On the Road Again with… Willie! We visit with Willie Nelson on the tour bus and learn about his early gigs in Texas polka music, his teenage days as a radio host doing the early morning farm report, and the fact that even when in the driveway at home in Texas, he sleeps on the bus! Blues, country, soul, jazz,Western swing and Tejano music surround our conversation with one of America’s musical kings of the road.

For Memorial Day, the first road holiday of the year, we speak with Red Simpson, who despite his not-quite-ready-for-the-Teamsters credentials (the only truck he’d driven was for Good Humor) was recruited by Capitol Records to sing trucking songs in the mid-60s. He went onto record great road songs like “The Highway Patrol” and “I’m a Truck.”

Travel to roadside attractions along America's musical highways, visit the annual Wally Byam Airstream Convention in Boise Idaho, and chat with nouveau rockabillies Southern Culture on the Skids. Plus music from Charles Mingus, Flaco Jimenez, The Breeders, and The Dixie Hummingbirds.

Guitarist, fiddler, vocalist, swingster Gatemouth Brown hails from the rich musical territory along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. A genre-bending, oil-patch bluesman who loves country and Cajun music as much as jazz, he offers his tart opinions of life and art between puffs on that pungent pipe of his. Non-smokers have no fear, the show is not offered with “smellaround sound,” but is does come with a music mix well-suited to Gatemouth’s eclectic sartorial taste for Hawaiian shirts and cowboy hats.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, we interview octogenarian Lalo Guerrero—-composer of “Cancion Mexicana” and zoot-suit swing and collaborator with groups such as Los Lobos—and young hot Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Perez, who blends avant-garde with the traditional music of his home country.