This is Country Jesus & the Extraterrestrial Highway
Underground rock on Radio Boise, every Monday night from 10pm to midnight
This show's name is an amalgamation of two underground music shows that aired on KKFI Kansas City in the 1990s that embody a spirit that I wanna give back to the cosmos. Those shows, for your painstaking researching pleasure, were Country Jesus & Hillbilly Blues and The UFO Show. [Yes, there are traces left on the internet of a show from 20+ years ago!]
Country Jesus is derived from the ZZ Top song Heard It On The X. The song is about Mexican border blaster radio stations of the 1960s, specifically XERF in Acuña, across the river from Del Rio, TX. At the time, radio stations in the US were restricted to 50,000 watts. Mexico had no such regulations, so stations on the border set up high frequency transmitters to overpower US stations. XERF had a 250,000 watt transmitter, which supposedly could be picked up in Canada and, at night, far into Europe. Southern Texas stations had a hard time competing for a signal and the ZZ Top lads picked up XERF loud and clear in Houston.
Those border stations, all beginning with call letter X, were beacons for various oddities, psychics, snake oil salesmen, charlatans and such, like Dr. John Brinkley. There was much religious content on these stations. According to Dusty Hill, one show sold a prayer flag claimed to be autographed by Jesus. All kinds of music was featured; country, blues, hillbilly music and other non-pop formats, aired on these stations, and from that came the lyric, “Do you remember back in 1966? Country, Jesus, hillbilly, blues; that’s where I learned my licks.” Billy Gibbons tells the story here.
This show brings that powerful and adventurous spirit to the airwaves in Boise and beyond, encapsulating various sounds of the underground, oddity, diversity, etc, minus selling or proselytizing.
Enjoy and respect the rock!
Country Jesus has been on air since Halloween 2017. From 2011-2017, I hosted a radio show called rabble rouser.
Thanks to Neocities for bringing back the better days of the internet.
I'm pretty lazy about doing website work.
One day, I may make this site look like something people want to visit.
But mostly it's about having links to underground rock radio.
And that don't need to be pretty.
Not much music, but a cool site for 20th century americana: cardboardamerica.org
For 90's internet fun: