Photo courtesy of Luke Acton and Riley Madden
Hidden in Cro, slotted next to the post office, lives Connecticut College’s least-known, eclectic haven for music lovers on campus. “How do I find this supposed paradise?” you may be wondering. Simply follow the music emanating from the north end of the student center as you walk down Cro Boulevard, and you will find a locked door that contains New London’s preeminent independent freeform radio station, WCNI. Knock on the door and chances are whoever’s inside will be happy to give you a tour. Inside, you’ll be greeted by a hall covered in stickers and posters from artists that cover pretty much every genre imaginable spanning the station’s entire seventy-year history. You’ll see an old-fashioned radio soundboard, microphones, CD players, record turntables, and an overwhelming collection of vinyl and CDs that would make any audiophile go nuts.
While most students on campus are in the middle of a deep slumber, Luke Acton is just getting off of his show, “Moon Bounce Radio”, named after the Earth-moon-Earth radio technique, where he’s DJ Luke from midnight to 3 a.m. In addition to the graveyard shift on early Monday morning, he does the same time slot every Thursday. That gives him six hours every week to play the music he loves to people who love listening to music late into the night. While he usually play music hovering around the ‘90’s to current-day alternative rock, he’s used my time to explore other genres and time periods that he would’ve never taken a chance on if he wasn’t a part of WCNI. Being a DJ here gives him that freedom, unencumbered by any genre-specific constraints that many other college radio stations impose.
Every Monday, twelve hours after Luke finishes his shift, I show up for my 3-6 p.m. slot, admittedly a much more convenient timeslot. I get there around 2:55, chat with my predecessor, Dancin’ Alice, whose jam band show, “Random Acts of Kindness” flows nicely into my ragtag collection of folk, rock, and Americana music. I start off every show with the same song, Pirate Radio, a rocker from the lesser-known folk rock musician John Hiatt. His song, a tribute to the old tradition of pirate radio blasted haphazardly over the airwaves, playing the unconventional, innovative songs commercial radio wouldn’t play, is also the name of my show. This name is a tribute to what WCNI is all about – ordinary people volunteering their time to play their favorite music for their community, no matter what genre, no matter how commercial or how obscure. My show is rooted in classic rock and folk – my staples include Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, The Who, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, John Prine and Gordon Lightfoot – but I try to bring to light some of my favorite contemporary artists keeping the tradition alive – Dawes, Nathaniel Rateliff, Father John Misty, and more. What I love about my show is that it’s a time for me to play my favorite music for open-minded people who are eager to hear something exciting, no matter what it is. Getting calls from listeners who like what I’m playing makes my day – isn’t that kind of validation exactly what we all crave?
I was recently elected to the position of Student General Manager of the station. Granted, I was filling a vacant position and was running entirely unopposed, but with great power comes great responsibility. When there’s trouble at the station, I’m there, just like Batman. Except my Gotham is a small-town college radio station and my bat signal is an email from John Tyler. No, not the tenth president of the United States. Tyler is our Community General Manager, and even though we’re technically equals, Tyler’s really running the show.
Tyler joined the station in 1995 as a sub when a close friend decided to join and brought him along. He started his regular show, John E’s World, which plays a selection of new and old traditional music from around the world, the following year. One day in the spring of ‘96, another DJ, Margaret Tyler, was subbing for the DJ after him, and they hit it off, up chatting in the studio for forty-five minutes after his show had ended. They kept bumping into each other around the station all summer, and by Fall they were together. They got married in 1998 and today they’re the power couple at the station’s helm – John Tyler working as Community General Manager and Margaret Tyler as Fundraising Director. John Tyler is also the contract engineer and the chief operator, responsible for maintaining the equipment and FCC regulations. In his tenure, he oversaw the development of new technology like the website, digital library, and the automatic playlist log Spinatron.
One of the things I’ve been working on with Acton, an unofficial board member, along with the rest of the board, is a developing partnership with our student band organization MOBROC. In February, John Tyler, Program Director Jim Hardwood, and I got in touch with MOBROC President Eli Prybala to bring him into the station – first as DJ and then to work on extending our connections with student musicians in general.
Prybala has a show on WCNI every Sunday from midnight to 3 a.m. His show, “Songs with a Cause”, relays a spectrum of genres, but with the connective tissue of containing topical messages. Prybala explains that when gets into the station and boots up his Spotify, he will usually start, “with a song from the urban folk revival, then I can go into some blues, then from there I’ll go to rock, [and] the main intention of the rock is to ultimately get to punk”. WCNI’s freeform format has allowed Prybala to experiment with different genres and how they impart a political message: “the rock and roll I like to do has some satirical, humorous, silly stuff. I’ll do like surf rock because surf can be really over the top and I really like that stuff.” Over Passover, Prybala even brought in a lot of Jewish music that his grandparents have, “fitting it wherever it feels right”, and sharing with his listeners the often satirical and topical nature songs of the genre.
One of the main reasons Prybala decided to join the station was the opportunity to give MOBROC musicians some further opportunities to share their music. “I can have MOBROC musicians come on the air for interviews, I can have MOBROC musicians who are friends spin some tracks, I know the station is working on a production studio, so in the future we can have the student bands bring the gear to WCNI, [and] play it live on air” Prybala explained. In addition, not only will the bands get their music out to WCNI listeners, they have the ability to record it, as all shows are archived on the station’s website.
For students like Prybala, where music is more like a way of life than it is a hobby or interest, WCNI has become a way to express their musical curiosity. As Prybala builds his playlist in the days leading up to his shift, adding in songs from albums new and old, he says that his show “becomes [a] reflection of your day-to-day and what you’re thinking about”. Thankfully, becoming a DJ is a painless process, he explains: “it was one classroom session… and then I did two on-air training sessions. At the end of the second one they felt that I was good to go”. Prybala was able to get in the studio that same week and start his first shift.
Since then, Prybala has found himself tuning into the station more and more, especially in the car and before he sleeps. He finds himself looking out for how each DJ’s personality comes through, saying that, “It feels very human, definitely like you’re listening to a person, and it’s always different music.” Now that he’s come to know many of the DJs, Prybala says, “you’re going to meet someone interesting there and you’re going to listen to interesting people every time you’re tuning in.”
In his almost thirty years at the station, John Tyler acknowledges that some things stay the same. Throughout his time here he can testify that “at WCNI we have all types of people, people who love music and appreciate music, they’re artists, and artists can be eclectic and unusual – they run the gamut.
But he’s also seen some significant changes. “When I got here it was just about fifty-fifty students and the community people… And slowly over the years as portable music became more popular and radio became less relevant the number of students just tapered off. I like to think that the ones who are here now… in general are adamant about the music… they love [the music they play], they just really want to do this.”
If you’re interested in DJing at the station, send an email to rmadden@conncoll.edu. Training sessions will be offered in early fall. In the meantime, you can listen to WCNI at 90.9 FM, on wcniradio.org, or on iHeart Radio and TuneIn.
