Profiles in KCSBage

“Sadness. Happiness. Bad women. Bad men.” Asked about his personal approach to set-building, KCSB DJ Leo Schumaker said he has returned to these themes, well-worn concepts that are the narrative pillars of the blues, time and time again since his program Bluesland began exploring and promoting the genre in 1996.

“I keep it to three or four songs a set, so people can remember which song was which,” Schumaker said, readying one of the many thematically rubber-banded bundles of CDs he brings to the studio every week. He then returned to the mic to back-announce the previous, climatically-themed double bill: the Muddy Waters Tribute Band with Clouds of My Heart followed by Lee Michaels with Stormy Monday.

When I joined Schumaker, whose show has become a KCSB institution, in the control room one Thursday night, any questions I had about Bluesland‘s fan base were immediately put to rest by the backlog of requests Schumaker had received via the internet (“Facebook, Myspace-I do it all”) even before opening the evening’s broadcast. I’d often barely be able to finish asking a question before the studio phone would ring yet again: Another listener had a question, joke, or desire to hear one particular number. This audience participation prompts improvisation: “Sometimes I have a set and think, no, I’ll play something else instead,” Schumaker said, “or I’ll build a whole set around a request.”