Last night, Subcarrier’s series finale aired on Alabama Public Television. The show’s 9th season featured Indiana act Cloakroom, LA-based Goon, and Birmingham artist Cash Langdon as the finale.

Singer-songwriter and musician Cash Langdon has been penning songs about his home state since returning to Birmingham in 2021.

“The album mostly has to do with my reframing of my own life in Alabama—being so highly critical of it when I moved away, and feeling much more settled and comfortable now,” Langdon told American Pancake about the release of his 2022 album “Sinister Feeling.”

For his follow up album “Dogs,” Langdon brought along returning drummer Reagan Bruce as well as longtime friend and Subcarrier co-creator Matt Whitson to form the backing band Meadow Dust.

“I’ve been playing bass in [Cash’s] band for three years, and the band has been good for all three years,” Whitson says. “We just now decided to film [the show] because…who else in town is doing what he’s doing?”

Subcarrier is a half-hour show filmed and recorded at Saturn, a music venue in Birmingham, featuring live performances and interviews with local, national and global artists since 2016.

“We were hoping to keep the same, sort of, DIY feel of We Have Signal,” Whitson says. “We just wanted to elevate everything on a technical level.”

Subcarrier is the spiritual successor to We have Signal, a DIY music series that aired from 2008 to 2015 when the world-famous venue, BottleTree, closed.

Whitson has produced, directed or audio engineered for episodes of both series for 18 years. The finale is the first time someone behind the show has appeared in an episode.

“It’s touching that [Cash was] the last episode, but I also really wish that it wasn’t the last episode,” Whitson says.

Last month, APT cut 15% of employees after 2.8 million in federal funding cuts. Local arts and culture programming, like Subcarrier and Monograph, have taken the biggest hit across the country.

“Making Subcarrier was not always fun, it’s a job. But the thing that always made it feel worth doing was knowing that we’re building this archive,” Whitson says. “Everything we do, we’re doing because it’s something that should exist in the world.”

Watch Cash Langdon live at Saturn when it re-airs Saturday, October 18 at 11:30 p.m. on APT or the PBS app.

• View dates for Cash Langdon’s 2025 tour with Meadow Dust.
• Watch the Subcarrier archive here.
• Meet the team behind Subcarrier.