Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region.

This week, songs not so serious, both modern and traditional, performed by various artists recorded live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park. Folk music is often thought of as being either dark and serious or naive and childish. Not so with this collection of artists and songs. In this episode, explore with us a lighter side of folk. Featured on this episode are a variety of artists including Antsy McClain, the Buffalo Gals, Bill & the Belles, Muriel Anderson, David Holt & Josh Goforth, Mike Snider, Jimmy Driftwood, the Hogslop Stringband, and Jerron Paxton. We’ll hear their most humorous songs, both traditional and modern, many of them written by the artists themselves.

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1979 archival recording of Ozark original Kenneth Rorie performing the traditional song “In the Pines,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

In this week’s guest host segment, renowned traditional folk musician, writer, and step dancer Aubrey Atwater discusses traditional songs that are unmetered & crooked and do not fit into our common ideas about rhythm. Hear Aubrey as she dares us to try and dance to these crooked tunes.