Downtown Madison, WI is an isthmus sandwiched between Lakes Mendota and Menona. Because they are lakes, they smell like lakes. Culver's corporate headquarters is not far away, and there are more than a dozen Culver's in Madison, so the city also kind of smells like butterburgers. ®

I moved to Madison to take a position at the University of Wisconsin as the Ethnic American Music Curator and have since become the Audio-Visual Preservation Archivist for the UW-Madison General Library System. In this role, I divide my time between public programming and outreach [largely focused on the Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest project for which I am a Co-PI], audio engineering [building and running the audio preservation studio for the Mills Music Library and Wisconsin Music Archives], as well as music curation [building connections with local musicians and organizations, acquiring Wisconsin-based recordings and music collections, and conducting oral histories and fieldwork with donors]. In addition to my work at the University, I am also recording [See: Nate Gibson & the Stars of Starday] and performing [see: Nate Gibson & the Stardazers] a lot of music and also co-hosting Bill C. Malone's Wednesday morning Back to the Country radio program on WORT 89.9 FM. I remain a Red Sox fan, but the Milwaukee Brewers and Madison Mallards are quickly growing on me.