Handshake Radio

Handshake Radio archives original lyrics by Jake Weld and broadcasts AI field demos to give the songbook acoustic animation.

Ranging in landscape, voice, and genre, the project explores songwriting as craft, witness, and invitation through Americana, blues, folk-punk, bluegrass, country, and beyond. The original three pieces, released in 2026, are a triptych of roots, rambling, reckoning, and returns.

These lyrics and field demos are offered as the start of a conversation – the first half of a handshake.

Handshake Radio’s signal broadcasts on all major streaming platforms.

What Is
Handshake Radio?

You've tuned in – so it's time for some station identification.

Handshake Radio's first three albums are a human-authored lyric triptych about attention, authenticity, inheritance, and what it means to be heard – delivered through intentionally provisional AI "field demos" that test what we think authenticity and authorship means in the first place.

How to listen:

Handshake Radio is streaming (for free) on all major platforms. Links are below.

Start anywhere.

Skip anything that isn’t your weather.

These songs are built to meet you at the surface: story, image, voice, place, hook.

But if something tugs, come back. The second listen is part of the handshake.

The songs are not presented as finished recordings. They are field demos: acoustic animations of a human-written songbook, offered as signal, sketch, and invitation. Listen once for the song. Come back if a line catches.

The Deeper Frame

The songs are meant to work first as songs, then as albums, then as a triptych.

But the larger project also asks where authenticity and authorship live when lyrics, arrangement notes, photographs, and generative tools all become part of the same artistic process.

There is no required way through. The signal is built to reward wandering.

The deeper frame is not required for entry – but it is there for anyone who wants the architecture.

If you would like to go deeper, the Artistic Method Statement is available by clicking here.

Handshake Radio's DJ:

Handshake Radio is an artistic exploration by Jake Weld.

Neither a working artist nor a music industry insider, Jake is a lover of language and music.

Each album cover photograph was taken by Jake: The New River as seen from Jake's front porch in Todd, NC, in 1999, the All American Man pictograph in Canyonlands, UT, and his former cabin in northern California, which was ultimately consumed by the Carr Fire in 2018.

The images, like the songs, track and trace a life of both lived experience and observation, and fluidly move between truth, Truth, and TRUTH.

Lyrics & Field Demo Notes

The triptych’s complete lyrics, including the field-demo notes used to guide each rendering, are available here.

These notes are part production direction, part arrangement score, and part record of how the songs were aimed. Careful listeners will hear where the renderings hit their marks – and where they sometimes still miss.

Final song selections were made from multiple rendering iterations shaped by engineered prompts. Once a version was selected for placement on an album, no post-production work was done.

Ready to reach back?

Picking up the signal?

Send a note, share a thought, or just say hello.

All American Man

© 2026 Handshake Radio

Original lyrics and photography by Jake Weld. AI-rendered field demos.

Distributed by Considered Practice

All rights reserved

Tune in to
Handshake Radio:

Thirty Years Gone

This Can't Keep

"Alexa, play music by Handshake Radio"