Join us Oct 6 for a Celebration and Sunday Service for Wiley Quixote

Jim Webb had something of a cult following.

He was a poet and a community organizer, the founder of a literary journal and a newspaper, and the master of wordplay so beloved it spawned a full-blown alter ego.

Wiley Quixote, Jim’s persona behind his famed radio show, “Ridin’ Around Listening to the Radio,” first appeared on the airwaves in 1985 when he started the show on our station, WMMT 88.7 FM. In almost 33 years, he missed hardly a single show.

Today is Jim Webb’s birthday. We feel his loss just as keenly as we did last fall when he passed away at his home, Wiley’s Last Resort, just up the road from us on the top of Pine Mountain.

As we wrote at the time, “without his brilliant wordplay around us, we struggle to say how deeply Jim’s loss is felt in the hallways and offices of Appalshop.”

But we know that Jim (and especially Wiley Quixote) would want us to recall his spirit in celebration.

That’s exactly what we’re going to do.

On October 6, along with his family and his loved ones, we’ll host a Celebration and Sunday Service here at Appalshop for Jim.

Under the panels of the solar pavilion he was so instrumental in advocating, we'll bring together friends, poets, musicians, swarpers, activists and heavenly hell-raisers to celebrate Wiley Quixote.

We urge everyone who knew and loved Jim to come help us celebrate his life — in fact we're throwing open our doors to the entire public.

So come on out you purveyors of poultry, swashbucklers of swarp, demons of demonstration and gardeners of glee!

We’ll hoist a huzzah to the grand poobah of mountain mirth and ornamental lawn ticky tacky.

It’s time to celebrate a birthday when a day is not enough and celebrate a life that couldn’t contain the legend.

You’re encouraged to take part — it’s going to be mighty fine, mighty fine.

Come play music, dedicate words, and share memories of Appalachia's un-enshrined Poet Laureate on Sunday, Oct 6, Appalshop, 2-5 PM. Details here.

In Jim’s own words from his last video interview, and on Oct 6th, “Let the mountains ring forever.”