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This week on the Earth Eclectic Radio Hour, host Laura Dedelow presents a “Precipitous Precipitation” — an episode born not from a concept but from a night: the evening before recording, she and her husband Jeff found themselves navigating flooded Indianapolis underpasses in a downpour, racing south to beat the water home to Bloomington. From that experience she draws both of the truths this series holds in tension: summer rain as a symptom of climate disruption, increasingly unpredictable and dangerous; and summer rain as a gift to the living world, watering vegetation, replenishing aquifers, offering protection against wildfire and drought.

Woven underneath Laura’s narration throughout the hour is a field recording — “Rain Tapers Off” by Bart Everson (Editor B), recorded at Lake Monroe in Indiana — giving the episode the sound of actual weather as its connective tissue. The music opens with Bears in Trees, a London indie-alternative act, with “Precipitation” (2022), then moves to S.G. Goodman of Murray, Kentucky, with “Heat Lightning” from her album Planting by the Signs (2025).

The episode then descends into deep American roots: Maria Muldaur with “It Feels Like Rain (I’m a Woman)” from her retrospective I’m a Woman: 30 Years Of (Rhino Special Products, 2004); Mahalia Jackson — born in New Orleans — with “Didn’t It Rain”; and Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans, with “It’s Raining.” Three women, three generations, three registers of devotion to the same falling water. Laura follows with Illusion Fields featuring R. Moose Jackson — whom she names as a fellow poet in New Orleans — with “Thunder Is Everywhere” from Dirge for the Deluge (2007), and Kadhja Bonet with “Remember the Rain” (2015).

The second half of the episode widens the geography and deepens the meteorology. 7 Walkers — the New Orleans-rooted band featuring Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann and bassist George Porter Jr. — offer the sprawling “Louisiana Rain.” Danny Schmidt of Austin contributes the vivid “Midsummer Hail Storm” (single, 2021). Barry Jones of Harrisonville, Missouri plays “Virga” from Dawn Song (2020) — virga being the atmospheric term for precipitation that evaporates before it ever reaches the ground, rain that exists only as a gesture, a promise the sky makes and then quietly withdraws. Rachel Curtin (UK) offers “Rain” from River (2023); and David Gans of Palo Alto closes the hour with his version of “Box of Rain” from Drop the Bone (2018), returning a beloved song to its elemental source.

PS: This was the summer edition; Laura promises to revisit this theme in winter.

Photo: by Laura Chamberlain Dedelow, depicting the harrowing automobile ride described in the opening paragraph