Author: KMRD

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Stephen, and my DJ name is DJ Subdude.

What is the name of your show and when is it on?

I am DJ Subdude, and I am on whenever anybody needs me.

[Subdude also helped with construction at the KMRD building, and designed both t-shirts that are currently for sale.]

Please describe your show. What is its format?

I’ve been learning as I go along what I want to do. The first show I did, I covered for a country show – that was all country stuff. I thought that was good, but I started to explore a little bit and I thought I’d do like what Peter and Scott do. They draw an arc, it travels from one place to another, it’s kind of thematic. What I grew up listening to was 60s pop radio, where you had “The Israelites” followed by “A Boy Named Sue” followed by “Revolution” followed by… and they would just throw in anything, each song you had to take on its own. I try to keep the pace going a certain way, but I like throwing one song after the next so that it’s not a thematic thing, it’s like the eclectic radio of the 60s. I will do themes if somebody dies, or if there’s a special occasion or something like that. 

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

I had just moved here, I was up on the hill when you guys opened, the first night. I had my Subaru out, opened both doors and just cranked it. And the music drew me – the radio station drew me. I heard you the first night, and I was just taken.

What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?

I love to stand there and listen to the music cranked really loud. I like the fact that there are going to be people around that are listening. It’s a dear thing. It’s something shared. I love the music, and I love the way the station came together, and I love the town. 

I play music, and I listen to music, and I like to share it.

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

It’s brought me a lot of enjoyment. It’s fed my soul. It’s just made me happy.

What are your hopes for your show?

To show up on time, not be drunk. Do all the things right, and have people enjoy it. Get more phone calls!

What are your hopes for the station?

To live long and prosper.

The station, the way that it’s going, I couldn’t have directed it or thought better for how it’s going, so I just want it to continue on as long as anybody’s in this town. 

All the people who originated it have done such a great job, and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve seen anybody do. It’s just a great effort, I’m so impressed by what it is.

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Serafina, and my DJ name is DJ Fina.

What is the name of your show and when is it on?

The name of my show is Desert Rose and All That Chit Chat and it’s on every other Thursday, 7-9pm.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

I think before all of this, my show was prominently based on the potential of interacting with live music from locals and traveling bands, to play that on the air, and also recorded. Having worlds of different demographics come on the air live and digitally: that was the format. That’s still happening – I’m still having a lot of local bands on the air, and then friends from different areas – which is kind of why I love the radio station, because it’s still interacting people globally. But right now the format is a little more up in the air.

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

I think that moving from the Pacific Northwest to here, I was so much more involved and at house shows and all this live action, and coming here the music seems a little slower. Just the connection, the connection to the community, to other DJs. And yeah, meeting actual local musicians has really brought me closer to music in general, and why people like to perform, and share communal interests.

What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?

I think the connection of being around live music or even listening through the airwaves – there’s just like this sense of oneness. Regardless of if you’re live, or you heard a new song that’s like really awesome, you can connect to someone else who knows that band or knows that song and there’s just like a communal oneness, and I really like that.

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

There’s this meditative process when I sit down to make a show, or I’m sitting down to interview a band, that just kind of shuts the rest of the world out for a second, and I can focus in on new music, or a new genre, or new origin of where music comes from, and I really like that process. Outside and inside the studio… definitely when I’m in there, it’s just like me and the music, and it seems very meditative. Especially traveling from Santa Fe to Madrid, it’s like this pilgrimage of “I’m going to go listen to music.” That feels really nice.

What are your hopes for your show?

When music is back to being a thing… I don’t know if I’m supposed to be saying pre- or post-Covid, but it has a lot do do with my show. I really do love live music, and people creating that: it changes a room and it changes an evening. I would love to have more people on the air and interview people from New Mexico and around the country, specifically the Northwest, to intertwine people, and intertwine music and shows and performance. I guess more live music! But people just kind of making community even if it’s far away.

I think radio in general is just a community act, regardless of if I’m in there by myself. Getting feedback from people, and then also sharing my feedback with other people, is prominently what will keep things happy and going and respectful. 

What are your hopes for the station?

I hope the station keeps poppin’! That it can be eventually this more involved, people in and out, place, safe space for a lot of people, to feel inclusive. But also that people are just so intrigued to tune in every week, and every time at different times of day, because there’s always variety going on, and so that it can appeal to different demographics at any given time. And that being spread constantly, and the knowledge of that going on and continuing would be so awesome. 

What is your name and DJ name?

Zach Maloof, OG Willikers. I perform as OG Willikers, that’s my emcee name, or hiphop name, or stage name, or alter ego – whatever you want to call it.

What is the name of your show and when is it on?

Rhyme Schemes with OG Willikers, 7-8pm on Tuesdays.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

The tagline I came up with organically: “Underground hiphop from the Southwest and beyond.”

Underground hiphop is the underground network of independent artists that either don’t do it full time, or have done it lifelong but have never made a career out of it. It’s a network of DJs, and emcees, and promoters and club owners, and a lot of those people are kind of the same thing. So collaboration is a huge element, and that’s kind of what this show is – it’s me playing musicians I know, have worked with, or are part of this underground network.

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

I’ve been DIY since Warehouse 21 days in Santa Fe, when I was a 14 year old kid and I was learning how to promote and book concerts. I’m 34 now, so that’s 20 years  now that I’ve been involved in DIY, underground. Back then it was punk rock, I didn’t really do the hiphop thing til my twenties. I was a promoter, event organizer, did tour booking, and that all went away, but I have this thriving network of awesome people I’ve met and I loved growing it. It was just so fun to meet new people, and put all the dots together. So when that ended, I was drawn to this, because it’s like a pivot during COVID – this was my way of still being able to give these people a platform, and be heard. 

What drew me to participate was also wanting to be more involved in this community. Instead of just being someone who lives here and takes up space, I wanted to contribute and share and get to know people, and it’s helped build a sense of camaraderie with, “Oh, what do you play on your show?” “How do you do that?” “Do you need me to edit that track for you? I’ll do that for you.” It’s just a fun thing for everyone to talk about, and have in common. One friend plays Texas country music (Dirt Devil, Fridays 11am-noon) but we still chill and talk about the radio shows, and it’s fun. I don’t listen to that music, I don’t really want to, but because it’s her show I enjoy it. I imagine as much as I get out of it – I can express myself – I can imagine other people feel the same way. So that’s what I think is so cool, that we can all kind of share ourselves in this community, get to know each other in a fun way.

What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?

I have this network of artists I was booking and working with and building with, and my monthly event, which is kind of the biggest thing I’ve ever done, a culmination of all my skills. It was this awesome thing – that’s the thing that still makes me really sad with COVID and everything, that one really still stings. But I was booking around five artists, once a month, from all over the country. Now, with this show, I play seventeen artists a week. So that’s really cool, how that’s exponentially grown. And it’s really showing in my social media feeds, and even now when I’m releasing music, I have all these people who are like, “Hey, he played my track! That’s cool, I’ll check out his music.” We’re all kind of sharing, and in a way that’s been really cool, how this has actually helped me with my platform as well. 

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

I’ve been a big fan of music for so many years, and I’ve always enjoyed all these other artists. I’ve seen everyone live so many times, but this has been an experience where I’m sitting there and paying very close attention to their recorded works. Their records, their discographies… I can see their strategies even: that person released that single, and then they released another one this month, and then they released an album. Just seeing how everyone moves. I feel like a lot of underground artists in my position, we’re just so busy working on our own craft that we’re not really as aware of how other people even in our own bubbles are really doing things. So for me, I’m getting so many insights. I’ll be digging through artists I know very well’s music and I’ll see someone they worked with, click on that and realize that that person worked with this other person I know, and the network just gets more woven. I discover more and more music that way. I’m digging – I was never a sample-digger, but this – I definitely relate to digging because I’m like, “I gotta find that hot track for my playlist this week, I need something fresh!” It’s been very enriching to me.

What are your hopes for your show?

It’s what I hoped for, I like it as it is, I like that it’s growing, I like meeting new artists. I hope that when the world opens up I get to meet a lot of the newer artists I’ve discovered through this show, that I get to actually work with them, and grow.

What are your hopes for the station?

I hope that COVID goes away soon and that we can start doing more activities, and grow on another level: grow physically, not just over the airwaves. 

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Raven and my DJ name is Raven.

What is the name of your show and when is it on?

My show is called The Sugar Show, it’s on 8 to 9 on Sunday nights.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

I have no format, really. There’s some loose format. I play whatever I want, and that’s really fun. I try to share interesting tidbits of information about the artists, and I like to let people know what year the record came out and what record it’s on. So I do a little more of a formal back-announcing than some people do. But other than that, there’s no format, really. It’s mostly music – pretty much entirely music. 

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

I knew about KMRD as soon as I moved back to Madrid in 2017, so it had been going for two years by then. I was super excited to come back to town – I grew up in Santa Fe, and a little bit in Madrid too, and to come back and find out that there was this incredible collective effort for community radio was invigorating, and I was so psyched. Being the nerdy person that I am, I looked it up and read as much as I could about it. I remember reading about how KMRD got started, and the licensing window for Low Power radio stations and so it was like I knew I wanted to take part in it just seeing what it did for the community, but then also reading about what you had done to make it happen as a small group in the genesis days of KMRD made me really want to be part of it. But then I was really shy and didn’t feel really ready for the public presence that I would have to bring to doing a show, so I put it off for years, and then didn’t start until 2020. I spent three years thinking about it…

What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?

Learning new technology and new ways to present myself, or my creative mind, has been really exciting. The idea of radio before doing the show and training here felt impossible, like something that only radio people do. It’s almost like you have to already be in it, or you have to be invited by the radio gods, or something, or be that person in college or something – I felt like I missed my window in school. And I just never felt welcome to this space. So something that’s really exciting to me is feeling welcome to the space. The appeal is really rooted in that it is so community-oriented and accessible and diverse. I feel like no matter where I’m at – however weird or not weird my show is, if it’s expected songs, or if it’s really whacko songs that I’d be nervous to play to a party – I feel like there’s space for it here. There’s so many cool things coming out of this radio station, but I think it lacks that cool kid affect that can be really exclusive and exclusionary. That’s what I want to be part of at this point in my life. I feel way more comfortable expressing myself now, through the radio, than I ever thought I would be. It’s built confidence in this really unexpected way, and it’s an anchor for my week now: it’s the only thing I do consistently, other than work, and like, eat. I don’t have any social engagements that are as consistent. It’s a really positive challenge that’s just anchored at the end of my week – to be creative and make space for that every week, and that’s awesome. 

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

I think the biggest difference it’s made in my life, aside from what I’ve already said, is I listen to music differently than I did before. I have always been kind of nerdy about music to some extent, in my own weird way, but now it’s like I see a lot more potential in music than I did before. I think before I saw music as an expression of my identity, like the things that I liked were somehow ways of expressing my identity, now there’s still that, but I listen to music in a way broader way. I allow myself to openly enjoy much broader things, because I’m just thinking about what’s interesting – not what’s cool, or what’s “good,” or what’s good enough to play in front of other people, or good enough to admit liking. All those weird shame processes – it makes me think of school, going through public education and just getting made fun of or something. I’ve totally been able to let go of that and just been like, what’s enjoyable? or what’s interesting? I play things I don’t even always like, because I think they’re interesting. And that’s really different, that’s changed my relationship to art, and to music especially. It’s a really cool different lens for art and artists and what people are making and how it fits into the bigger world of art-making. I’m enjoying music in a different way and it’s also changed me just because I make time for creativity every week, and that’s the biggest thing. Even when I don’t want to, then I have to, and it always feels good.

What are your hopes for your show?

I really want to learn how to actually DJ, like Will does. I want to learn how to mix and layer things. I think the feminist approach for me is really exciting, wanting to get skills that I feel like I’m not welcome to, like technical skills that I think I could totally learn here. 

I want to incorporate other forms of art in creative ways, in imaginative ways – like how can I weave in little tidbits of writing or of maybe my own writing and art-making into it. At the end of the day, I think I want my show to be a little more textural than it is now. Right now I play songs, and then I’ll back-announce them and then I’ll play another set – I do like sets, and it’s kind of more simple, kind of classic radio structure. It feels like a very simple format, and I’d like to still have that human, accessible, live DJ vibe, but have things be a little more textural, where it can be a little more of a feeling or an idea than just like these segments, like a little caterpillar. 

I also want to do collaborative shows. I’m thinking of music as an interview, with friends and stuff, and as excuses to connect with people I haven’t talked to in a while, to build shows together. And probably not even have them and their voice in it very much, if at all, but hear them through the music that they pick, and do little interview sets.

What are your hopes for the station?

I want to up my participation in the space, I want to be a little more involved in what’s keeping this place up. I want to ask more people to do the same. I want work to be spread a little more evenly, because I want it to last for – I’d love to have a kid who knows about this radio station. Or gets to have like a 10-year-old’s show. Either we get money, or get work spread out more. That’s the big one – I have lots of dreams, probably, for this place. 

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Dylan, and my DJ name is also Dylan.

What is the name of your show and when is it on?

The HipHopapotamus Show, and it’s on Sundays from 9 to 10.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

I noticed that there was a minimal amount of hiphop in the area, in general, so I decided to focus mostly on hiphop, but I deviate to soul, and neo-soul, and funk and r&b.

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

Kate and Adrian told me to do it and I thought it was a good idea.

I used to DJ in Denver a little bit, but I was helping behind the scenes  – it was like a podcast/DJ thing, and I was doing the online editing stuff while the video was going out. That was mostly like a radio talk show about hiphop in the area – it was community radio there. I have experience with sound boards, and I like music a lot. 

What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?

The appeal for me, specifically for hiphop, is that a lot of hiphop on the radio is overplayed, like one or two songs from the newest artist, and they don’t play a lot of the underground stuff or DJ instrumentals or anything like that. That also is what drew me to KMRD – is that it’s freeform, you can do whatever you want. The appeal is to play underrated music.

I actually was not listening to music that much until I started doing the show, and then I started finding more music. I do professional cleaning on the side, too, and you listen to music while you’re cleaning a lot. Before I was just playing whatever, like old stuff I listened to, but I found a lot of new music since I’ve started doing this, so that’s exciting.

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

How DJing has changed my life is introducing me to more music – and more people, on the station, and their taste. More music in general. 

What are your hopes for your show?

I hope that I can get it together each week – before the hour of. That would be nice. My other hope is to eventually get (partner) Xochitl to collaborate with me. For a while I thought it would be cool if we did hiphop history, because I’m just always playing music but I never really talk about what I play. Some of it you don’t really need to talk about – like the classic stuff and instrumental stuff – but talking about where they got the influence from…

I hope that people who don’t listen to hiphop might start to.

What are your hopes for the station?

That it never dies!