In producing "American Soundcheck," a series of radio programs exploring the music of assorted U.S. cities with an eye toward historical context, Tripp Clarke immediately ruled out a number of overdone points on the map.

"I can list five or six cities that I have no interest in at all," says Clarke, who hosts the "Monday Evening Mix" on WYEP, "because they've already been done ad nauseum. You can find a million documentaries on Memphis or Nashville. And I'm convinced there are interesting stories to be told on cities that may be flying below the radar."

Take Pittsburgh, for instance. It's one of the cities Clarke's done, in addition to Cincinnati, Fort Worth and Charlotte, N.C.

As Clarke, who lives in Aspinwall, explains, "Fort Worth is, generally speaking, seen as the poor country cousin of Dallas. A lot of artists from Forth Worth, their management says to tell them you're from Dallas. Don't tell them you're from Fort Worth. Austin would be the most likely. Houston and Dallas are just enormous pools of talent, but Willie Nelson worked the Fort Worth honky-tonks for years and Roger Miller was born there."

He doesn't just look at the music. He also looks at the overall history of the city. He talks about Charlotte, for instance, as one of America's premiere textile towns, while also touching on boll weevils, a gold rush and NASCAR.

"It digs pretty deep," he says.

He's also done his best to interview notable local figures. In Charlotte, for instance, he talks to Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane and Mitch Easter of Let's Active.

In dealing with what's going on today in each city, he's chosen to focus on artists that would fit right in on a station like WYEP. His Pittsburgh show, for instance, features music from Good Brother Earl, Ernie Hawkins, Sodajerk and the Hi-Frequencies.

"Even a town like Charlotte," he says, "which sort of flies below the radar, has a lot to contribute. Not just as far as what it contributes historically to music but on a contemporary level, you find maybe not quite as many but you certainly find as talented artists at that level. When I did Charlotte, I literally listened to over 120 local bands. I was lucky. There happened to be a guy named Andrew Webster who put together this enormous compilation just within the last couple of years of local bands, and there are eight CDs amounting to about 120 bands, and I picked three."

His first four shows will be making their broadcast premiere Monday night from 8 to midnight on WYEP. After testing the waters, the next stage for Clarke will be finding the funding to take it national.

"Part of this," he says, "is that I have to interest some foundations, some arts agencies, either on a local or national level. I need someone who has the kind of money they like to invest in these types of projects to really believe in the project and really take it under their wing."

And if that should happen, he says, it would also be good for the city.

"If you look at what shows like 'World Cafe' or 'American Routes' or 'Beale Street Caravan' has done for those cities where they're produced, it's a nice little notch on the marketing kit for what the city can do for people. I would love to think that at some point this would be as popular as that.

"Obviously, I have pie-in-the-sky aspirations, but I think it's just one more thing that we can say we do. Like at WQED, we used to be able to say we produced 'National Geographic' and 'Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego' and Fred Rogers. We can't say that anymore."