BUZZARD DUST RETURNS TO THE AIRWAVES WITH “WHITE COUNTY MOON”
A strange, sentimental, half-forgotten radio broadcast from an Arkansas that may never have existed
August 25, 2026 — Mount Vernon, Arkansas
Tonight, somewhere between the last light over the White River and the sound of an old radio warming up in a dark room, W-D-A-R is going back on the air.
Buzzard Dust: White County Moon arrives tonight as a new installment in the Buzzard Dust universe—a nearly half-hour collection of old-time songs, fictional radio broadcasts, advertisements, local legends, and musical oddities assembled to sound like a dusty artifact rescued from a forgotten Arkansas station.
This isn’t simply an album.
It’s a radio station that never existed, broadcasting from a place that feels like it should have.
W-D-A-R “Big Skeeters” of Mount Vernon, Arkansas takes listeners through White County with reports on the White River, Little Red River, and Bayou Des Arc River, local advertisements, strange news, fishing stories, mysterious legends, and music supposedly recorded by names that sound like they might have been sitting around an Arkansas courthouse square eighty years ago.
And then there are the songs.
OLD SONGS, NEW STORIES
The album opens with “Red Hen, Skip to My Lou,” performed by Toe Rivers—a deliberately crooked, homespun homage to the old American folk tradition surrounding Skip to My Lou, dating back to around 1840.
Then comes Jesse Jenkins’ “Rovin’ Gambler,” a reimagining inspired by the older Gamboling Man tradition — first documented in Delaney’s Song Book No. 23 around 1900 and later republished by Carl Sandburg in The American Songbag (1927) — bringing an old wandering-song idea forward through the voice of a fictional Arkansas musician.
At 6:12, W-D-A-R heads down to the water for “Fishin’” by Johnny “Jed” Smith, an American folk adaptation inspired by Chris Smith’s 1911 “Fishing,” the song associated with Butler “String Beans” May and Sweetie Matthews May and connected to the musical tradition later popularized as “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas in 1928.
And then, suddenly, the broadcast gets personal.
GRANDPA’S ’29 DODGE
At 8:22 comes “Grandpa’s ’29 Dodge” by Henrely Lee.
It’s a dedication to Charles Owens and his 1929 Dodge Standard Six/DA, accompanied by a simple birthday message:
“Happy 95th Birthday Grandpa. September 15th, 1931.”
It’s one of those moments where the fictional radio world cracks open just enough to reveal something real underneath it.
The rest of the broadcast drifts between advertisements for Cache River Bait & Grocery, Beebe Radio & Repair, and McRae Tow Service, while W-D-A-R continues reporting the strange happenings of White County.
LEGENDS AFTER DARK
Later in the broadcast, the station turns its attention toward the things people whisper about after dark:
The Headless Man.
Whitey the White River Monster.
Jacob’s Lantern.
The news gets stranger.
The radio signal gets older.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Ryan Phillips’ “Eyes Like Rain” appears—not once, but twice.
The second airing even comes with the explanation every little regional radio station eventually gives when it has found a song it can’t stop playing:
“Song Repeats, Like a Hot New Single.”
😂
A LITTLE COUNTRY. A LITTLE FOLK. A LITTLE BUZZARD DUST.
Among the musical pieces are American folk homages inspired by songs from earlier generations, including “Tears on My Pillow” (Gene Autry & Fred Rose, 1941), “Rainbow at Midnight” (Lost John Miller, 1946), and the Roy Acuff-era tradition surrounding “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (Fred Rose, 1945).
But these aren’t presented as attempts to replace the originals.
They’re Buzzard Dust interpretations—new songs looking backward, imagining what might have happened if forgotten singers, rural radio stations, porch musicians, and little-town characters had carried these musical ideas somewhere else.
That’s the heart of White County Moon.
It’s not nostalgia for a real past.
It’s nostalgia for a past that feels real.
LEGENDS OF WHITE COUNTY
Every small-town station worth its static has a stretch of the dial reserved for the stories nobody can quite confirm and nobody wants to deny. On White County Moon, that’s the “White County Legends” segment — three names W-D-A-R claims as its own, whispered between the weather and the fishing conditions, whether or not the county lines agree.
The Headless Man
Arkansas has told versions of this story in more towns than anyone can count — a figure seen walking a ridge or a tree line near dusk, always at a distance, always gone by the time a truck slows down to look twice. It’s not a story that belongs to any one place. W-D-A-R just happens to be the station still telling it, and White County drivers still know better than to stop and ask.
Whitey, the White River Monster
The real Whitey belongs to Newport, further up the White River in Jackson County — sightings going back over a century, a shape in the deep eddies described alternately as gray-skinned, elephant-hided, wider than a car and three cars long. But a river doesn’t stop at a county line, and W-D-A-R has never been shy about claiming what floats downstream. The station keeps its own tally of White County sightings anyway, filed somewhere between the fishing report and the classifieds — Whitey, adopted.
Jacob’s Lantern
Out past the bayou, folks talk about a light that moves low over the water on the darkest nights — no lantern-carrier ever found, no clear record of where the story started. Unlike the other two, this one doesn’t trace back to any documented Arkansas legend; as far as anybody at W-D-A-R can tell, it’s homegrown, which might be why it’s the one the station tells with the most confidence.
Together, the three make up the backbone of W-D-A-R’s late-broadcast identity — the part of the dial where the news stops being about rivers and weather and starts being about the things people only half-believe, and keep telling anyway, borrowed or not.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Buzzard Dust Mixtapes is the work of Emmitt Owens, who lived in Mount Vernon, Arkansas from 1979 to 1982 — a stretch of years that helped shape the fictional station’s sense of place, and one of the stops marked on the Buzzard Dust creator’s map. White County Moon draws its geography, its advertisers, and its legends from that corner of White County.
TONIGHT, W-D-A-R SIGNS ON
Clocking in at roughly half an hour, Buzzard Dust: White County Moon is built like one of those strange recordings you might find in a box at an estate sale:
A little music.
A little news.
A little advertising.
A little folklore.
A little family history.
And just enough static between the stations to make you wonder whether somebody really broadcast this once upon a time.
Buzzard Dust: White County Moon releases tonight.
Turn down the lights.
Find an old radio if you’ve got one.
And when the signal fades in from Mount Vernon, Arkansas…
listen close.
You never know what W-D-A-R is going to say next.
TRACK LIST
Time Segment
00:00 W-D-A-R “Big Skeeters” — Mount Vernon, Arkansas — White County News: White River, Little Red River & Bayou Des Arc River
00:31 “Red Hen, Skip to My Lou” — sung by Toe Rivers — American Folk Homage/Adaptation to “Skip to My Lou,” c. 1840
01:47 “Rovin’ Gambler” — sung by Jesse Jenkins — American Folk Homage/Adaptation inspired by “The Gamboling Man” from Delaney’s Song Book No. 23, c. 1900, later republished by Carl Sandburg in The American Songbag, 1927
05:05 W-D-A-R “White County Legends” News
05:34 “Cache River Bait & Grocery” Advertisement
06:12 “Fishin’” — by Johnny “Jed” Smith — American Folk Adaptation inspired by “Fishing” by Chris Smith, associated with Butler “String Beans” May & Sweetie Matthews May, c. 1911; related to the song later popularized as “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas in 1928
08:22 “Grandpa’s ’29 Dodge” — by Henrely Lee — Dedication to Charles Owens & His 1929 Dodge Standard Six/DA — “Happy 95th Birthday Grandpa. September 15th, 1931”
10:41 W-D-A-R “Beebe Radio & Repair” Advertisement — “Smack It Twice and Hear Little Rock”
11:21 W-D-A-R “Station Identification” — Mount Vernon, Arkansas
11:50 “McRae Tow Service” Advertisement
12:30 “Tears on My Pillow” — by Jace Livingston — American Folk Homage to “Tears on My Pillow” by Gene Autry & Fred Rose, 1941
15:31 “Rainbow at Midnight” (Short Version) — by Tubby Mathews — American Folk Homage to “Rainbow at Midnight” by Lost John Miller, 1946
16:36 W-D-A-R “White County Legends” — The Headless Man, Whitey the White River Monster & Jacob’s Lantern
17:25 “Beebe Radio & Repair” (Short Advertisement)
17:40 W-D-A-R “Station Identification” — White River Monster Report
18:06 “Eyes Like Rain” — by Ryan Phillips — American Folk Homage to “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by Fred Rose, 1945
22:07 “Rainbow in the Dark” — by Cedar Johnson — American Folk Homage to “Rainbow at Midnight” by Lost John Miller, 1946
24:32 “Eyes Like Rain” — by Ryan Phillips — American Folk Homage to “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by Fred Rose, 1945 (Song Repeats, Like a Hot New Single)
28:33 W-D-A-R “News” — Legends & Eerie Broadcast
29:22 “Buzzard Dust Mixtapes” Advertisement — EmmittOwens.com
Buzzard Dust: White County Moon
Tonight — wherever you hear Buzzard Dust.
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