Well, as these show summaries go, this is certainly an unusual one. Quite fitting, really, given how unusual this show was, to say nothing of the morning this show aired. WMNF is in Tampa and as many listeners know, I live on the opposite coast of Florida. Which means a three-plus hour drive, each way, on Wednesdays, and getting up at 3:45am to get behind the wheel. So that’s the backdrop. On this particular Wednesday, I got in an accident en route to WMNF. 
Hit by a pick-up truck, which actually crossed three lanes to smack me! (You have to applaud that 
sort of dedication!) Luckily, I wasn’t hurt, nor was the driver of the pick-up, but my car was seriously crunched and not drive-able. I had to wait three hours for a tow truck, never made it to the station, but in the best the-show-must-go-on tradition, I did the interview on my cell phone, patched in at the station with Mindy—who was on the phone from Nashville—while I sitting in a semi-quiet area of the tow yard in Lake Wales. (Big thanks to Randy Wind & Frank Knox for crisis management in the studio.) Smith—the acclaimed singer-songwriter who turned heads when she burst onto the music scene a decade ago—discusses her history with animals, and the present population of dogs in her home, including one named Porter Wagoner. She explains 
how she came to be commissioned to write the theme song for the national PBS series, “Shelter Me,” which spotlights animal shelters while promoting the virtues of adoption—and how that required a different songwriting approach from the way she composes music for her own albums. There’s now a wonderful video set to Smith’s breezy, winsome song, and a benefit compilation album she oversaw, “Songs For Shelter Me.”
AUDIO ARCHIVE:
to come
