Bob Boilen aboard Doug Aitken's Station to Station art train.
BOB BOILEN
In 1979, I quit my job running a record warehouse and bought an Arp Odyssey synthesizer. In a few months, I was performing at dc space in Washington, D.C., with Tiny Desk Unit. I joined Impossible Theater in 1982, writing music for a handful of original multimedia productions with some incredibly talented artists from Baltimore. Some of my favorite music was written then and can be found on the cassette I released called Music For Unitards. In 1988, I quit my TV production job and went to NPR looking for work. I showed up every day hoping I could make radio. In about a year, I was somehow directing All Things Considered. At the end of the last century, I started NPR's online music show All Songs Considered. I did that for 23 years. I started an intimate series of concerts at my desk called Tiny Desk Concerts featuring both emerging artists and well-known musicians. I retired in October 2023.
These days, I have a one-hour radio show on WOWD-LP/TakomaRadio.org every Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. ET called My Tiny Morning Show. If you miss the live show, you can listen to my archives here.
I make music under the name Danger Painters with former Tiny Desk Unit guitarist and musical soulmate Michael Barron. We've made 19 albums and 3 EPs together with KD Lay and William Harvey. I've been making music with electronics for over 40 years. Tiny Desk Unit was reformed briefly in 2007. Michael, Susan Mumford, and I wrote an album for the RPM Challenge (the make-an-album-in-a-month challenge) called Sputnik Fell on My Birthday in honor of the passing of our drummer Lorenzo "Pee Wee" Jones.
In 2016, I completed my first book, "Your Song Changed My Life." I asked 35 artists about a song that changed them forever and then wrote essays linking the artist with their inspirational song.
I am a concert photographer, and during COVID, I’ve taken up macro photography, infrared photography along with bird photography. I've enjoyed storytelling with images, some of which I'll post here, but I'm most often posting on my Instagram account, @bob-boilen.
I retired from NPR in October 2023. I still keep up with new music, and you can hear me on My Tiny Morning Show.
I also make bagels; here’s how.