I apologize for the lack of updates, but I’ll try and give you the outline of recent events, personally and for the station. Since the apartment fire, life has been… stressful. There have been blessings in the chaos, mind you, but here’s the basics: After the apartment fire, we’ve been living temporary lives in temporary homes while our building was repaired. We have to be out of this current temporary place at the end of May, but when we called the owner of our apartment building to get an ETA on repairs, we were told they were repurposing the building, and we lost our home permanently. It was a real gut-punch, because we were left scrambling to find a new home.

It turns out that it’s darn near impossible to find an affordable rental in the winter in our area, and even more complicated if you have pets. I’m a die-hard animal lover, and we consider our pets to be part of our family, so we’re pretty unwilling to give them up. I won’t go into the miserable details, other than to say the past several months have been one gut-punch after the other. Over and over, my wife & I have had the rug pulled out from under us. My mental-health isn’t all that great at the best of times, and the past several months have been a downward spiral of anxiety and depression. Then the apocalypse happened, and it made our complicated situation infinitely more complex.

There have been blessings in the chaos, though. DylanRadio.com hasn’t changed our singular mission during this global calamity: KEEP BOB’S MUSIC PLAYING! YOU have been AMAZINGLY supportive during all this. In spite of the global economic situation, you’ve been very generous in your regular support of the station, as well as many of you helping my wife & my personal situation via GoFundMe. Among the recent blessings, we’ve also just been offered a new home last week. Papers are signed, and we’re set to move next month, but I’m not celebrating until we’re settled… we’ve just been screwed too many times lately for me to trust that it’s a sure-thing.

Unfortunately, there have also been hiccups here at the station because of COVID-19. DylanRadio is run though three separate systems at three separate locations, and we ran into problems at two of them. Due to to the economic downturn, our broadcast-server hosting company started shuttering a number services last month so we had to relocate that server. Then, last week the website was taken down by some automated monitoring system, and there were no support-staff on-site at the website-hosting company to help me bring it back up, and we were left scrambling for a couple days. I think we have all that sorted out now, and I’m hopeful that there will be no further interruptions.

So that’s a basic update on where we stand right now. I just can’t express how thankful I am for each & every one of you who tune in, spread the word, and support DylanRadio.com. More than that, the support we’ve received through your donations to our personal GoFundMe campaign has been the single greatest source of encouragement during this ongoing nightmare. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve your constant encouragement, but there just aren’t enough thank-yous in the world to express my appreciation. You have been a lifeline through one of the most difficult periods of our lives, and I’m not ashamed to say you’ve moved me to tears repeatedly over the past number of months. This will pass… and I know we’ll all be stronger for it. Thank you for making my little homemade radio-station a part of your lives, and I hope the music continues to uplift you during this terrible global situation.

My wife and I just can’t thank you enough for your encouragement & support.  I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates, but we’re still stuck on very limited internet access at our temporary home.  Since the fire that forced us out of our apartment, we’ve been staying at a cottage.  Unfortunately, the cottage can’t be winterized, so we can’t stay there for much longer.  We hopefully have temporary winter lodgings lined-up, and I’ll update when/if that happens to keep you in the loop.  So far as we know, our apartment will be under repair until spring of next year, and it’s our hope to move back in… but we’ll see, I guess.  We’re currently sitting in limbo waiting for info.

The support you’ve given us has been our one source of hope & encouragement through all this.  Yes, we’ve lost our home, a pet, furniture, clothing… but you keep reminding us that we have people who care about us.  We’re still struggling, so if you’d like to help you can visit our GoFundMe campaign here, but even if you can’t afford to contribute, please considered sharing the campaign on your social media.  That’s a huge help as well.

So, THANK YOU.  There just aren’t enough thank-you’s in the world to accurately show our appreciation.  You’ve all been amazing for your support of the station, but those of you who wanted to help us through this… I wish I could express how much it means to us.  It’s everything, right now.  It really is.

A number of you are my friends on Facebook, so you may already be aware of the current situation.  On Tuesday night (Sept 17) we were awoken by our neighbor to discover the apartment below ours was in flames, and our home filled up with smoke quickly.  Thanks for our neighbor’s quick action, we were able to get out safely along with out pets.  Thankfully there was no fire damage, but the smoke damage is extensive, and we’ve been forced out of our home while our landlord rebuilds.

As many of your already know, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.  After a summer of trials including multiple deaths, job-losses, and a hurricane, we’re pretty lost as to how we’re going to deal with everything.  Now even our vehicle has decided to start breaking down, making us even more impotent.  In the midst of all this, however, we have been greatly blessed by friends & family all eager to lend a hand.  We’ve been offered a temporary place to stay while reconstruction is underway, and many folks have offered to help with cleanup and moving.

However, many of you have contacted me to ask for some tangible way you can help, so I’ve set up a GoFundMe campaign for folks who want to help in a financial way.  The current total is just a rough, conservative estimate of our immediate need, but that may increase as we go through the process of determine what can be saved, and what is lost.

Please don’t feel obligated to contribute in any way.  This is just for the folks who have asked for a way to help.  If you want to help, click here to go to the GoFundMe campaign, and even if you can’t chip in, you can still share the campaign on social media… that’s also a huge help.  I hate coming to people with a hand out like this, but I was chastised by a listener who said that by not sharing it, I’d be robbing people of an opportunity to do make a difference.

We’re very thankful that God preserved us and all our pets during this and EXTREMELY thankful to our neighbour who saved our lives.  If she hadn’t been home or hadn’t woken us, Marsha and I would have died in our sleep that night.

Thanks to everyone for taking part in our Wilbury Weekend.  I’m happy to report the wandering band of ne’er-do-well minstrels have agreed to return the station back to it’s original format, but they warn that future takeovers are not only possible, but probable. 😀

The Wilburys have taken over the station again!!  Tune in all weekend long and request your faves by those crazy wandering minstrels, Nelson, Spike, Otis, Clayton, Charlie T Jr, Muddy, Lefty, Lucky & Boo!

You can also tune in to the BBC Program “The Traveling Wilburys Revisited” that will play a number of times throughout the weekend:  Friday at 3pm Atlantic (2pm Eastern, 1pm Central, 11am Pacific, 7pm London, 6am Sydney), Saturday at 2am (1am Eastern, 12am Central, 10pm Pacific, 6am London, 5pm Sydney) and again at 8pm (7pm Eastern, 6pm Central, 4pm Pacific, 12am London, 11am Sydney), and Sunday at 5pm (4pm Eastern, 3pm Central, 1pm Pacific, 9pm London, 8am Sydney).