Free Press

Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

WMPG is not exactly a college radio station. It sits on one edge of campus - the first of the white houses as you drive past the garage - but bumper stickers, t-shirts, banners and DJs all proudly proclaim it as southern Maine's community radio.

If you were tuned in last Tuesday morning, you might have heard DJ Deirdre Nice cue up Jeff Tweady's rendition of "Simple Twist of Fate," but you didn't see her sit back in her chair and gaze out toward the parking garage at the gray, rainy day.

Sure, people come in here to feed their thoughts and musical tastes to the 200 listeners tuned in at any given time, but the dim lighting and cozy atmosphere of the booth makes for something a little private, too.

You've heard them on the air, at 90.9 and 104.1, but what's it inside that little white house?


10:12 a.m. - As I walk down the hall toward the sound booth, Deirdre Nice is on the air. She's sampling the "I'm Not There" soundtrack, a collection Bob Dylan covers by indie and alternative rock icons. Right now, Sonic Youth is either paying homage to or massacring the title song, depending on your preference.

The show is In Your Ear-and she's been on the air with it for 19 years.

She remembers first being approached by the station's program manager: he wanted more women's voices on the air. She was already known around town-at the time, she owned Silly's restaurant. Nice was kind of interested, and remembers when she and a friend first went on the air to mess around.

"It hasn't changed too much since then," she says, though as she looks around, she fixes on the LCD computer monitor that hangs beside the microphone. "Well, nothing dramatic. Things slowly get more professional, and work more often."


10:30 - John Dennison wanders in with a pile of records under his arm. He is happy to get behind the microphone for Soundscapes, his "all-too-short" weekly music block. He's been kicking Soundscapes around, through various incarnations across different regions, since about 1979.

Feeling the loss of a friend who died little more than a week ago, he opens the show with a mournful piece by Bill Evans-a take on "Suicide is Painless," the theme from MASH.

It fits, too, with the organic nature of his show: the dreary weather, he says, can't help but creep into things somehow.

Dennison has been working with radio since his teenage years, or "the high of punk rock." He has no qualms about using digital files, CDs, or cassettes, but records remain his favorite.

"I love being able to see the music laid out on the vinyl," he says. He watches as Miles Davis' "My Man's Gone Now" quiets down, and readies the Supertramp song "Fool's Overture." When finishes the changeover and pulls his hands off the board triumphantly.

"I had that segue in my head for a couple of days. It was just a matter of making sure it's not too abrupt."

Less than a minute later, the phone rings: an old friend listening online from Rochester, NY appreciated the transition.


11:59 - Program manager David Bunker, who has been weaving in out and around the offices all morning, shuffles through a stack of CDs. Democracy Now - the international news show hosted by journalist Amy Goodman, and one of few bits of programming not produced in-house - has just begun; it's an addition he made to the line-up a few years back, and now he's in the process of putting together a local team of reporters to cover upcoming elections.

Bunker is enjoying his time at WMPG. He'd gotten frustrated with public radio after spending the last half of the '90s as music director at Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

"When NPR and the like began in the (1970s), the goal was to reach new audiences," he says, and cites Car Talk and Fresh Air as local shows that let emerging talent find a voice.

Now, he says, "it's all big money projects that have to be ready and national on day one."

That squashes the will to experiment, he says, and shuts the door on 99 percent of good ideas.

But his cynicism is reserved for the state of the business - when it comes to the medium, he is only excited, particularly by having an effect on other's lives.

One morning about ten years ago, serving up classical music on MBPN, he happened to crack a joke about a composer - nothing out of the ordinary, something he'd done a thousand times. That morning, he got a call from a physician who had just gotten off a brutal double shift in the emergency room.

He had managed to make her laugh, and she'd just called to tell him.

"That's the kind of thing that gives me chills," Bunker says.


1:06 p.m. - Chip Edgar - better known as Homedad - ushers in the post-lunch half-hour with his short but lively and polished news-talk show. And he has a crew with him: Jessica, his engineer, is ready for phone calls and tocue up music as Edgar is settled in the adjacent booth with his 3-year-old son (his in-studio guest) and a cameraman from the local cable access station.

Today he's on the phone with independent U.S. Senate candidate Laurie Dobson, talking about her effort to accelerate the "impeach Bush" movement.

Generally serious, Edgar kicks into entertainer mode now and then.

When civil liberties come up, he asks his son if the name of New York's former mayor is Guiliani, or "Ghouliani." His son decides on the latter, or at least enjoys repeating it.

And, with no shame in wearing politics on his sleeve, there's his nickname for the current U.S. President, whom he calls our "court-appointed, sociopathic, draft-dodging, corporate happy-face, who claims high-tech death and destruction is the only way to democracy."

Looking over at his notes, I see that the line about Bush is actually typed right in.

The show was originally meant as a place for stay-at-home-dads to "spill their guts," but Edgar quickly found that men wouldn't even stop to ask directions to the studio, he says, never mind bare their souls on his little show.

So things turned to public affairs, and now he comes to each broadcast armed with a recent newspaper.

After repeating his pet name for Bush, Edgar decides that he's pretty happy with his life - beautiful kids, nice home, healthy marriage.

"But all this rusty machinery of free speech," he gestures around the studio. "Its just going to get dried up if nobody's using it."



Tune to WMPG at 90.9 or 104.1, or listen catch the online broadcast at wmpg.org. A full programming guide is also online. If you're interested in trying the sound booth out for yourself, contact David Bunker at (207) 780-4598 or programdirector@wmpg.org.

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