WHAT IS RADIO FREE FERNIE?

Radio Free Fernie is a streaming internet radio station that plays only rock cover songs.

We broadcast at a bit rate of 128 to give you the best possible listening experience under current broadband conditions.

WHY COVER SONGS?

I love cover songs. and you probably have some interest as well or you would not have made it this far.

I am not a musician and the concept of writing a song is beyond me.

However, by listening to cover songs which are after all just different version of the same song I feel I get a non musicians glimpse into the song writing and interpretation process.

Because you hear the song translated in two different ways, I appreciate the musical skill of song writing better than I did before.

Songs, in a given, possible original incarnation, come to have strong meaning to their listeners and for an artist to take a song that is so ingrained in our musical consciousness and give it a fresh slant is a musical talent I really enjoy and appreciate.

COVER SONG SELECTION

A cover songs radio station such as Radio Free Fernie poses many challenges, the most important being which cover songs to play.

Cover songs are not a genre of songs and most radio stations song playlists are based on a genre.

To work around this problem I only play covers from what I would call the middle of the rock genre.

Specifically, there are many hard rock , metal or otherwise extremely loud covers of great rock songs.

To make the station more cohesive and therefore listenable I have excluded the vast majority of these songs.

To give you some idea I have a collection of over 5000 cover songs but only 2500 of them ever make it to air.

One of the main goals of this website is to encourage the listeners to participate in the song selected to be played on Radio Free Fernie.

You can do this by voting on the song that is "now playing" at the top of this page, or of course you can drop us a line at radiofreefernie@gmail.com

Thanks for dropping by. I hope you enjoy the covers.