Hey everyone, Daniel Long, host of the Groove Yard on Sundays and the Groove Break on Mondays. 2020 has been one wild ride, and WEMU has been by your side throughout it all. COVID-19 has impacted each of us in different ways, and WEMU has been there to help keep you informed at a local and state level. When loneliness and claustrophobia set in during the stay-home-stay-safe order, WEMU lifted you up with music to fill your soul with joy and beauty. And in an age of social unrest around the disparities in communities of color, WEMU uplifts and amplifies Black voices through the Black American musical tradition.

The blues has a long and rich tradition and Southeast Michigan and WEMU have been part of that tradition for over 50 years. Clubs, festivals and radio have made our area a blues hotspot. Now a different kind of hotspot threatens all that history. Clubs are closed, Festivals cancelled and Covid 19 threatens blues on the radio, too.

"You may not recognize me, but I work for you!"

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This is the honest greeting which I have offered audiences at live music events where I have had the pleasure and privilege of being the MC over the last few years. It's literally true. Listener support provides the salaries of all of our "live and local" weekend music hosts...Wendy Wright (From Memphis To Motown), Jeremy Baldwin (The Roots Music Project), Nik Thompson (The Sunday Best), Daniel Long (In The Groove Yard), Jessica Webster (The In Crowd), and Joe Tiboni (The Big City Blues Cruise): we ALL work for you. And we are happily honored to do that thing!?

I've been working in news since?since?1989. Every one of those 31 years in radio have been spent in Washtenaw County, 26 of them here at 89.1 WEMU. Never... and I mean never...have we had a year like 2020 and we're only half-way through. Never has LOCAL radio been so important. We have a lot to talk about in the months and years ahead but we are in the midst of massive change. It is my mission to have those conversations and to help bring you the information you can use to help guide those changes in your homes, neighborhoods and communities. The scope of that mission is largely determined by you.?