© 2024 | Jefferson Public Radio
Southern Oregon University
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
541.552.6301 | 800.782.6191
a service of Southern Oregon University
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Misner & Smith Live Session

Ways To Subscribe

With their brand new release, Seven Hour Storm, Misner & Smith have created an album of vivid, poetic songwriting, filled with some of the finest harmony singing around. The album features lush, yet subtle arrangements, filling out an already rich sound that the duo is known for producing live.

It was an entirely different art form that brought these two together in the first place. Having separately studied and worked for years as actors in theaters around the country, they met for the first time at a Shakespeare festival in California in 2002. Though the seeds for their future collaboration may have been planted then—in an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by the poetry and prose of Shakespeare and Chekhov—it took two more years for the musical bond to be forged, when the two were cast in another show together in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. This time it wasn’t the spoken verse of the Bard that was at the center, but the verses penned by legendary American folk singer and songwriter, Woody Guthrie. Through several weeks of rehearsals, and an extended run of the play Woody Guthrie’s American Song, Sam and Megan discovered a mutual love of roots music, and in particular, harmony singing.

With intricate, often 5-part vocal arrangements of Guthrie’s songs as the backbone of the show, the special blend that Misner & Smith have become known for became evident right away. Since then, the two have acted in the play over a hundred times around the country, including runs at venues such as Marin Theatre Company, The Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, among others.

As FM Network Program Director and Music Director, Eric oversees many aspects of JPR's broadcast day. He still hosts the occasional Open Air or classical music shift, and is the driving force behind JPR Live Sessions - our popular series of live in-studio music performances and conversations.