Episode 43
This is Bluegrass Region Voices and Views. I’m Tom Hailey.
I’ve decided to produce two types of shows. One is an interview format with creative and inspiring people. This is the other one…a new type…for 2024…where I shine a spotlight on engaging organizations, activities, and places around the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. This could be valuable to you if you want to discover more about our local culture that’s maybe been hiding from you in plain sight, or hearing. Or maybe you’ve recently moved here and are checking out the local scene. This will help. So, let’s get started.
It was probably 1998 when I was surfing channels on my car radio as I was driving from Lexington to Cincinnati, and I heard a voice unlike any I’d heard before around here. I had tuned in to the WRVG radio station out of Georgetown Kentucky and was hearing their morning host, Tom Martin.
The calm resonance and intelligent, entertaining comments about the music and other morning drive time topics hooked me.
Jump forward to today, 26 years later, and I still listen to that same voice hosting the weekly radio magazine show named Eastern Standard broadcast by WEKU radio at 88.9 FM out of Richmond, Kentucky.
Eastern Standard features interviews and stories focused on interesting people, places, and events around Central and Appalachia Kentucky. So, of course, I love it.
I’m tempted to make this podcast about Tom Martin, and his amazing background beginning in Morehead and then moving on to Washington DC and New York and back to Lexington for a host of professional broadcasting and media jobs… and now bringing Eastern Standard to life at WEKU along with other projects such as Under-Main and more. Maybe I can persuade Tom to be a guest here someday to talk about his career.
But for now, let’s focus on his program, Eastern Standard.
A good way for you to begin building an appreciation for Eastern Standard is to go to their website at esweku.org and click on the About page. Read that and then put your earphones on and click on the Home tab and then the Stream Latest Edition button. Sample bits of the current show or listen to all 53 minutes of it.
And there is much more there than that show.
Click on the Contributors tab and a long list of listening opportunities other than the radio program will show up. I suggest you begin with Humans of Central Appalachia and Kentucky Authors with Tom Eblen and Radio Plays. Just click the audio player and listen. I know you’ll enjoy it.
Next subscribe with your podcast app by searching for Eastern Standard Tom Martin. The show art, or logo, will be white with WEKU.org on it and the title, Eastern Standard. Or you can always listen live on Thursdays at 11 am and 8 pm or on Sunday at 6 pm. Another option is NPR ONE or the WEKU app. Information about all these options is on the Eastern Standard website.
There is such a variety of topics covered over the course of a year of weekly shows, I don’t want to presume to know what you might like to hear. But I am sure there will be a lot of topics covered that you will be so glad you listened to.
And that voice! I just recently discovered that while Tom Martin was in New York, one of his jobs, from 1990 to 1995 was, are you ready for this…he was a substitute for Paul Harvey on the ABC Radio Network News program!
Eastern Standard is produced in the studios of Dynamix Productions here in Lexington with Neil Kesterson as the Technical Director. Neil himself is a local treasure in the audio and video production world. If you have any interest in that world, you need to know more about Dynamix.
In my last episode I told you about the Kentucky Monthly magazine and what a great source of information it is for Kentuckians. Now, you can add an excellent listening experience to your week with Eastern Standard.
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