Past Programs 2011

Join us at the Oshman Family JCC's Schultz Cultural Arts Hall at 3921 Fabian Way in Palo Alto, to make beautiful radio together. See this recent Article on West Coast Live from the Palo Alto Weekly!

Sedge welcomes:

Naturalist

AMY STEWART

award-winning author of Wicked Plants: the Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities, now with Wicked Bugs: the Louse that Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects, describing diabolical misdeeds and havoc wrought by your favorite insects.

Author

DAVID SHIELDS

Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death; Reality Hunger: A Manifesto; The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead and other thought-provoking books.

Biologist

THOR HANSON

author of Feathers: the Evolution of a Natural Miracle. Feathers are aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. From dinosaurs to Vegas showgirls, they date back to the dawn of time. And yet, until now their story has never been fully told.

Musicians

GO VAN GOGH

with "country music from many countries" (music so fresh it has yet to be caught!).

 

Bay Area's

RAGAZZI BOYS CHORUS

performs both traditional and contemporary works, sung in their original languages.

The Comical

JOSHUA RAOUL BRODY

will be filling in for Mike Greensill.

A Favorite from the West Coast Live Archives; first aired June 23, 2007

Sedge welcomes:

Author

DANIEL HANDLER

aka Lemony Snicket, author of the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate events.

Author

MIN JIN LEE

with her award-winning debut novel Free Food For Millionaires.

Author

CRYSTAL ZEVON

brings us her account of her husband's life, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

Musical Group

THE WAILIN' JENNYS

swing down from Canada to share a bit of their acoustic folk-roots vocal beauty.

The Magical

MIKE GREENSILL

The one-and-only, on piano, with occasional banter.

Join us at THE ODC THEATER, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell) in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Dancer

Jacques d'Amboise

brings us his fascinating memoir I Was A Dancer, recounting his days as a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet. He also sheds light on his decision to leave the Ballet to found the nonprofit National Dance Institute.

Novelist

Thaisa Frank

author of Heidegger's Glasses.

Novelist

Meg Wolitzer

New York Times-bestselling author of The Ten Year Nap brings us her latest novel, The Uncoupling.

Artistic Director

Emily Johnson

Artistic Director of Catalyst Dance, will discuss her performances of The Thank You Bar, at The ODC Theater April 7-10.

Singer-Songwriter

Danny Schmidt

A force of nature: a blue moon, a hundred-year flood, an avalanche of a singer-songwriter, with a new CD Man of Many Moons.

The Earnest

Mike Greensill

Resident piano player and accompanist for Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.

Join us at THE ODC THEATER, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell) in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together.

Sedge welcomes:

JOYCE CAROL OATES, acclaimed American poet and novelist, with her recently published memoir, A Widow's Story.

KATE ATKINSON, international best selling author brings us her latest, Started Early, Took My Dog

FRAZER BRADSHAW and BETH LISICK, on their contemplative drama Everything Strange and New

BRENDA WAY, Artistic Director and Founder of the ODC Theater, will discuss Women Who Frame the World: A Symposium on Creativity at ODC April 12-13

BLAME SALLY, San Francisco's beloved group of female singer-songwriters, returns to promote their forthcoming album Speeding Ticket and  Valentine.

THE EXPERT MIKE GREENSILL

Join us at THE ODC THEATER, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell) in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Novelist

Ciji Ware

Author of A Race to Splendor.

Writer

Peter Mountford

Seattle-based author of A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism.

Writer

Ann Packer

author of Swim Back to Me.

Singer-Songwriter

Rory Block

Brings us what Rolling Stone calls "Some of the most singular and affecting Country Blues anyone, man or woman, black or white, old or young, has cut in recent years".

Elizabeth Soberanes

Will discuss Rhythm & Motion's Carnival Workshop, preparing students of all levels to participate in the 33rd Annual Carnaval SF Parade on May 29th.

The Wandering

Mike Greensill

Resident piano player and accompanist for Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.

Join us at THE ODC THEATER, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell) in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Graphic Novelist

Daniel Clowes

Celebrated graphic novelist of Wilson, David Boring and Ghost World, academy-award nominated screenwriter, and frequent cover artist for the New Yorker.

Novelist

Donovan Hohn

Former senior editor of Harper's Magazine and now features editor of GQ. His is the  author of Moby Duck: the True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea ...

Journalist

Susan Freinkel

Author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Freinkel takes us through history, science and the global economy to assess the real impact of plastic in our lives.

Choreographer

Kate Weare

Award winning choreographer and Artistic Director of the Kate Weare Company, will discuss her newest work, Bright Land, coming to ODC Theater's main space April 28 thru May 1st.

Band

The Crooked Jades

Old-time bluegrass band from San Francisco known for their rare and obscure repertoire, beautiful original compositions, inspired arrangements and eclectic, often vintage instrumentation.

Singer-Songwriter

Susan Werner

With a new CD, Kicking the Beehive.

Join us at THE ODC THEATER, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell) in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Writer

Mary Gordon

Writer and McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College and author of The Love of my Youth.

Journalist

Adam Hochschild

Author of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.

Writer

Eric Greitens

Eric shares lessons of leadership, ethics and inspiration from his service as a humanitarian and a warrior. He is the author of The Heart And The Fist .

Theater Director

Rob Bailis

ODC Theater Director, will discuss his tenure at ODC, and the institution's role in the artist community at local, state and national levels.

Musician

Davell Crawford

The piano prince of New Orleans.

The Grand

Mike Greensill

Resident piano player and accompanist for Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.

Join us in the Port Commission Room on the second floor of 1 Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Author

Geoff Dyer

Author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Author

Louis B. Jones

Fiction director for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and author of the brand-new novel Radiance.

Film Maker

Richard Schickel

Life and Time magazine's film critic and movie historian for over 40 years with his latest book, Conversations with Scorsese.

Farmer

Lee James

will briefly step out of the farmers market to talk to us about Tierra Vegetables, her family farm in the heart of Sonoma County.

Acoustic Trio

The Devil Makes Three

bring us their punky perspective on vintage American blues.

The Enchanting

Mike Greensill

Resident piano player and accompanist for Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.

Join us in the Port Commission Room on the second floor of 1 Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:

Author

BHARATI MUKHERJEE

with a new novel, Miss New India.

Author

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

with his new Tales of the City musical at A.C.T.

Music Critic

GREIL MARCUS

author of The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.

Farmer

DAVID WINSBERG

of Happy Quail Farms.

Musician

WESLA WHITFIELD

inhabiting that indeterminate zone where jazz meets cabaret.

Singers

MEREDITH MONK AND KITKA

in the first collaboration between a local favorite and a MacArthur Genius.

We gather at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!

Sedge welcomes:

MICHAEL McCLURE, award-winning poet, playwright, songwriter and novelist, with his newly-published book, Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems.

ANTHONY HOROWITZ, screenwriter of acclaimed British World War II detective television series Foyle's War, and author of the bestselling Alex Rider children's series, with the final installment, Scorpia Rising.

LISA TAYLOR, author of Your Farm in the City: An Urban Dweller's Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals

BRIAN CHRISTIAN, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What it Means to Be Alive.

QUINN DEVEAUX AND THE BLUE BEAT REVUE with their New Orleans soul and early blues sound that is sure to get you up out of our seat.

The Rambunctious MIKE GREENSILL

Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!

Sedge welcomes:

WESLEY STACE (AKA singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding) with his new novel, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: In her singular voice—humble, elegiac, practical—Maxine Hong Kingston sets out to reflect on aging as she turns sixty-five, in her new book I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

Naturalist CLAIRE PEASLEE on Central Valley waterbirds

DAN HICKS and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge
 

THE EVENTFUL MIKE GREENSILL

and so much more!

Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!

All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.

Sedge welcomes:

ALAN PAUL, author of Big in China: My Unlikely Adventure Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Reinventing Myself in Beijing

ADAM HASLETT, author of Union Atlantic

  GABRIELLE HAMILTON  , founder of New York's acclaimed Prune Restaurant, with her new memoir Blood, Bones & Butter.

MARK MOFFETT, AKA "Dr. Bugs," author of Adventures Among Ants

KARL AND CARL'S Tips on Travel

EOS ENSEMBLE, an exciting chamber music group comprised mainly of members of the San Francisco Opera orchestra

EVIE LADIN, in a solo performance 

THE EFFERVESCENT MIKE GREENSILL

*No discounted tickets or gift certificates accepted for this show

Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!

All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.

Sedge welcomes:

T.C. BOYLE, celebrating the publication of his thirteenth novel, When the Killing's Done

CAROL EDGARIAN, cofounder and editor of Narrative Magazine and author of the novel Three Stages of Amazement

TOM SHADYAC, director of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, Patch Adams and many more, on tour with his latest project, something completely different. In his new documentary I AM, Shadyac asks some of today's most profound thinkers two questions -- What's wrong with our world, and What can we do about it?

LORETTA LYNCH, with music that's a little bit front porch, a little bit backwoods, the art motel on a long stretch of highway

STEVEN WILLIS, with a new CD Taproot

THE SPONTANEOUS MIKE GREENSILL

*no discounted prices or gift certificates accepted for this show

Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!

All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.

Sedge welcomes:

CATHLEEN SCHINE, whose new novel The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility

SARA WHEELER, author of The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle

KEITH THOMSON, author of Twice A Spy (sequel to Once A Spy)

LINDA TILLERY and BARBARA HIGBIE, in honor of In honor of National Women's History Month

TYLER NELSON and NANCY GUSTAFSON, of Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival Opera, performing next week at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, the first time the company has performed outside of their home theater in Virginia.

THE SMARTEST MIKE GREENSILL

*No discount tickets or gift certificates accepted for this show

Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!

Sedge welcomes:

CHRIS SMITHER with a new CD, Time Stands Still

SUSAN HALL, artist and author of River Flowing Home

JANE MCGONIGAL, game designer and author of Reality is Broken

SHARON SALZBERG, author of REAL HAPPINESS: The Power of Meditation

SUMMER BRENNER, author of My Life in Clothes

KEN OLSEN, Olsen Organic Farm

ZAHRA NOORBAKHSH, whose comedy show All Atheists Are Muslim is now at San Francisco's Stage Werx Theatre

THE GENEROUS MIKE GREENSILL

More wonderful guests, TBA

In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building

RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.

Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!

Sedge welcomes...

LISA NAPOLI, public radio show producer and host, and author of Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth.

MARK STEVENSON, futurist, stand-up, musician, and author of An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer "What's Next?"

MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS, author of The Oracle of Stamboul, in which a preternaturally intelligent little girl becomes an advisor to the Ottoman sultan.

TOMMY EMMANUEL, Australian guitar wizard with a new album, Little by Little

The SAN FRANCISCO BOYS CHORUS, led by Artistic Director Ian Robertson, will share their Grammy Award winning sound with us before their upcoming performance in Robert Moses' world premier of Fable & Faith at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

THE DIMPLEY MIKE GREENSILL

In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building

RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.

Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!

Sedge welcomes...

SNL's LARAINE NEWMAN, performing Feb. 4 and 5 at The Marsh in San Francisco

RODNEY CROWELL, Grammy-winning performer, and author of a new memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks

PEGGY ORENSTEIN, award-winning writer, editor and speaker talks about her newest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter

HELENE MARSHALL of Marshall's Honey Farm

THE MOORE BROTHERS, the innovative acoustic duo from Grass Valley  

THE SPECIFIC MIKE GREENSILL 

In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building

RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.

Join us a the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!

GREIL MARCUS revisits more than forty years of listening to Bob Dylan, weaving individual moods and moments into a brilliant history of changing times

MIKE DAISEY, on his double-header--The Last Cargo Cult and The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs--at the Berkeley Rep

BRUCE JENKINS, author of Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins, about his father, Gordon "Gor" Jenkins, top-notch composer, arranger, conductor and performer

THE BOBS, beloved (and award-winning) a cappella practitioners return to the WCL stage

"HE SAID/SHE SAID" - duets performed by Dan (from the Bobs) and Angie Doctor (from the group Clockwork)

The Magic MIKE GREENSILL

In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building

RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.

Our first LIVE Broadcast of 2011

JOAN GUSSOW, author of Growing, Older: a Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables, in which the author writes about everything from garden pests and national food policy, to zucchini and butterflies

LINDA SCHLOSSBERG, award-winning writer with her debut novel Life in Miniature, a wholly original coming-of-age story.

TOM RACHMAN, author of The Imperfectionists, his highly acclaimed debut novel about a struggling international newspaper in Rome

DAVID VANN, former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Wallace Stegner Fellow, John L'Hereux Fellow, with his new novel Caribou Island

WILL BROKAW of Brokaw Nursery, on California-grown subtropical fruits

Music by OR, THE WHALE, a band that will rock you, make you dance, and maybe even inspire you to contribute to their amazing vocal pyrotechnics—voices everywhere, indeed.

THE REAL MIKE GREENSILL

In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building

RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.

Whoa, you can be there again!  January 26, 2006. 

presented LIVE at the now defunct Empire Plush Room in still extant York Hotel.  ( Back LIVE 2011 at the Ferry Building January 22nd)

MONEY is the theme today, and 

DAVE BARRY, humorist and columnist, has something to say about the subject in his new book Money Secrets...

LIZ PERLE, author of Money: A Memoir, also Editor-in-Chief of Common Sense Media

MATTHEW and TERCES ENGELHART, authors, The Abounding River, owners of Cafe Gratitude

THE COTTARS, amazing young CELTIC musicians from Cape Breton

CHARLIE OWEN, San Francisco's best-kept-secret soul singer

and the ever-splendid MIKE GREENSILL, investing in the house piano.

Our Anniversary Show - Today - a live-ish special mixed with some highlights from those formative years.  We pulled together just a few hilarious and moving moments with a few of the 10,000 guests since Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live first broadcast January 8, 1994 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. West Coast Live succeeded his successful West Coast Weekend, which began in October 1984, following a year of Breakfast Jam he began in September 1983, both produced live. Yikes, 27 years of live radio!

The theme today turns out to be Voices -- voices still here, some gone, voices produced through other forms -- of instruments, history, emotions.  We start with the first :30 prior to the first broadcast from the Cowell Theater, before we went live to air, and the opening moments from January 8, 1994, with DIANE HIDY at the piano.  You are there!  

In the First Hour we begin with a conversation with the inimitable JULIA CHILD about food and eating and love, from 11/16/1996 when she was 84, doing her best Meryl Streep impersonation. We reveal her favorite hors d'oeuvre. 

From 10/221994, TERRY JONES of MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS expounds of falsettos, and how comedy is made in Life of Brian. What fun we can have in a live, spontaneous show with a lively audience!

Later, on 11/25/2006 at the Plush Room, LAURIE ANDERSON and the Tuvan Throat Singers CHIRGILCHAN came in and we persuaded the TUVANs to teach the renowned a capella group THE BOBS how to throat-sing.  First you imitate a Harley-Davidson....

MIKE GREENSILL plays the brief interval break, 

then the 2nd Act begins with THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT from 8/31/1996 as they were on their way to acclaim 

From November 11, 1995, as we celebrated the reopening of the Legion of Honor Museum, STUART CANIN demos with a Bach fugue the Guarneri Del Gesu violin Jashcha Heifitz played and donated to the museum.  And he recreates the beginning of the FRED ALLEN - JACK BENNY feud of 1936 with the :45 Bee.

STUDS TERKEL, the late, great Chicagoan waxes on the horrors of solo violin music, except for STUART CANIN, JASCHA HEIFETZ, and FRITZ KREISLER and how his mother always wanted him to play like MARVIN, his upstairs neighbor.  Then we here about the importance of stories that make political movements human and personal.

MIKE GREENSILL and WESLA WHITFIELD updated the 1952 LOUIS JORDAN jazz classic as Greensill for President for Nov. 1, 2008, a story of political adventures that are the same, but different, and still the source for great lyrics.

And we close with a high-energy song from the 6/8/1996 show with TAJ MAHAL joining with JIM CAMPILONGO and the 10 GALLON CATS for a festive fishing and libation number.  We had to retrieve TAJ from the end of the Cowell Theater pier, where he'd gone to hang out that beautiful morning with the Russian fisherman using cuttlefish and cut fish as bait and spark plugs for weights.

The closing credits from that day features DIANE HIDY rocking out with her classical verve 

RESERVATIONS for the Live Broadcast at the Ferry Building in San Francisco: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.  Also facebook.

Gentle Frolic and New Year highlights for this special that made it way through ice and snow and sunshine and time and space to be with you as we commence 2011.

Originally broadcast January 3, 1998 from The Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.

OMAR SOSA and JOHN SANTOS, featuring music from their latest recordings Nfume - For the Unseen and Omar Omar.

Monologist SPALDING GRAY. Seven years ago, Spalding went elsewhere.  What stories he told. Here he talks about The Slippery Slope. Poignant then, and especially now. He says stories are a form of reincarnation.

Slack guitar music from GEORGE KUO, MARTIN PAHINUI, DENNIS KAMAKHI, and DAVID KAMAKAHI.

KEVIN KELLY, editor of "Wired" (in 1998). Here talking about technology as we knew it in 1998 and in Out of Control.  His new book, 2011, is What Technology Wants. What a time-trip.

Travel tips from CARL AND KARL, timeless, chanelling on Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Jonathan Winters, and George Carlin.

Music from piano player MIKE GREENSILL who's partied all night to be with you today.