Category: Trains

art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Entertainment, Environment, Family, Food, History, Hugs, Music, outdoors, Philanthropy, Sustainability, Trains, UTC, women

Rising Rock Media Podcast

By Megan Cooper

Megan Cooper hosts an episode of Rising Rock Media Podcast where listeners can get a glance at life in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She speaks with several very different people from interviews she hosted throughout the semester.

Meet The Storyteller

Megan Cooper is a senior communication student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, UTC, focusing on being an audio technician and editor. Megan has experience using Adobe programs to create audio content for broadcasting. Megan is a show host, promotions director, and station manager at UTC’s student-run radio station, the Perch. She is also currently working as a promotions tech at Summit Media Group in Knoxville, TN. This is Megan’s second semester in Rising Rock as an audio technician where she uses nothing but tone of voice to share people’s stories, and she built the Rising Rock radio showcase for 88.1 WUTC. When she isn’t working she is reading fantasy books and hunting down the next CD on her list. Cooper’s passion lies in music, books, radio, and using stories to bring people together. If you have a story you want to tell or want to contact Megan you can reach her at megancooper820@gmail.com. 

Animals, Anxiety, art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Entertainment, Environment, Family, Folklore, Healing, Health, History, Hugs, Love, Music, outdoors, Sports, teachers, Trains

Rising Rock Radio Showcase
Graphic by Kylee Boone

Rising Rock is excited to showcase some of our best audio stories in a continued partnership with Scenic Roots.

Nature vs Nurture

Taryn Brooks sits with Taylor Reed, a member and volunteer of Forest Families of Chattanooga. Reed, along with her daughter, has grown alongside the organization and seen the benefits of nature firsthand.
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Chattanooga, community, donate, Entertainment, Family, History, Trains, Uncategorized

Tennessee Tracks

Written by L’Nyah Mattress

Jason Fields, a trainman and railroad historian for the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, talks about his love for trains and how he’s living out his childhood dreams.

Racing through the pitch black of the tunnel, dense clouds of steam funnel out the chimney and coal residue fills passengers’ airways as the whistle blares; here comes Southern Railway 4501 charging down the track. The massive steam locomotive is one of many engines in the care of the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (TVRM).

Jason Fields, a qualified trainman for the TVRM, works to share his lifelong passion for trains and preserve train history in Chattanooga and for anyone who passes through. His position entails working in passenger train service as a historian who gives train tours—from sharing interesting facts to occasionally aiding engineers, he has experienced it all.

“I’ve been going there even before I was in Rail Camp when I was 13, so any chance I could’ve gotten to go out and get involved there, I took it,” said Fields.

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art, Chattanooga, History, Music, Photography, Trains, Uncategorized, UTC

A Tin Type of Man

Written by Taryn Brooks

Bill Steber, a Mississippi Blues photographer and one of the Hoodoo Men musicians, speaks about the value in analog art forms and revisiting the past through historical and modern perspectives.

The backdoor of a well-loved white van swings open with a squeak, revealing a fully functional darkroom that transforms tin plates into photographs. Upon closer look a collection of instruments inhabits the corners, mirroring how the two devotions appear in the life of photojournalist and musician Bill Steber. 

Steber describes his job title as a “chief cook and bottle washer at preserving the old weird America,” a culinary term meaning his responsibilities in his field rank from high to low and everywhere in between, illustrating the journey his professional career has taken. 

Along with strumming to an array of instruments and joining friend Sam Baker in the HooDoo men, Steber also spent 15 years as a photojournalist for the Tennessean and embarked on a documentary journey through the Mississippi’s Blues Trail. Photography and music have been life-long passions of Steber’s, both of which were born out of a love for illustrating modern times through a historical lens.

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