The Holidays & MP Come to the Iowa Channel

New on the Iowa Channel this week, some music of the holidays. Cool jazz from the Daugherty McPartland Group, including the now-rare Daugherty, Davis and McPartland Christmas disc.

Also a very nice 1996 collection from Mark Pence, whose theme is his mom's favorite holiday tunes.

Speaking of Mark, we're also debuting his new release this week, "Piano Sketches." More info on his website, www.studiomvp.com.

As always, your comments and suggestions for the Iowa Channel are always welcome!

Lauren & Peter Dig The Iowa Channel

So, I'm in my office on a normal afternoon, bouncing on the Spri stability ball I've recently replaced my office chair with, when an email rolls in, from a guy named David. He asks where the Iowa Channel webcast is, it's not giving him any audio.

Now, I find out later that David is an Iowa ex-patriate, just the kind of person who sometimes happens on our webcasts. Usually it's someone who's found or rediscovered KCCK. In fact, this is one of the first emails I've received about the Iowa Channel that wasn't from a musician wanting to submit music, and definitely the first from out of state.

And, as it happens, Engineer Dave had just taken the channel off the air for its weekly reset. So, I reply to David telling him it will be back up shortly. A couple of minutes later, he acknowledges my message, chiding me good-naturedly about the timing, as we probably have some new listeners because of the Parade article about Lauren Graham. With my usual acuity, I say "What article?"

He scans the article in, sends me a pdf, then a few minutes later, sends me the actual link, and I realize it is THE Lauren Graham, the actress, that he's talking about, and that the article is in the Parade Healthy Style supplement to the freakin' LA Times. Somehow, Lauren and her Parenthood co-star and boy friend Peter Krause found the Iowa Channel and were listening over the Internet when the writer visited them.

Heck, most of the musicians whose music we play don't even know about the Iowa Channel, and here are people living in L.A. checking us out.

In the immortal words of Vizzini, "Inconceivable!"

Oh, and did I mention we had picked this moment to take the Iowa Channel OFF THE AIR. We are nothing if not Kings of Bad Timing.

Eventually, we got the stream back up and waited for the avalanche of listening from L.A. and all the cities where the article appeared.

Checking the IP address log today, I see that in fact, we have a couple people in LA listening to the Iowa Channel webcast, as well as a two in Atlanta, not to mention one in Athens. Greece. We're on our way!

By the way, this is not the first time a project of mine has been mentioned in the LA Times, believe it or not. For the story behind the "Emergency Richard Gere-Sighting System," visit my personal blog.

So, David-thanks again for letting me know about the article. Lauren and Peter, thanks for listening! Let me know how you found the Iowa Channel, I'm pleased and thrilled, but a little puzzled.

Welcome to the Iowa Channel Blog! - Dennis

Thanks for checking out the Iowa Channel blog. I'm Dennis Green, general manager for Jazz 88.3 KCCK, and the main programmer and admin for the Iowa Channel.

The Iowa Channel came about when KCCK began offering digital "HD Radio" a couple of years ago. Like with digital TV, the new technology enabled us to not only offer a CD quality version of the main jazz channel, but let us "split" the digital stream in to three distinct program streams.

Only question was, what should we put on the new stream(s)? Jazz is a pretty narrow niche, and it didn't make sense to split our existing audience by playing a different kind of jazz, or just rebroadcasting our existing jazz shows. What could we do that would be different, and maybe attract a different audience?

Well, one thing we have always done on the jazz side is play a lot of music from local and regional artists. Plus, we air a lot of live concerts and festivals that take place in our little corner of Iowa. Iowa-based arists and bands have achieved national and international notoriety in jazz, blues, latin, reggae and rock. What if we started a station that just played Iowa artists?

It would be like if you could go to Pandora and type in Iowa and get all this cool music.

So, in 2009 we launched the Iowa Channel on the air. A webcast soon followed. In 2010, we developed the Iowa Channel iPhone app, and the stream is also compatible with all other mobile platforms. Check out the listen page for your particular phone or device.

Honestly, in modern broadcasting terms, the format of the Iowa Channel is kind of a train wreck. Who ever heard of a channel that broadcasts a mishmash of vocal and instrumental jazz, blues, reggae, rock, latin, big band and folk? Well, we think it's kind of cool that you don't always know what to expect. I hope you do, too.

So, the Iowa Channel is a work in progress, there's nothing else like it in the state, and not many in the country. And, it's kind of a "hobby" project for us right now, I work on it in my spare time. But, I think there's a lot of potential.

We'd be thrilled to hear your feedback on the station, both positive comments and suggestions on what we might improve. Use the comments field below or email feedback@iowachannel.org. If you're an Iowa musician with music you'd like to get on the channel, send it to me! Our mailing address is on the home page.