RootsWorld / Hollow Ear originally started in 1992 as a small archive for my music writing and a breeding ground for some small labels and indie artists to get on the 'net back at the dawn of e-time. RootsWorld has since become a full blown, internet-only magazine. I depend on subscribers to pay our way and I thank you if you are one of them!

Me? I'm a music and communications junkie. I'm an adequate guitar and mandolin player (with two defunct bands to my credit: The Phabulous Pheromones and Voluntary Relatives), songwriter and music journalist. I have done volunteer community radio since the 1980s, at WYBC in New Haven,CT; WNHU in West Haven (where I was summarily dismissed for being "too far out of control") and now I reside on the airwaves at WPKN in Bridgeport, where I am the tame one by comparison to many. [You can look at a list of the songs I played on a program, if you want to.] I have written for a number of magazines, including Radio Planet 3, a column for Dirty Linen. I started the "New World" column at CMJ New Music Reports back in 1989 and wrote it weekly until January of 1999 (fired again!)

RootsWorld and Hollow Ear (now rolled into RootsWorld) were an outgrowth of all of these things, a content heavy musical site in the morass of links-to-more-links that has become commercial cyberspace. It's commercial in that I don't want to spend my whole life paying for all of my fun and work, but it is also a labor of love of music, and I hope a little of that comes through. The artists we review make unusual music, offer something unique to the cyber world of technocrat-financed "alternative" and empty sites that lead you to more empty sites. The writers who contribute their work are exceptional folks; musicians, musicologists and enthusiats who are eager to share what they hear with the world.

In 1996 I created Rootster, an edited, online search tool for global culture. Now shut down.

In 2001, I started cdRoots, an online web shop, in an effort to 1) pay for RootsWorld and 2) make some of the hard to find music we cover available to an online audience. I'll be shutting down cdRoots in 2019, most likely. It's time has passed.

So there it is, the whole RW empire in a cyber-nutshell. If you want more info or need to contact me, please read the faq.

Thanks for checking in!

cliff

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