by Mark E. Waterbury

Bob found that he also had a passion for politics, and someone approached him about composing music for a multi-media theater production called "City of Strangers." Although he never composed music before, Bob decided to tackle that as well, and in a few months time, had thirty pieces of music written for the Baltimore-based troupe ironically called Impossible Theater. In 1985, his work in theater helped gain him the "Performance Artist of the Year" honor from Washington City Paper. "I took my compositions and staged them with slide shows in D.C. with other musicians. It was part theater, part musical performance, and I was working with many well-known rock musicians in D.C. The award was mostly an outgrowth from that." Bob was also involved in sound engineering and recording while at Impossible Theater.

In the late 80's, Bob delved into television production and worked for a local station mainly to pay the bills. Television was not the form of media that most intrigued Bob, however, and he soon began hanging around the offices of National Public Radio. "My love of listening to music and of politics was guiding me again. I was getting very frustrated working in the TV environment, putting out media and information that I didn't have the heart for. I listened to NPR every single day for a long long time, and then one day, I told my wife I was quitting my job in TV and I was going to get a job at NPR." Bob had a connection at NPR. Ira Glass, the host of the news, feature and music show "All Things Considered" did a piece on Bob in 1983. Ira remembered Bob and asked him if he knew how to edit tapes for radio. Bob claimed he did, although like many of his previous endeavors, he had never done the task before deciding to tackle it. He edited an interview for Ira who was pleased with the results and asked him to come back in the next day. "It was right around Thanksgiving and they were short on help. They asked me if I could stay the day, and I agreed, and then every day I would just show up. After a couple weeks they gave me a two week appointment and then a four week appointment, and this went on for a year and a half!" While Bob was in this long term full time temporary mode, he came to know Marika Partridge, the director for "All Things Considered". Marika decided to go to New York to work with a different show for a year and she asked Bob to take over while she was gone. "If you've ever seen what a director for TV or radio has to do, it's a frightening thing!" Bob recalls whimsically. "My jaw dropped when she asked me and I thought I would never, ever do that job, even though I have a good amount of confidence in myself. Directing is like that guy who used to be on the Ed Sullivan Show that would balance spinning plates on a stick." Bob told Marika he didn't want to do the job, even though she knew he had the music knowledge to handle it. She told him that his ear for music was something that could not be taught. Eventually she persuaded him to take the job and then trained him for four days before leaving for New York. Bob as usual adeptly handled the new aspect of his career, going it solo until Marika came back. The two then split the job duties for the next eight years until Marika left NPR.

As the director of "All Things Considered", one of Bob's duties was to choose the music used in the show. "One thing different NPR does that no other news media does is they separate a lot of the news stories with music. It lends the show character and gives the listener a chance to catch their breath and think. I guess I had an ascetic to touch the hearts and minds of the listeners because I used to get tons of hand-written mail in the pre-internet days with people wondering what songs we were playing. We used to answer those queries by hand, too." In 1995, Bob started listing the music they played on the web. This received a very favorable reaction from the listeners, especially since they primarily played indie music that could not be heard on most commercial stations. Because the web was becoming more popular, Bob thought it would be a good time to start an internet program of music that would include information about the songs and the artists. Thus, in 1999, the internet show "All Songs Considered" was launched. "It was great because instead of the way it is in television where you had only three lines of text to tell you about a song, here you could do twelve paragraphs for them to read while the song is playing. People can learn who the artist is, where they are from, maybe why they wrote the song; all the wonderful stories that make up a good musician's tale."

Bob stays busy splitting his time between "All Things Considered" and "All Songs Considered". His own musical performances are now limited to his home at night, often playing music with his fiddle- playing son. He does think that one day he would like to record and release some of his own music, but at the moment he is more than happy with his life's passion. "I love NPR and I love what it does. I love the opportunity they have given me to get other artists out there. My mission in life the past fifteen years producing music features for these shows is to let people know about music that is out there they wouldn't know about otherwise. It never ends. Radio is basically dead in America, and for anyone who wants radio with a sense of adventure, they are few and far between. You would think listening to them that there are only a hundred and fifty CDs released every year. There are thirty-thousand of them and I try to find the gems and get them out there."

Bob Boilen's advice for musicians: "Don't give up is the key. If you have something you think is musically right and unique and you have the talent, just keep going for it. With hope, you will be recognized. Maybe you won't become a superstar, but you see every day musicians who make a living at what they do. They don't become rich. They play hard and play two hundred gigs a year and just keep at it. And you must have the integrity. When you see these known artists putting out lousy records because they lost the initial reason they wanted to do music, that's just not right."