Here at What Weekly we have spent a year and a half documenting the Baltimore Renaissance and I can personally say with no hesitation that it has been the most exciting year and a half of my life. There are no signs of it slowing down. It’s really quite the task keeping up with all the beautiful and amazing things all of you are doing and the energy that you release into the cosmos with every painting, song, or performance only fuels and grows a fire that’s burning hotter than ever before. That said, WE GOTTA GET IN ON THE MIX PODCAST STYLE!
It is with great pleasure that I get to announce the start of our very first Podcast. Lunar State Radio!
What is Lunar State Radio? LSR is a radio show based out of the fictional college of Lunar State located just up the hill from the fictional town of Smokey Oaks, which is located “somewhere” in the Pacific Northwest. The show consists of stories and interviews from some of Baltimore’s most talented artists, live music, and sketch comedy from our ever-growing theater community in Baltimore.
Now you might be asking yourself “Why the pacific Northwest?” Good Question! That’s because LSR is actually the creation of one Ian “Huckleberry Humphrey” Baltimore Native, Baltimore School for the Arts alumni, and current Copy Cat Resident.
“Lunar state is a place I created based off of the college I went to out in Olympia Washington. It’s called Evergreen State and is one of the most liberal hippy schools in the country,” Ian explained. “While I was there I was a journalism major and wrote for The Cooper Point Journal, our schools newspaper. I got to write on stories as odd as cafeteria food theft and bare witness to things like riots and cop cars being flipped and burned.” All of which were not necessarily new experiences for Ian considering he grew up in Baltimore but they did serve to grow the idea of LSR, which had begun percolating up from the depths of his imagination.
After a few years at Evergreen Ian finally returned home to Baltimore but the stories and experiences from that time in his life always stuck with him. There was something defining about those rebellious, ideological, and downright dumb decision making times. Even if people don’t share the same exact stories, they would have unique stories of their own and the two things that the stories would always have in common are that they came from the same period in time in everyone’s lives and they always brought about a laughable sense of nostalgia.
I mean think about it. What’s more fun than laughing with your friends about that time you or someone else got arrested because they walked up to a cop with a joint in their ear. Or when your friend stole their parents’ car only to total it in the middle of the night with nine other teenagers riding in the back. Even if nothing like that ever happened to you the likelihood of you knowing someone that did experience such adolescent adventures is almost a guarantee. And For Ian “Huckleberry” Humphrey, that type of connection is what Lunar State Radio is all about. “It’s like a punk rock prairie home companion” He’ll often say. “Only instead of Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong and men are good looking it’s Lunar State, where parties are outrageous and the day trippers are a-plenty”
Every few weeks we will be brining you new stories from Lunar State along with very real interviews and performances from some of Baltimore’s best artists. Have a new comedy night you want to promote? Send us an email. Just finished an album and you want people to take a listen? Give us a call. This is What Weekly by the people and for the people and it’s time to get heard.
And to that end without any further adieu I would like to present to you the first episode of Lunar State Radio. Broadcasting from Lunar State. Where you never know what you’re gonna learn.
