
RYMAN VIEWS | The Ryman Auditorium as seen from Bridgestone Arena tower, location for the SiriusXM studios, in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
Since its 2001 launch Bluegrass Junction has had its primary residence in Nashville; it broadcast from a small studio space in Music City’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum until moving to a dedicated live performance studio, shared by all Nashville-based SiriusXM channels, in 2007. Located behind the blue glass walls of the cylindrical Arena tower of Downtown Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, the lobby of which, seen here, houses the Music City Shop of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation, the Bluegrass Junction studios are, rather appropriately, in eyeshot of the city’s iconic Ryman Auditorium, upon whose stage bluegrass, the very genre the channel promotes, is said to have been born in December of 1945.
– SiriusXM
Moves by SiriusXM brass in early 2014 led to some roster reductions, and not once but twice in recent years the channel has been temporarily and frustratingly taken off air (off the satellite feed while still available online and on the SiriusXM app) to make way for seasonal programming – in December 2015, when it was replaced by Radio Hanukkah for 9 days in honour of the Jewish celebration of lights, and for 11 days in November 2019 when Heart Strings Radio commandeered Bluegrass Junction‘s usual channel 62 for wall-to-wall Dolly Parton, an agreement with Netflix that coincided with the premiere of Dolly’s TV series, Heartstrings. (We won’t even mention the fact that in August 2016 the dial was shifted to move Bluegrass Junction from its then home on channel 61, a rejig to accommodate the September debut of The Garth Channel… what an affront… oh the indignity of it.)

‘Still Time to Speak Up for Bluegrass Junction‘, David Morris, Bluegrass Today, December 4, 2015

KYLE CANTRELL | With Kyle Cantrell at the studios of SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
The aforementioned roster reductions in 2014 – part of a broader cost-cutting plan by SiriusXM to eliminate voices from some of its music channels, and at a time when both the company’s stock price and subscriber base were up – saw long-time presenter Chris Jones pulled from his regular weekday shift, reduced to a solitary weekend shift instead (mostly broadcast from ‘the Northern Studio’ in Alberta, Canada). Ned Luberecki also lost his More Banjo Sunday slot (it has since thankfully been restored); Nedski’s popular Derailed show (‘two hours of bluegrass music’s wild side!’) and Jones’ Friday first-generation bluegrass showcase Truegrass, easily our favourite part of the whole weekly schedule, are ever-present and still survive through to this day. Today you’ll only hear two on-air voices on a daily basis, SiriusXM employees Joey ‘You and Me’ Black (who mostly broadcasts from New York) and Program Director Kyle Cantrell, seen here, who was good to us with his time and by gifting us a pair of Bluegrass Junction memento ball caps. A broadcasting veteran who has been with SiriusXM since 2002, he’s a four-time IBMA Bluegrass Broadcaster of the Year and eight-time SPBGMA Bluegrass DJ of the Year. Kyle hosts the daily morning request slot live from Nashville (he also enjoys a gig as an announcer on the Grand Ole Opry). It was a pleasure to put face to the voice of Mr. Bluegrass Junction, the ‘voice of bluegrass’, to meet its manifestation in physical form.
Here’s to the next two decades.
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