It was the middle of the work week, but both the young and the graying hipsters clumped near the back of The Pinhook bar made music as if only a string of Saturday nights stretched ahead.
Beckoned like the rest by a monthly acoustical jam, public radio talk show host Frank Stasio tapped his foot, played the bongos and grinned. Stasio tuned into the timing of the bluegrass standard Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms and did his best to shore up the percussion.
“This is so Durham,” Stasio says between songs, basking in the circle of good voices, guitars, harmonica, drums and the rest.
It’s been four years since Stasio moved from metro Washington, D.C. to host the WUNC talk show The State of Things. On air, the veteran radioman explores all things North Carolina, from this state’s poetry to its most perplexing politics. But after work, it’s the Bull City that Stasio makes his own.
Stasio and his wife, Joanne, live in a serene block of American Village, where they host dinner guests on a roomy back deck overlooking a no-pesticide garden. It’s a stone’s throw from Duke Forest but close enough to commute downtown by bicycle. Stasio’s show airs live at noon there most weekdays from the American Tobacco Historic District.
Stasio is out and about a lot, often with family, soaking up what’s local. He’s the approachable guy with a beard and round glasses at the grand opening of Beyú Caffé, a new play at Common Ground Theatre, a Golden Belt art event, a concert at The Broad Street Cafe, dinner at Papa Mojo’s Roadhouse or some other happening in this town’s crowded calendar of events.
“Durham has a kind of intimate charm you find in all the best cities,” Stasio says. “There’s a lived-in, front-porch easiness that characterizes the city’s coolest places.”
Like many Durhamites, Stasio, 56, didn’t plan on settling here.
But radio has propelled him many other places he didn’t expect to land.
To read the full article, pick up a copy of the June/July 2010 issue. Call us at 688-8400.
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