American Song

Joe Hines
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  • Music History
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America was meant to be a light on the hill — a place others looked to when they needed to find their own way forward. If America has ever truly been that light, it came from its music. From the people who suffered the most and somehow still found something worth singing about. From colonial taverns to protest marches in the Eastern Bloc, from gospel churches to a ghetto in Soweto, American rhythms helped people band together, speak truth, and refuse to quit. Our songs became the world's songs — not because we exported them, but because people who needed hope reached out and claimed them as their own. American Song tells the stories of the artists who made the music and the people who were moved by it. One era at a time. One genre, one band, one song at a time. Music that started by campfires, in cotton fields, in churches and juke joints — and moved out into the world to become something larger than any one nation could contain. This is American Song.

  1. Nov 2

    Signal: Freeform Radio Breaks the Rules and Makes History

    Get in touch! Catching You Up New to the series? Here’s where we are. Episode One was the birth of American radio: a box in the living room that started talking in the 1920s and became the most intimate machine Americans had ever owned. Episode Two was the complicated part. Edwin Armstrong invented FM and RCA buried it. Television took radio’s stars. Black radio, the disc jockey, and rock and roll moved into the empty rooms, and the payola hearings made sure the independent DJs paid for it. You don’t need either episode to follow this one, but they’re both in the feed, and they’re both pretty good, if I say so myself. And I do. Moving the Story Forward In April 1967, a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound former Top 40 star named Tom Donahue sat down at a San Francisco radio station so broke its phone had been disconnected. He put on a record and let it play all the way through. Then he put on another one. Nobody had told him he couldn’t.That’s how freeform FM started, more or less. Larry Miller, the overnight man, would like you to know he’d been doing it for two months already.This is Part One of the story. It’s about the government order that accidentally emptied the FM dial, and the people who walked in and started playing whatever they wanted. Listeners built antennas out of coat hangers. The staff went on strike at three in the morning, on the air, and the bands came down to play in the street. Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh dropped by the studio with a stack of records and called their own debut album a turd. On a commercial radio station.You’ll hear the real thing: Tom Donahue on KMPX in 1967, Scott Muni and Alison Steele, the Nightbird, on WNEW-FM in New York, and Michael Tearson on WMMR in Philadelphia, recruiting doctors for a free clinic in the middle of his overnight shift. Two guests who were there tell it from both sides of the glass. Brad Kyle was a nineteen-year-old DJ in Houston who once phased two copies of a KISS album by hand to make a car crash sound better. Bruce Warren was a kid in Philadelphia with his radio tuned to WMMR, who grew up to help build World Cafe.For a few years, a person with a stack of records and an opinion could put a seventeen-minute song on the radio and nobody got fired. This is the story of those years. Part Two is about who paid for them.

  2. Oct 23

    New Artist Interview - Emzae; All the Things She Taught Herself

    Get in touch! Perseverant. By the time you finish listening to  my interview with emzae, you’ll have a good idea about why I’ve started my introduction like this. Other words also apply. Intelligent. Interesting. Insightful. Inspiring. These words also seem uniquely appropriate for this singer-songwriter from Derby, England. emzae and I met for this interview across the span of one continent and one ocean but by the end of our conversation, I felt like we were a little bit closer. I think you’ll have the same experience. emzae is the stage name of Emma, a singer-songwriter, producer, and mixing engineer from Derby. She calls her hometown an engineering city with little creative heritage or pathway. She coined the name in a 2009 MSN Messenger chat. For years afterward she drew artwork with it splashed across the front, rehearsing a future she wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to have. The road there was not direct. Chronic illness, M.E. and OCD, arrived in her teens and took her out of school at fourteen. She finished her schooling in a hospital outpatient classroom and taught herself the rest: singing, guitar, piano, production, and mixing. You see - there it is; perseverance. In 2014 she began posting demos to SoundCloud, many of them recorded on a guitar she’d received at seventeen, purchased at Argos. One of the songs she wrote for her first acoustic project earned her first BBC “Introducing” play. Then came “Lucid Dreaming,” a trip-hop-tinged confession of how badly she wanted to make music for a living. It was the first song she felt proud enough to share with her own family. You’ll get to hear a number of her songs, interwoven through this interview. That song opened the door to All Those Things I Thought I Knew. Taking six years to complete, her debut album was released in September 2023 on her own label, Zirconia Records. She wrote it, played it, sang every layer of it, produced it, and mixed it. She then toured it, remixed it, and pressed it on vinyl with money she didn’t really have. Since the Beatles and the Stones first took American R&B home and handed it back, British pop has been talking back to American song. emzae belongs to a newer branch of that family tree: the artist who is also the engineer, the label, the publicist, and the booking agent. Perhaps I should go back and insert the word, multi-faceted, up there at the top? She has written candidly about the cost of that arrangement. She describes it as a fine line between “protective hyper-independence and simply screwing yourself over.” She has also written about walking away from the major-label dream in favor of something she could actually sustain. Today she mixes and produces for other artists through her studio, Zirconia Audio. In October 2026 she played her first full-band show, and her second album is well underway. In this conversation, recorded in August 2026, we go song by song through All Those Things I Thought I Knew. We also talk about building a career outside the system, and what it takes to keep making art when your body sets the schedule. More Ways to Enjoy American Song! Visit us on Substack. Drop us a note and share your ideas for future shows, see more of our new artist interviews. Read our blogs. It's all on Substack. Use the link! https://substack.com/@americansong Joe Hines is now live on GUTSY radio twice a month on Saturdays at 5 pm Eastern time. Great music, fascinating stories, good vibes!  See the Gutsy show schedule for details.

  3. Sep 28

    Signal: Static

    Get in touch! At the start, radio was like the Wild West. Anyone could get on the air, and it was all fair game: preachers, farmers, a quack broadcasting from Mexico. But that was before the networks moved in, before the payola hearings took the records out of the DJs' hands, and ultimately before a single law in 1996 sold the dial to a few corporations. Signalis the story of American radio's hundred-year fight between the people who wanted to say something and the people who wanted to sell something. Because the good guys win in the end, free voices keep getting through anyway. Last time: Signal Episode One, “Hello, World,” covered radio’s first three decades. We listened in as a man on a Pittsburgh rooftop in 1920, read election returns into a microphone without a clue as to whether anyone was listening. In just three short years from that random starting place, there were 556 stations. In the beginning, Boy Scouts built crystal sets. Families gave the radio the best spot in the living room. Farm wives in the Depression found company in it, and FDR comforted a nation in it. For a brief, chaotic window, anyone could get on the air: preachers, poultry farmers, Pedro González speaking Spanish to Los Angeles, and a goat-gland doctor blasting half a million watts from across the Mexican border, where a six-year-old Johnny Cash heard the Carter Family for the first time. Then NBC and CBS moved in and turned all that noise into a business. Radio was built on the fact that people would crave a voice they trust. Then television showed up and took the business away. Now: This is Episode Two and its about what happened in the empty room TV left behind. The big stars packed their bags and left: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, the Lone Ranger all headed for that little box with the fishbowl screen. Meantime, a transmitter, a microphone, and a stack of records were left to hold down the fort. That turned out to be enough. It actually birthed the DJ.  Episode two is also the tragic story of Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio and was destroyed by the company that should have made him famous. So much for gratitude and fair dealing. And this is also the story of WDIA in Memphis, where Nat D. Williams reached one in ten Black Americans and B.B. King sang jingles. This was also the open range prowled by wildman Wolfman Jack, howling across the border at 250,000 watts. Look again and its also the story of payola hearings: Alan Freed lost everything, Dick Clark lost nothing, and anyone paying attention could see why. My episode two guest is Bruce Warren, who has spent more than 35 years at WXPN Philadelphia, most recently as Assistant General Manager for Programming and Executive Producer of NPR's World Cafe. He’s living proof that some vestiges of the 1950s still remain. The listener-supported model that a pacifist invented in Berkeley, CA in 1949 is the same one that pays NPR station bills. The promotion game that brought down Alan Freed still happens to a lesser extent; these days its concert tickets now instead of cash. And the formatted, playlist-driven radio the payola hearings created leads straight to today, where one voice-tracked DJ can "host" six cities at once.  Turn it up. The static’s the good part. Did you miss the first episode - Signal: Hello World? No problem! It's available here on your favorite streaming platform or on the American Song website. Check it out - you won't want to miss it! Get in touch: I'd love to hear from you! Find American Song on Substack.

  4. Sep 16

    Signal: Hello World

    Get in touch! In 1920, a radio signal was a rumor with electricity behind it — a handful of amateurs in garages and attics, broadcasting into a void nobody had proven was listening. There were no networks, no formats, no rules, because nobody in power had figured out yet that there was anything here worth controlling. That's the world this episode opens in: the accidental birth of American radio, before it belonged to anyone. "Hello, World" traces how a scattered hobby became a national voice — and sets up the argument this whole series is built on: American freedom tends to live in the places nobody's bothered to claim yet. Episode one of Signal, a new American Song series on the rise, fall, and strange afterlife of American radio, is live now. In this episode: Robert Baden Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) talks to parentsKDKA Pittsburgh. 11/2/1920. First Commercial Radio BroadcastW.K.  (Old Man) Henderson -  Hello World (1930)KPBS Classics - Ballad of an Unsung HeroFather Couglin - 12/11/1938The Amos 'n Andy Show - Courtroom CatastropheOrson Welles - War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast (1938)FDR Fireside Chat on BankingEdward R. Murrow - The London BlitzAnd here's what comes next: Radio didn’t stay innocent for long. Neither did anyone, really. A man invents FM radio, and the company profiting from it steals it out from under him and leaves him with nothing. For thirty years after that, nobody wants what he built. Turns out neglect was the best thing that could’ve happened to it — because ignored is free, and free is where a DJ can play whatever he wants, for as long as it deserves to be heard, with nobody telling him otherwise. That part is genuinely glorious. It’s also, like most glorious things, temporary. Because eventually somebody in Washington signs a piece of paper almost nobody reads, and in a few short years radio stops belonging to the people who loved it and starts belonging to a balance sheet. Local voices get replaced with automation. One January morning, a chemical disaster hits a small town, and the station legally required to warn people doesn’t answer the phone — because there’s nobody left inside to answer it. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what corporate greed actually costs. The people radio pushed out never stopped loving it. They rebuilt it somewhere else — podcasts, Substack, stations run by people who remember what this was supposed to sound like. Something America loved got taken away by greed, and then, quietly and stubbornly, brought back from the ashes by the people who never let go of it. That’s also an American pattern. It happened to jazz. It happened to punk. Over the next six episodes, we watch it happen to radio.

  5. Sep 8

    Meet Southern California Singer-Songwriter, Anson Corsair

    Get in touch! Today’s episode is an interview with the Southern California based singer-songwriter, Anson Corsair. His remarkably open interview reveals some of the highs and the lows he’s lived through and how he’s processed these events into a growing group of beautiful songs. While American Song generally covers some of the most well-known musicians throughout the canon of popular music, these artists are just the tip of the iceberg. Interviews with people like Anson help us appreciate just how rich the music world is. Writers like myself have an opportunity to shine a light on the immensity of what’s found below the waterline!  With a sound that is reminiscent of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Ed Sheeran, Anson’s songwriting craft is elegant, and poetic. In this interview, he goes deep on the many life experiences that have shaped who he is and how he understands his world.  I hope you’ll enjoy today’s show! Learn more about Anson Corsair: Website: https://www.ansoncorsair.com/ Instagram: AnsonCorsairMusic Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ansoncorsairmusic Spotify Follow American Song on Buzzsprout or your favorite streaming platform and connect with me on Substack!

  6. Aug 15

    Independent Artists: A.J. Deiboldt - Nashville, TN

    Get in touch! Today on American Song, I’ll introduce you to my friend, A.J. Deiboldt. A.J. is a singer-songwriter originally from upstate New York, now making his music in a small town in the woods of Tennessee just outside Nashville. American Song is a show that celebrates the history, breadth and richness of our country’s music in all its flavors. Writing memorable and sensitive songs in the style of Chris Whitley, and with historic connections to acoustic blues pioneers such as Ledbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson, A.J. is certainly no stranger to this legacy.  By the end of this interview, I think you’ll end up agreeing , he represents the music well!  A.J.'s songs are beautifully crafted, and his musicianship is finely nuanced and highly developed. I’m proud to have him on. Music In This Episode Some Day's Gonna Come Some DayDiamond's In The DustSteal AwayThe Old WaysPretty Days Look for A.J. Deiboldt at: Substack: The High Notes YouTube: AJDeiboldt Connect with us online! American Song on Substack.

  7. Aug 4

    Dancing Under Fire: Blood in the Groove — Los Prisioneros, Soda Stereo, D.A.F., and Brenda Fassie

    Get in touch! New Wave was born in a New York dive bar, then it got on a plane. In England it picked up eyeliner and a synthesizer where its guitar used to be. But somewhere over the Atlantic, in a few very specific places, it also picked up something heavier: a government watching. This is the final episode in our New Wave series, and it's the one where the genre stops being an aesthetic and starts being evidence. In Chile, three teenagers formed a band while Pinochet's regime was still making people disappear — and wrote songs about it anyway. In Argentina, a junta collapsed the same year its kids started plugging in synthesizers. In South Africa, artists built entire careers on saying things apartheid censors weren't fast enough to catch. None of these bands set out to be political. The regimes they lived under made that decision for them. Germany, South Africa, Latin America, and back around to post-Franco Spain — the biggest songs from the boldest bands in each, made under governments that would've preferred they stayed quiet, played anyway. This is Dancing Under Fire. Across different times, places, artists and eras, it's a now familiar story in hipper clothes and different accents. American music keeps leaving the country and coming back changed — recognizable, but not asking permission anymore. Music In This Episode Germany DAF - Der MussolilniSpider Murphy Gang - Skandal Im SperrbezirkNina Hagen- Du Hast Den Farbfilm Vergessen Ideal - Blaue AugenIdeal - Wir Stehn Auf BerlinIdeal - MonotonieNena - 99 LuftballonsNena - Irgendwie Irgendwo IrgendwannPeter Schilling - Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst)Peter Schilling - Die Wüste LebtFalco - Ganz WienFalco - Der KommissarFalco - Rock Me AmadeusSouth Africa éVoid - ShadowséVoid - TaximanéVoid - I Am a FadgetéVoid - Urban WarriorBrenda Fassie - Weekend SpecialBrenda Fassie - Black PresidentBrenda Fassie - MemezaPaul Ndlovu - Khombo Ra MinaSolomon Linda - MbubeLatin America Los Prisioneros - La Voz de los '80Los Prisioneros - El Baile do Los Que SobranLos Prisioneros - Tren Al SurLos Prisioneros - EléctricasSoda Stereo - Por Qué No Puedo Ser del Jet SetSoda Stereo - Nada PersonalSoda Stereo - Persiana AmericanaSoda Stereo - En la Ciudad de la FuriaSoda Stereo - De Musica LigeraCaifanes - La Negra TomasaCaifanes - La Célula Que ExplotaCaifanes - NubesCaifanes - No Dejes QueRadio Futura - Enamorado De La Moda JuvenilRadio Futura - Escuela de CalorRadio Futura - Semilla NegraRadio Futura - 37 GradosCome visit with us on Substack!

  8. Jun 19

    New Wave: The Conquerors - The Second British Invasion, and How Michael Jackson and Prince Broke Down the Walls at MTV

    Get in touch! Britain just turned the lights fluorescent. The future arrives every Wednesday now, whether you're ready or not. Picture 1979 England: factories closing, Thatcher cutting glass with every syllable, and a music press so brutal it could make or break a band before the tea went cold. Punk already burned down the house. Now a blond former schoolteacher from Newcastle who sounds like a cathedral trying to seduce you, a man dressed as three centuries of fashion history simultaneously, and a band that named itself after a hairstyle and a bomber are about to rebuild it — colder, sharper, and somehow more danceable. This episode: The Police turn jazz chords into a global empire. The Clash and XTC ask exactly how much pop a protest song can survive. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Squeeze, and Tears for Fears each find a different way to make precision sound like feeling. Elvis Costello smuggles class warfare into a piano hook your kids could hum. Then the screen turns on. MTV launches with nothing to play but the eccentrics nobody else wanted — and the eccentrics become the biggest stars on Earth. Until two artists the network never planned for, Michael Jackson and Prince, force the door open and rewrite who gets to be on television at all. The future was never going to be warm. But it was going to be brilliant. Songs In This Episode The Clash -  Career OpportunitiesXTC - This Is PopThe Police - Message In a Bottle (No Vocal)The Police - RoxanneThe Police - Walking On the MoonSqueeze - TemptedAdam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild FrontierThe Cure - A ForestSiouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in DustOMD - Enola GayTears For Fears - The HurtingTears For Fears - Mad WorldTears For Fears - ShoutTears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the WorldElvis Costello - Pump it UpElvis Costello - Watching the DetectivesElvis Costello - Oliver's ArmyElvis Costello - AlisonElvis Costello - Radio, RadioThe Monkees - (Theme From) The MonkeesThe Buggles - Video Killed the. Radio StarMichael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get EnoughPrince - ControversyMichael Jackson - Billie JeanPrince - When You Were MinePrince - 1999Prince - When Doves CryFalco - Der Kommissar (German Version)Interviews With StingAdam AntElvis CostelloMichael NesmithAndy Summers Join American Song on Social Media Substack:  https://substack.com/@americansong

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

America was meant to be a light on the hill — a place others looked to when they needed to find their own way forward. If America has ever truly been that light, it came from its music. From the people who suffered the most and somehow still found something worth singing about. From colonial taverns to protest marches in the Eastern Bloc, from gospel churches to a ghetto in Soweto, American rhythms helped people band together, speak truth, and refuse to quit. Our songs became the world's songs — not because we exported them, but because people who needed hope reached out and claimed them as their own. American Song tells the stories of the artists who made the music and the people who were moved by it. One era at a time. One genre, one band, one song at a time. Music that started by campfires, in cotton fields, in churches and juke joints — and moved out into the world to become something larger than any one nation could contain. This is American Song.

Information

  • Creator
    Joe Hines
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    65
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 American Song
  • Show Website
    American Song