Let’s start at the beginning.
WNUR is Northwestern University’s radio station. To get to it, you have to first enter Louis Hall, probably fighting your way past an enormous amount of camera equipment, past a flight of stairs, and then turn left.
[nat sound]
At any given point, day or night, weekday or not, there will be a lot going on. Sometimes it’s the sports club calling a baseball game, or the weekly folk show, or even the news. The walls are plastered with ads for live shows, podcasts, and a painting of a bird saying a motivational quote.
And in the OACR itself, where the magic happens, you might be lucky enough to hear a variation on this:
This is Hector Morales, aka DJ H, 2o and you’re listening to w n u r, 89.3 f m
you’re listening to WNUR, 89.3 FM in HD one Evanston, Chicago. This is DJ Lee.
This is WNUR News…
You’re listening to WNUR 89.3 FM and HC one, Evanston, Chicago. I’m DJ Cal,
and I’m DJ Jha, and welcome back to the Kalia rock show Power
and welcome back to the Kalia rock show Power Hour.
it’s Both kinds, and I’m here with James Allen Finley, but you can call me Al. We’re friends, right?
It’s often said that journalists write the first draft of history — but live radio is the first draft of everything. And WNUR, a student-run radio station, is living proof.
You’re listening to college radio. Sorry!
And WNUR isn’t just any old student run station. It’s been broadcasting since 1950, and it has a reputation for the unusual.
RL: The thing I like the most about it, you know, from a personal standpoint, is we get to play whatever the heck we want…here, the world is my oyster..
The station used to go by the title “Chicago’s sound Experiment.” In fact, one of the DJs told me an anecdote about someone getting told off for playing John Mayer on air — apparently he was too mainstream.
JF: WNUR doesn’t care. They really do whatever you want. If anything, they would rather you be way out on a limb than somewhere, like in the trunk.
JF: it’s like you’re almost being more of a rebel by playing something really popular here.
And boy, do we get experimental. WNUR’s airwaves are shared by a mind-boggling number of clubs, from live sports broadcasting on WNUR Sports, to radio news at WNUR News, to Jazz, Rock, Streetbeat, Folk, Blues and Western music shows. And at any given moment, you can tune in and hear any of those.
JF: whereas here on WNUR, it might be a baseball broadcast, it might, it could be anything. When you turn it on, you know, if the students are here, who knows what it’s going to be overnight, it’s, you know, fairly Thumpy.
That was community DJ James Allen Finley, who you heard in the introduction. A “community DJ” is usually an Evanston or Chicago resident that has a weekly show on WNUR. They’re different from student DJs, who are usually undergraduate and graduate students, like Lee MacKethan and Hector Morales, who started as a graduate student DJ and is now a community DJ.
Lee: I learned a lot about how to find cool music because I had to. And like, I feel like it’s really up to my like, music exploration game
HM: What I enjoy about being a DJ is that I get to create a playlist, which means listening to at least two hours of music. For every show, I play music, so I know how hard it is to create music and present it in a way that has meaning, power and continuity. Since the show focuses on playing local music artists or non commercial music, I get to learn about new music artists all the time.
Ron Lewis is another community DJ.
Ron Lewis: I’ve been doing I’ve been doing it for about 25 years. I’ve been involved that one with the folks show, which is on Sundays from 10 until noon.
James Allen Finley hosts a show called Both Kinds, a country and western fusion named after a moment from The Blues Brothers.
Both kinds is from phrase in the Blues Brothers movie they go into this, this restaurant, and they they’re going to pretend to be the band, and they’re and they’re like, What kind of music do you have here? I think John Belushi asks, and the waitress says, Well, we have both kinds of music, country and western.
[Jon Belushi quote]
He’s also a loyal listener of WNUR’s weekend programming.
I’m listening all day long, through through dinner with fish, which starts at six, I think goes to seven. So I pretty much listen on Sundays and Ron’s show on Saturday morning, breakfast, the bagels.
WNUR broadcasts locally to Evanston and Chicago, and even as far as Wisconsin and Michigan, but Finley has listeners from all over the US.
I love that aspect of theoretically, anyone can listen. And one of my somewhat regular listeners now this someone I met while we were traveling in the spring, and unfortunately, it was only like, the last day or the day before, like that, we discovered we both love music so much, and then it’s like, Oh, you do a radio show. So yeah. So he. Like, listens from, you know, Utah or Colorado or wherever he lives.
Lou Berkman is another community DJ that started as a graduate student and longtime listener.
LB: I’ve been a listener of WNUR for a very long time. And WNUR has been like, just a great resource for hearing new music and stuff for years.
LB: So about 12 years ago, I picked up a slot. It was on Sunday nights for 90 minutes. It was the hardest thing I ever did. It seemed like 90 minutes was, like, endless.
Students sometimes joke that no one listens to WNUR, but community DJs, especially ones with longtime shows, have loyal listeners.
LB: Every once in a while I would get a call from somebody like who I had never heard from before. And that’s always really gratifying, because it’s like you really don’t have any idea who’s listening on it, on a on a radio station like this, because it’s…Yeah, yeah. You know, it doesn’t seem like it has a big audience, but there’s, there’s people in the community who listen on a regular basis, who’ve been listening for, you know, their whole lives, some of them are old. And there are people who listen on the internet, yeah. So, I mean, I’ll get calls from people, you know, from other parts of the country.
There’s also communication between community and student DJs alike; WNUR’s station is old and upkeep can get difficult, so people get to know one another and their shows, whether that be a political talk show or an underground hip hop session.
RL: as a result of that, you know, I’m become friends with the people that do the show “This is Hell,” which comes on Saturday morning, which is a very long running show, and large listener base. Is not just in the Chicago area, but worldwide. And so I’ve got to know those guys very well. And, and I helped the 6am show on Saturdays, and sometimes come in early to start their show. And, and just, you know, so through slack, we’ve kind of gotten to know, know, kind of everybody.
Radio is about communication; talking to people, getting to know them, and making connections. Almost everyone I interviewed for this story asked me about myself too.
And that connection, that human touch, is part of why people still love radio, even in the age of streaming when you can get whatever you want at the press of a button.
RL: Nowadays, you know, with the Spotify and the Apple Musics of the world and and the TikToks and the Instagrams. There’s less moderated music. It’s more, you know, just make your own playlist than the way you go. So it’s nice, I think, to share some stories.
RL: It’s not just listen to the music. It’s the extra layer of fabric, interesting back stories that you can add to the listener to get them in, you know, interested in the music.
But streaming services, and on-demand podcasting, as well as the disruption of the pandemic, have eroded support for the station in recent years.
RL: I think over the years, there’s, it’s harder to get people interested. You know, we used to have much larger base of DJs, I think.
Students tend to cycle in and out of the station quickly, spending at most three years with shows on air; on the other hand, community DJs can have their shows for decades. So getting things moving, like larger repairs and remodels, can get difficult.
LB: You know, all of the, all of student station managers are very, you know, earnest about this job. I think it’s a very hard job for the students to do. I don’t, can I say this? I don’t think, I don’t think the, I don’t think Northwestern gives enough support to the student managers, and I think that’s a bit of an issue. So, but, you know, I’ve encountered really great people here, the students here, who are the are the exec board, are generally, you know, very well intentioned.
So why keep it going? One answer might be the legacy of community DJing. WNUR still has an enormous library of CDs and vinyls, with a huge breadth of genres and artists. Finley thinks that both sides of the station, student and community, have a lot to learn from one another.
JF: I grew up, you know, purposely trying to listen to old time radio shows and doing things, you know, purposely trying to ingest what had come before me. Because what comes before you, you know, affects like how things develop, and wanting to see how it developed.
JF: I don’t really understand people not being more interested in the roots, which is really what, you know, we call it the roots block here on Sundays, and kind of knowing where everything comes from, and how, the hell, how this tree got here.
Radio used to be, and sometimes still is, a connective tissue that spans generations.
JF: I grew up like, you know, my parents would listen to the Grand Ole Opry every weekend, like every Friday and Saturday night, and you can, I mean, even still, you can get Nashville, like, 650 it’s the only station I have on my am dial marked so, like, I still occasionally tune in the Grand Ole Opry. I could listen online. I never do. It would be clear — it’s not as magical to me.
A lot has changed around the station over the years, but having your own radio show is still a weird and mysterious experience. It’s still sitting in a small dark room, saying your thoughts into the microphone, knowing they’re being broadcast across entire states, and asking if anyone is out there.
JF: There used to be some fascinating station in northern Indiana that seemed to have, like, no format that that the DJ just wanted to please everybody. And so you’d be hearing a big band song, and then suddenly they’re playing like Nirvana, and you’re just like, God. I mean, I it was so it was so interesting, and it was like a small town, and it seemed like the only radio station. They’re, like, trying to please everybody. I loved it.
In radio journalism, we often talk about a “driveway moment” it’s when what you’re hearing is so compelling, so interesting, that you just sit in your driveway, unable to move, waiting to hear the next thing, knowing you’ll remember it forever.
LB: I used to listen to talk radio as a kid, and there was a lot of talk radio where people would talk about UFOs and stuff that. Kind of crazy stuff. Again, I, you know, I’m so old. I’m, I mean, I remember hearing the Beatles before they were famous and stuff like that. So those kind I mean, that’s my childhood. That’s so long ago. But, I mean, yeah, to be able to actually be in at the beginning of, like, you know, a radio DJ going, this is somebody new, you know, and finding out later that, you know, they’re actually famous, you know, hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time, hearing the Beatles, hearing whoever, yeah, and then, and then realizing that over time, hey, this is, like, really happening for these people. That’s that’s a favorite memory.
LB: I remember there were a couple singles The Beatles had that are not famous. They were cover versions. One was Till There Was You and My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. Wow, yeah. I mean, those are songs that are so old and so forgotten that nobody even remembers that they did them.
[Me, on tape]: But you heard them.
I heard them.
There are still student-run and community radio stations all over the country. All these signals, crossing over one another. Saying, I hear you.
JF: it’s funny, you can try to give away tickets, and no one will call, and you’re like, God, is anyone listening? And then you can say something really kind of stupid, you know, because you misspeak. And then people, people, like, three people would be like, No, do you realize it’s and so it’s like, yeah, people are out there.
JF: I mean, for me, radio was magic, because, you know, you that’s all you had,
WNUR, like the actual station itself, is kind of falling apart – if the phone isn’t broken, the turntable starts acting up. The speakers work about half the time, and there are definitely a few doors no one has the keys to anymore. But people keep coming back.
LB: It’s a means of expression, you know? It’s a way to try and communicate your interest to other people. Yeah, so that’s, that’s the most fun about that’s what brings me back.
[me on tape: What’s your rating of college radio?]
LM: 10 out of 10
HM: I feel it is an honor and a privilege to be able to DJ at WNUR and share my music with folks that tune in and support the station.
KR: It’s been a wonderful evening of music, of trials, of tribulations, but our time has come to a close. We’ll be back in a couple weeks, same bat time, same bat channel. Until then. Thanks for hanging out with us.
And I think that pretty much says it all.
Thank you to all the students and community DJs that spoke with me for this story. And thank you, for listening.
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison.
