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This is Time Signatures with Jim Irvin, a podcast and radio program presented by the Capital Area Blues Society in Lansing, Michigan. Most any contemporary musical style can trace its roots back to the blues. Time Signatures explores the blues and its musical connections with captivating interviews, lively discussions, and news from the world of the blues. And now, here he is, your host, Jim Irvin.

Well, hello there and welcome to Time Signatures. I'm your host, Jim Irvin. And today's guest is another one of those people who simply have one of the coolest jobs on the planet, at least in my opinion. Imagine being responsible for housing, digitizing, and maintaining anything and everything related to the blues that crosses your desk. Imagine being responsible for such items as sheet music, concert tickets, recordings, record label business files, and lots and lots of 33s, 45s and 78s. Yeah, he has all of that. As the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi celebrates its 40th anniversary, I am honored to welcome a man that has become a good friend of mine over the last several months. Head of Special Collections, Blues Curator, University of Mississippi Professor Greg Johnson. I'm pleased to welcome you to Time Signatures. How are you, sir? Man.

Thanks, sir. That was a great introduction. I'm doing really well. Yeah, we're right on the cusp of our 40th anniversary and we're really excited about all the work that's happened here and looking Forward to another 40 years beyond this.

I want to dive in here and, and get at it because we've got a lot of ground to cover. How long have you been with the University of Mississippi and how long with the archive?

I started here, August 16, 2002, after I started realized. Wait, that date sounds familiar. Oh, that's the date Elvis died. That's the date Robert Johnson died. That's the date Aretha Franklin died. The multiple. I'm like. So I always get a little superstitious around that date. I try not to stand on any ladders when I'm at work or anything. So, yeah, I've been here 22 years now. I was curator of the Blues Archive solely up until two years ago when I became head of all of Archives and Special Collections, including the Blues Archive.

Nice. There's so many cool aspects to the Blues Archive, but I want to back up to the beginning. Where did that all begin? And most importantly, why? I'm sure that you're going to tell me a little bit about William Ferris and his relationships. Had some incredible things, but I want to hear the backstory on this.

Sure. The easy thing to point to is when B.B. king donated his personal record collection. Over 1982 and 83, he gave about 10,000 sound recordings, you know, LPs, 78s, 45s, even some Edison wax cylinders in the collection. Yeah, that firmly established the need for a blues archive. You know, in 83, the university acquired Living Blues magazine. You know, it started Chicago in 1970, and the university took over publication in 83. So the convergence of those two pivotal things, you know, the university publishing Living Blues, taking over the publication of living blues, plus B.B. king donating his record collection, that established the need for. For us to create such a thing as the Blues Archive. Now, these were all the direct result of William Bill Ferris, who was the first director for the center for the Study of Southern Culture here on the campus of the University of Mississippi. He had seen how important it was for institutions like Tulane to have, you know, create the Hogan Jazz Archive. Very focused collecting of jazz music, particularly New Orleans jazz in their collections. And, you know, jazz had been considered as a serious study not that long, you know, that many years. I mean, even when I was in college in the late 90s, I remember a music history professor I had, he was telling me, I think when he was at LSU in the 40s, he got in trouble for practicing jazz in the practice rooms. Jazz hasn't been taken seriously as an academic study. Not, you know, it wasn't that long ago that it was taken seriously and then much later for blues. So Bill Ferris had this vision of, you know, doing such a thing for blues music. So his vision and perseverance and hard work really helped establish this. His connections with people like B.B. king and others helped bring these collections here. But we can go back even further now. This is also another Bill Ferris connection. There were some collections that were brought in in the 70s, particularly the Kenneth Goldstein collection. Dr. Goldstein was the first professor of folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also one of Bill Ferris major professors. He had done a lot of early recordings, the first recordings of Reverend Gary Davis, did a lot of early recordings of Sonny Terry and other blues artists on, like, Riverside, Stinson, Prestige, those albums, those labels, I mean. And so we got his collection here to the university in the 70s. It primarily consists of a lot of Anglo Celtic field recordings of folk music and folklore. But there's a lot of blues in there as well. But if we go back even further, well before a blues archive was established, there were some librarians in the 60s who created something called the Mississippi Collection. They were collecting all of these things by Mississippi authors. So Books by Mississippians. But also they were collecting sound recordings of Mississippians, including a lot of blues in those collections. So the library had already been collecting blues decades before we officially created the Blues Archive. And then if we go way back, there was a student here named Howard Odom. He was studying, like, classics and he took a sociology course. During that, he got really interested in African American music. And so he made some field recordings around 1907 or 1908 onto Edison Wax cylinders.

Okay.

He went all around Lafayette County. Sorry for all those people in south Louisiana listening. We mispronounce it here in where Oxford is. I apologize, but we pronounce it Lafayette here. He went all around the county collecting examples of black folk music. And it's clear from the themes he and his research partner, Guy Johnson at Chapel Hill. Themes they wrote down that what he had recorded were examples of blues or a proto blues type music. We're not sure because the cylinders don't exist at some point over 100 years ago. They're presumably lost either between here or Chapel Hill or somewhere. No one knows. But that would be a holy grail to find something like that early. I mean, before commercial blues was really recorded.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, wow. But so that's. That's a little history, but, you know. So even though these collections were sort of generated initially by work done at the center for the Study of Southern Culture. We just. The shorthand term, we just call it Southern Studies rather than the long formal name. It was always part of the university libraries because it makes sense if you're creating an archive. We already had the Department of Archives and Special Collections here. Then the Blues Archive was established. And then in 2002, the Blues Archive merged with Archives and Special Collections. So essentially, all of the different archival units on campus, for the most part, with a few exceptions, are part of this one unit.

And how cool is that? That the Blues Archive is housed and was founded at the University of Mississippi. I don't believe I've ever heard of another blues archive anywhere else in the country. And furthermore, I mean, it was born out of the birthplace of the blues. I mean, how cool is that?

Absolutely. I mean, the Chicago Public Library has had a sort of Chicago Blues Archive kind of collection. It's not as big as this one for some time.

And they're. They're specific to Chicago, too.

Yeah, that's right. And there are other institutions that do collect blues. I mean, Chapel Hill has some really great blues holdings in their collections, but it's not specific to focusing on blues. And you Know, like, the Library of Congress has more of any subject matter than anybody else, pretty much. But, yeah, it. It does make sense for such a thing to exist in Mississippi, and particularly where we are in Oxford, Mississippi. We're at the southern part of what we call the North Mississippi Hill country region. You know, it's associated with artists like R.L. burnside and Junior Kimbrough and all of their extended families. And then we're outside of the Delta, but we're right. We're very close to it. So it's kind of. We're at a point. We're almost at a convergence of where the Delta meets the Hill Country.

Very cool. Very cool. Now, I've got to believe Bibi's been to visit. Have you had a chance to speak with him? And what was that like?

Yeah, it was really cool. In 2004, this was at our second Blues Today symposium that we put on. We made him an honorary professor of Southern Studies. And I got to interview him on stage in front of a lot of blue scholars and fans. And, you know when that happened, because I'm like, oh, man, I'm talking to B.B. king. And there are all of these, like, you know, really serious scholars out there. So I was nervous. I was more nervous about speaking in front of them. But, you know, and BB's bus was running late. He got there, met him backstage, and he was just so down to earth, just such a gentleman. I had a lot of formal questions I had, but we end up kind of throwing them out. We just had a conversation. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Asking a lot of questions about his. His collection that he had donated. You know, in his collection, there's a lot of blues and jazz, as you would expect.

Sure.

There's a lot of stuff outside of those areas. I mean, there are classical recordings in there, There are comedy albums. There's a recording of War of the Worlds, the radio broadcast. There are about 40 to 50 foreign language courses on LP, like, you know, how to speak Serbo Croatian, how to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Wow.

A Yiddish language course. And he told me they. When he went on his first world tour, he wanted to learn a few phrases in the native language of whatever country he was performing in. So that. That's pretty cool. He also has some odd titles in there, like Morse Code for Pilots and what in the World Is This? Yeah, he was studying to get his pilot's license, and he said while he was on tour, get back to the hotel room after a gig. And he would. He would study and prepare for the Exam by listening to some of these records. It's. It's really cool stuff in there.

Wow.

Actually, the artist, the single, the artist is the most recordings of. Of anyone, if any genre is Django Reinhardt, which I found pretty fascinating. He just, apparently he loved. Yeah. Django's guitar playing and. Yeah.

Wow. I want to flip the page a little bit and first of all, let me mention to you I am a subscriber to the Living Blues magazine. Before I knew that it was part of you, Ms. But I was reading an article in the Blues Archive recently and help me out. Is this accurate? You've got like a hundred thousand sound recordings, 200,000 photographs and more than 34,000 books, periodicals and newsletters, including extensive holdings of concert tickets, concert programs and clothing like blues festival gear. That's really some undertaking, isn't is?

Yeah, that's. Yeah, those numbers are I think, mostly accurate. Yeah, it's, it's a lot, you know, to manage all of. I mean that's this pretty vast collection. But, you know, it's not just me working here. We have a. There's a whole team of cataloging librarians.

I was going to say there has to be.

Yeah, the catalogers, they're the ones that do all of the work, you know, putting all of the information into the catalog to make everything searchable. Me and I have some staff and student workers. I mean our student workers, we couldn't get this done without their help. You know, we have people in house work and outsourcing the digitization of a lot of our holdings for a lot of our photographic collections. This is work that us, like our staff, plus our student workers do a lot of that. You know, we're.

Wow.

There are times you're scanning things, creating the metadata to describe it. You know, who's in the photo, where was it taken, when was it taken, who's the photographer, all of that type of information. I got a very large grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, NHPRC a year ago. This is allowing us to digitize our non commercial audio visual holdings. So we have sent off, I think 17 pallets of material that's being digitized. Now we've received the first batch of digitized files back. And literally today we set two of our new student workers up, two graduate assistants up, going through these files. The initial thing, checking to make sure everything that we got back is accurate, checking, doing quality control work. Then we start creating all the metadata to describe them. And then, then there's another process of creating transcriptions. Ada Accessible transcriptions of every spoken word thing in the, in the collections. And that's an undertaking because, you know, now nowadays, like AI is has gotten really good speech to text type technologies. They've gotten incredibly good and fast and efficient.

Yeah.

But they're not good at understanding old thick Southern Mississippi accents.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of this, it takes human intervention. Yeah.

My daughter, God bless her, is the person that does my work with the transcripts. You know, the generation of the transcript wasn't perfect. So I understand those challenges.

Oh, yeah.

Now you, you also have some interviews and even a podcast or two on the archive, including the only currently produced podcast, which is Time Signatures with Jim Irvin. And by the way, once again, I wanted to say thank you for having us. It's an honor to be there. But for those that are not aware of what the archive has to offer, what can you find there? What all can you search there? Is it all online? Do you have physical items as well available at the University of Mississippi? Tell us a little bit about that.

Sure. So let me give you just kind of an overview of the collection and then I'll tell you. Drill down to how people can search this and access it.

Yep.

The listing you gave earlier of sound recordings and photos, posters, blues festival T shirts and hats, all of that stuff. Yeah, that's. That's exactly the type of things that we do collect. It's all physically available to anyone to come into the archive Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, our hours that were open to the public. You don't have to be affiliated with the University of Mississippi. It's completely open to anyone and we get visitors from all around the world coming here. You don't have to be doing serious research either. You can just be a blues fan and show up now. We always have exhibit spaces with some blues things on display, but we're a research archive first and the museum kind of aspect is sort of a secondary aspect to what we do. So the vast majority of any of our holdings are in what we call closed stacks. It's ones where like you can't come in and just start browsing stuff and pulling things off the shelf as public.

Right, right.

You request things from of us at our front desk and we'll go pull those for you. You can also send us an email and request things ahead of time. We can have them ready for you to look at when you get here. Because we just don't have space to have, you know, several hundred thousand sound recordings all displayed at the same time, you know, right. But we have ways people can search through our online catalog to look for the commercially produced things like commercial sound recordings and books, things of that nature. But we also have for our archival collections, what we call finding aids. That's an archival term for an inventory of collections where you can pull that up and it will give you all of the information about who donated this collection, general synopsis of it, and then it gets down to more granular detail of item level. In many cases, you know, what's in this collection so you can come and request. You could say, you know, for instance, I would love to see the Sheldon Harris Collection, boxes 63 through 84, something like that. And we'll pull those out for you. And you can look at all of his research files and things that he was using when he wrote his seminal work, Blues who's who.

So you can actually go in and see the physical papers and whatnot?

Yes, all of that's available to the public to come in and see physically here. Now, a lot of people, you know, they can't travel here. Maybe just, you know, they don't have the time to make the trip or the resources. We do have a lot of things online, but the vast majority of our collections are not online. You know, a lot of people would love to be able to access all of the audio recordings we have over the web, but just because we have physical items here doesn't mean we own the rights to those items. So the vast majority of commercially recorded blues, it's. They're still all under copyright control.

Oh, gotcha.

Even all of Robert Johnson's recordings, I mean, everybody thinks, oh, those are all old recordings. No, those, those rights are still owned by the record industry, you know, and like, so I can't put them out for free for anybody to access online.

Sure.

But you can access them here in the archive. And then a lot of things that we do have rights to or they've, they're now in the public domain. A lot of those materials are online and you can access those remotely.

Very nice. And overall, what does the group of people look like that come in and access the archive is like you said. I know you said there are people that are big time researchers and stuff like that. Do you see a lot of just normal fans like you were talking about earlier, just coming in to check things out?

Yeah, often, you know, I get, we get most of the just blues fan traffic.

Sure.

In near, near blues festival time. You know, if there's a festival in the region.

Okay.

That's when people are often traveling and they're like, well, while we're here, on our way back home, let's go and see the Blues Archive. You know, on campus. I speak to classes all the time in different subject areas. There are classes in the school of Music here. I'll do a blues talk, like a Blues 101 type presentation to those groups. A lot of times, classes from, you know, Southern Studies, they're over here. I've had some classes doing work on like blues, blues literature, like analyzing lyrics and things like that. I've spoken to groups like that. And then also a lot of English as a second language, like intensive English programs here. A lot of the instructors there sometimes want. Because we'll get sometimes an intensive group maybe like for one or two months. There'll be a group of students from another country or several countries that are coming here really working on English. And the instructors really want them to, in addition to learning that, learn about some of Mississippi's history and culture, including the blues. And they'll bring their classes over to learn, learn in those ways.

Now, I wanted to ask you. When you and I spoke about having time signatures put up in the Blues Archive, you talked about ways that it would be used. I'd like you to talk about that a little bit. In what ways will these interviews be available and used, you know, for, for papers and different things like that?

Yeah, absolutely. Our institutional repository. It's where we manage all of our digital collections, including time signatures. So it's now available to the entire world. People can access these. They can listen to your interviews you've done with so many wonderful artists, and that's available for them for their research. You know, somebody's writing an article on somebody you recently interviewed. I can, you know, I could see this program being super useful to them. I'm hopeful that there's a Master's of Fine Arts and MFA program here in Documentary Expression, part of the Southern Studies program. I think your program serves as a good model for how to conduct an interview, how to do this type of conversation with people. And I'm hopeful that some of those, those students are going to be utilizing it in that way, using your program as, as a template for what's done. Right.

You know, I didn't even think of something like that. That's. That's mind boggling.

Yeah, because there's two parts here. I mean, there's the content, but there's also the way you've. You've done it. And in today's age, with technologies like zoom, you know, it's. It's a real game changer.

It's a beautiful thing, baby.

Yeah. Because, you know, not everybody has gas money to travel everywhere. Yeah. In person, interviews.

And the other thing is, what I. What I like most about it is I was able to interview, for example, Jennifer Noble in London. And we sat down on a Sunday. It was. I was morning my time, it was early afternoon her time. And, you know, all. All you got to do is be able to. To set a time to have the discussion and you can speak to somebody around the world. It's incredible.

Yeah.

So my goal is to get down there next spring. That's the plan. And be able to take a little look around and meet you in person and thank you properly. But I want you to know that I've also been working as a. An extended arm of University of Mississippi's Blues Archive, because I think there's a lot of people out there that really need to consider donating some of their stuff to your collection. I mean, there's several photographers that I've spoken with. There's also several musicians that I've spoken with. I want to see this grow. I want to see it continue to flourish, and as you said, be here for another 40 years. For the person that wants to reach out to you, maybe they feel they've got something of value to donate to the archive. Greg, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Absolutely. I think the best way is through email, just contacting the department. It's Archives Dept. Like Archives departmentolmiss.edu. contact me through email and then we'll start a conversation that way. You know, donations are the backbone of everything here. This is why we exist.

Very good. And if anybody wants to go visit your website, go ahead and throw that out there as well.

Sure. I wish we had a shortened email address, but it's Libraries ole Ms. Edu Specialcollections pages, slash the Bluesarchive. There's no way you're going to remember that. So I think it's the easiest thing is probably just to type into your favorite search engine, just Blues Archive, and we'll be hopefully at the top of that list.

And we will absolutely put the information up on the description section of our episode so that people can link to it directly from there if they would like as well. But Greg Johnson, what an honor. Thank you so much for your time and for taking the time out of your day to join me today on Time Signatures. I really, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate it, sir.

Well, I really appreciate it, Irvin. That we're happy to have your program here as part of the archive now as well. And it will be a growing collection, so.

Yeah, absolutely. And season two, Season one was great because it was the kickoff. Season two was fun. But season three, man, I got Walter Trout, Joe Bonamassa. I got names that I can't even tell you right now because they're coming up. But we. We are just continuing to seek out everybody and anybody that we can to get in and get the interviews and capture some of those stories and. And that's. That's the most fun part of my job.

Yeah. You know what? I can add one more thing.

Sure.

Yeah. I was thinking, you know, a lot of times, blues fans, you would love to go out and find, you know, see an original Robert Johnson 78 or Charlie Patton 78. Unless you happen to know a blues collector who is just lucky enough or wealthy enough or both to have one of those in their collections, you're not going to find one of those there. Or there's a very slim. Likely archives like ours are places where the public can come and you can see. You can physically see these things here on display. So I think that's. That's another powerful aspect of. Of archives like ours.

One more question I wanted to ask you now. When they come in and they say they want to look at some of B.B. king's collection, you have a means to play that, that they can put it on a turntable and.

Absolutely. We have listening stations, we have turntables. We can play most formats up here. Now, there are some that just made

it 100 times more cool.

Oh, yeah. There are some recordings that are just maybe too rare or too fragile where you can't handle that physically. But we will often have a digitized version of that. You can hear it because we just can't have everybody coming in here and putting a needle onto a Robert Johnson, you know?

Yeah, No, I understand that.

Yeah.

All right, Greg. Well, listen, I appreciate your time once again. And that wraps up this edition of Time Signatures with Jim Urban. Once again, my sincere thanks to the head of Special Collections, Professor Greg Johnson, and most importantly, to you, our listeners, our subscribers. For without you, none of this would be possible. Jim Riven reminding you that keeping the blues alive is everyone's responsibility. But preserving the history of the blues one story at a time, that's my mission. Until next time.

So long

this has been Time Signatures with Jim Irvin, presented by the Capital Area Blues Society in Lansing, Michigan. For more information on CABS, visit capitalareablues.org you can find this episode and past episodes@lccconnect.org the Time Signature's theme song, Michigan Roads is used by permission and was written by Root Doctor featuring Freddie Cunningham.

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Until next time, keep on keeping the blues alive Sharing the voices of Lansing Community College. Visit us@lccconnect.org LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision

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LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision welcome to Front

Row Backstage, the show that takes you behind the velvet ropes of the media world. I'm LCC student Greg Trimmer, and each week we'll explore the stars you see on screen, stage and radio, and the tech and talent making the magic happen behind it. From unsung heroes to spotlight sensations. We've got the stories you won't hear anywhere else, so grab your popcorn and let's dive in. Welcome to front row backstage today, guys. Today we have a very special guest, Daedalian Lowry, who happens to be the amazing person behind LCC Connect that allows us to do this podcast here. He is a renowned voice in the Lansing's radio scene and as I said, the creative force behind LCC Connect. With over two decades of experience in broadcasting, Dadalian has shaped Mid Michigan's airwaves through his work at stations like wlnz, wfmk, WVIC and wjxq. His career reflects a deep passion for connecting communities through the power of radio, using storytelling, music and culture to bring back local voices to the forefront. Today we'll delve into his journey and how he's been keeping the spirit of local broadcasting alive. Welcome.

Thanks, Greg. Thanks for having me on the show too.

To start out a little bit, what sparked your love for radio, for broadcasting? What made you say, this is what I want to do with my life, this is what I want to provide, what I want to be in the world?

Well, an honest answer is originally I hadn't intended it. In some ways I did. In some ways I didn't. I suppose radio was always something I had a fascination with since I was a kid. Music's always been a big part of my life. I always joke about the fact that one of the very first songs I can ever remember was Steve Miller's Fly like an Eagle. I broke my arm in like kindergarten or something like that and got home, didn't have to go to school because, you know, I had a broken arm. So I was flying around the room like an eagle. But back in the 80s, anybody who's familiar with the radio stations in the Lansing area, there used to be two morning jocks that used to go back and forth. That always cracked me up. And I'll give them a mention too because they were influential into me getting into radio and that was Rich Michaels and Tim Baron. So they used to have this like little on air war with each other. I don't know if it was play or what they did, but it was enough to spark my interest. And then of course there were TV shows like wkrp, which was just a classic that I absolutely loved. So by the time I got done, went out of high school, I originally intended to get into advertising and I did work in marketing for quite a while and then decided I did not care for it at all and turned around decided to go back to school. And I'd say Probably in my 30s, I decided to get into radio. So I got in a little bit later than a lot of people. Yeah, that was kind of my journey.

Amazing. Yeah. Nobody's journey starts out nobody's journey. Well, not nobody. Some people's journey starts out. They come out of high school and they know exactly what they want to do, and that's what they do the rest of their life. But some people, including myself, need, you know, they've needed some time to figure out where exactly their place in this world is. And there's nothing wrong with that. And honestly, sometimes I think that grows a passion and makes a passion even more like sets it on fire.

Yeah. Yeah. I always say that the path to the end is rarely straight and narrow. And it is. It's true.

So we know WLMZ is LCC's radio station. That is correct. 89.7. And that's kind of what you're doing now. But before that you worked with wfmk, WVIC and wjxq. Tell us a little bit about what it was like working with those radio stations, what you did specifically, if you were like actually on the radio station or if you were behind the scenes and kind of what that was like in those early years.

WLNZ has actually been a part of my life ever since I started doing radio. Anybody that's been in radio knows that it is a little bit difficult to get to the top. So a lot of the times you end up working a couple of part time jobs. And WLNZ was a part time job for me for a long time. So at the same time, I was also lower at wvic. I had a full time gig there though. And even though I had the full time gig, I still needed to hold down another job just to make it work. Because at that time you really didn't get paid a lot in radio. In fact, you probably still don't really. Commercial radio especially. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And so I was working at wvic, WLNZ at the same time. Then there was a point that I moved on from WVIC as a full time position and went over to Q106 and I was doing production work for the morning show and then also working part time on the weekends, as on air. After that, technology came along. And technology is one of those things. It's awesome because it makes the world so much simpler in some ways, but it also eliminates a lot of jobs. And mine was one of those jobs that got eliminated from Q106. They were great folks there at the time, very helpful in helping me to move on and find another position. And then I ended up over at wfmk, where I worked part time there for quite a while. So on air at every single one of those stations, but also behind the scenes because they did a lot of production work, too. And honestly, when it comes down to it, production is where, like a lot of the creativity is a lot of the fun of, you know, creating all the little pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

That fun.

It's a lot of fun doing that kind of stuff. And I enjoy it. Yeah, all the.

Yeah.

W, L and Z, you know, that kind of stuff. It's kind of. It's a lot of fun. So there's a lot of creativity there. I think I got a hit on all your questions there.

Yeah. One more little thing. With your early broadcasting journey, how do you think growing up in Lansing shaped your commitment to the local radio scene? Local arts, local media?

Yeah, great question. I mean, originally I was a Mason boy, so I grew up in Mason, but Lansing, of course, being so close, I kind of grew to really love Lansing eventually. You know, once I got into college, then I moved into the area, and the capital city has always been my home. What I love about this city is I always call it a big, small town because it's, it's not like, you know, when you go to Chicago or New York, it's not like bustle, bustle, but there are a lot of great folks in this town. It really comes down to the people. Every time somebody asks me what I love about this city the most is the people. It's a diverse population. And generally speaking, I would say that my experience has been that most people are pretty friendly all the time. They're open, they're receptive. And I just love this town. So it's just kind of really grown on me.

All right, so moving on a little bit, we're going to talk about the role of local media and how that fits into our society and Lansing and such. So just as a start, how do you think local radio supports community identity and culture?

Local radio supporting community identity and culture. That's a great question, too. A lot of the times you will find that if you, and specifically I'm going to say anything like wlnz, where you're talking about a nonprofit, if you're talking about, like, the impact, the impact's another good example of this. Anything that's a nonprofit reflects the identity of the City it's in. I can't say that local radio does that as much anymore. Now, there are stations out there that are mom and pop type stations, but most of it is corporate now. So it's a little bit difficult to answer that question in the aspect that I don't know that it does as much as it used to. But I will say that there are stations, the smaller stations. I'm trying to think of the call letters right now, and they're not coming to me right now. But I want to say WCYE in Grand Rapids. Wyce. That's it. Wyce. If you tune into that, you're gonna very much see a reflection of what Grand Rapids is, because they are playing local music. They're doing some great stuff with it. And, you know, when we were doing music here at wlnz, that was our goal was to reflect the city. And I will say WDBM does a great job of that. That is the impact. So, again, to answer your question, I don't want to say that radio doesn't reflect its city, but it isn't like it used to be. It's a little bit more corporate now. And it's part of the reason why I'm not really a part of commercial radio anymore either.

What do you think the challenges are that people are facing while trying to preserve the relevance of radio stations like WL and Z? Like any of these out there amidst, for a matter of fact, a lot of industry changes that have happened even just over the last five years or so.

Yeah, that's another great question, and it is a difficult one to answer because it depends on what avenue you're talking about. Obviously, the biggest challenge for radio has been the many, many streaming platform server. I mean, people are just inundated with streaming platforms now. You know, you can tune into Spotify, listen to whatever song you want at any time. And music, of course, has always been the basis of what? Well, I'm not gonna say always, but, you know, most of the time, when people think of radio these days, music is essential, right? Well, if I can look up a song on YouTube that I'd have to wait for at the radio station, you know, what's the. What's the point of the radio station? Right. That doesn't mean that there isn't a relevance to it because you kind of hit on it. And where I think radio really needs to be more focused on, and that is that local environment. And that is the key that radio. The advantage has over, say, a music streaming platform is that you and I can talk about things that are relevant to our community because, let's face it, every community is different. Right?

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the biggest reasons I wanted to start this podcast, Front Row Backstage that I've started is to bring to the light and highlight local artists, local musicians, people working behind the scenes in that industry. Just that when they're working on a local basis, kind of just in the mid Michigan area, they're not always gonna get the credit they deserve or be shown to the community the way that I think that they should be.

Right.

And I think that's hugely important. And I think that that's an amazing thing for local radios to be focusing on, and I think we should be doing more of that.

Yeah.

And it's definitely happening here and there, and I'm seeing it from time to time. By any means. I mean, I realize that some of the stuff I may be saying sounds negative about radio, and I don't want to make it sound like that, because radio still has a place in the world.

No, no. Yeah. It's just. It's the reality of how things are being shaped and how we have to try to adapt to continue to keep radio and keep this broadcasting age alive, you know?

Yeah.

So basically, to go back to your question, though, when it comes to relevance, the biggest advantage radio has is the local factor. And the more I think that any radio station focuses in on that, the better off it's going to be.

So what motivates you specifically to keep these local voices in this local community and radio as a whole? Deep down, what motivates you to continue to do this and to continue to champion these voices?

At the risk of recycling my answers, I'm gonna say it's the people again. It's great working with students like you, first of all, and you're a student at the moment, but eventually you're gonna move on to do something else. And this is giving me an opportunity to kind of hopefully guide you and help you to get to where you want to be. But you go beyond that. We have various local community members that are activists that just want to be involved. So I'm giving them a platform. We have a number of staff and faculty here at the college that do a great job. And honestly, I think a lot of them would have never have done anything like this if we hadn't created this platform. So really, it comes back to the people every single time. Not only the people that I work with, but the people of this community. Because I also feel like we're putting out a lot of great information out there for folks to listen to and to find out about resources that we have here at the college. Yeah, the list goes on and on, really. But, yeah, recycling answers, people.

No, no, no. Like, I mean, recycling answers is fine. Like, if that's the passion. That's the passion.

Right.

So kind of segueing, talking about LCC Connect, specifically, when you decided that LCC Connect was kind of going to be a thing, what was your vision behind wanting that platform for students and faculty and staff and community members?

Well, I will say that, I mean, I had been listening to podcasts for a little bit. I had been on a couple of podcasts before for starting LCC Connect. But I will say that Dr. Robinson, when he came along, he was kind of like the catalyst in a way, because he had started up with Alumni Stories and Teachable Moments, two of our podcasts. And he had been doing that prior to LCC Connect. And it was one of those things where I thought, okay, if we're going to be changing the way we do things at wlnz, which was going to happen, it was inevitable. And it became this thing where I was like, if we're going to do this podcast, obviously, is almost the new radio. It's the new broadcasting format. I thought, okay, we have a little bit of airtime on WLNZ that we're gonna be utilizing. And I thought, what better way to do that than to create a platform of different podcasts? Because one of the things that I noticed as I looked around at other colleges, other universities, was the fact that nothing ever seemed centralized. So I'd go to a different university website and I'd see like 10 or 13 different podcasts that they'd have in different areas, but nothing was ever centralized. So I thought, well, why not take all these podcasts, put them in one location, so everybody knows that this college or university is putting it out there and creating some great content.

Seems like bigger universities with more financial resources than some, than a place like Lansing Community College would be more apt to having a more centralized situation.

And I'm not going to lie, there's a part of me that hopes that we'll see that in the future. And I'm hoping that we will be the inspiration. I've already had a couple of folks that are in the broadcast field at universities and college compliment us on what we're doing. So who knows, we might see it become a new thing.

LCC starts a revolution.

Yeah, there you go.

That's awesome. So what stories or Guests so far do you think have resonated with listeners on LCC Connect?

Oh, well, that's a big question there, Greg. One of my favorite shows, and don't get me wrong, I love every single one of these shows, but Coach Cut's Corner, I absolutely dig what Coach Cut is doing and he's putting a positive vibe out there and he has come up with some pretty inspiring stories on there. And, you know, you had to ask me this without me giving any, getting any preparation, and I can't actually see. Normally I'd be accessing the computer right now. But there is somebody's Angels. I can't remember remember the name of the organization, but a great facility that's here in Lansing. All right, so I managed to multitask while talking to you. And here we go. It's KCS Angels. It's a registered nonprofit, adults with disabilities. And they all get together, they do different sports activities. And it was a organization that I'd never heard of until Coach Cut had them on his show. So it is one of those things where what we talked about earlier, it's a resource here in Lansing that I want people to know about that's out there, and it's a great organization. So that's been one of my all time favorites. You go beyond that. There's been a multitude of other ones. I could go on and on, but, you know, we only have like so much time fitted in.

Right. No segueing a little bit. So you mentioned how Coach Cut has been, you know, bringing things from the community and fostering that. So how do you think that the initiative has strengthened Lansing's connection to arts education, all these different things. Nonprofits, obviously. How do you think that this initiative, LCC Connect, is strengthening Lansing's connection to that?

Well, one of the things I'd like to say is, I mean, like folks like you, we were very adamant when we began LCC Connect that we wanted students to be a part of what we're doing. And so in your case, already, you're putting a show out there where you're giving people a chance to learn about different folks like Druid Drummer. That is an individual that they may have never got to know before. So there's that there's the avenue of kind of what we just talked about with the KCS Angels. There's a lot of nonprofits that are getting their information out there, getting their chance to know. I do Shining Stars. It's one of my podcasts, and that's focused on nonprofits. Community Convos is Another show where I'm very much about trying to get folks in to talk about the different things that are happening here in Lansing. So really, I think it's just getting the information out there. When you asked me that question, I think that's where we're hitting a home run every time, really.

I'm sure you have plans to continue to expand this platform, get more people involved. I'm sure that's your passion. I'm sure one day you'd love to see 50 podcasts on here or something. So just tell us a little bit about what you're doing to foster that and grow this community.

Yep. Well, one of the things, again, back to the students. We do the podcast Power up every year. That is our way of, like, reaching out to the students and saying, hey, you want to do a podcast? Here we are. This is what we do. You go beyond that. A lot of word of mouth is kind of how this has been happening. You know, it doesn't hurt that we're on a radio station every week. You know, it's basically saying, hey, LCC connects here. We just had a psycho delicious conversation. Join up not too long ago. This is a couple of community activists, Mike Stratton and Morgan Bowen, who just really are doing the show because they want people to think about their mental health. That's awesome.

That's amazing.

I'm gonna go ahead and mention Melissa Ford Luckin. She's doing a great job with bringing in all these great writers and everything on Washington Square on air. So really, word of mouth is primarily what's happening. I mean, when we started this, I think we had, like, maybe five to six podcasts. We're at, like, 25 to 30 now. Like, every year. It's been growing. And, yeah, my hope is to see it get up to, like, 50 podcasts or more. I don't know.

Right.

I'm not gonna lie. That notion scares me and excites me at the same time.

So, yeah, no, I mean, talking specifically about Melissa, I know her podcast is amazing. And I know what's another really cool thing. You guys want students to be involved. And she's brought students onto her shows literally out of her classes. My friend Isaiah Womel was just recently on her podcast. It just got released not that long ago, his episode. And he was literally in her class this semester. And she was just like, hey, you want to come and do this and talk about this?

And that's an exciting opportunity for any student to come out and just say, yeah, I wrote this. I did this. This is what I'm doing. This is awesome. And she does a great job with that. Honestly, I wish I could go through every single podcast and just give them a mention because they are all doing a great job. And a lot of these folks aren't people that were trained to be in the broadcast field. That's what's awesome. They are just regular folks and they're doing this and, you know, it's a process. It's fun.

One final question, really quick for the listeners, anybody who is wanting to break into this industry, whether it be TV broadcasting or podcasting or radio or whatever, what tips do you have for those people? Because, you know, your tips 15 years ago might have been very different because things are evolving heavily now into a more technological age. So in that modern technological age, what are your tips and advice you would give people? Trying to break in?

I hate to be a negative guy again. Don't do it. I'm kidding. Podcasting, I think really, if anybody wanted to get into podcasting, I think the possibilities are there. You're talking radio. That's a different. You know, like you said 15 years ago, it was quite a bit different. We had a lot more jobs here in the Lansing area, but they're not really there anymore. I'm not as familiar with tv, so I can't really speak for that, but I would imagine that they're kind of dealing with that a little bit too. As far as podcasting goes, we've got a really professional setup here. The college is great at making sure that we're provided for. Right. But the thing of it is, is you don't even need that to start a podcast. That's what's awesome is you could technically have a microphone and a computer, a laptop, and you're good to go. You can pull it off.

Little tiny focusrite, Scarlet Mini or whatever.

That's a yeti. Whatever they are, yeah, you could easily do it with that. And that's the beauty of this, is that it is an open environment for. For anyone. And that's what I do love about what we're doing. And a lot of the times to get your podcast out there, you can usually do it for free. Even now. The thing of it is, I don't want to step aside because if somebody was interested in being involved with what we do here at LCC Connect, we're always interested to talking to anybody, whether they be students, staff, faculty, or even community activists. I'm trying to think of the number of community. I think we've got like three or four community activist shows right now.

That's amazing.

Yeah. Irv, I should mention him because he does a great job. Does the time signatures with the Capital Area Blues Society.

Yeah.

Well thank you for joining today today, Leon.

Hey, thanks for having me in, Greg. Appreciate it.

Learning about this community and this ever evolving industry. Yeah. And hopefully things continue to stay strong and that we can leverage this new podcast age and it can just make the industry bigger and better than ever. Thanks for tuning in to Front Row Backstage. We hope you enjoyed this week behind the curtains of the media world. Don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram for more information and join us next week for more stories from the front lines of entertainment. Until then, stay tuned because whether it's on stage, behind the scenes or over the airwaves, the real action is everywhere.

Featuring the faculty, staff, students and others that help to make Lansing's premier college what it is today. LCC Connect MidMichigan's connection to Lansing Community College. To find out more about our featured programs or listen on demand, Visit us@lccconnect.org

LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision

Lansing Community College Performing Arts is proud to present Summer Stage under the stars featuring a 10 minute play festival directed by Paige Dunkle and Shelley Peterson. A wonderful variety of styles and concepts for this evening of theater, including all these Buckeyes by Joshua Thompson Linton, A farcical work that touches on current issues. HOA President Bingus Stunk is determined to keep the Ohians in their place. But there are so many Buckeyes. Will his assistant Gibble save the day? Featured at LCC's outdoor amphitheater July 23rd through the 27th at 7pm in the event of rain or extreme heat, performances will move into Dart Auditorium. For more information, visit lcc. Eduardo all performances are free to attend.

Hi, I'm Greg Ladig and I host

a show called Stars on Sports with Assistant Athletic Director Steven Cutter here on LCC Connect. It's all about Lansing Community College Athletic Department.

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Stars on Sports and listen on demand@lccconnect.org. Well, I'll have a real good time.

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