Rusty Faust
The Lazy River Lounge

-Smooth Blues Showcase-

The Lazy River Lounge is three hours of the best blues and soul presented every week on a market-exclusive basis.  We are the first that I know of to promote a ‘Smooth Blues Showcase’ and the only independently produced commercial Blues Radio program in our region.

We started the year with our 100^th show, have traveled all over the Pacific Northwest to bring our audience great interviews with prominent artists and even across the country to give listeners an exclusive backstage look at the largest gathering of blues bands in the world as we put them right on Beale Street in the heart of Memphis for the International Blues Challenge! 

There are many facets to The Blues … we have elected to highlight the best of the genre without the hard-driving edge that might turn off some of our listeners, hence the term “Smooth” and our broader audience base.  We focus on the quality of the music and information that we present, exposing our listeners to tracks that they would otherwise never hear on the Radio and to artists that they might like to know more about.  Every week we bring our listeners quite a few fun and informative features:
       We highlight a new CD, including samples from every track on the album and at least two full songs.  We talk about the musicianship and style, lyrics and production values as well as presentation and overall ‘soul’ that goes into the recording.  Occasionally, if a CD completely meshes with the format, we will feature the album in its entirety and let listeners do their own ‘Smooth Blues Review.’
       We profile an influential artist – from BB King to Eric Clapton to Stevie Ray Vaughan – their life, their loves and especially their music.  Weaving enlightening narrative with the songs that define their career, it is an intimate look at your favorite artists and how they shaped the musical landscape.
      ‘Blues Alive!’ presents the music captured the way it was intended to be heard … live and in concert.  The feeling and feedback from an audience is what makes these performances outstanding, so we set aside a whole segment to feature some of the most exceptional concert recordings available.
      Just for fun, we offer an interactive element called ‘The Blues Connections,’ where there is a common thread that runs through the set.  Listeners are encouraged to follow along and try to figure out the relationship between the songs or artists before we tie it all together at the end of the segment.
      We regularly present interviews with local and national artists, venues and promoters who characterize the format in an informal, friendly and revealing forum.  Talking to the people who shape The Blues on an ongoing basis, we keep you in touch with what’s happening in the genre today as well as upcoming events and releases that directly affect our listeners and the industry.
      We travel to and promote the events that interest our audience.  Through music, interviews and narrative, we put you in the middle of the action.  From festivals to concerts to special events like the IBC competition in Memphis, we take you there like nobody else can.
      Plus, we dedicate the first two segments – over 40 minutes – of every show to requests from our listeners … an interactive way to integrate our audience and their feedback into the program on a weekly basis.  To make it even more fun, we have given away thousands of dollars in prizes to listeners just for sending in those requests.

… and we do it all with friendly style, personality and a healthy dose of Theatre of the Mind as we broadcast from a fictional roadside bar “just outside the city limits.” 

That’s “The Lazy River Lounge!”

Our website – www.lazyr.net – has also been updated and expanded to include detailed playlists, Northwest events calendar and an online form for submitting requests and entering our contests.  Traffic has soared to thousands of hits each month with visitors from as far away as Australia, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan and Russia!  The site is constantly updated with fresh content and links to benefit blues fans everywhere.

Host and Executive producer Rusty Faust has been on the Radio since the age of seventeen, starting this program in January of 2001 to coincide with ‘The Year of The Blues.’  He is more than just a DJ, he is a fan of the music and a friend to the people who make it.  Rusty is also the vice president of his local Blues Society and is helping to organize a new regional Blues Festival.