The WFSU Ecology Blog
  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
      • Backyard Blog January 2019
      • Backyard Blog February 2019
      • Backyard Blog March 2019
      • Backyard Blog May 2019
      • Backyard Blog April 2019
      • Backyard Blog June 2019
      • Backyard Blog July 2019
      • Backyard Blog August 2019
      • Backyard Blog September 2019
      • Backyard Blog October through December 2019
      • Backyard Blog January 2020
      • Backyard Blog February and March 2020
      • Backyard Blog April 2020
      • Backyard Blog May 2020
      • Backyard Blog June 2020
      • July and August 2020 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Blog September/ October 2020
      • Backyard Blog November/ December 2020
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources
Kayak and Canoe Adventures
Chipola River Paddling Trail | The Ovens and...
Kayaking Bald Point | Adventure on a Living...
Wacissa Springs Adventure | Kayaking a Wild Florida...
A Geologist’s View of the Apalachicola River |...
Upper Chipola River Kayak Adventure | Ghosts &...
Tate’s Hell & the Apalachicola River Delta |...
Kayak Scouting Mission on the Ochlockonee Water Trail
Merritt’s Mill Pond | Kayaking and Spring Caves
Kayaking the Apalachicola River with my Four-Year-Old Son
Canoeing the Aucilla: A Red Hills River Steeped...

The WFSU Ecology Blog

  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
      • Backyard Blog January 2019
      • Backyard Blog February 2019
      • Backyard Blog March 2019
      • Backyard Blog May 2019
      • Backyard Blog April 2019
      • Backyard Blog June 2019
      • Backyard Blog July 2019
      • Backyard Blog August 2019
      • Backyard Blog September 2019
      • Backyard Blog October through December 2019
      • Backyard Blog January 2020
      • Backyard Blog February and March 2020
      • Backyard Blog April 2020
      • Backyard Blog May 2020
      • Backyard Blog June 2020
      • July and August 2020 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Blog September/ October 2020
      • Backyard Blog November/ December 2020
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources
EcoAdventures

WFSU EcoAdventures Looking to Keep Music “All Local”

by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 13, 2015
by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 13, 2015 0 comment

Musicians of north Florida and south Georgia, we want to increase your exposure over our airwaves.  Find out more below. Also, we preview some of the EcoAdventures that you can watch on season 1 of WFSU’s new Local Routes program.

Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV
Moments after its hatchling was banded by researcher Jim Cox, this red cockaded woodpecker flew to its cavity to check on the seven-day-old.  This footage is part of our collaboration with Tall Timbers, currently in production, which will explore ecology, culture, and recreation in the Red Hills.  Between now and March 2016, we'll need some Red Hills music.

Moments after its hatchling was banded by researcher Jim Cox, this red cockaded woodpecker flew to its cavity with food for its young. This footage is part of our collaboration with Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy, currently in production, which will explore ecology, culture, and recreation in the Red Hills. Between now and March 2016, we’ll need some Red Hills music.

Our EcoAdventures are making the move to WFSU-TV’s new show, Local Routes, and I have a goal regarding the soundtracks of these segments.   I’d like the music we hear to be entirely local.  Years ago, our station saved a good deal of money by getting rid of most of our stock music library. I’ve been using Creative Commons music.  There are some lovely creative people who make their music available free for noncommercial use.  But it’s a lot of work to sort through thousands of songs on CC sites to find music that fits the mood and tempo I’m after.  I’m really picky about what I want to hear when we’re coasting down a river or watching a red cockaded woodpecker bring a meal to its hatchling.  The new show is called Local Routes, sounds like roots, and lately I find myself wanting music with roots in our area.

Well, maybe not just lately.

Once upon a time, I produced a program called OutLoud.  Area musicians of every stripe would come into the WFSU studio- rock, bluegrass, zydeco, jazz, tango- I could go on.  We had our bits of nature.  Haiqiong Deng, master of a Chinese instrument called a zheng, gave us a performance at Maclay Gardens.  I remember collecting spanish moss (and chiggers) to dress our set when Bogazedi came on.  When the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra’s Tallahassee Fiddlers came on, their music was interspersed with footage of Lafayette Heritage Park.  Music and nature have always been connected to me.

After years of producing the show, I was heartbroken to learn that management no longer wanted to use our increasingly limited resources and personnel to promote local music this way.  A new show, Dimensions, would promote local culture and events in a broader way.  My professional preference shifted from shows shot in a big studio with a large crew to something simpler.  And often wetter, dirtier, and with only a crew of two, including me.  But even while exploring (mostly) unpaved Florida, I need good music.

Is this a Suwannee tip?  This spearhead was discovered in the Wacissa River, and is likely to be 12,000 years old or older.  As covered in a blog post a couple of months ago, we dove down with archeologist Morgan Smith as he and his team excavated a site on the river.  We need music for this and other planned segments on underwater digs and archeology in Florida.

Is this a Suwannee tip? This spearhead was discovered in the Wacissa River, and is likely to be 12,000 years old or older. We dove down with archeologist Morgan Smith as he and his team excavated a site on the river (read more in a post from June). We need music for this and other planned segments on underwater digs and archeology in Florida.  Do you have music that could accompany our adventures into a world thousands of years gone?

With Dimensions now giving way to Local Routes, I’ve come full circle.  I’d like to simultaneously promote our local outdoors and music.  Musicians of north Florida, do you want your music on WFSU-TV?

The specifics are as follows:

  1. An on screen credit during the segment on both TV and web.
  2. We’ll link to musician sites here on the blog.
  3. If you have a song with a connection to local nature, we may be interested in having an adventure with you.  I had a lot of fun on shoots with writers earlier this year (see below); there are so many great possibilities when art and nature come together.
  4. We’ve been talking about having Local Routes feature some musical performances.  Submitting music is a great way for us to become aware of acts we might feature.

You can submit electronically or get more information from me by e-mailing rdiazdevillegas@fsu.edu.  We can also work with CDs- we’re still cool with physical media!  Send them here:

Rob Diaz de Villegas
1600 Red Barber Plaza
Tallahassee FL, 32310

What kind of music am I looking for to score EcoAdventures?  Well, pretty much anything.  I don’t like to limit myself to a specific genre.  Having said that, certain music feels right for certain segments, and a submission might sit for a while before that segment makes it to my edit station.

I’ve collected some of my favorite uses of local music on EcoAdventures:

Velma Frye & Mel Thomas | Bird Watching & Nature Writing: Susan Cerulean at Bald Point

This is a great example of why I wouldn’t specify a type of music that I would use on EcoAdventures.  Shortly after we shot this, Susan and Velma would be collaborating for the Word of South Festival, and so Velma sent me tracks to use.  Usually, I favor instrumentals, typically something either folksy or new age (I notice that I like to make sunrises and underwater scenes feel mystical).  While I wouldn’t have set out to look for something with piano and vocals, it felt perfect the instant I heard it.  That’s what excites me about the potential of receiving local submissions- it’ll shake me out of some of my routines.

Brian Bowen | Canoeing the Aucilla

I met Brian Bowen a couple of years ago at a rally in Apalachicola. The community had come out to the county courthouse as Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio convened a special session on the state of the Apalachicola Bay oyster fishery. Brian sang his song, Salt in the Blood, about the struggles of Apalachicola oystermen, and I used it in our preview of RiverTrek 2013. I wanted more music like that, and he very graciously provided me with two copies of his CD- a full version and one with the vocals removed. Instrumentals give me the best flexibility while editing, and these sounded fantastic. Looking at the CD liner, I noticed a couple of OutLoud alumni- the tracks were mixed by Pete Winter (who came on with Del Suggs in 2007) and Danny Goddard played a few different instruments. It got me thinking of how many talented people I had worked with on that show, and how many great musicians were making local music worthy of sharing with the public.

Hot Tamale | Down the St. Marks River with the Green Guides

Craig Reeder appeared on OutLoud in 2003 with a group called Outer Circle. When we started doing EcoAdventures in 2011, he wrote us about the Wakulla Green Guides, graduates of an ecotourism program at Tallahassee Community College. And it just so happened that he and his bandmate, Adrian Fogelin, had written a song called Wakulla Green that we could use. I don’t often have the luxury of a song that so closely reflects the content of a video, and there’s something about hearing that song with the shots of Captain James Hodges zipping down the river that gets it in my head when I’m on a boat.

So what do we have lined up for the first season of Local Routes?  Let’s take a look:

DSC_0815-smaller

For months, I’ve been writing about outdoor adventures with my son Max.  In October, he and I will join Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s RiverTrek 2015 for two days of kayaking and camping.  Can he climb Sand Mountain?  He really wants to.  This is the first year that the Trek will have cyclists riding alongside the river; we’ll also get some footage of them as they make their way down to Apalachicola.

IMG_1972-small

We’re doing a deep dive into the Red Hills of Florida and Georgia: fire, red cockaded woodpeckers, mucking through wetlands, farm to table tastiness, and the deep roots of our local communities.  We’ll look at ecology and history, art and recreation: cycling, paddling,  duck hunting, and more.  It almost seems like too much to fit into ten videos. This series debuts in spring of 2016, but in the fall we’ll traverse old growth longleaf forests and the wetter woods around Lake Jackson in search of butterflies.  We have quite a lot of species here, some of which are rare.

We’ll also have underwater archeology, excursions into the massive Apalachicola National Forest, and so much more that we’re in the process of setting up.  We’ll have some can’t-miss EcoAdventures on this first season of Local Routes.  Hopefully, we’ll have some can’t miss tunes as well.

Facebook Comments
0 comment
0
FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now in its tenth year, the Ecology Blog recently wrapped its most ambitious endeavor, the EcoCitizen Project. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

previous post
SUN Trail Legislation looks to Connect Florida’s Trails
next post
Capital City to the Sea, SUN Trail quick hits

Related Posts

Shorebirds in the Misty Morning | Surveying the...

December 15, 2020

RiverTrek Day 4: Sand Mountain

October 13, 2012

Butterfly Watching and Research in the Red Hills

November 19, 2015

Seasons Out of Order | EcoShakespeare

April 7, 2015

Dude, where’s my water?

December 6, 2011

Rivertrek Day 5: Owl Creek to Apalachicola

October 15, 2012

Wacissa Springs Adventure | Kayaking a Wild Florida...

February 16, 2017

Volunteers’ Labor of Love: The Wolf Creek Trout...

March 5, 2015

The Path Less Paddled

September 13, 2011

Green Guides and the Lost City of Magnolia

December 27, 2011

Search

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive more outdoor adventures, and an in depth look at our local forests and waterways by Email.

If you do not receive a verification e-mail, check your spam folder.

Category

Florida milkvetch

Florida milkvetch (Astragalus obcordatus) in the Munson Sandhills

When I test out a new camera, I usually head to a random spot in the Munson Sandhills and take a series of videos and photos. This small flower caught my eye, as almost nothing was in bloom. I identified it as Florida milkvetch (Astragalus obcordatus) in iNaturalist, and it was confirmed.
I then saw a photo of this plant in a Facebook group for native plant enthusiasts. It turns out this is kind of a rare plant, and one botanist went so far as to classify it as imperiled. It pays to keep your eyes down by your feet when walking in the sandhills.

WFSU-FM Environmental Stories

  • Florida House Plan Targets Flooding, Sea Level Rise
  • Lawmakers Look To Fund Environmental Projects Despite Budget Shortfalls
  • Florida Forest Service Warns Panhandle Communities Of Wildland Fire Threat
  • Controversial Wastewater Project In Wakulla Gets Public Hearing
  • FWC Considers Banning Commercial Sale Of Tegus, Green Iguanas

2021 Backyard Blog update- migratory birds and invasive plants

Cedar waxwings eating glossy privet berries.

Cedar waxwings eating glossy privet berries.

Twitter

Tweets by wfsuIGOR

iNaturalist

iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

iNaturalist.org

Thumb
View robdv’s observations »

Most Recent

  • Hiking the Aucilla Sinks | Geology of the Floridan Aquifer Uncovered
  • New WFSU Ecology Intern To Help Out at Lake Elberta
  • Florida and Georgia Head to the Supreme Court — Again — In Fight Over Water
  • The Case for Weeds, Our Unsung Florida Native Plants
  • Shorebirds in the Misty Morning | Surveying the St. Marks Refuge

Archives

August 2015
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Jul   Oct »

WFSU Ecology YouTube

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Flickr
  • Youtube

@2017 - PenciDesign. All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by PenciDesign

test title

this is the info in my test popup.