About the Freight Train Boogie website

FTB Mailing Address
About Advertising
About the Reviewers
Review Archieve

The Freight Train Boogie website is a quality place to get news and reviews of Americana and Roots CD releases. It is primarily the work and passion of Bill Frater. I started the site in 1997 because I wanted people to know about all of this excellent music that wasn't being played on the "regular" radio stations. I also had an idea to do a radio station on the Internet that was like the old freeform stations yet played Americana and roots music.

Here are some e-mail comments I've received....

(It's) "home-made aesthetic accentuates the folky flavor of Americana and alt-country music".  -Entertainment Weekly  (June 6, 2001)

"I have been all over the net the past couple of weeks visiting sites and have to give credit where credit is due.  Yours is the best Americana/ whatever you want to call the genre web site out there."  -R

"Your site is way cool, a relevant, authoritative source for Americana music.  Thanks for what you're doing."  -KB

"You're doing a wonderful service spreading the word about roots music."  -DT

"Just wanted to drop you a note to compliment the FTB radio show, and really, the page in general.  Over the past year or so, the show and page helped expand my knowledge of Americana/ alt-country, whatever you call it.  There's tons of stuff out there and it's good to know I can be tipped off to gems through y'all."  -JJ

"I really appreciate what you're doing with FTB.... it's just the best, thank you very much."  -AC

"Just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know how much I am enjoying your show on Live 365.  I stumbled upon your website by accident and then went to your station and have totally become enamored with your show!  I listen every day while I'm at work and I've gotten turned on to so many artists that I wouldn't have heard otherwise. It's like having a friend who brings over his record collection and turns you on to some great music!" -Pam

FTB Mailing Address

Freight Train Boogie
P.O. Box 4262
Santa Rosa, CA 95402

If you are submitting CD's for review and radio consideration, kindly send 2 copies. Thanks!

Advertising on the Freight Train Boogie

My advertising rates are very reasonable. I prefer roots music-related sponsors. A single banner ad on any 3 pages of your choosing starts at only $125 a month. Discounts for independent artists and for multiple month buys. Please e-mail me for details.

The FTB Reviewers

Kay Clements: Kay is the General Manager at KHNS in Haines, Alaska. She hosts a bi-weekly radio show called "With Strings Attached" on KHNS (Wednesdays, 8-10 PM, Pacific time)

Barry Dugan: Barry Dugan is a freelance writer and editor who has lived in Sonoma County since 1979. A native San Franciscan, he spent the past 24 years working as a community newspaper editor before starting Dugan Communications in 2007. He loves baseball, songs about diesel trucks and trains and the people who sing them, his children and his sweetheart, just to name a few.

Dan Ferguson: Boudin Dan has been the host of The Boudin Barndance broadcast at 90.3, WRIU-FM in Kingston, Rhode Island since 1987.  The programs airs Thursday evenings from 6 - 9 PM EST webcast link  Past shows archive. Writing has been a sidelight of sorts for Dan since the late 1980s.  Not content with just radio and writing and tiring of the lack of an outlet for"roots" acts to play live in Rhode Island, he took matters into his own hands in 2001 and started Roots Hoot House Concerts with his wife Liz.  He's been hosting shows on a monthly basis out of his home in Peace Dale, R.I. ever since.

Bill Frater: Bill is the creator, editor, reviewer and webmaster of the Freight Train Boogie. He hosts a weekly radio show on KRCB, in Sonoma County. The show is also called the "Freight Train Boogie" (Thursdays, 8-10 PM) and you can hear the show live on the Internet too.

Don Grant: I saw my first concert in 1963, when the Beatles hit Toronto, and I was 12, so there's how old I am. I've observed, and been a fan of, several genres of music over the years. Somehow, most of them got stale with time. Today I find the most satisfaction in what we call the Roots/Alt.Country /Americana style. It seems, of late, that this is where I find most of the creativity and originality in music today. It is transcendental music, (and not that goofy 60's definition of transcendental, either; see Steve Earle), that speaks about us, for us, and, with us. I do believe in people; I'm not a particular believer in 'handles' when it comes to music; for me, (as Gram Parsons said, paraphrased,), "there's only good sounds and bad sounds". Congreve wrote that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast", let it do so to ours.

Scott Homewood: Born a Yankee in Upstate New York, he has since seen the error of his ways and has moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. He has quickly shaken off his formerly evil Big City ways and has embraced Americana music in all its forms (except for the shit you currently hear on country radio). He is often published, constantly pissed at the current state of the music industry but happy every once in a while. This is what he calls his life. Send him stuff to review before he kills somebody. Oh yeah, it better be good. Content note: people who copy something but do it well will get better reviews than people who make their own garbage. So listen to Buck Owens and learn, punk.

Doug Lang: Doug Lang is a songwriter-singer from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, who's been doing live radio for a quarter century now in Canada. Better Days is his Vancouver-based roots music show that webcasts at www.coopradio.org  on Thursdays, 10 pm to midnight Pacific time. Doug's My Space page is myspace.com/betterdaysradio

Michael Meehan: After spending parts of his life in El Paso, Northern California and Alaska, Michael and family have settled on Long Island's North Fork, nestled between the Peconic River, family farms and world class wineries. A fan of Americana art, literature and music, Michael is a bass player, songwriter and chef of some local renown.

Brad Price: Brad Price is a family man, tech geek and Telecaster abuser living in Portland, Oregon. Having stumbled into country, blues and folk while all his friends were listening to prog rock, he put himself though MIT playing honky-tonks and truckstops around Boston as a hired-gun lead guitarist and band leader. These days he keeps a few music projects on the stove and explains digital audio to people for a living.

Keith Robb: 40 yrs old, Akron OH resident. I've played Guitar since I was 9 and took up the Non-Pedal steel about 5 years ago. I play out 2-3 times a week. Nuthin too wild. Just a little western swing/ honky tonk jam band at Brady's Leap Cafe (located in an equally neat place called the Kent Stage). Influences are: for guitar Hank Garland, Danny Gatton, Junior Barnard and Luther Perkins. Steel guitar: Alvino Rey, Jeremy Wakefield, Cindy Cashdollar and Jerry Byrd.

Jeep Rosenberg: Jeep Rosenberg is a poet, songwriter, and guitarist who has played roots music professionally since the Great Folk Scare of the 1960’s. A long-time New Yorker raised in South Carolina, he first encountered The Deep Twang in the playing of Roy Acuff’s dobroist Oswald Kirby, and has never shook it off. He was a featured performer on an Austin City Limits special dedicated to the military folklore of the Vietnam War, with Kris Kristofferson as guest host. He also went through an NEA-funded apprenticeship with legendary jazz/blues guitarist Teddy Bunn. Further colorful details and music at www.jeeprosenberg.com and www.reverbnation.com/jeeprosenberg