Arts Underground: Meet Burgin Mathews!

Each Saturday night at 7 on our main signal, Burgin Mathews hosts ‘The Lost Child‘, sharing with us vintage music recordings from across the South. He curates episodes with music you may be able to sing along to, like ‘ABC’ by The Jackson 5 and lesser-known down-home music, fit for a bluegrass jamboree, like the stylings of the Johnson Family String Band of Sand Mountain, Alabama.

In this conversation, we get to know Burgin a little, including the origins of his radio show, which began in 2012. Burgin tells us how Woody Guthrie sparked his quest to save these vintage recordings, his favorite part of archiving music with a grassroots sound, and about a pleasant surprise he received in archiving the music of a family singing group from Elizabethtown, Tennessee.

This interview was recorded on January 15, 2026. A portion of it aired on Tennessee Valley Mornings on January 20, 2026. The full version aired first on February 6, 2026.