But worried about the limited format. Over the course of my first year doing a morning drive-time show, I found myself digging into the KAOS music collection and was surprised by the depth of music coming out of the city –my birthplace and home for most of childhood.
So that’s what I’ve done, play songs by musicians such as Earl King who kicks off the show with “No City Like New Orleans,” Johnny Adams who swings through “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You,” and Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses jamming through “Minor Drag.”
I’m not a fan of long goodbyes but I also believe its important that radio stations provide closure when a show ends (as opposed to abruptly changing format with no warning). So I made it a finale show and asked listeners to call in and say hi. And over a dozen did! My favorite comment was from a listener who said she was going to JazzFest this April as a result of what she had heard on the show. (I couldn’t have received a better report card.)
Today’s show takes a sentimental walk through some previously covered material, including “St. James Infirmary” a personal lifelong favorite which has an interesting pedigree. Here’s more detail on that history. This week’s segment includes a clip from the Treme TV series featuring Wendell Pierce riffing off that song in the Touro Emergency Room.
The HBO series “Treme” had just wrapped its original run on TV when I started my show. Third from left is Wendell Pierce who played the fictional character Antoine Batiste. In this picture, he’s parading with actual members of Rebirth Brass Band.
Later, I play the original version of “Basin Street Blues” by Louis Armstrong and hint at its fascinating history detailed more in a previous show and post including how that song acquired lyrics which then resulted in the City of New Orleans returning the “Basin Street” name after eliminating it during a blush of civic post-Storyville shame (I guess tourism promotion beat out virtue and vanity). Satchmo scats on this early pre-lyric version of the song.
The Treme Brass Band does a great job on “Darktown Strutters Ball” a song with lyrics and a title that has caused me concern and in which I explore in a show and post.
I touch on the topic of Nine Lives a book by Dan Baum about people’s lives in New Orleans — originally sent to write about Hurricane Katrina, Baum ended up with a book detailing unique aspects of New Orleans culture such as Mardi Gras Indians, and marching bands. I play a song about Tootie Montana in today’s show.
This week’s show also includes a couple of clips from interviews including a funny description by Irvin Mayfield of his good friend Kermit Ruffins. You’ll also hear Kermit sing from his Happy Talk release. Here’s the interview of Kermit and Irvin in Kermit’s Mother-in-Law club about their album collaboration.
So this is it. I’m done creating new shows though you can listen to the 300 shows available through this website. I’m looking to travel a bit more and explore even more new music. And I’m going to keep this blog going. I suspect it will be quiet for a few weeks but don’t be surprised if I return with non-radio show type posts regarding music. Thanks for listening. But to keep in touch, you should subscribe .(right hand column)
Mardi Gras is over but the dancing can continue with the help of over two dozen New Orleans acts ready to kick off March in style. Start the show to hear Jason Ricci and Joe Krown offer up some “Real Good Funk.”
Big Sam’s Funky Nation rocks the opening of the first full set with “Feet on the Floor” followed by Marcia Ball’s “Right Back In It” and a retro disco-like cover of “Fly Me to the Moon” by Dr. Brice Miller’s alter ego Ecirb Muller’s Twisted Dixie.
It’s not all funk cause the second full set is loaded with hot jazz by Meschiya Lake, Jacques Gauthe, Shotgun Jazz Band, Treme Brass Band, and Smoking Time Jazz Club.
This week’s show features “Dame Tu Reloj.”
The show switches gears but still stays danceable with The Iguanas and Panorama Jazz Band, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and The Neville Brothers.
Where’s the R&B? Next set features Irma Thomas and Ernie K-Doe (Patron Saint of this Blog). Later Lloyd Price demonstrates why he is an underappreciated progenitor of ‘rock n’ roll.”
And so the show rolls and rocks and boogies with additional help from Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes, John Lisi & Delta Funk, Theryl “Houseman” DeClouet, The Meters, Professor Longhair, Dana Abbott and Professor Longhair.
Enjoy the show and stay tuned for next week’s farewell show. Last Gumbo YaYa!
Sweeney's Gumbo YaYa 