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Leningrad. Summer Garden In Winter. by Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 1929. Image source

This episode may have a different name in the Episode Name field, but really it is Winter Light III. I started this program in the summer of 2018, which means this is my third winter putting on Winter Light / Summer Heat. When I first debuted the show, the name felt long, oblique and maybe even clunky, but it meant a lot to me and I was resolute in my choice. I wanted the name to capture and reflect the two types of music I was going for: psych and folk. One is rough, loud and often fuzzy and hazy. I associate this type of music with the summer season and I find that I quite enjoy listening to that kind of sound in the middle of the year. But folk music isn't like that. It's softer, often acoustic and usually about entirely different subjects. I felt like the winter season went hand in hand with the introspective nature of folk music and the sparseness on which it often relies. The title is also a not-so-subtle, some would say blatant, reference to Ingmar Bergman's classic film Winter Light fit into the naming structure of The Velvet Underground's sophomore effort White Light/White Heat. Every year around this time, I go back to the very root of what puts the winter light in Winter Light / Summer Heat and assemble a new collection of songs which showcases the feelings I set out to evoke and ones with which I genuinely feel a deep almost-spiritual connection. You are always doing things that you put your soul into and maybe listening to songs like these will help you grow your soul back.

31 different acts in this show, here is some information about some of them:

Connie Converse:

Despite mostly moving on from music in 1961, Connie Converse is only now gaining a cult following as her music didn't see release until 2009. Elizabeth Converse was born into a strict religious New Hampshire family in 1924. After two years of college, Converse dropped out, moved to Greenwich Village, changed her name to Connie and started smoking, drinking and writing and performing songs. She was ahead of her time in terms of the material she was coming up with as an acoustic singer songwriters, and for a female in the songwriting field. Her friend, Gene Deitch, who recorded Converse in 1954, as well as Woody Guthrie and John Lee Hooker a decade earlier, tried to help her career including arranging for her to perform on CBS' The Morning Show, but to no avail. Deitch said this on her songwriting and historical importance: "There's something about those songs that was extremely personal. In those days, this was something you never heard. Nowadays, there are lots of women singers who you might call folk singers or personal song singers, who are doing pretty much the same thing as Connie did. But I think she was really the first." Converse left New York and largely gave up music in 1961, the same year Bob Dylan moved there. In 1974, Converse packed her belongings into her car and disappeared.

Countries represented: USA, England, Canada, Australia, Spain, France, Slovenia, Italy, India, Peru