“I say it on the show every week that we’re on American Forces Radio network, on the air from South Korea to Kuwait. I get hundreds of emails from listeners around the world … but when one of those fellows show up at the theater, it’s time to stop and shake hands.”
— Michael Johnathon, WoodSongs Host
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 18, 2023) — Folksinger Michael Johnathon and the WoodSongs crew was honored to have a very special guest join the show this week. U.S. Army Master Sergeant (MSG) Joe Smith, an Iraq war veteran, would always listen to WoodSongs on American Forces Radio Network while deployed with his fellow soldiers. He came home and decided he wanted to find the one thing in the middle of all that war that gave him comfort. He said WoodSongs gave them a sense of home, a sense of family, especially when the war became difficult.
“Joe came up and said hello after the broadcast taping and told me his story,” said WoodSongs Host Michael Johnathon. “I introduced him immediately to Jerome, our engineer, and listened to him tell his story again. Then I thought it was better to introduce him to the entire crew, which we did. We stopped all work and assembled everybody together at the front of the stage, and Joe told his story again.”
This is a picture of Joe, and the WoodSongs crew on the stage that gave him and his friends overseas a sense of calm in the middle of much trial.
“It’s not an issue whether war is right or wrong, pro or con military, it’s not an issue about morality,” Johnathon said. “It’s just people that are hurting, people that look for a source of calm in the middle of horror.”
“I say it on the show every week that we’re on American Forces Radio network, on the air from South Korea to Kuwait,” Johnathon continued. “I get hundreds of emails from listeners around the world … but when one of those fellows show up at the theater, it’s time to stop and shake hands.”
About WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour:
WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour is an all volunteer, live audience celebration of grassroots, bluegrass, country and folk music and the artists who make it. Produced 44 Mondays per year from the historic Lyric Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky the show airs worldwide on 537 radio stations from Australia to Ireland and across the United States. It also airs on American Forces Radio Network twice each weekend in 177 nations, every military base and US Naval ship around the world. It is broadcast into millions of homes as a public television series on KET in Kentucky and PBS stations coast-to-coast, nationwide every Friday on RFD-TV, America’s Most Important Rural Network.
Photo Assets:
[WS Crew with U.S. Army MSG. Joe Smith | Photo: Larry Neuzel | Download PNG]