From January 2008 comes the thirty-fourth episode of Radio Free Charleston, “Lucha Mask Shirt (Show Without Words #1) which featured music from Charleston’s Blues legend Raymond Wallace, WV’s Latin Stars Duo Divertido, and Parkersburg’s master of the 12-string Josh Buskirk. This episode was online briefly as part of the RFC Archives MySpace page, but went down with that ship, and is now available again for the first time in well over five years.

In addition to the music, we also had fresh animation from RFC Big Shot Frank Panucci and a special visit from the then Commander in Chief. Best of all, this episode of RFC featureed NO VOCALS! The music is all instrumental, as is the animation, and even the President doesn’t have much to say.

Of course there were the host segments to contend with. I hosted the show with duct tape over my mouth. There are subtitles for my mumbling. We even recorded a special version of the theme song, and non-verbal jingles for this show. A lot of effort went into this as an afterthought.

We remembered to record them while we were shooting the host bits on the fifth floor of the Quarrier street parking building at the Charleston Town Center, and the new jingles and theme were recorded in the car while RFC Big Shot Melanie Larch and I were warming up between segments. It was very, very cold  when we shot these.

The “Show Without Words” became an irregular feature of Radio Free Charleston, with three more wordless episodes in the ensuing years. This one was the first. We sort of got the hang of it later. You can read the original production notes HERE.