kevinbouldin

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill. A young puppeteer from East Nashville, who has remained faithful to what many would consider a lost cause, lives out the adage in WPLN’s latest installment of “Upon First Meeting.”

Four notes and what can sound like gibberish make up one of America’s oldest music traditions. In WPLN’s occasional series Upon First Meeting, Kevin Bouldin interprets the curious sound of fasola.

Macon County, Tennessee is marble country. It’s home to some of the greatest marble players on the continent. WPLN’s Kevin Bouldin has the story of two world class players from the town of Moss—two brothers who carve and shoot their own homemade marbles.

In 1917, H. L. Mencken, the writer, infamously declared that the South was about as artistically, intellectually, and culturally sterile as the Sahara Desert. Two years later, in 1919, Hazel King was born. And for the past ninety-one years, she has been a living rebuttal to Mencken’s claim. WPLN’s Kevin Bouldin introduces us to King as part of our occasional storytelling series Upon First Meeting.

Hyperbole often follows tragedy, but no exaggeration is needed to describe the impact of our recent flood. WPLN’s Kevin Bouldin brings us a story about one family who lost out completely, when their trailer home took on water and began floating away.

James Skamra lives in a camp on the banks of the Cumberland about a mile north of the Jefferson Street Bridge. When the rains began falling last Saturday, the river rose, flooding his site and washing away everything he owned. Skamra swam to safety but then returned to help rescue a litter of newborn puppies belonging to one of his camp neighbors. On Monday night he told the story of how he ended up being rescued from his rescue attempt.

This morning we continue our occasional series “Upon First Meeting,” storytelling focused on the people and places of Middle Tennessee. Today, WPLN’s Kevin Bouldin invites us into the Gospel Hour at Robert’s Western World. It’s a Sunday morning church service in the unlikely venue of a downtown Nashville honky-tonk.

This morning we begin a new series of storytelling focused on the people and places of Middle Tennessee. Upon First Meeting: A Series of Introductions begins with today’s subject: a man who was crushed by a nine hundred pound falling branch. WPLN’s Kevin Bouldin introduces us to Ethan Swiggart, a tree surgeon who possesses the skills of an ax man and the eyes of an artist.