Featured Artists

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 Friday, September 23

Elaine Diehl joined the staff of Cincinnati Public Radio in 2015 as a part-time announcer on WVXU and WGUC. She came on board full time in 2017 as WGUC's Afternoon Drive/Early Evening classical music host. Elaine is also heard on WVXU's "Around Cincinnati," interviewing local and national musicians, writers, and event producers. She has been deeply involved in the Cincinnati music scene since graduation from Xavier University. A versatile singer, Elaine is at home performing Rock (Bromwell-Diehl Band, Elaine, and the Biscaynes, Madrigal), Jazz, and Swing (Lee's Junction Big Band, Boutique), Musical Theatre and jingles. She appears annually in the Pillar Award-winning Suits That Rock at Covington's Carnegie Arts Center. As a life-long Cincinnatian, Elaine's love of radio was born while listening to The Big Red Machine with her grandfather on a 9 volt-powered pocket transistor. She began in Public Radio as a volunteer, answering phones and making doughnut runs for Fund Drives at WVXU, WAIF, and WNKU where she began her on-air career hosting Morning Drive. Elaine and her musician husband, Jan enjoy the abundance of Art and Entertainment available in Cincinnati. The parents of two grown daughters, they reside in Green Township.

https://www.wguc.org/hosts/?name=elainediehl Friday September

Saturday, September 24

Among the throngs of artists in the music world, few have elevated “dreaming” to such a high art form as folksinger Michael Johnathon. He is a touring songwriter, author of five published books, playwright of the Walden Play performed in 42 countries, composer of the opera, Woody: For the People, organizer of the national association of front porch musicians called SongFarmers, the full symphony performances of SONGS OF RURAL AMERICA and as the creator and host of the live audience broadcast of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour with a radio audience with over two million listeners each week on 500 public radio stations, public television coast-to-coast, American Forces Radio Network in 173 nations and now on the RFD-TV Network nationwide … including the legendary WSM AM the home of the Grand Ole Opry.
WoodSongs produced its historic 1,000th live audience broadcast November 2019
Michael grew up in upstate New York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas, and found a job working as the late-night DJ on a small radio station. One night, he played ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ by Roger McGuinn and The Byrds. As the song played, he recalled seeing the songwriter, his neighbor Pete Seeger, performing in his Dutchess County hometown in New York. By the time the song had ended, he decided to pursue a career as a folksinger.
Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky. For the next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the Appalachian mountains knocking on doors and learning the music of the mountain people.
Michael experienced hundreds of front porch hootenannies where folks would pull out their banjos and fiddles, sit on their front porches with him and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them.
Soon enough, he began performing concerts at hundreds of colleges, schools, and fairs. He performed two thousand Earth Concerts, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and shelters helping battered women and children. In all, he sang to over two million people in one four-year stretch.
Now settled in the foothills of Appalachia, the Kentucky-based songwriter is a  tree-hugger at heart, he performed two thousand Earth Concerts at schools and colleges, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and shelters helping battered women and children. Billboard Magazine headlined him as an “UnSung Hero” and he has been featured on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo, and the BBC.
http://www.michaeljohnathon.com/bio/