We get sonically aloft with musical memories of the Byrds and the Flying Burritos Brothers. The Byrds, the fabled folk-rock band known for their vocal harmonies and jangly guitar sound, gained huge fame between 1965-1968. We’ll hear music that influenced the Byrds from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. Plus conversation with Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers co-founder Chris Hillman about his bluegrass roots, the Byrds’ shift toward country music on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and forming country rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons. We’ll also find out about songs in the land of love lost and found from Dr. John, Sam Cooke, Patsy Cline and Irma Thomas.

We asked our listeners to help pick music and musicians that deal with the troubles we’re facing, and we added a few songs and singers that fit the mood as best we could, including the Staple Singers, Allen Toussaint, Woody Guthrie, Toots and the Maytals, Son Volt, Carole King, John Coltrane, Los Super Seven, Dr. John, and Tom Waits. So we’re just trying to make it real, and the big question remains: Compared to What?

This week, we celebrate the cultural minglings in New Orleans with a visit to the 2019 French Quarter Festival: a free, homegrown, four-day annual event featuring a vast array of local music presented on stages throughout the city’s oldest neighborhood. We’ll hear from Soul Queen Irma Thomas, the late piano patriarch Ellis Marsalis, and the Preservation Hall Brass Band. We’ll also catch the French-Creole jazz of Don Vappie and Evan Christopher, Cajun dance music from Bruce Daigrepont, vaudeville and gospel from Topsy Chapman and Solid Harmony, Klezmerfunk fusion from the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars and traditional jazz from Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band. 

We’ve got New Orleans jazz, Baton Rouge blues and Ethio-jazz played on keyboard and accordion by a former Washington D.C. cab driver, Hailu Mergia, who mixes Ethiopian music with jazz, funk and soul. Then, it’s a rare, intimate solo performance by Baton Rouge bluesman Lil Ray Neal, live at the West Baton Rouge Museum. Plus, music by Dr. John, Etta James, the Meters, Aretha Franklin, Big Mama Thornton and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.

It’s songs for Easter, Passover and spring, to let hope prevail while we preserve freedom in these tough times. We’ve got songs of resurrection, liberation, rainy weather, and rabbit blues, with the voices of Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Bessie Smith, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Dr. John, Willie Nelson and Fats Domino. We’ll hear the “voice of the Holy Ghost” through the sacred steel stylings of Fran Grace (“Lady Strings”) and Nicolle “Nikki D” Brown from Toledo, Ohio. Then, we travel to North East Louisiana to witness the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble perform a spiritual ritual from enslaved Africans that combines Christian worship and the West African ring shout tradition.