Find out why New Orleans is the vampire capital of North America. Lots of frightening music and special guests: authors Andrei Codrescu and Anne Rice, just in time for the Hallows.

Saddle up for a musical romp across mountains and valleys, deserts and and plains as we “cross the deserts fair, and breathe the mountain air.” We’ll visit with cowboy and Indian poets, meet the inhabitants of a movie set ghost town, and hear music from Sonny Rollins, Judy Collins, Aaron Copland and Patsy Montana.

Keyboardist John Medeski of Medeski, Martin and Wood talks about the sound this New York group makes from acid jazz to organ trio funk. Also, he produced the acclaimed CD “Buck Jump” for the most influential of the contemporary New Orleans street-jazz bands, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. They jump in for conversational and musical jams in the second hour.

Visit with Arkansas rockabilly hero Sleepy LaBeef, the human jukebox. Sleepy knows several thousand of songs by heart, but he still loves the Southern gospel numbers of his youth. And we’ll talk with gospel singer and scholar Horace Boyer about the roots of the music.