Skip to main content

Let's Dance, a Rolling Musical Thank-You

Wed, 05/06/2020 - 10:10
WLNG’s Rolling Roadcaster bus provides a much-needed lift to health care workers at East End hospitals.

Music, among its many charms, is therapy. In its myriad forms, music can comfort, uplift, and inspire, all of these sorely needed, it turns out, during a public health emergency.

As a means of offering gratitude to the health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic, WLNG, the Sag Harbor radio station that has been broadcasting since 1963, is “roadcasting,” taking its Rolling Roadcaster bus to the East End’s hospitals on Fridays, where at 7 p.m. the “WLNG Thank You Song,” a different selection each week, plays over the bus’s sound system.

Listeners are asked to “blast it in their cars and homes to say thanks to our heroes on the front lines,” said Bill Evans, an owner of the station.

On Friday, the Rolling Roadcaster played Sam and Dave’s 1968 R&B classic “I Thank You.” “We followed it up with the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ ” said Anthony, WLNG’s D.J. on weeknights, as hospitals around the country have taken to playing those tracks when recovered Covid-19 patients are released and sent home. The station also broadcast “You Are the Champions,” a reimagined rendition of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” by that band with the vocalist Adam Lambert, recorded this year as a tribute to health care workers on the front lines. 

Five or six songs are played, Mr. Evans said, “and the hospital staff gets a chance to get a break and dance.”

The Roadcaster will roll up to Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead tomorrow at 7 p.m. to play a new thank-you song and songs celebrating patients’ recovery. Selections are yet to be chosen, Anthony said this week, and will be based in part on listener requests.

The Rolling Roadcaster is to visit Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport on Friday, May 15. “It’s our way of bringing some ‘feel good’ to our hospital workers,” Mr. Evans said.    

Villages

‘Country’ Lawyer, Author, Painter, Man of the World

The pace at which Lenny Ackerman moves belies his 86 years. The prominent East End attorney writes a weekly column for The Mountain Messenger, has taken up painting, and has just published his fourth book.

Jul 31, 2025

Item of the Week: The A.O. Jones Hardware Store

This photograph from the C. Frank Dayton Photo Collection at the East Hampton Library shows the A.O. Jones Hardware Store at 51 Newtown Lane. Owned by Asa O. Jones (1857-1953), it later became East End Hardware and today is A.L.C., a clothing store.

Jul 31, 2025

Amagansett Summer Party for Joan Tulp

The Amagansett Village Improvement Society will tip its collective hat to Joan Tulp on Saturday. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone more committed to their hometown than Joan,” said Victor Gelb, who serves as co-president of the group with her.

Jul 31, 2025

 

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.