There was a time, before the internet, before streaming, when local radio was a thing. Not the shock jocks. It was the music that mattered.
It was the place for the cool kids to tune in and catch all the latest and greatest tunes, the up-and-coming artists and to form a sense of community, where a DJ with the right personality could become a cult celebrity.
It was fodder for hit television shows (WKRP in Cincinnati, which gave us the infamous Thanksgiving turkey drop) and popular drive-in movie fare (FM, a prescient tale in which DJs Cleavon Little, Martin Mull, Eileen Brennan, et al. barricaded themselves in the QSKY studio to protest the heavy-handed commercialization being forced upon them by evil corporate ownership). And it’s mostly gone the way of those drive-in movie theaters, Main Street shopping and cassette tapes, replaced by formulaic, universal corporate sameness.
But not entirely. In Patagonia, that time lives on, albeit on a different scale, thanks to the industriousness of former resident Will Hadley, a cadre of like-minded music aficionados and a heavy and generous dose of community involvement.
KPUP 100.5FM is an outgrowth of the Federal Communications Commission’s approval, in 2000, of LP (Low Power) licenses, designed for noncommercial use by schools, nonprofits, universities and small communities. They are limited to 100 watts of power—or in KPUP’s case 50, due to its proximity to the border.
On a good day, the signal is strong enough to stretch from the U.S. side of Nogales to Sonoita, although streaming on kpup.rocks extends its reach worldwide. Music-hungry campers at Patagonia Lake have been known to carry the station home with them.
“I’ll come in and check the phone messages,” said Mark Nicholson, KPUP’s de facto programming manager, “and there will be a message from somebody who said, ‘Hey, I was camping at the lake and I found this station and I love it. This is the greatest station.’”
Hadley, combination computer geek and musician, was the mover and shaker. He drummed up support in the community, spearheaded fundraising, applied for and got a license, scrounged for equipment, and leaned on his friends to make it a reality.
“Will was really good at sourcing things,” Nicholson said. “Will put together a list of what we needed and then he went out and found it. Whether it was a used piece of equipment from another station or software to run the station, Will had a knack for finding the best and least expensive solution.”
In 2005, KPUP went on the air, but only when there was a volunteer DJ in the studio. On March 1, 2007, through the magic of computer software and automation, it went round the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And it’s still there.
“It’s amazing. A town of 900 people has a radio station,” said KPUP board president Jeff Latham. “I know people who have it on all the time. In a sense, it’s the background music of the community.”
But don’t mistake KPUP for just another algorithm-driven streaming service. DJs inhabit the studio on Tuesday for a World Jazz show (Mark Berg) and a Jazz and Blues show (Fred Hansen), Wednesday night for classic rock and roll (Sean Alexander), and Thursday night for anything and everything that Latham feels like showcasing on The Possibility Explorers, including a weekly installment of Mushkil Gusha, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales.
John Warner, one of the station’s first DJs, still produces Hook’s Radio Roadhouse in his home studio in Virginia and sends it to the station for airing every Friday night. Lars Marshall has hosted shows with high school and Montessori students. There are local weather reports throughout the day, thrice-daily news reports and regular segments devoted to bird watching and Petey Mesquitey’s ‘Growing Native.’
For the DJs, it’s a labor of love. Hansen worked in radio as a college student and is a huge jazz and blues buff.
“I just love it,” he said. “It’s so much fun. And we get to do some good things for the community.”
When the automation takes over, predictability is thrown to the wind. Nicholson and the station’s other volunteers over the years have loaded some 155,000 songs into the station’s library.
Sure, you’ll hear the occasional Bruce Springsteen, but The Boss might be sandwiched between a slice of reggae and a slice of bluegrass.
It wouldn’t be unusual for the station playlist to include Justin Bieber, B.B. King, Talking Heads, Lady Antebellum, Sister Sledge, conga player and Latin jazz band leader Poncho Sanchez, and Austrian Electro Swing pioneer Parov Stelar. In fact, on one recent Sunday it did.
Even when the artists are familiar, the songs might not be.
“My philosophy with programming music is to play the best music you’ve never heard,” Nicholson said. “There are so many artists out there who are not the Rolling Stones, but they have great music. I call our music ‘NPR music’ because it’s eclectic, it’s singer-songwriter, it’s rock, it’s pop, it’s Latin. I wanted to not have songs that are going to make you want to turn the station off.”
Latham, an architect from Nogales who doubles as Thursday night DJ, takes it a step further, both with his musical selections and the stories of Mushkil Gusha, the “remover of all difficulties.”
“Being a music lover, the type and quality of music that plays on KPUP is unprecedented,” he said. “I don’t believe you’ll find another radio station anywhere that plays music like KPUP.”
Latham’s musical philosophy was nurtured in his youth by music appreciation classes, first in grammar school and later at the University of Michigan.
“It amounted to going for an hour and sitting in a room and listening to music. Nothing else, just listening to music,” he said. “This is something people don’t seem to do anymore.”
The ability to do just that is one of the many pleasures he takes from his DJing shift.
“We have a really good sound system in the studio, and there’s really good music,” he said. “I’m in there to surprise myself, to learn, to find new music, and to help other people find new music. I’ve never heard any complaints.
“The opportunities are amazing to contemplate.”
Making it work does require some labor. Free labor.
“Frugality is baked into our DNA,” Nicholson said. “We’ve never had any paid employees. It’s all been volunteers.”
Bob Ollerton, a fan of the Americana genre, was one of those volunteers as a part-time resident. After he moved here full-time and Hadley had moved away, he took over as station engineer—maintaining and replacing equipment, updating software, and anything else needed to keep the station on the air—tasks he estimates require five to 10 hours a month. He’s also landlord of KPUP’s studio, which helps keep the rent low.
“I love the community radio aspect of it,” Ollerton said. “Geographically, KPUP serves an underserved area. For some people in our community, KPUP and the PRT are the only sources for what’s going on in the world. We strive to emphasize that locality, not just be another blast of music on the internet.”
KPUP’s largest expenses are music licensing fees, both for broadcasting over the air and the internet. There are also generic costs of doing business such as electricity, phone bills, insurance, rent. On very rare occasions, outside contractors are needed for heavy lifting.
It has balanced out those costs through underwriting, donations, grants earmarked for new equipment and a very successful community fundraiser: the annual KPUP Luau, scheduled this year for May 11. In 2014, Patagonia resident Jan Herron took the fundraiser into overdrive by organizing a Hawaiian shirt sale to accompany the Luau, and it’s been, if not a station saver, a stress reliever.
“That really changed things for us, it took the pressure off,” Nicholson said. “We just pray every year that God willing, let Jan be willing to do that.”
Herron says not to worry. She’ll continue, with the help of her friends, to scour the thrift shops from Oklahoma to Los Angeles to restock the 500 or so shirts that are sold annually, even as they are getting pricier and more difficult to find.
“We’re happy to do it. It’s really, really fun,” she said, with a dose of the infectious enthusiasm she uses to hawk the shirts in front of Global Arts Gallery, Patagonia Trading Post and Gathering Grounds for the better part of two weeks, starting in late April.
“We’re so lucky to have this radio station,” Herron said. “It’s just important to have an independent local radio station that’s about the people that live here.”
But fundraising is not the only concern.
“What concerns me,” Nicholson said, “KPUP has been on the air almost 20 years, the people involved are getting older, some are fighting health problems. We need to have some new blood. A new generation has to come along at some point and take over the station if it’s going to continue.
“And I realize that with that, whoever comes in here, they may take this station in a whole different direction. But to me it’s worth it because I’d like to see the station continue.”
Ollerton was asked to contemplate Patagonia without KPUP.
“It would be like your favorite restaurant closing,” he said. “It would diminish the brightness and cultural uniqueness of the community. We’re not so self-important that I don’t think they can’t live without us, but I do think we add value by being here.”