We here at WMSE 91.7FM are super excited to announce Radio Summer Camp – a four-day music festival and symposium taking place at venues throughout Milwaukee from Thursday, August 20th through Monday, August 24th.

We will be slowly unveiling the full club line-up in the coming weeks, but today we are proud to unveil the artists playing the featured event of Radio Summer Camp, The Backyard BBQ. The BBQ will be held at Cathedral Square park from 11AM – 9PM on Saturday, August 22nd, mixing some of Milwaukee’s best with great national touring acts.

11 – 11:45am          Cedarwell
12: – 12:45pm        Alex Wilson Band
1:15 – 2:05pm        The Championship
2:30 – 3:30pm       Joe Pug
4:00 – 5:00pm      Bill Kirchen
5:30 – 6:30pm      Justin Townes Earle
7:00 – 8:30pm      Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound

As you all can probably tell, the BBQ has a kind of straw hats and lemonade, country, blues and bluegrass kind of feel. And we’re really excited to have Milwaukee legend (and WMSE DJ) Paul Cebar as the headliner for the event.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Some lovely press for the concert on May 13th.

NPR’s Joe Shapiro did a lovely story on Weekend All Things Considered

WUWM’s Lake Effect did a long interview with music.

Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel really captured the complexity of the project.

I’m so excited…we set the date for the CD Release concert for David Greenberger and Paul Cebar’s “Cherry Blosson Apple Picking Time.”

Save the date and book your tickets!  8 p.m., Wed. May 13th at Milwaukee’s amazing Pabst Theater…  Tickets are 15$, general admission, and go on sale April 15th!  Tell your friends!

Alterra Coffee Roasters is doing a gorgeous poster and postcard for the event.  And Milwaukee Public Television will do a multi-camera shoot for broadcast…and pieces of it will be included in the documentary being made about Greenberger’s life work.

The CD is a compilation of songs built around interviews that David did with people with memory loss here in Milwaukee over 2008-2009.  The spoken word songs and the broad range of musical styles so lovingly capture the humor and the longing of the ethereal experience of memory loss.

It’s the kick off event for The Center on Age & Community’s Think Tank and Public Forum:  “How can we radically transform activities in long term care?”

David Greenberger (of Duplexplanet.com fame) is nearing the end of his Residency in Applied Arts at the Center on Age & Community (which I direct) at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.  We’ll miss his elvish humor and deep-souled good-guyness.  Today, he and local collaborator Paul Cebar (and a couple of Paul’s musician friends) played about 5 of the songs they’d created, inspired by David’s conversations with local Milwaukee folks with memory loss.

The venue was less than ideal – a big banquet hall with low ceilings and no stage – even giant pillars blocking the view of the 300 folks gathered for the Milwaukee Aging Consortium’s annual Networking Fair.  But the short musical pieces, built of Paul’s soulful guitar, drums, keyboard and horns, and David’s perfectly tuned jazz-styled readings, were echanting.  Delicate, unique jazz improv snowflakes capturing the delicate conversations that are gone once they hit your hand. Thank you David, thank you Paul.  We hope to bring them back in May for a fully staged show that can really do justice to the beauty of what they created in their three month collaboration in Milwaukee.

David Greenberger and Paul Cebar by Jimherrington.com

Tune in this Friday at 5:30pm on 88Nine RadioMilwaukee with Scott Mullins. He will have Paul Cebar live in our studios.

Paul talking about his music collection

From 1986

I’ve admired David Greenberger’s work since I first encountered it in 1994. Greenberger has a way of posing a question that deflates any pretense and invites expertise (or at least some serious sass) from the respondent. This February, Greenberger will be in residence at the Center on Age & Community in Milwaukee to interview people with dementia and work with local legend Paul Cebar to set those interviews to music.