Category: DJ Features

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Ethan. My DJ name is DJ Libre, which my wife suggested, based on the name of a street we used to live on, and because it worked in the context of freeform radio. 

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

Old News, Mondays noon to 2 p.m.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

On the schedule I describe it as “classic alternative rock, alternative classic rock, and more.” That obviously gives me a fair amount of wiggle room. I guess what I’d say I’m really looking for is music that conveys sincere feeling, whether it’s country or jazz or rock ‘n’ roll or soul or tropicalia or what have you. And I’ll deliver a little spiel once in a while if a song moves me to say more than just its title. 

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

The first thing I focused on was the Sunday morning gospel show, which stood out to me because of all the amazing artists I’d hear there, like Reverend Charlie Jackson and the Louvin Brothers. That kind of set the hook. Then, as I started listening to the station more, so many of the DJs’ tastes and sensibilities resonated with my own that KMRD became almost like a constant soundtrack in my life. I donated a little money to the relocation fund and found myself daydreaming about what it would be like to do a show myself: songs I’d play, things I’d say about them, etc. One day I finally sent an email asking if the station needed more DJs. 

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

It’s so much fun. I love it. I’ve spent most of my adult life working as a journalist, a lot of it writing about music and the music industry. That’s all super-interesting to me, but it’s also a bit removed from actual music. Having a radio show gives me a chance to share music with other people, and also gives me an impetus to stay on the lookout for new music—or at least music that’s new to me. 

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

It’s sort of rekindled my connection to music. I had a weekly radio show in college, and it’s been interesting to see what parts of my taste have and haven’t changed since then. On top of that, we don’t live in Madrid—we live a bit to the north, in a town called Santa Fe—and it’s great having a reason to travel here every week. “Community” is a word that gets thrown around pretty casually, but Madrid strikes me as a true community, and I very much appreciate having even a minor connection to it. 

What are your hopes for your show?

More listener requests!

What are your hopes for the station?

With the new, permanent home, I hope KMRD will be a long-lasting presence in Madrid. And awesome DJs keep joining up.

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Caitlin, and my DJ name is Caitlin.

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

It’s Mustard Palace, and it’s 12 to 1 on Tuesdays.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

It’s just what I imagine the soundtrack would be in this big beautiful yellow palace. 

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

My friend Colleen told me about it during Covid, which was nice. And then my brother Arpi went with me to DJ training. Colleen was already at the station, and she got my brother and me involved, which I was very appreciative of.

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

It’s a really great creative outlet, and a fun way to work with music. 

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

It’s the most fun way to be a volunteer, because it doesn’t even really feel like volunteering. It’s nice being involved with a community, especially outside of Santa Fe a little bit. Even though I don’t really know a lot of people who are DJs, but I can listen to them and become a fan. I just love being around people who have really serious relationships with music. 

What are your hopes for your show?

Just to keep going, to be able to continue to do it. I’m trying to work on a book soundtrack thing, maybe working with authors, exploring the relationship between music and writing. 

What are your hopes for the station?

I hope that it keeps thriving; I’m excited about the new location. And that more and more people become familiar with it.

What is your name and DJ name?

Jesse Lion: My name is Jesse, and my DJ name is Jesse Lion.

L’Raine: And my name is Cathy – Cathy Weber Colvin – and my DJ name is L’Raine.

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

L: Mondays –

J: 2pm, Cerrillian Afternoon –

L: 2 to 4pm.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

J: It’s an hour of me playing a mix, and then it’s an hour of L’Raine playing different stuff:

L: This is what they’re going to print, spice it up!

J: Well, I play all kinds of stuff from all kinds of eras from Bach to Roll Over Beethoven, and L’Raine plays more of a sweet, introverted, kind of looking out the window and thinking about my problems type music.

L: [laughs] Ok, I play a mix of classic, and modern, and millennial, and gen x alternative rock.

J: Well, I’ll be playing everything from Paul Revere and the Raiders to Pussy Riot to Mitski to Frank Zappa to the original soul music cut of Mr. Moonlight, which was covered by the Beatles, Roy Johnson. So I got a way big mix. 

L: Well, I’m playing…

[both laugh]

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

L: I live with this guy, and it just doesn’t seem fair to keep him all to myself!

We’ve been interested since Dan first started, and Dan would come by and say he had a radio show, and got us very excited. We were off raising our kids, but we tuned in and were interested.

J: I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before, something new, something I had to learn. It was a little leap into the void.

L: I was always a film and video maker and teacher, and it’s so much fun to just do radio.

J: As you age, you gotta learn new things or else – it’s either progress or regress. 

L: I grew up with really great radio, and everybody listened to the radio all the time, and I love to get back to it. You can listen to it when you’re doing stuff – we turn it on all the time, we love it. 

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

J: Down there in Cerrillos you don’t see a lot of other people; I feel like I’m seeing a lot of people when I’m on the radio.

L: We love to be part of the community, find out what’s going on. Madrid’s gotten so vibrant and continued to grow, from the anarchy of the ‘70s and continued to move forward along those lines, and it’s just really unique. 

I love the live nature of it – 

J: Yeah, it’s fun, to connect –

L: And it’s a performance, that part. Every radio show, all day long, you can listen to different performers. It’s a happening, right?

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

J: It’s helped me reconnect with music I used to really dig, but forgot. My daughter’s a musician, so she’s turned me on to new artists and I like to mix them. What’s good is good, a hit from 1720 plays today like great.

L: I love the no-commercial format, and I’ve just gotten so tired of radio – the stations, they all have an agenda, and it feels like there’s not really an agenda here other than just connecting. I love that. It’s unique, it’s a rare thing, I think, in the whole country. We’ve gotten calls from people – 

J: From classrooms –

L: We’ve got kids in a classroom, we got a call from Maine – 

J: Somebody in Indiana – 

L: Not people we know! So that’s pretty cool. It’s just great to have a megaphone for the sister/twin cities, Cerrillos and Madrid. I know that a lot of people in Cerrillos listen to it, and so it’s nice to have a little bit of the Cerrillos vibe going on. I know there’s a lot of Cerrillian DJs, and we like to be part of that. It’s great to be part of the community. 

What are your hopes for your show?

J: Syndicate it, go worldwide, make a ton of money, and buy up everything in Madrid and just give it away. 

L: It would be fun to do more stories, and we love doing the current events. We’re writers, so it does kind of keep the creative juices going. We look forward to it every week.

J: It’s like, taking part of Monday off to do it is really fun.

L: It’s part of our creative menu.

And then, we hope people are listening!

J: We don’t know. Are you out there? Am I in my closet having a show by myself?

What are your hopes for the station?

J: Keep on keeping on. Maybe get some more power. There’s this other 96.9 on the other side of the mountain that’s like this fascist gun bible thumping bizarre, so they’ll be coming in and out…

L: We would like to crest the hill and take over the other station!

J: “The seven headed dragon of revelations has come” … and then, “Meanwhile on introverts” – so we want more power, for the station to go farther.

L: What I would like to see is, I think there’s a lot of fun shows and there’s some really unique voices – I would love to continue to grow the audience and knowledge of it, so that we can do more stuff. Get more equipment. At the same time, I love the local nature of it. Lake Wobegon wasn’t a real place, but Madrid is.

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Sawyer, and my DJ name is Sawyer.

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

It’s Sunday Mornings with Sawyer, 8am to 9am on Sundays.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

I like to play indie music, I really like country and folk music. I mostly play music that my mom listened to when she was in high school. I get a lot of old people saying, “How do you know what that song is?” Every now and again – hopefully every week – I’ll play a “Muppets Song of the Week,” which is like a song I could imagine in a Muppet movie: goofy, or really intense songs that I could hear Kermit or Fozzie singing.

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

My friend said that I should go to a DJ training and if I like it I should have a show. I went to a DJ training, and then I just got a show. I thought it would be fun to be a bigger part of the community. 

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

I like doing a show because it helps me get out the good music that I’ve found throughout the week in a way that lets other people hear it, rather than just me listening to it in my headphones at school. Getting to share the cool music that I’ve heard.

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

It has brought me closer to Madrid. I like getting to meet other people who have shows, and it’s made me feel like a real part of the community in Madrid.

What are your hopes for your show?

To stay true to it, not to get flaky. But I also really want to let it be a musical journal for me finishing school. 

What are your hopes for the station?

That it just thrives. I love the station so much. And to get some stability too. 

What is your name and DJ name?

My name is Marissa Aurora and my DJ name is DJ Mariscos.

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

The name of my show is ¿Qué Onda? and it’s on Sundays from 6 to 7pm.

Please describe your show. What is its format?

My show strives to be a mix of interviews and collaborative musical playlists with people from around the world. So it’s a bilingual show – I try to do most of the interviews in Spanish – and then collaborate with the person I’m interviewing on a musical playlist for the other half of the show. That what it strives to be, but sometimes it just kind of is music, and vinyl from the radio library, and whatever feels good!

What drew you to participate in KMRD?

One is that it’s actually just a really amazing radio station, like I really love listening to it, and all the different things that people do with their slot, and just seeing what a creative outlet it is for so many different people. I had never really experienced community radio before, and just listening to it and knowing what it was about made me really want to be a part of it.

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

The appeal of doing a radio show for me I think has a few different layers to it. For the interviews, it’s a really fun way to get to know people, both people I already know – I’ve interviewed some really good friends and learned more about them – and also strangers running different organizations and doing different things with their lives. It’s been a cool way to get kind of intimate with people through interviews. And then the music – it’s a great reason to seek out and discover new music. And it is a really fun creative outlet in a way I’ve never been creative before. So it fits into my life in that way, that throughout the week I’m either talking to people or listening to music and thinking about how I’m going to fit it into my little show on Sundays. Being in the studio is just so fun, and it ends up being one of my favorite parts of the week.

What difference has being a DJ made in your life?

I think people have a misconception that I’m cooler than I am when they find out I’m a radio DJ! It’s a funny thing that I never thought I would be, and I feel like every time people find out they think it’s really cool, and I’m not used to being thought of in that way – so it’s really funny to me!

It’s just like a fun opportunity to take an hour and move into a different kind of headspace – ok this is DJ time, this is DJ Mariscos. Almost like escapism, in a really positive way.

What are your hopes for your show?

My hopes for my show are to demonstrate to listeners the different ways that people are living their lives around the world, and kind of offer a glimpse into normal people’s lives, on a level that we don’t always get to connect with strangers. And to also expose people to different types of music from the Americas that don’t get played on the Top 40, or aren’t popular artists around here. I’ve discovered a lot of new artists throughout Latin America that have been fun to share with folks here. I love getting a call when I’m in the studio and playing new music that I just discovered and having people excited about it, and getting to pass that along – it’s like a little present to the community, which is fun.

What are your hopes for the station?

My hopes for the station are to have a stable physical location, and to continue being this multigenerational hub that brings people from disparate cultures – like subcultures – together. Like people that normally wouldn’t hang out together or be involved in the same kind of project – I feel like anybody with any kind of beliefs that are involved in a wide range of different activities can be involved in the station, and I think it’s a really cool way to bring people together in the community that normally wouldn’t be partaking in the same activity. And so for that to continue to grow.