UPDATE: You can now download the podcast here.

This Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. you can hear the rebroadcast of my Great Northern Radio Show, which aired live last Saturday night from Armory Square in downtown Park Rapids, Minnesota. The show will air on Northern Community Radio, including 91.7 KAXE (Grand Rapids and the Iron Range), 90.5 KBXE (Bagley and Bemidji), 89.9 FM (Brainerd) and 103.9 FM (Ely). The podcast will be posted at KAXE.org next week, and the show will become available to other public radio stations.

The Great Northern Radio Show is a traveling variety program that tells the stories, plays the music and honors the people of the places it visits. Telling about “modern life off the beaten path,” the show also features rising musical talent and features the monologues of host Aaron Brown, who is also the person writing this blog post right now.

Entitled “Panthers and Potatoes,” this was the first Great Northern Radio Show we ever did from an active construction zone. The old Park Rapids Armory is in the midst of a transition into Armory Square, a multi-use arts, convention and meeting space. This was their first major traveling production to use the theater. We were proud to help this wonderful community show off its tremendous progress and potential.

Remember to tune in for the Park Rapids edition of the Great Northern Radio Show this Sunday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Northern Community Radio. Find the podcast at KAXE.org next week.

Our next show will be an interesting turn. We have typically done the winter shows in the classic vein of the “Christmas Special,” but this year we will instead broadcast Lucky Show #13 from the Northern Lights Casino ballroom in Walker, Minnesota. The theme is “Winter in Walker,” and we’ll be telling the story of how people survive the winters here, starting with the first peoples to walk these woods.

We’ll feature many guests from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, a top-notch Minnesota musical act still being wooed (you know who you are, awesome band), the Great Northern Radio Players, and all the fun one can rustle up at a casino. But the big news is that we’ve booked Jim Northrup, a well-traveled Northern Minnesota writer, poet and storyteller, to share his work throughout the show. Jim is one of Minnesota’s best writers and among the best-known Native American writer in the country, both powerful and hilarious.

Here are some images from the Park Rapids program: