Bell Buckle Radio

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Mike Kear Host of "Music From Foggy Hollow" Contact Mike

Mike Kear is a New Zealander, living in in Windsor, a satellite town to the northwest of Sydney, Australia since 1981. He was married since 1975 to Frances ('The Chairman of Finance') until her passing in 2014 and they have two sons, Hamish and Alistair, and three grandchildren (Lucy, April and Layton).

Mike first heard bluegrass in 1968 when the great New Zealand band Hamilton County Bluegrass Band had their weekly prime time TV show 'A Country Touch' in that country. He was immediately hooked on the excitement in the music and never stopped loving it. After Mike and his family moved to Australia, he joined the bluegrass society there, and soon found his way into a band, singing lead and playing rhythm guitar. One of Mike's greatest thrills was to be singing alongside his elder son Hamish, who came into the band from time to time to add harmonies, and to be the 'sex symbol' of the band. (Obviously! None of the rest of us old fogeys would qualify as any kind of sex symbol!)

Mike started doing bluegrass radio as a guest DJ on Sydney's 2SER-FM over in 199, in a one hour show that had been running for 16 years in the careful hands of Rod &Judy Jones. He soon found himself as one of the permanent presenters of that show for its last year. When the show ended after 2SER-FM changed format, he went straight into his own show, Music from Foggy Hollow, on Sydney's Hawkesbury Radio, which continues today.

The focus of Mike's show is new releases. 80% to 90% of the show's content is released in the last 2 months or even not released at all yet - with a touch of Australian bluegrass, humour and bluegrass news. It's a tribute to the wonders of the internet that Mike can gather the material for a show based on new releases worldwide and be up to date or ahead of most other bluegrass programs around the world most of the time. Music from Foggy Hollow is now heard on 12 radio stations every week, some of them playing the show twice a week, most of them in the eastern USA, the heart of bluegrass.

Mike is proud to have been honoured with a life membership of Hawkesbury Radio, in northwest Sydney, and in 2020 was awarded IBMA's Broadcaster of the Year - still the only non-American to be honoured with that award.

Mike welcomes emails about the show at foggyhollow@bluegrassAF.com - or through the Contact US page on the show's site at http://atalkingdog.com. - feel free to request tunes, interviews, or comment on any aspect of the show. You can also view Mike's weekly songlists all the way back to the turn of the century.

Mike joins Bell Buckle Radio as another of our International hosts.
Music From Foggy Hollow can be heard on Bell Buckle Radio each Monday at 9:00PM
and Saturday at 6:00AM.