Rag Radio:
Margaret Moser and Sonny Carl Davis discuss
the film, Roadie, and the Austin cultural scene
By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | March 7, 2012
Rock journalist Margaret Moser and film actor Sonny Carl Davis were Thorne Dreyer’s guests on Rag Radio, Friday, March 2, 2012, on Austin community radio station KOOP-FM.
They discussed the making of the classic 1980 Alan Rudolph movie Roadie, which was partly filmed in Austin and which starred Meat Loaf, who is a 2012 inductee into the Texas Music Hall of Fame. They also talked about the upcoming Austin Music Awards, which Moser directs; the 2012 South by Southwest music, film, and interactive festival; and the thriving Austin music and film scenes.
You can listen to the show here.
on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer, March 2, 2012
An “unabashed former groupie,” award-winning rock journalist Margaret Moser is a senior editor and staff writer for the Austin Chronicle, and is also the author of three books including The Edge Guide to Austin and Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things.
Moser has been a commentator for NPR and has written for Sony Records and MOJO magazine. She has served on the Austin Music Commission, is currently on the Board of the Texas Music Hall of Fame, founded the South Texas Popular Culture Center in San Antonio, and directs the Chronicle’s annual Austin Music Awards show during South by Southwest.
Sonny Carl Davis is a film actor, a musician, and a screenwriter. He played a redneck entrepreneur in Texas filmmaker Eagle Pennell’s The Whole Shootin’ Match and played memorable roles in Last Night at the Alamo and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He also had featured parts in Thelma and Louise, Melvin and Howard, and Roadie, and a supporting role in Red Headed Stranger with Willie Nelson. Sonny was also a founding member in 1968 of Austin’s legendary Uranium Savages, a theatrical rock group that played Austin’s venerable 60s-70s rock venues.
Both Sonny Davis and Margaret Moser were involved in the production of Roadie, which was written by Austinites Big Boy Medlin and Michael Ventura, with Davis playing a featured role in the film. Roadie, which was filmed in Austin, Los Angeles, and New York, starred Meat Loaf and featured Art Carney, as well as musicians like Blondie, Alice Cooper, Hank Williams, Jr., Roy Orbison, Alvin Crow, Asleep at the Wheel, and the late Soul Train host, Don Cornelius.
Davis and Moser hosted a special screening of the film on March 5 at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. Meat Loaf is being inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on March 8 at ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin.
South by Southwest, with keynote speaker Bruce Springsteen, takes place in Austin, March 9-March 18; and the Austin Music Awards, featuring performances by Tex-Mex great Joe King Carrasco and the Crowns, blues musicians Carolyn Wonderland and Ruthie Foster, and a special Christopher Cross reunion, is on March 14 at the Austin Music Hall.
This episode of Rag Radio was produced during KOOP’s spring membership drive; fundraising pitches, underwriting announcements, and recorded music have not been edited out of the podcast.
Rag Radio, which has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history.
Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP and streamed live on the web. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive.
Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is produced in the KOOP studios, in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.
Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Coming up on Rag Radio:
March 16, 2012: Journalist and labor activist David Bacon on how U.S. policies fueled Mexico’s great migration.
