By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Once upon a time, all radio was live radio. Music was played live in studio for the listening audience. Dramatic and comedic actors performed programs with a live studio band and real-time sound effects. Radio stations were alive, vibrant, active places.
That has changed over the years. Recording technology got better, and with it came cheaper, and more predictable, scheduling and programming. Live radio may have had a special energy, but you didn’t need to worry about the singer getting laryngitis if you had a record to play.
As radio modernized the live component was relegated, for the most part, to the DJ who introduced songs and read commercials – and that’s mostly where it’s stayed over the last 80 or so years.
But Mike Nelson, station manager with WUGO/WGOH in Grayson, wasn’t content to be the only live element in his studio anymore. So now, every Thursday, you can tune in for radio the way it was in the 1920s – when musicians performed in the studio while the technician and host directed the show from their booth.
The new series is called, simply enough, WGOH Live.
“We’re just keeping it simple,” Nelson said. “The station has taken on the moniker ‘the Tradition,’ and it’s mainly because we want to continue to do what WGOH has done for years. It’s provided news, information, and music to our audience here since 1959.”
And while the technology has changed – with analog equipment switching to digital, and records giving way to tape, then to compact disc and digital audio files – the format has mostly been the same. A technician or DJ queues up music and commercials and makes sure they broadcast when they are supposed to. But, as Nelson explained, it hasn’t always been that way.
“If you go back to the old days of radio, prior to 1959, going back to the 20s and 30s, and back to when radio first started, you didn’t even have records to play,” he said. “To entertain the audience you had people reading scripts around a microphone. You had live commercials being produced. And then you had musicians around a microphone, singing between segments.”
Though the WGOH studio was never used for those kind of programs, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be. They have a studio they use for live talk radio programs. So, Nelson thought, why not use that same space for a new live music program? One featuring local and regional musicians. It was, he thought, a great way to live up to ‘the Tradition’ name and to create programming that was meaningful to listeners and performers. Plus, it wasn’t unheard of.
“We thought, ‘We’ve got a nice studio here.’ We’ve had, in the past, musicians come in and sing. We still actually do it on Sundays, we have preachers and churches represented by folks who come in and give the Word, but they also sing a little bit around the microphone. So that’s something that’s a tradition in radio to do, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we do that here once a week and see how it goes?’”
They started the series with Grayson singer-songwriter Rob McNurlin doing his country and honky-tonk blues tinged originals and select covers in the first episode, two weeks ago. Last week it was Hammertowne singer and guitarist Dave Carroll. This Thursday brings the first full band to the studio, when the old-timey group The New Beckham County Ramblers grace the studio, beginning at 3 p.m.
“To start off they’re more likely to be local,” Nelson said. “We are looking at some regional and national (acts), but the national will depend on their touring schedule, if they’re coming through here on their way to someplace else. We’ll have the possibility of that happening when Rudy Fest comes, in June, to Morehead.”
Though, he noted, “that 3 p.m. time slot is always bluegrass,” they’re being a little more flexible with the live show, while still sticking with bluegrass, country, and other traditional styles.
“Folk and country and all that work together,” he said.
And, he said, if it goes well on the Thursday, they may end up expanding it. It just depends on what the audience wants.
On the first day, with McNurlin, the audience seemed to enjoy and accept the variation in format. Calls and internet requests came in for tunes, and McNurlin said he was happy and honored to be the first artists to participate in the new program. If that interest and acceptance continues, Nelson said, he sees a bright future for WGOH Live.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
