page_title: ETown
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: ETown / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Nick and Helen Forster, co-founders of eTown. Photo by Tim Reese
context_page_description: eTown is a 501c3 non-profit, nationally syndicated radio broadcast/podcast, multimedia and events production company based in Boulder, Colorado. The eTown radio broadcast can be heard on National Public Radio, community radio stations, and commercial radio. The program has a variety show format that features live musical performances and interviews with musicians, authors, and other public figures.
  eTown is recorded in front of a live audience at eTown Hall, eTown's solar-powered theater in Boulder, CO, which also serves as a social and environmental hub for community events. eTown also records eTown on the Road tapings in different cities across the country. The program is heard weekly on 300+ radio stations and podcast across the U.S. and around the world.
context_section_description: eTown was founded in 1991 by host and co-executive producer Nick Forster, a career musician (best known for his work in the progressive bluegrass band Hot Rize) and his wife, Helen Forster, a professional actress/vocalist/voiceover artist who serves as co-host and executive producer of the show. eTown presents a wide range of roots music, conversation and examples of environmental and community activism to listeners around the world.
  eTown host Nick Forster's involvement in music began as a teen playing guitar in various amateur folk and folk-rock bands in upstate New York. A job offer as a luthier (guitar repairman) led him to Colorado in 1975, where he met future bandmates Charles Sawtelle, Pete Wernick and Tim O'Brien. In 1978 they formed the bluegrass group: Hot Rize. In Hot Rize, Nick played the bass and guitar, provided vocals and acted as the group's M.C. The band released ten albums, toured worldwide and appeared on radio and television programs, including Austin City Limits, The Grand Ole Opry and A Prairie Home Companion. Hot Rize earned both a Grammy nomination and the International Bluegrass Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award before retiring in the spring of 1990. Nick teamed up with Tim O’Brien and Jerry Douglas to form a new group just after Hot Rize retired. In 1990, Nick accompanied Sam Bush, John Cowan, and Laurie Lewis on an extensive US State Department tour of Eastern Europe and Turkey. During the tour, he was struck by music's ability to bring people from diverse backgrounds together, including former Communist Party bosses, new democratic leaders, school teachers, business executives, dissident poets and everyday citizens. He was also astounded by the region's noticeable environmental degradation due to lack of community control. Nick imagined there had to be a way to link the power of music with the sharing of information about and solutions to the environmental and social challenges facing the planet, inspiring people to work together to make a positive difference. On the flight home, he came up with the idea of a radio program that would channel the energy and spirit of live-performance audiences into a dialogue about global issues. Returning home from that U.S. State Department tour, Nick shared the idea of the radio show with Helen, who agreed to help him. The two of them launched the program ‘eTown’ on Earth Day in 1991.
  eTown’s co-host Helen Forster began her artistic career as a child studying and performing theater and music in Minneapolis. She attended the University of Minnesota, where a chance enrollment in one of its first environmental studies courses made a huge impact on her, one that would establish an environmental awareness within her that would eventually guide her involvement in eTown. After college, Helen moved to Telluride, Colorado, where she joined two theater companies: SRO, an improvisational comedy troupe loosely modeled on Second City Chicago, and Plunge Players, a formal theater company led by L.A. director Paul Fagan. During this period, in addition to her role as a professional theater actress and as a writer/performer in SRO, she also performed in multiple radio theater productions, co-authored three children's musicals and honed her skills musically as a professional vocalist. Additionally, Helen developed broad production experience as producer and director of numerous stage productions and live "on-the-air" radio theater pieces. For several years, she also owned and produced the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, an annual music festival with international acclaim. (It was behind the stage during that festival in the late 1980s that Nick and Helen first met, eventually marrying in 1991.) Outside of her current day role in eTown, Helen has performed as a vocalist on Prairie Home Companion and in concerts around the country. She is also a nationally established voice-over talent.
caption: Nick and Helen Forster, co-founders of eTown.
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