Today, Wednesday January 30th, I will be a guest on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC in New York, along with Clarke Peters (Freamon), Jamie Hector (Marlo), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris). I’m guessing it will be a pretty lively discussion, and we will also play some music from the recently released soundtrack CDs. It’s live radio (we’ll try the hell not to curse), and the kick-off is at noon. If you can’t listen live, the show will be archived here.

In other radio news, I taped a nice spot for NPR’s World Cafe show last week in Philly, along with Darkroom Productions’ Juan Donovan. That one will air on Thursday, February 7th. In New York you can hear it on WFUV 90.7 at 10pm. In Baltimore, it’s on WTMD 89.7 at 2pm. World Cafe is syndicated on 200 NPR affiliates, and their shows are archived here.

I hope you can listen in.

**UPDATE** I guess the World Cafe spot has been re-scheduled, as there seemed to be a pledge drive happening on the XPN live feed when this was supposed to air. I’ll post here when I get the re-scheduled air date.

**UPDATE 2** Apparently it is airing today on the regular scheduled World Cafe broadcast on NPR affiliates, just not on XPN where I was listening.  Did anyone manage to catch this??

The journalists celebrating a good story in their local bar at the end of episode 51 of The Wire are listening to none other than Davis Rogan, the formidable pianist, composer, bandleader, DJ, raconteur, and provocateur from New Orleans.

I had the privilege of seeing his band play down there last year, and they tore up the venue, which happened to be a tent in a parking lot next to Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge. As the show progressed, the enthusiastic but admittedly small audience apologetically and politely departed to do some other important things, until I was the only one left, slowly sipping a Dixie and self-consciously bobbing my head in time to the music. Completely unperturbed, Davis and his band continued to complete their set, resulting in one of the live performance highlights of recent memory: my own private recital of I Quit, Davis’ rude masterpiece of anti-corporate R&B irreverence.

While you might initially be drawn to Davis’ music because of his hysterical stories and fierce attitude, you’ll end up sticking around for more because it turns out he’s a great pianist and songwriter with a real talent for dragging New Orleans musical heritage through the keyhole into the future.

The song we used in 51 was Do Me That Way, which like I Quit comes from Davis’ self-released album The Once and Future DJ. Other standout tracks are Hurricane and Godzilla v. MLK. The album was completed moments before Katrina hit, and the masters were actually lost because of the storm. Read that story here.

You can also read about Davis getting fired from WWOZ for playing hip-hop here. The artist has a Myspace here, where you can hear several more songs. You can buy The Once and Future DJ here.