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Dan Maher Celebrates 35 Years of Inland Folk

Back in 1982, a young broadcasting student and musician answered KPBX’s call for volunteer folk music hosts. Dan Maher is still host of Inland Folk 35 years later, but he says the anniversary is just another number. “Thirty-five years is great, but I intend to keep going,” Maher told Tara Roberts of Inland 360.

KPBX celebrates Maher’s milestone with a special segment during the annual Fall Folk Festival live broadcast. Music Director Verne Windham and former Nacho Celtic Hour host Carlos Alden co-host, and Dan will perform some of his favorite songs. “Dan is that rare music producer who can bring a genre of music into a larger context and humanize it,” Verne says. “He understands the essence of all music, including what we call ‘folk.’ He proves its importance, relevance, and its meaning in his lovely conversational way. He’s absolutely central to our folk offerings.”

At KPBX’s beginning as a public radio station, folk music came on Sundays at 6 p.m. after NPR’s All Things Considered. By fall ‘83 Maher was the sole host of Inland Folk, recording each episode at Washington State University in Pullman and sending reel-to-reel tapes on a bus up U.S. Route 195. When he went from student to staff at WSU, their radio station began airing the show too.

Inland Folk grew from one hour to two, then expanded to three hours in the early 2000s. By then he was his own producer, engineer and editor, and Inland Folk was a staple for listeners across the Northwest.

Maher will also be live in the KPBX studio during the Pledge Drive Folk Special on Oct. 22 from 1-4 p.m. The first hour of Inland Folk airs Sundays at 3 p.m, with two more hours later that evening from 8-10 p.m.

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