PORT ANGELES — As promised, the national radio show “eTown,” recorded in Port Angeles this September, will at last arrive on local airwaves Friday afternoon.
The show, starring the indie-rock band Cake and singer-songwriters Danny Barnes and Eliza Gilkyson, came to the Port Angeles High School auditorium the night of Sept. 17 amid the “Celebrate Elwha!” festivities.
The “eTown” episode coincided with ceremonies that day at the Elwha Dam, where national, state and local dignitaries — U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal elder Ben Charles Sr., U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, Gov. Chris Gregoire — marked the start of dam removal.
So Cake, Gilkyson, Barnes and “eTown” hosts Nick and Helen Forster, filled their show with music and conversation around environmental restoration.
On KONP
The Port Angeles High event has been turned into two hourlong radio programs, the first of which will air at 1 p.m. Friday on KONP, 1450 on the AM dial and 102.1 on the FM band.
The second half will air at 1 p.m. next Friday, Dec. 2, on KONP.
Both programs run 52 minutes, station manager Todd Ortloff said.
“We’ll do about six minutes of news and commercials at the top of the show,” he said; then, “the ‘eTown’ broadcast will proceed without any additional commercials until the end of the hour.”
For these two Fridays only, “eTown” will replace “Art Beat,” Karen Hanan’s weekly program celebrating local arts events and personalities.
That’s fitting since Hanan, executive director of Arts Northwest, brought “eTown” to Port Angeles in the first place.
The show, which airs on hundreds of public and commercial radio stations across the continent, is devoted to “music. Ideas. Community,” according to www.eTown.org.
The Port Angeles episode’s ingredients included Cake’s fierce renditions of songs from its new record, “Showroom of Compassion.”
Then there was Gilkyson’s rendition of “Greenfields,” a song by her late father, Terry Gilkyson.
To her, it’s about a time when “man and Mother Nature were lovers,” walking hand in hand through verdant meadows.
Barnes’ humorous patter and banjo playing came next.
Dicks, Jarvis interviews
He was followed by Nick Forster’s interviews with two of the public officials who have pushed for the Elwha River Restoration project: U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, the Democrat from Belfair who represents the North Olympic Peninsula, and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis.
Also during the show, the “E-chievement” award was presented to Mike Town, the Redmond High School teacher who developed the Cool School Challenge (www.CoolSchoolChallenge.org), a carbon footprint-lightening program that has spread to some 400 campuses nationwide.
The program is saving Redmond High $40,000 per year in utility bills, Town told the “eTown” crowd.
The night’s conversations about Olympic National Park, along with the music from the three acts, drew abundant cheering from the nearly sold-out school auditorium.
Dancing broke out at the front of the hall well before the finale, which brought Cake, Gilkyson and Barnes together for “Take Me to the River,” Al Green’s plea to be washed in a cool stream.
For more details about “eTown” and the other radio stations carrying the show, visit www.eTown.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
