The public radio program Music Inside Out with Gwen Thompkins, which since 2012 has featured in-depth interviews with some of the best practitioners of New Orleans music on WWNO-FM and later WRKF-FM, will leave the air June 1, but only for a short time.

Thompkins will use the hiatus to compile a book that draws from the nearly 100 interviews she’s conducted. She plans to return with the show in 2022, but that doesn’t mean that Thompkins’ fans will lack for her insightful, on-air interviews. They will have “Back by Popular Demand—the Music Inside Out Sessions,” a series of monthly radio stories about musicians and music presenters as live entertainment venues reopen nationwide. Thompkins will host the series, which will air on a variety of WWNO and WRKF programs.

Music Inside Out is collaborating on this initiative with WWNO-FM and The Historic New Orleans Collection. Each story will be available on musicinsideout.org and be included in “From the Front Line: Narratives of the COVID-19 Pandemic in New Orleans,” as part of the collection’s oral-history project documenting the pandemic. For more information, please contact Gwen Thompkins at [email protected]. To listen to previous episodes of Music Inside Out, visit here.

Past guests on Music Inside Out have included Marcia Ball, Big Freedia, Wendell Brunious, Rickie Lee Jones, and Terence Blanchard.