{"id":285,"date":"2009-12-17T13:35:54","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T19:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=285"},"modified":"2009-12-17T13:35:54","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T19:35:54","slug":"ckuwho-twangtrust-with-stu-reid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2009\/12\/17\/ckuwho-twangtrust-with-stu-reid\/","title":{"rendered":"CKUWho? TwangTrust with Stu Reid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stu
Stu is on the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wednesdays, 6-8 p.m. on CKUW 95.9 FM or online at www.ckuw.ca<\/a>
\n
\nStylus: Can you tell us about the origins of the TwangTrust?
\nStu Reid: <\/strong>It was originally my friend Gaylene Dempsey\u2019s show. She applied to do an alt-country show shortly before CKUW first came to the FM airwaves [in 1999], but because she was frequently out of town for work, she thought she should have a permanent co-host as a back-up and she asked me. Initially, I was scared to death of the idea, but I soon grew to love it. Gaylene lost interest a couple years into it and I\u2019ve been a lone wolf ever since. I doubt I\u2019d ever have done it without her, so I\u2019m indebted to her forever.<\/p>\n

Stylus: You\u2019re known as \u201cThe $3000 Man\u201d because you consistently raise that amount of money during your FunDrive show. What\u2019s the secret to your success?
\nSR:<\/strong> Bruce content! No one else on CKUW plays Springsteen as much as I do. Coincidence? I think not. Seriously, though, while it\u2019s not a \u201cmy music is better than your music\u201d kind of thing, I think the kind of music I play has a deeper personal connection to the people who enjoy it than that of most other genres. Also, I don\u2019t just throw together a bunch of songs that I like. Most everything I play gets played for a specific reason, whether it\u2019s a local gig preview, a set of music with a theme, be it conceptual, historical or a common musician, songwriter or whatever. There\u2019s something to learn on the show if you\u2019re prepared to pay attention, and regular listeners appreciate the work I put into it.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What can you tell us about TwangTrust listeners? Who are they? Where are they?
\nSR: <\/strong>International, good-hearted folks, all. Ever since CKUW started their podcasting feature, TwangTrust has been the most downloaded show. That\u2019s on top of the dozens of folks who listen to my show each week via my own website (www.twangtrust.ca). That number ranges from 30 to 300, depending on whether a particular episode gets mentioned or linked on someone\u2019s blog somewhere. Still, I spent months playing Elliott Brood\u2019s first album, begging people to check them out at their first Winnipeg show and there were three of us that showed up. And I know the other two weren\u2019t there because of me. So that puts things in perspective.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Can you talk about the importance of Bruce Springsteen to the show, and to your life in general?
\nSR:<\/strong> I do have a personal relationship with Bruce Springsteen that I\u2019d like to tell you about. My musical tastes aren\u2019t as myopic as you might think, based on my show, but Bruce has been special from early on in many ways. To paraphrase the website www.thestureidexperiment.com <\/a>(no, I have no idea what that\u2019s about) [Ed note: He\u2019s serious\u2014our Stu Reid is in no way connected with that site. Weird.]<\/em>, \u201cNone of us are Bruce Springsteen. All of us are Bruce Springsteen. You are now Bruce Springsteen.\u201d I learned the history of music from Bruce, through artists he would cover or talk about in interviews\u2014everyone from Duke Ellington to Suicide. I started a fanzine, Bruceness, dedicated to him back in the prehistoric age of 1981 and even met my wife through it. I do often feel weird playing an established classic-rock artist on a campus station, but I have to. It wouldn\u2019t be an honest show otherwise. The first time I heard Bruce was on the original CJUM<\/a> back in the late \u201970s. I have been in Bruce Springsteen\u2019s dressing room before, and Bruce once stood on the actual boardwalk in Asbury Park and said \u201cYeah, I met that dude last night,\u201d talking to a friend about me. Plus, I once insulted him to his face. His wife Patti was there and she peed herself laughing.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What is the StuDome?
\nSR: <\/strong>My living room. My wife and I throw house concerts whenever the opportunity presents itself. We\u2019ve had Mike Plume, Jim Bryson and Leeroy Stagger through twice each, as well as Pat DiNizio from the Smithereens. The coolest show ever was C.R. Avery and his string quartet. Three violins, a cello, a conductor who played guitar and snare drum and C.R. doing his thing.\u00a0 A friend who came without ever having heard of him, said it was among the ten best shows of his life. And this was a guy who\u2019s seen a LOT of shows. Mike Plume christened it the StuDome. It was originally the Stu & Kathy Reid Theatre for the Performing Arts. Many StuDome patrons are just folks who listen to my show, who I don\u2019t really know that well. And I should add there are many listeners who have become people I DO know very well. I\u2019m very picky about who I book at the Dome, but as dream-come-truey as it is to have my fave bands playing in my living room, sometimes there\u2019s something too polite about the whole thing. There\u2019s only room for so much politeness in rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. I may soon require people to break things when they come to a StuDome show.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Do you ever see a day when you\u2019ll hand the reins of TwangTrust over to someone else, permanently? (Your daughter, Britt, perhaps?)
\nSR:<\/strong> Yes, I\u2019m old and will be dead soon, it\u2019s true. That was certainly the motivating factor in raising a child. Five-year-old Britt is coming along great, playing music for the whole family on Mud Puddle Radio every third Saturday at 9 a.m. (I occasionally tech for her). However, we may soon need to consider a second child as a backup. This past May, just before going in to see her third Springsteen show in St. Paul, we asked her if she was still a big Bruce fan. Britt said, \u201cUh… I\u2019m actually more of a Tchaikovsky fan.\u201d Damn kids and their classical music…<\/p>\n

>>><\/strong>www.twangtrust.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesdays, 6-8 p.m. on CKUW 95.9 FM or online at www.ckuw.ca Stylus: Can you tell us about the origins of the TwangTrust? Stu Reid: It was originally my friend Gaylene Dempsey\u2019s show. She applied to do an alt-country show shortly before CKUW first came to the FM airwaves [in 1999], but because she was frequently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[149,194,914,1039],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-ckuwho","tag-stu-reid","tag-twangtrust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}