Various Artists, American Routes with Nick Spitzer: Songs and Stories from the Road (American Public Media)

On the two-disc set, American Routes with Nick Spitzer: Songs and Stories from the Road, producer and interviewer Spitzer offers some of the more interesting interviews from his internationally distributed radio program. Spitzer is an incisive interviewer, asking questions that on the surface seem innocuous, but entire worlds are explained in the answers they provoke. Questions to participants involved in the 1960s North Carolina beach culture show a world that let music and surfers break down racial segregation. His segment about songwriters Leiber and Stoller show how two Jewish guys ended up writing in what many considered hip black vernacular. In these pieces as with the program as a whole, Spitzer is concerned with authentic and hybrid culture, what such terms mean and how they evolve. One way he gets such answers is by appearing to be either outside the culture he’s questioning, as is the case in his off the cuff conversation with a street barbeque cook in the segment taken from the Treme Sidewalk Steppers second line parade. Elsewhere, he’s deep enough into it to converse as an expert, as he does in talking about nuances of Cajun music with Feufollet. However, the best moments of this set occur when Spitzer is surprised during the recordings. When former DJ Johnny Rabbit shows up while Spitzer talks to Jaspar Giardina about his radio collection, Spitzer inadvertently lets down his guard and lets his geek enthusiasm shine through. Such enthusiasm adds a charm that creates the special radio moments that Spitzer is trying to achieve and is successful at most of the time.