
Hometown Hoedown: Opportunity Center of Owensboro Clients Create Country Radio Show
National Public Broadcasting Day was January 13th and the clients and staff at The Opportunity Center of Owensboro came up with a terrific and appropriate way to celebrate. Under the guidance of local broadcasting legend Brian Jackson, the clients created, voiced and produced a country music-infused show called Hometown Hoedown.
Brian Jackson is certainly no stranger to the airwaves. Though he has worked on a variety of stations (like Q102 and WVJS) here in western Kentucky, he is best-known for his decades-long run on the morning show on 96 WSTO. Today, he works at The Opportunity Center of Owensboro, where he is able to share his love for communications with the staff and clients.
Amanda, who works in programming at The Opportunity Center, came up with the idea of putting Brian's radio expertise to work on National Public Broadcasting Day. Their goal was to create "some kind of experience that would involve (Opportunity Center) participants in the process of making an audio recording suitable for broadcast."
Brian loved the idea and immediately tapped the brain of Pinocchio's 'wise Executive Chef' Ashley. She suggested, "Why not let each group pick a song, and then be the DJs to introduce it to the audience?"
The result? The Hometown Hoedown! Brian describes it as "a celebration of shared love of music, of cooperative participation, of meaningful inclusion and of disciplined entertainment."
As for the actual process, it was interactive and, well, country. Brian says, "Our initial genre was country music. Each day-training small group had to decide on a representative song and then select their on-mic representatives." Brian taught them his trusty WARP method that defined his 42-year-long radio career. In the WARP method, you Write, Amend, Rehearse, Perform.
That's exactly what the aspiring broadcasters at The Opportunity Center did. Brian says the finished product exceeds his expectations. "The result is something so lovely it eclipses its original intent altogether and has become, I think, emblematic of what The Opportunity Center is all about – the practice of diversity in an atmosphere of human compassion."
Here's the Hometown Hoedown!
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Gallery Credit: Abby Monteil