I’ve had the distinct pleasure to host and produce Tasting Room Radio for 17 years.

Most weeks we consider featuring some of those stories on the podcast but music, arts and music history seem to carry the day.

These two interviews deserve to be featured because they tell the story of the current state of the BC wine industry.

The Okanagan has been burned by summer fires and choked by summer smoke, blocked by road closures at the peak of the summer season, deep frozen by two successive winters and disappointingly shunned by liquor governing bodies in Alberta.

All the while the BC wine industry is making better and better wines. So it all feels like three steps forward and two back

Kimberly Hundertmark, the GM of Okanagan Wine Festivals brings great news. Right now, they are kicking off the Spring Wine Festival all over the Okanagan Valley. It’s an amazing collection of events. Huge gatherings like 2024 BC Top 50 and the Wine of the Year. The TASTE series, carefully curated in locations North and South, the Naramata Bench this Sunday, June 2 and the District Wine Village in Oliver Sat-Sun June 8/9 and Saturday, June 8th at the Summer Sips at Spirit Ridge Osoyoos. Kimberly brings all the news and tips for making plans.

The complete list of events can be found at www.thewinefestivals.com

John Skinner is the co-owner/co-founder of Painted Rock Estate Winery, on the Skaha Bench in Okanagan Falls.

If you go to their website www.paintedrock.ca have a look at the wines and also the awards those wines have won over the years.

Pages and pages of awards and outstanding reviews.

John’s comments about his wines and two new releases – Rose and Chardonnay can be found on Tasting Room Radio. www.tastingroomradio.com

These comments by John are about the state of the BC wine industry – the good and not-so-good.

Above all, it’s John’s belief in BC Wine. He shows leadership and well-thought-out decision-making.

If you’re interested in supporting the BC wine industry – and I truly hope you are – then John brings clarity and commitment to all of us.

John Skinner reminds us that most of these wineries are owned by small farming families.

“support the little wineries first. Find your favourites and support them when you can”

Wonderful article from Charles P. Pierce Esquire Magazine May 25

Let's get the whole gang together: Davey Moore, Hattie Carroll, Hollis Brown, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, the motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen, Ma Rainey, and Beethoven, John the Baptist, the Commander In Chief, Louis The King, Napoleon in rags, Lucille, Johanna, Sweet Marie, John Wesley Harding, St. Augustine, the joker, the thief, Big Jim, Lily, Rosemary, and most of all, the Jack of Hearts, Rubin Carter, Isis, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Blackjack Davey, Charlie Patton. All of them. Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack, because if you want to remember, you better write down the names.

Bob Dylan turned 83 on Friday. All of him did. All of them did. All the personae, the entire kaleidoscope of masks, the false fronts and head fakes, and, finally, the last, and in many ways, best of them all. The travelling storyteller, the seanchai as the people in the old country would call him. Out on the endless tour, up the endless highway. I think of him and I think of Turlough O'Carolan, the legendary blind Irish harper who would travel the countryside, composing his songs on the spot for whomever would give him food and drink. Go back further. Go back to Homer. Sing to him, O muse. When Dylan dropped "Murder Most Foul," virtually out of a clear blue sky, blessing us with it as consolation for the years when America had gone so terribly wrong, it was Homer of whom I thought, poet and historian both, protector of the shadowland between myth and reality, chronicler of what Greil Marcus called "the old, weird America," a phrase I wish I'd written.

He'll be around all summer, travelling with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp and a whole clutch of other artists in something called the Outlaw Music Festival Tour. It's a high-priced extravaganza but, in a very real way, he's just on the road, heading for another joint. Move along, brother Bob. The highway, as you taught us, is for gamblers, and we take what we have gathered from coincidence.

Here’s a collection of comments and reflections from Dylan's artistic partners and others just sharing the same spaces with Bob. Interviews I’ve done over the years to be added to when Dylan turns 85.

Interviews with

David Bowie

Robbie Robertson

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks

The Avett Brothers

Barney Bentall and Steve Dawson

Greg Keelor (Blue Rodeo)

And Colin Linden (Blackie and the Rodeo Kings)

Wine and Dine – Tofino June i/2.

The second story takes place next weekend June 1 and 2 in one of Earth’s most beautiful places - Tofino, British Columbia. The western edge of Canada on Vancouver island. The community includes surfing, golfing, fishing, underwater adventures and an unusual gathering of chefs. It is where they come to learn how to create seafood dishes and cook with what the forest and oceans give them – and surf their minds out.

It's the second annual Wine and Dine gathering on the front lawns of Best Western Plus Tin Wis Resort.

All of the details can be found at www.tofinowinedine.com

Our guests are the organizers and founders of Tofino Wine & dine

Ronnie Lee and Ryan Orr.

We know Ottawa-born Sue Foley from the blues albums she’s created and released. Plus Multiple blues awards on both sides of the border.
Her new album is One Guitar Woman. A tribute to the female pioneers of guitar.

This was/is a very personal journey for Sue. She’s studied the many women who played guitar before her and left their legacy to study and pass on.
Female singers and players like Memphis Minnie, Elizabeth Cotten, Maybelle Carter, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Geeshe Wiley, Lydia Mendoza etc.
Many tales and tunes are connected to the album.

Four-time Blues Foundation Traditional Female Artist award winner, Sue Foley’s new album One Guitar Woman is a heartfelt tribute to the female pioneers of the guitar - including Memphis Minnie, Lydia Mendoza, Maybelle Carter, Ida Presti, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The album showcases the dexterity of Foley’s acoustic nylon string guitar skills as she expands on her blues playing into other genres like Piedmont fingerpicking, traditional country, the Carter Scratch, flamenco and classical.

“From the time I decided to be a professional guitar player, I’ve always looked for female role models. These are the women who were expressing themselves through the instrument as far back as the 1920’s, at the inception of radio and recorded music. They are the trailblazers and visionaries whose footsteps I walk in,”

Sue Foley.