Milwaukee, I love you

I’m a sentimental man. An enormous emotions rambler. And also you inspired me to be on the air for eight years. Thanks, Milwaukee. 

This Friday can be my final day on air at 88Nine Radio Milwaukee earlier than I transfer to Nashville and grow to be the assistant program director (APD) and afternoon host at WNXP in Music Metropolis, USA, and earlier than I’m going, I want to give yet one more long-winded, heartfelt goodbye. 

I began at 88Nine in 2013 as an unpaid intern. Earlier than that I’d gone to UW-Madison, the place I obtained levels in Historical past, Political Science, Built-in Liberal Research and Gratuitous Consuming. Principally the one sensible factor I’d completed was be a part of the school radio station, WSUM, the place I used to be Music Director and had a present known as “Hello-Constancy in Low Decision” and a present known as “Tom Waits and Tom Waits Play Tom Waits.” I’d aspired to be a Music Director in actual life, regardless that the Wisconsin Broadcasters Affiliation instructed me that iHeart Radio was going to scale back the place down to 1 place and I would as nicely go into gross sales. However with my fifth 12 months coming to an finish in Madison, I knew I needed to apply for jobs.

I utilized at NPR, WPR and, weirdly, I nearly turned the motive force of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, as a result of I believed it might be a joke. After being roundly rejected at each finish and with commencement approaching, I knew I must transfer again to Milwaukee and transfer again in with my dad and mom. However I had one final shot. A radio station that launched whereas I used to be in school and performed numerous music that I performed on my school radio station had an internship program. I’d by no means had an internship. I labored three jobs to pay for school and the thought of an unpaid internship appeared classist to me, which I nonetheless stand by. I utilized regardless that they stated they didn’t rent children who had already graduated. It was my solely shot. 

I bear in mind getting the decision after I was crossing the street on my strategy to a Latin American historical past class. I used to be listening to Tom Waits’ “On the Nickel.” Tom has simply growled out the road, “The world retains getting greater whenever you get out by yourself.” Bawling and damaged, I walked into the classroom ten minutes early and my cellphone rang. It was Jordan Lee, saying he’d damaged protocol and would take me on as an intern regardless that I’d graduated. 

Unhealthy transfer. I used to be precisely what they feared in hiring a school graduate with no different alternative. On the primary day I instructed Jordan, “I desire a job at 88Nine.” He gave me a crimson sizzling look and stated, “Get in line.” So I did. I used to be employed to work on Thursdays and Fridays from 2-4PM. I began coming in daily at 8AM.

After about six months, I bear in mind being at Romie’s bar method out in Franklin with a good friend and saying, “I have to make one thing the place 88Nine listeners will need to maintain me round.” I had come into this job loving new music and loving telling tales so I needed to tied all that collectively. I got here up with a weekly net article known as “5 Songs We Can’t Cease Listening To.” The thought was to have DJs contribute and to write down a bit myself and publish each week. It turned clear fairly rapidly that the opposite DJs had been busy and it might simply be me. I used to be tremendous with that. I began publishing each week and loving it. The viewers liked it, too. 

Then our Program Director left. After practically a complete 12 months as an unpaid intern, I had put myself in the fitting place on the proper time. I wrote the job description for the job that I had been doing and, after interviewing a number of different candidates and nearly not hiring me, 88Nine took me on full time. We additionally employed a brand new program director who took an curiosity in placing “5 Songs” on the air. 

June 1, 2014 was the primary time that 5 Songs hit the air. I talked for one minute about Hamilton Leithauser’s “Alexandra.” 

“Hamilton Leithauser is a crooner” I stated smokily, like I used to be in a Vegas night time membership with him. “Like Sinatra or Dean Martin and the Rat Pack serenaders of the Nineteen Forties. He bears a black tuxedo within the video for the music. The album’s cowl is a black and white portrait of Hamilton smiling over his shoulder, presumably in entrance of a Vegas crowd. However the crooner persona actually comes ahead from the supply. Like Dino, he’s singing a lover’s lament, however it’s a bit tongue in cheek. He’s struggling, however not an excessive amount of. He’s nonetheless having a good time. On this lament, he’s telling Alexandra, “Hey, I’m ingesting, smoking and carrying on, however on the finish of the night time, I’m desirous about you, babe.” 

It was rather a lot for some individuals. I bear in mind listening to somebody on employees saying “Why is that intern on the air” and another person say, “Effectively, it’s a polarizing section.” Radio just isn’t constructed for a DJ to precise their emotions. However why not? That’s what they do in songs. Music is about eliciting emotions which might be bigger than life. I felt that I ought to replicate that feeling. So I’ve. And, let me say this, I feel {that a} music is among the solely locations the place males are inspired to precise their emotions, and I needed individuals to know that I’m a person with huge emotions too. 

Sometimes, 88Nine would have artists come by and carry out in our house. Within the time between sound verify and occurring stage they’d be sitting round. I had a music to write down about, and I needed to speak to them, so when the band Spanish Gold was right here, sitting round, I requested one of many band members to come back into the studio and inform me a couple of music he couldn’t cease listening to.  It was two birds with one stone, and it was nice perception right into a bands musical style. That began a floodgate. 

I began to interview everybody who got here to Milwaukee. I interviewed Tame Impala, Loss of life Cab For Cutie, Glass Animals, and members of the Milwaukee Bucks. I’d constructed relationships within the music trade and I believed I’d attempt to interview individuals who weren’t coming by Milwaukee. I bear in mind spending nearly a complete day making an attempt to make a sophisticated ISDN line join with My Morning Jacket of their studio in Louisville. After about three hours I requested them one query. Each band members answered and after I stated “Thanks! Have a terrific day!” They stated, “That’s it?” 

Some bands liked doing a one query interview. I bear in mind Portugal. The Man saying, “Thanks for not asking me about being from Alaska for the millionth time.” However I additionally felt like I ought to do extra. The one factor was that I wasn’t nice at speaking to individuals. I’ve all the time had social nervousness and the thought of filling time with an entire stranger, particularly a well-known one, was much more terrifying. Nevertheless, it was good for the job. An enormous driving consider my life is eager to be good at my job. So I stated sure to each alternative that got here up. Each interview it doesn’t matter what. After I was terrified I simply ready extra. After I lastly secured a 10-minute interview with David Byrne after 4 months of persistent asking, I ready 4 pages of questions. I discovered what labored. I threw in jokes. I attempted to fulfill them the place they had been. The important thing to any dialog is listening. 

Then I obtained a name to interview Thom Yorke. He’d simply completed the rating for the film “Susperia” and hadn’t completed a radio interview in years. The document label, Beggars Group, needed somebody who would make him really feel comfy. In order that they requested Rita Houston, the radio legend from WFUV in New York. She needed to do it however had a bit well being drawback on the time and wasn’t positive if she might make it. In order that they needed a backup, and so they known as me. Of all of the individuals in all of the world, they selected me, and it stays to be one of many huge honors of my life.

They flew me to New York, to the well-known Electrical Woman Studio in downtown NYC. Within the interview, since we had been speaking about films, I requested him what can be a film that folks wouldn’t anticipate him to like and he stated, “You understand, I actually love ‘The Hangover.’” And we each laughed so laborious we blew the mics out for a second. In fact, I requested him a couple of music he couldn’t cease listening to and he stated, “This Time Round” by Jessica Pratt. After the interview, I walked out of the room and took a deep breath. Then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I circled and it was Thom Yorke. He’d run out of the studio and he had his cellphone open. “I believed we might take heed to the music collectively.” He stated. So me and Thom Yorke stood collectively in between studios, his hand on my shoulder and we listened to Jessica Pratt’s “This Time Round” by his clogged up cellphone audio system. 

After that it was recreation on. I interviewed RZA, The Nationwide, Phoebe Bridgers and Moby. However I additionally needed to do extra. 

Through the years I had fallen in love with the tales that I’d heard from Milwaukee musicians about Milwaukee’s musical historical past, which is a topic nobody talks about. Individuals inform all types of tales about Nashville, LA and New York’s musical legacy, and it’s not like Milwaukee doesn’t have one. We’re residence of Violent Femmes, Liberace, hell, we invented emo. So “If not us, who?” I thought of telling Milwaukee’s musical historical past. 

One time, shortly after I’d obtained employed, I met up with Andy Nobel at Gas Cafe in Riverwest. Andy is a surly document retailer proprietor who is aware of extra about Milwaukee’s musical historical past than anybody. “So what’s your angle?” he requested me, suspiciously. Not considering that I simply needed to know outdated tales and have fun Milwaukee’s musical historical past. I instructed him I had no angle different than simply that, which was true. Over a pair cups of espresso with some heaping spoonfuls of hostility, form of as an offhand remark he stated that this band had, “form of, by chance written Milwaukee’s first hip-hop music.” I wrote it down and put a star subsequent to it. Over the subsequent 12 months in editorial conferences I introduced up the story of Milwaukee’s first hip-hop music, however we had no the place to place it. The story was too huge. It felt like a podcast. An investigative journalism podcast about uncovering the story of a music.

Our Content material Director, Nate Imig, urged we usher in Tyrone Miller — who has been part of the Milwaukee DJ group for many years — to co-host. We came upon that there was a band who wrote Milwaukee’s first hip-hop music years earlier than one other hip-hop music was recorded in Milwaukee. It was the band The Majestics, who had been nonetheless performing after 50 years, now because the extremely named Chocolate Ice II. Within the early 80s a document producer named Marvell Love began a document label in Milwaukee known as New World Data. He needed Milwaukee to be the subsequent Motown. Marvell did his analysis and went to a music convention within the midwest the place they talked about this new style of music popping out of New York known as “hip-hop.”

Marvell got here again to Milwaukee and pulled some children right into a studio to document an R&B music and he stated that in addition they needed to put a music on the opposite facet that was on this new type known as “hip-hop.” In order that they sat within the kitchen, wrote the music, recorded it, and “Class A” by The Majestics turned Milwaukee’s first hip-hop music. BUT that wasn’t how Tyrone or any of the Milwaukee DJs noticed it. Hip-hop is a tradition, and no person listened to “Class A” when it got here out. However everybody listened to “A-Tac on the Wax” by a younger child nicknamed Peachy, who would go on to vary his identify to Speech, and launch “3 Years, 5 Months, and a couple of Days within the Life Of…” a document that has gone 4 occasions platinum and comprises the music “Tennessee” which is on The Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame’s 500 Songs that Formed Rock and Roll.

We instructed the entire story. Leaving it up for the viewers to resolve which issues, time or affect. Someday I used to be at my desk packing up and Tyrone texted me and stated, “Did you see that e mail from The New York Instances.” I believed he was joking or mistaken. However positive sufficient I obtained to my desk and the New York Instances was asking for a jpeg of the brand that they might run in The New York Instances print version the subsequent day. On my method residence, I known as my grandma, my mother, my dad, and nearly everybody else in my cellphone guide. I yelled so loud in pleasure that folks sitting exterior Cactus Membership, a block from my residence, turned to see what was occurring.

Within the pandemic, abruptly everybody needed to speak. There wasn’t a lot else to do. And they’d do it on digital camera, a device that simply wasn’t at our disposal earlier than. The title 5 Songs We Couldn’t Cease Listening to was clunky and musicians saved considering they needed to choose 5 songs as an alternative of 1, so we seemed to vary the identify. Since I began I’ve claimed to be “from the music desk” even when that was simply my little nook as an intern. I used the phrase to feign legitimacy and I manifested that legitimacy into being. On June 1st, 2020 “5 Songs We Can’t Cease Listening To” turned “From the Music Desk” and I started interviewing artists for 20 minutes at a time on digital camera. Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes did Werner Herzog impersonations with me. Caroline Polachek defined that she is now not a horse woman, however liked being one. And Lucy Dacus belted “I Can Solely Think about” a fan favourite Christian rock basic from her trip bible camp days.

The interviews have a collective hundred thousand views on YouTube, which I’m pleased with. I speak to artists comfortably, as an alternative of continually fearing that I’m going to expire of issues to say or that they’ll hate me. I’m nonetheless nervous earlier than each interview, however much less positive that I’m going to screw it up. I really feel that 88Nine has given me the talents to be an individual. Oftentimes, From the Music Desk has been my confessional.

You’ve let me cry on air. You’ve let me sing my favourite songs. You’ve inspired me to really feel huge emotions and to precise these over the radio, to hundreds of individuals at a time. You’ve let me be me. 

The opposite day, I went to Membership Garibaldi, then to Cactus, then to Puddlers, my neighborhood spherical. At each cease, I used to be greeted by heat pleasant faces who had been enthusiastic to speak, share and love and I believed, “I’m leaving this??”

I received’t be far, Milwaukee, only a nine-hour drive away. And if you wish to hear me, I’ll be on WNXP from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.90 daily. I’ll nonetheless be interviewing bands and pouring my guts out about songs, simply not within the 414 space code. So, earlier than I formally log out right here I need to say thanks. 

Thanks for supporting a neighborhood radio station. Even within the 12 months of our lord 2022 when radio appears to be a relic from the previous, it nonetheless is among the solely sources of native media who actually cares about this metropolis. Thanks for supporting native music. Thanks for eager to take heed to one thing new. Thanks for giving your hard-earned cash to one thing you may get without cost since you imagine in what it stands for. I imagine in what it stands for. 88Nine’s mission is to be the catalyst for creating a greater, extra inclusive and engaged Milwaukee. It accomplishes that mission daily since you give a shit. Thanks for giving a shit, Milwaukee. And thanks for caring a couple of child with huge emotions who talks for too lengthy on the radio. I like you.