A stellar lineup of Sonoma County's most notable kitchen denizens join The Kitchen Sisters for a night of radio, readings and some local hidden kitchen cooking. KRCB's Robin Pressman: Jimtown Store's Carrie Brown: DaVero's Colleen McGlynn; Tierra Vegetables' Lee James; and chefs Evelyn Cheatham, Mark Malicki and special Slow Food guests with tales of Terra Madres along with chef Max La Riviere-Hedrick and New Langton Art Director Sandra Percival.

Guests wll enjoy spicy tastes from the Salsitas, the Secrets of Salsa Project women and hidden kitchen cooking featureing chef Mateo Granandos, accompanied by local DaVero wines and Dempsey's microbrew.

Thursday, May 31, 7:00 pm

April 18th-The Sisters in Minnesota at St. Cloud University, Minnesota
This year, the focus of the event is purely on female documentary artists and is titled "FRONTLINES: Women Documentary Artists." More »Voicings: The Kitchen Sisters By Adam Hammer

On Air - WHER radio disc-jockette, Janie Joplin, honored on
NPR's All Things Considered
A special obit in honor of WHER pioneer, Janie Joplin, produced by Art Silverman. listen at npr.org

Janie Joplin passed away in Ellendale last week at the age of 85. Her name may not be familiar to Memphians today, but in the 1950s, Janie Joplin was a household word. She and a dozen or so other young women were the disk jockeys on WHER, the nation’s first all-female radio station.

WHER, recently featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” was the brainchild of Sun Studio owner Sam Phillips. The station first went on the air on October 29, 1955, and survived until the novelty wore off several years later. During that time, the entire staff — djs, sales staff, secretaries, even the record librarians — was female.

Joplin worked as an on-air broadcaster and copywriter, and later moved to WHBQ radio, where she worked as an advertising writer until her retirement in the mid-1980s. In her Commercial Appeal obituary, her family observed, “For many years it would have been hard to listen to radio in Memphis without hearing her distinctively pleasant voice.” During her career at WHER, her popular sign-off for the AM-1430 — advertised as “the station with 1,000 beautiful watts — was “Be good, and you’ll be happy.”
More about Janie and the women of WHER.
Watch a short video

On Air - KCRW's Good Food Show 89.9 Fm - Saturday, March 24
Davia reveals out-of-sight places, events and traditions that celebrate food. From stepping off the tarmac at the Bob Hope Burbank Airport a few weeks ago and discovering the car rental agencies' hidden kitchens, to the singing Trinidadian shuttle driver sharing his stories of his own favorite LA hidden kitchens... the discovery of these below-the- radar, unexpected hidden kitchens and stories of tradition and culture are revealed all in morning of travel while she visits her hometown of LA. These stories and more. Tune into KCRW's Good Food show, Sat. 11am - 12 noon.

Black History Month
Stories from Lost & Found Sound, Hidden Kitchens & The Kitchen Sisters Archives
In honor of Black History Month here are some stories from our archives we thought you might enjoy knowing about. You can listen to them online.

R.A. Coleman's "Electronic Memories" » The second of the Lost & Found Sound Memphis trilogy presents a glimpse of life through the recordings of African American photographer RA Coleman, making his living by documenting the black community in the 1950s South.

Liberace and The Trinidad Tripoli Steelband » The steel drum musical instrument was first created in Trinidad, hammered from biscuit boxes, brake drums and oil barrels. One of the biggest "steel pan" bands of the 1960s was the Esso Trinidad Tripoli Steelband, who gained worldwide fame when an unlikely patron heard their act and took them on tour. Lost and Found Sound presents a story of calypso music, steel drums and flamboyant pianist Liberace.

Pan American Blues » In searching out this sound, we were led to the remarkable story of Harmonica Wizard DeFord Bailey, the first black to perform and tour with WSM's Grand Ole Opry, whose signature song, Pan American Blues, inspired the naming of the show. DeFord's story, along with the story of WSM and its legendary Grand Ole Opry make up this program.

Persuading the Dead » The Persuasions started out singing soul, and since then, they've covered everything from gospel to Motown to Kurt Weil to Frank Zappa. The Grateful Dead combined bluegrass and folk influences with the radical spirit of their times. So when the a cappella group took up the songs of the musical icons of the 1960s counterculture, it was a twenty-first century recording session devoted to the songs of a quintessentially twentieth century group with musical roots stretching into the nineteenth century and earlier.

Georgia Gilmore and The Club from Nowhere: A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen » In the '50s, a group of Montgomery, Ala., women baked goods to help fund the Montgomery bus boycott. Known as The Club from Nowhere, the group was led by Georgia Gilmore, one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights era.

January 2007

Friday, January 26
The Tables of New Crowned Hope: Mozart's Hidden Kitchens
For the past year Austria has been Mozart-crazy, commemorating his 250th birthday with every kind of celebration, including “New Crowned Hope”, a month-long festival produced by theater director Peter Sellars, It isn’t every day an arts festival presents a new John Adams opera, an avant garde Maori dance troupe, Ethopian mud dome installations, Alice Waters and lunch ladies from across Europe.  On the eve of his 251st birthday, The Kitchen Sisters take us to Vienna, to Mozart's Hidden Kitchen and The Tables of New Crowned Hope.

The Kitchen Sisterhood - We call it The Kitchen Sisterhood, a new aspect of The Kitchen Sisters Productions in 2007. Details here »

Story # 19: Deep Fried Fuel: A Biodiesel Kitchen Vision

Most Emailed Story list on NPR for 4 days.

Public Radio Program Directors Conference / 2006
Public radio trying to improve reception - Michael Klein / Philadelphia Inquirer
If the hundreds of public-radio programmers who gathered in Philadelphia this week seemed a tad edgy, it is because they are facing a new challenge: a declining audience.
...To help them buck the trend, the 540 attendees at the Public Radio Program Directors' annual conference were treated to wonkish sessions such as "Living Your Demo," as well as roundtables on programming, such as "Making Your Own Driveway Moments," in which Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, the "Kitchen Sisters," talked about creating stories that compel listeners to sit in the driveway, riveted to the radio. read more >>

Thursday, Nov 23rd
Hidden Kitchens Story #20: FARM AID
On Thanksgiving Morning, The Kitchen Sisters take us to the 21st annual Farm Aid Benefit Concert in Camden, New Jersey for some turkey stuffin', potato mashin' music and some deep stories of an endangered tradition — the American family farm. Web exclusive photos, recipes and additional interview clips here >

Sterling Houston - Friend of The Kitchen Sisters, author and playwright, December 3, 1945-November 8, 2006. Sterling grew up in and around icehouses in San Antonio. We spent one evening with Houston visiting some of his favorites - he gave us a grand tour. We honor his passing today. To read an excerpt from his novel on our Hidden Kitchens Texas Icehouse link>
for more on Sterling including his most recent play, Living Graces, link >

HIDDEN KITCHENS PODCAST LAUNCHES! May 22, 2006
Along with NPR we have launched our first ever podcast. We're starting with the earlest stories and working our way forward. All you have to do is copy and paste this URL into a podcasting tool: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510063 and you'll start receiving the archived Hidden Kitchens stories each week or visit this link for more info>>

Readings and Road Trips — New York, Texas, New Jersey & California and more. Snapshots from our most recent road trips and book readings.

Terra Madre, Italy - Where 1600 food communities from 5 continents and 150 countries, 5000 farmers , breeders, fishermen and traditional food producers, 1000 cooks and 200 universities meet in Italy. Terra Madre was inspirational for us as we developed stories for
Hidden Kitchens. Here's an excerpt from our book link

New Releases — Hidden Kitchens featured in Best Food Writing 2006 / Fast Food Nation
at the movies.

The Kitchen Sisters in New Orleans for Nick Spitzer's American Routes

“Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins—In Search of My Father” written and performed by W. Allen Taylor — opens Jan. 5 to Jan. 28, 2006 at The Marsh. Back in 1999, our colleague Ellen Sebastian Chang, the play's director, produced "Walkin' Talkin' Bill Hawkins" as a radio story with The Kitchen Sisters for our NPR Lost & Found Sound series on All Things Considered. The piece is a moving, musical chronicle of William Allen Taylor's search for the father he never knew — Bill Hawkins, the first black disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio.We urge you to go see this remarkable and popping story. For details click here and visit www.themarsh.org>

Listen to “Walkin Talkin Bill Hawkins”, produced by The Kitchen Sisters
& Ellen Sebastion Chang for Lost & Found Sound, Dec. 17, 1999

DECEMBER