Please check out my new website...

March 3, 2011

This blog is no longer being updated. If you are interested in my current work, or would like to see my portfolio, please visit www.richardziglar.com .

Thank you!

Richard

New Website

For my current collaboration with Barry Yeoman, I have created a website called http://stillsingingtheblues.org/. Any documentary news I have in the next month or so will probably be posted there. I'm also creating a new website for myself called, drum roll, www.richardziglar.com. At this time I am so busy keeping the former site updated, that the latter site must remain "under construction" for the time being. This is a real case of the cobbler's children having no shoes.

So please join us at http://stillsingingtheblues.org/.

"Still Singing the Blues is a two-part, two-hour radio documentary series featuring musicians in New Orleans and South Louisiana who continue to perform both traditional blues and more commercial rhythm-and-blues. Part 1, which debuts June 1, burrows into the lives of three outstanding older performers: Carol Fran of Lafayette, Harvey Knox of Baton Rouge, and Little Freddie King of New Orleans. Part 2, which debuts in July, takes listeners into the handful of neighborhood clubs in New Orleans that keep the blues alive."

You can also find us on FB: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Still-Singing-the-Blues/123544507675680

And stay tuned for information concerning our new zydeco research project... news on that to come in August.

Thanks for your patience...

It has been a busy few months in audio doc land. Here are a few of the things I've been up to:

1) The War Stories of Happy Valley did get published to a CD. You can buy a copy here,

http://ncculturaltrails.org/happyvalley/contact/happyvalleycd.aspx

This was a work-for-hire piece so I am not making any money on the sale of the CD; however, it has quite a few interesting stories, including one about the legend of Tom Dooley. So definitely check it out.

2) Barry and I made our second interviewing trip to New Orleans, which he has blogged pretty extensively: http://stillsingingtheblues.blogspot.com/. Sadly, it was our last extended trip down to Louisiana, for a while anyway. Most of the interviews are done. For the next few months I will be logging tape and, with Barry, creating the script and producing two one-hour radio docs on South Louisiana blues.

3) You may have gotten to this blog (well, actually an archive) by seeing the link at AARP's Truckin' My Blues Away . Barry and I co-wrote and co-produced that piece and it is the first major feature-length work we have produced together. From the blurb:

"This music-rich hour-long special introduces listeners to the stories and sounds of four older Southern bluesmen—and to the efforts of Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, to help lift these musicians from poverty and obscurity.

The musicians cover a wide swath of the South: Boo Hanks from Virgilina, Va.; Captain Luke from Winston-Salem, N.C.; Eddie Tigner from Atlanta; and Little Freddie King from New Orleans. In their own words and performances, these men bring us the story of a music, an era and a culture that are uniquely American."

The program is co-produced and co-written by Richard Ziglar and Barry Yeoman, who traveled around the South collecting interviews and field recordings of the musicians. Yeoman, who co-produced our Gracie Award-winning program "Picking Up the Pieces," narrates."

If you have not heard Truckin', please take some time to listen to it and let me know what you think: http://www.aarp.org/content/aarp/en/home/aarp/broadcast/aarp_radio/radio_prime_time/articles/truckin_special.html

Please check out the new blog Barry Yeoman started about our Louisiana blues project:

http://stillsingingtheblues.blogspot.com/

We are currently in the middle of producing two one-hour documentaries on Southern blues artists. This blog documents some of our adventures on the way to researching the one based in Louisiana.

I apologize for not posting more frequently. This has become more of an archive than a blog. I hope that is OK.

The Civil War podcast for the NC Arts Council is finished but they have not posted it yet. I will post an update here when that happens.

Currently Barry Y and I are collaborating on two different one-hour documentaries on the blues. One is a commission from a national magazine; the other is funded, in part, by a generous grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. These will both be done by the first and second quarters of 2010. Again, when they air I will post an update! We will be spending a lot of time in New Orleans for our first round of interviews in October. When we get back I will create a blog for the Louisiana project so you can keep up with our progress and by early next year we should have a full-blown website for the New Orleans blues doc.

Thanks for checking in...

New Pieces on Oprah.com

Here are a few more collaborations with Barry Yeoman. At the links below you will find four slideshows we did together. They complement an article Barry wrote for O, The Oprah Magazine. He also did the reporting and photography for the slideshows. I produced/edited the audio and mixed the sound track. Barry created the slideshows with Soundslides.

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200906-omag-abused-dogs-saved

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200906-omag-abused-dogs-saved/2

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200906-omag-abused-dogs-saved/3

The music for the third piece is from the band Sequoya.

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200906-omag-abused-dogs-saved/4

Life as a freelancer

Here is something I have done recently in collaboration with Barry Yeoman:

Captain Luke

When you access the link above you will see a slide show. The slide show audio is not the broadcast piece, although I edited it also. To hear the broadcast, please scroll to the bottom where you will see a link that says "Download MP3."