SAYING GOODBYE TO AN OLD FRIEND

It served me well for 11 years, but on Monday night, my Roland VS-880 recorded it's final show for me, Father Brown - The Miracle of Moon Crescent. This was the first digital work station ever available, and when we got it for CRT we had already recorded and released about 6 shows. All but two were re-recorded later, digitally.

As best I can figure, I recorded and edited over 300 radio dramas/comedies with this machine (it's true - I never edited a single CRT show on a computer) , and considering it runs on a hard drive, that is pretty good service! The other night while recording it started to struggle and make some noises that were the signs of an approaching fade to black, so it will be retired and a new machine is on the way, and hopefully recording of MOONFLEET will continue without a hitch. It sounds odd, I am sure - but I have spent thousands of hours working with this great machine - from Gettysburg to the Alamo, The Wizard of Oz, Captain Blood, Pirate Legends, 60 or 70 Dibbles, 60 Powder Rivers ... and so on. In a way, I will miss it.

COLONIAL RADIO - PODCAST 2

The last Thursday of the month means that it is time for the Colonial Radio Theatre Podcast! Produced by Jack Ward at the Sonic Society, this months offering contains two episodes of THE FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES - just in time to hearald in the CD release next week ;) Also included is an interview with J.T. Turner, who plays the title role. Tell us what you think of the podcast! Should we continue? Is it a good idea?? Feedback is appreciated. To hear it, click on their homepage HERE, or click to the direct link at Sonic Society Podcast and you can download the episode to your computer or other listening device.

We plan to produce a total of 16 FATHER BROWN episodes, and #10 records Monday night.

Richard Widmark - Dec.26, 1914 - March 24, 2008.

One of my all time favorites.

SPECIAL FEATURES??

For the first time ever, CRT will have "Special Features," or as some call them "CD Extra's" on our CD release of KING SOLOMON'S MINES. These will include interviews with some of the lead cast members, some very rare bloopers from the recording sessions (rare because we seldom let them out!), an interview with J.T. Turner about dramatizing the book, and a demonstration on how a scene is constructed, from the raw recording to the final poduct. We'll see how this goes over with people, and if they like it, we'll do some more on some upcoming releases.

MOONFLEET SETS SAIL

Recording started tonight on our new production, MOONFLEET. A great session, and some really cool performances. VERY happy with our young star, Rob Cattell, who is doing a fantastic job as John Trenchard. Tom Berry co-stars in a fun character role, and the cast tonight was rounded out by CRT vets Cynthia Pape, Lincoln Clark, and Marcia Friedman. This one records thru April 14th, and we hope to have it on the air in July.

Horton Hears Ca-Ching!

CONGRATS to our friends and Dibble Show TV production Partners Ricardo Curtis, Wesley Lui, and the incredible team at HOUSE OF COOL in Toronto for the stunning weekend opening of HORTON HEARS A WHO! You got the #1 movie in the country, guys, and I wish I was in TOR for a celebration drink! HoC did the 2D animation for the picture, and Ricardo was Head of Story!

HALLOWEEN TREE TRAILER

Be sure to check out the trailer for our upcoming release THE HALLOWEEN TREE, by Ray Bradbury! You can find it on the home page of the Colonial Radio site (www.colonialradio.com). Turned out pretty good, I think!

POWDER RIVER

For the next week you can hear POWDER RIVER - ON THE TRAIL OF THE BIG HORN in a stream on Jim French's IMAGINATION THEATER. This program actually contains two episodes from the series, "The General" and "On The Trail of the Big Horn."

Next month it will be one year since we went on the air with IMAGINATION THEATRE, and every month we get the same six people or so who leave comments like "This show sucks," "It's the worst thing on the air," "The writing is childish - in fact, my nine year old can write better," and "please, please, make this show go away!"

But then we get thirty or more votes and comments monthly from people who like the show, so that's more like it!

Updates

Well, we are finished with THE HALLOWEEN TREE. Ray should have his copy of the finished production by now, and I hope he likes what we have done with his incredible story. In my opinion, it's the HALLOWEEN version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. You should get the book and give it a read - it's wonderful. Our program should be released in the fall.

Now that our job is finished on that one, it's time to focus on KING SOLOMON'S MINES, which is being post produced by Byron Lee. It's due at the end of the month, and what I've heard so far sounds pretty good. The episodes are a little on the long side, so they will have to be re-cut to fit our XM time slot - no, that doesnt mean leaving things on the editing room floor; it means that part of the original episode 1 will now be part of episode 2, and so on and so on. No biggy, we've done it before. I'll say this much, it sure does sound like we recorded it in the jungle!

I hope to have the cast set for MOONFLEET by the end of the upcoming week, as I want to start recording ASAP.

HALLOWEEN TREE - UPCOMING TRAILER

We are in the final hours of editing for Ray Bradbury's THE HALLOWEEN TREE - finally! It will be finished in the wee hours of the morning.

This production was recorded on Dec.2, 2006, and then put on hold until we upgraded our music department. I knew this show needed the very best music we could get, and I decided to wait until we had it. The following summer, of 2007, the music was ready to go, and Jeff started to work on the score. On Jan. 16th, Chris Snyder started post production. Recording for re-takes also took place on Jan. 27 and 28, 2008, Feb.16, and March 3, 2008.

We have 8 very talented (and I DO mean talented) youngsters in this cast; Matthew Scott Robertson, Anastas Varinos (our two stars of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES), Connor Doherty (from GUNS OF POWDER RIVER), Curtis Brauner, Dan Duran, James McLean (POWDER RIVER), Jacob Rosenbaum, and Rob Cattell. These guys poured their hearts out for this production, and it shows.

Two of these young performers have some pretty good gigs going on at the moment! Matthew is about to embark on an eight month tour of Asia in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, while Jacob Rosenbaum is doing some Shakespeare in NYC as the young Macduff to Patrick Stewarts Macbeth!

J.T. Turner narrates the story. In fact, it was J.T. who first mentioned THE HALLOWEEN TREE, back when we were starting work on DANDELION WINE. If it wasn't for him, I probably would not have thought about doing it!

Although the show won't be released until September or October, we are going to be posting a trailer at the CRT website, so you can get a sneak peek! Look for it towards the end of the week, or early next.