Some radio stations pick a genre. XRDS.fm picked a genre and a myth. Broadcasting out of Clarksdale, Mississippi, it plays blues and roots music from the town that claims to be the actual location where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil at midnight, in exchange for a guitar style nobody else could play.
Launched by a Nonprofit Built for the Delta
According to American Blues Scene's coverage, XRDS.fm signed on as WXXO on November 19, 2016, becoming Clarksdale's 24-hour blues and roots station. It is owned by Radio @ The Crossroads, a Mississippi nonprofit incorporated in 2011, and broadcasts as a low-power, non-commercial signal on 88.1 FM from downtown Clarksdale, alongside its online stream.
Named for the Crossroads Itself
The station's name is a direct reference to the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, marked today by a three-guitar sculpture and officially recognized by a 1999 Mississippi state resolution as the site of the legendary Devil's Crossroads. That is where Robert Johnson, born and raised in the Delta and later recognized as one of Delta blues' most important innovators, is said to have met a stranger at midnight who retuned his guitar and handed back a sound no one in the region had heard before. Clarksdale has built its entire cultural identity around that legend, and XRDS.fm broadcasts from the middle of it.
Programming Rooted in the Region's Own Sound
The station's playlist draws specifically from Mississippi Delta and Hill Country blues traditions, spanning classic, Chicago, electric, acoustic, and modern blues alongside R&B and Americana. That range matters in a genre where the Delta style, raw slide guitar and stark vocal delivery, differs meaningfully from the droning, hypnotic rhythms of Hill Country blues found further north in the state, and a Clarksdale station is positioned to cover both traditions with local credibility neither a national blues channel nor a station outside Mississippi could easily claim.
Broadcasting Next to Ground Zero
Clarksdale's blues tourism economy runs through venues like the Ground Zero Blues Club, co-owned by Morgan Freeman and housed in a former cotton-grading warehouse next to the Delta Blues Museum. XRDS.fm operates inside that same ecosystem, giving visitors chasing the crossroads myth and locals who grew up on the music a live, constantly running soundtrack for a town that has turned its blues history into both an identity and an industry.
Tune in to XRDS.fm on Radio Shuffle for Delta and Hill Country blues broadcasting from the Mississippi crossroads where the legend started.