The evidence was in my hands in the form of a screwdriver. I was five years old and I wanted to know how the music came out of that box. It was the first time I got personally involved in radio.
Over the years my obsession with radio has become a full-blown love affair. I’ve sat alone in different studios, sometimes in the middle of the night, speaking into a microphone to nobody, yet everybody.
Over the years I’ve hosted my radio show, Drinks with Tony, on a few different stations. It’s my baby, but for the last year it hasn’t had a home. Then I received a phone call in March from John Hell (his DJ moniker), a longtime friend and fellow radio host from my college radio days at KFJC at Foothill Junior College. John let me know about a new station, Radio Valencia, and explained that the studio would be located in a warehouse in the Mission District. He also invited me to the station’s orientation meeting.
After John’s phone call, the guilt of putting off finding a home for Drinks with Tony lifts. I can feed the baby again.
Three months after I hear from John, I push open a huge medieval door that leads to a vast warehouse space. One room houses a stage for bands, and I walk past it to sit down with the Radio Valencia staff for a Tuesday night meeting.
There’s a buzz of enthusiasm around the room. This group is handpicked from the arts community, and most volunteers are veterans from stations such as Pirate Cat Radio, San Francisco Liberation Radio, KFJC, and others. There’s a high school teacher, and the owner of a theater near Union Square. I see many familiar faces. It’s a good group of people, and I immediately feel at home here.
John presides over the gathering to give us the full details on the station. Format? There is no format except that we’re a community. Staff meetings? Other than this orientation, there will be no mandatory meetings. DJs are welcome to participate in planning events, but it isn’t a requirement. I sigh in relief. The other college, Internet, and pirate radio stations I’ve volunteered at have required monthly meetings, station dues, and extra time for mandatory volunteering – which adds up when you take into consideration it takes 10 hours a week just to prep for my show.
I’m impressed with the passion and commitment from the people in the room. They know low-powered, community-based radio doesn’t need to be a thing of the past.
John passes around a sheet of paper. He wants everyone to pick their top three DJ shifts so he can schedule the 30 or so volunteers who are interested in joining the station. “The shifts can’t all be 6–8 p.m.,” John adds, and everyone laughs.
Those 6–8 p.m. (or occasionally 7–10 p.m.) shifts are coveted at every station I’ve worked at, and the DJs who have them tend not to move from their time slots. Working those hours means you can keep your day job without interruption and still have time to go out at night.
I write down Thursday, 4–6 p.m. and 6–8 p.m., and Wednesday, 6–8 p.m. There’s a method to my choices, which are centered around the Wednesdays my favorite bartender works at the nearby 3300 Club and Thursday bingo games at the Knockout.
A few days after the meeting, I find out Drinks with Tony will air on Wednesday nights, 6–8 p.m.
In the weeks after the orientation, there are a couple of delays before Radio Valencia’s equipment is rigged up and ready to go. The station finally goes live on August 11, streaming from www.RadioValencia.fm. There’s a rumor that someone will be setting up a transmitter to broadcast Radio Valencia over the FM band too, on 87.7FM.
I walk into the studio on August 18 about 10 minutes before my first show while the DJ before me does one last microphone break and cleans up his vinyl. The room is small – about 12 feet long and 5 feet wide – and it houses a vintage, professional tape player and a box full of cassette tapes among other equipment. I’ll never use the player since I stick to CDs and vinyl, but the tape player is a machine of beauty.
A portion of the two hours that Drinks with Tony is on the air is usually dedicated to interviewing guests, mainly novelists and writers. I prepare the music I play along a theme. A couple years ago, I had mystery writer Cara Black with me. Her books are based in the different neighborhoods of Paris, so we had a lot of fun playing French music as interludes. There are no guests for tonight’s show. I want a couple of weeks alone to get used to the new studio.
I take my shoes off and sit in the comfortable desk chair in front of the microphone, but I hesitate to get too relaxed. The mixing board has 16 channels and handles everything going over the air, including the CD decks, turntables, and microphones. It doesn’t have a cue setting, so I can’t listen to one track while another is playing live without it going out over the air. I end up playing songs I didn’t want to play. On my first station break, I talk into the wrong microphone, and to calm myself down I crack open a couple of beers.
By the second hour of the show, I spend the time in between tracks telling listeners that I’ve been single for the longest run in 14 years, going on to admit how odd it is to date women at my age. I confess more on the air than I would in a Facebook update to my friends.
Sitting alone in a room full of DJ gear and microphones can be an odd feeling when you're first starting out. At Radio Valencia I’m in my zone. My groove is back. I can talk about the most personal, embarrassing subjects to an anonymous audience, things that I get a little uncomfortable even telling my therapist about. The self-censor goes away here.
Does this lack of filter get me in trouble? It always has. But part of me believes only a few people are actually listening – if I really knew the numbers I’d either be highly disappointed or have constant panic attacks.
Two weeks later I’m hosting my third show. I’ve booked my first interview for this one, and my friend Matt Holdaway comes in to talk about his new band, Matt Holdaway’s Army. He gives me his CD to play a couple of tracks from and I’m surprised at how great the band sounds. They’re very similar in aesthetic to Joe Frank, who tells stories over jazzy improv.
I’m still getting used to the equipment, making more mistakes, broadcasting moments of dead air, and pressing the wrong CD player after announcing a different song to the audience. I also say that we’re on Pirate Cat Radio instead of Radio Valencia, a force of habit since I had a show on Pirate Cat for years. Add to all this the concentration it takes to interview someone, and the show becomes a juggling act. I have to listen to what Matt is saying and stay engaged with eye contact, while also checking the time on the computer, selecting the next song, making sure the mixer levels aren’t hitting red as we speak, and having the mixer ready to go for our next segment.
I just confess to my screwups as they happen, though, and hope nobody and everybody listening gets a laugh out of them. Luckily my guest gets a kick out of the looseness of the show.
That’s the beauty of a radio station that runs the old way, with no sleek producer in another room. My show leaves just one human responsible for what goes out across the airwaves.
As I wrap up Drinks with Tony for the night and think about the future of the show, I realize I’m still slightly nervous to be on the air. But it’s a good nervous. It’s like taking a drug, or having a little too much coffee in your system.
The second the studio monitors go quiet, and I announce the show and my guests, and I press play for the Drinks with Tony theme song, there’s no going back. The show is being broadcast, and later the same night it will be forever archived as a podcast.
It’s best not to think too much about that and just have fun, though. After all, it’s only radio.
Radio Valencia, currently streaming on RadioValencia.fm, doesn’t make money. In fact, DJs pay $40 a month in station dues to have a weekly two-hour show. It’s a communal effort to bring a true voice to a station. If you’d like to join the staff, contact mrjohnhell@gmail.com. For more information about the station in general, visit RadioValencia.fm.
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lmm
Sounds like fun. Thanks for the article!
Weebeasty
I really enjoyed this. I really love that Valencia is such a community effort type thing. Excellent.
Kristen P
I was just about to ask if there was any affiliation with the former restaurant called Radio Valencia, then I realized I had a machine in front of me that could probably answer :) from http://bit.ly/9El6yz "Named by Chicken John, Radio Valencia will probably evoke memories for many San Franciscans of the former restaurant of the same name (known for its well-crafted playlists of music) that met its unfortunate demise after several fire engines crashed into its corner storefront on Valencia and 23rd Streets. Although Chicken John says that the radio station is not meant to be an homage to the old Radio Valencia, it will no doubt appeal to some of the same folks who frequented the place back in the 1990s."
Run Your Mouth