The New Year will bring a new host to WUWF's monthly concert series, RadioLive. After 35 years, Pat Crawford is turning the show over to Tanya Gallagher, a Pensacola-based singer-songwriter. Gallagher, who has been a featured performer on the show over the years, sat down with Crawford to talk about her music and her love of RadioLive.
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Pat Crawford: You're a native of Pensacola?
Tanya Gallagher: I am a fourth-generation Pensacolian. I actually just found this out a couple of weeks ago. My grandfather got off of a boat in like 1907 at Muskogee Wharf from Portugal. Didn't really speak a lot of English, got right into downtown, and then was the milkman for a while. And so I love Pensacola. I love the size of it. I love the downtown. I also loved how I've seen progression, even just in my 35 years being on this earth, of how Pensacola has changed and what downtown looked like for me in high school. It looks so much different now.
Crawford: When did music come into your life?
Gallagher: My parents always had music playing in the house, whether it was those classic country songs that my mom always used to be singing in the house or my record collection in the garage. From a really young age, music was really prominent. Words and poetry were always something that I really loved. At age 15, I think I started singing in church, and then at age 18, I picked up guitar. And I think it was only a couple of months after I picked up the guitar that I started playing in bars.
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Crawford: I can still remember pre-Gallery Night days. I remember walking down Palafox one night and you were tucked up in one of the storefronts, guitar case open, busking in downtown.
Gallagher: That's right. Yeah, those were pre-Gallery Nights, I guess. I tell people that now and they're like, 'Oh, yeah, lots of people play on the street.' And I was like, 'No, I think whenever I was playing on the street, there weren't very many people playing on the street at that point.' Yeah, my brother-in-law and I, had a band called Baylen, and then him and my sister, they moved to, and so Baylen broke up.
Crawford: Was there a point in your life where you may have become even aware of RadioLive?
Gallagher: Oh, absolutely. So I think that I had a friend of mine in school who I think back whenever you had local acts play, he had played on RadioLive before. Norman Jeter is his name. And Norman's kids, I went to school with them then. They were like, 'Oh, yeah, my dad plays RadioLive.' That was the kind of thing that I was like, 'Yes, I've heard this on the radio. Where is the Museum of Commerce like, you know what I mean? All these things kind of then fell into alignment where it became known to me is like, this is so cool, because Norman Jeter is an amazing guitarist. If he plays on this — then kind of opened that door for me.
Crawford: What was your impression at that point? I mean, just as somebody who just became sort of aware of the program.
Gallagher: I mean, it was definitely the kind of music that I liked even at that age, because my parents, we had kind of a mix of music in the house. I was always drawn to my dad's James Taylor records to Joni Mitchell and to Joan Baez. And these sorts of records of my dad's always kind of drew me in a little more than some of his others. So, I mean, in my mind, it fit that genre of music. And honestly, it's like a fabric in me. It's the fabric of my core. It's that kind of music. I mean, I think I was drawn to it and then just never left.
Crawford: Describe to me, because now that you've been on RadioLive a few times, describe that experience when you're on RadioLive.
Gallagher: Oh, man. One — I distinctively remember being invited to play RadioLive, or however that worked. I probably reached out to you because I was living in Vancouver, and one, it was just a trip back home, and two, I was just so excited because in my mind, RadioLive, I'd built it up so much because I'd listened to it ever since I was a kid. So, I mean to get to play on it is something of a huge honor. I had to move away to do it, but it's OK. The audience, you couldn't ask for a nicer audience. I mean, honestly, they're so wonderful, it almost makes me nervous. I'm so used to playing background music in bars where no one's paying attention, and here you are with the audience. It's all that an artist could ever ask for.
Crawford: It's been a while since we announced formally that this is going to happen. What kind of reaction are you getting from people?
Gallagher: They can't shut me up about it, for one. I feel like everyone that I meet, I'm like, oh, RadioLive. Do you know about it? Yeah. I'm going to take over as host in January, and, everyone has been really pumped. My hope is that it brings in some people who maybe have heard of the show but have never been to the show. Some people, I think, realize that the show is on the radio, but they don't realize that it's just right downtown and that you can so easily get a ticket to come sit in the seat and actually watch this live.
Crawford: This is your time to make this your own. And I don't know whether you even want to share any of that right now or you want to keep all this a secret so that people will just have to find out what you're going to do. But anything that you might want to just share the kind of direction that you might be saying 'I kind of want to do these things to sort of put my fingerprints on it.'
Gallagher: Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I think some of it we will work out things that work and things that don't. I feel like I have a nice set of guidelines and parameters because the one thing that I'm always really quick to say is that I'm not taking it over, I'm carrying it on. But I do think that there are going to be probably some tweaks to it. We are going to have a new opening theme song, which I'm very excited for. And then we're bringing back a house band in some capacity, which will be fun. But I do think you have a formula for the show that works really well. So I don't want to change too much, but I think that there will be just a few — my subtle touches of what we'll go for at first. So, yeah, we will have a constant band leader and then we'll have just kind of a rotating cast of folks. The show is always about the artist, and so the focus will forever be on those who we are bringing into town to highlight. And so I want to make sure not to ever distract from that.
Tanya Gallagher will start her tenure as the new host, RadioLive on Thursday, January 4. Tickets for the show are available at radiolive.org.