Featured Show of the Week: Brownie Mountain Songs
This is the first installment of WERW’s Featured Show of the Week series. Every week, I'll be picking a show to write about and share with WERW’s staff, DJs, and audience. We’ve got a lot of great programming this semester, and there are a whole bunch of shows that deserve a little extra attention. Check out our blog every Sunday night for the latest Featured Show.
I wanted to make Kevin Sampaio’s Brownie Mountain Songs the first program to be a part of this series because it’s pretty much the epitome of college radio – Kevin started his set on Saturday by playing a tune from the Velvet Underground; he went on to play some fairly deep cuts from bands like TV On The Radio and The Smiths; and at one point he said, “If you don’t listen to Joyce Manor you’re not sad enough.” If that’s not college radio I don’t know what is.
Kevin’s been doing the radio thing for a while now. Up until this semester, he co-hosted The Sunday Sessions with WERW’s Music Director, Johnny Pflieger. With Pflieger being gone this semester, Kevin started Brownie Mountain Songs, a show whose title – among other very important elements – was inspired by a Tim and Eric bit. The idea of Brownie Mountain Songs is to have a new theme each week, influenced by a special guest that helps Kevin put together a playlist based on the week’s theme.
For his first show, Kevin decided to make the guest component a bit more communal – “Listening to my show on Valentine’s Day means you probably don’t have a date, SO LET’S BE SAD TOGETHER!” Kevin invited his friends to call into the show and request sad love songs. It turned out well, resulting in a track from Beck’s Sea Change (an album that is pretty much Pt. 1 of Morning Phase, which just won Album of the Year at the Grammys. I recommend checking it out if you’ve been diggin’ MP.), a Steely Dan gem, and a closing song from Akon that was introduced with a sense of endearing hesitation.
It’ll be fun to see where Kevin takes Brownie Mountain Songs over the course of the semester. You’ll be able to catch him on air every Saturday from 3 – 4 PM. If you missed his show this week, check it out on our Soundcloud page here.
Setlist:
This article was written by Quinn Donnell, WERW's General Manager.