SATURDAYS 5PM

Salwa Khan
I'm speaking with Mike August, and his show is Rootin’ Around on Saturdays from 5 to 7PM. Tell me, Mike, how did you first become interested in radio?

Mike August
I became interested in radio when I was 15 years old. I lived in Houston, and there was a top 40 station called KILT. I met a guy who was doing basically street promotion for the station. I would go with him on Saturday nights to the station and pick up a bunch of records, and a list of addresses of people had sent in, addresses where they're going to have parties.

We would go by there (to those addresses) and give away albums and do a remote, calling in to the studio. We wouldn't give the location of the party, but we would say, “Hey, we're out here doing this stuff”. That basically got me down the road for radio.
In 1970 when the Pacifica radio network built a station in Houston, I was one of the original volunteers there, and later became the manager after almost a decade there. It implanted in me a love for community radio.
Salwa Khan
Radio and other media is something you do, and have done, professionally?
I worked in radio basically from the time I was 15 until I got persuaded in the late seventies to go to work in television, at the public TV station in Houston. And then I remained in TV for the rest of my career. I spent almost 20 years at KPRC television in Houston, the NBC affiliate that is owned by the Washington Post, (now Graham Media Group).

Salwa Khan
What did you do there?

Mike August
I've pretty much done everything in front of and behind the camera, across my career. The last years at KPRC, I was in charge of their broadcast operations and transmitters. I basically maintained all the studio playback equipment, especially the commercials, and also maintained the transmitter and the generator plant; everything that keeps the station on the air.

Salwa Khan
That is both important and essential. How did you get to KWVH?

Mike August
I was getting ready to retire from the TV station, but I didn't feel like I was ready to just sit on my back porch in a rocking chair. I was looking for stuff to do and went down to the Chamber of Commerce and at that time, there was a flyer about the radio station, which was not on the air. I don't think they had even been granted a license. They were in the application stage. I said, hey, this sounds just right for me, so I went down and volunteered with Susan Raybuck and Dr.Bob. They had space at the old Baptist Church in the basement. I thought, this is really going to be underground radio!

Salwa Khan
Then how did the idea for your show come about?

Mike August
After volunteering for several years, I pitched the idea to have a show on Saturday afternoon. There wasn't a lot of programming on Saturday, at the time. It was mostly the automation system. One thing I wanted to do was to play a mixture of music, principally Americana, R&B and classic rock. But I wanted to include new music, and cover songs. I even have segment dedicated to cover songs.

One of the main features of my show is to invite a different person every week to come on and bring in a list of songs that hold special meaning, or conjure up a story for that person. We listen to each of the songs and then hear the stories they invoke.
I have different guests on my show. I'm going to have Michael O'Connor, who's a singer songwriter. Eliza Gilkyson, who's a former Wimberleyite, is going to be on the show. Both of them have agreed to bring in songs that hold special meaning to them. So it could be a list of songs they created, as well as songs that influence them and they can talk about their influences and kind of give the story behind it.

Salwa Khan
That should be really interesting! Now how did you come up with the title for your show?

Mike August
Well, rootin’ around, you know, I love all kinds of music, but I also love the roots of music, different genres. One genre leads to another, and it's all tied together.
I thought I was just going to be talking about the classic roots of music like the blues or jazz or whatever. But then as time went on, I realized there's a lot of stuff that happened throughout my life that actually formed the roots of Americana music. The Viva Terlingua album was recorded near Wimberley in Luckenbach. So in a way, that's kind of the roots of what we call Americana music today. I realized I was exploring the roots of music in my lifetime, as well as the music that came before my lifetime.

Salwa Khan
Do you have a particular process as you go about planning your show before you actually, do the program?

Mike August
I have a calendar and try to see what's going on in Wimberley and the shows that are going to be around. What's going on in the community, music wise, will drive a lot of it.
And I have a big list of songs that I'd love to play someday on the radio. I may hear a song here or there or think about a song and I'll put it on that list. Then each week I'll go through. and find songs that are on the list. They may be new songs or cover songs or just songs that struck me for some reason.
Embedded in the song is this story about what's going to be happening that day, coincidentally. And so then I just basically choose songs for all of the segments. Of course, I have a person who submits a list of five songs that are meaningful to them. So it all kind of keys off one another.

Salwa Khan
I guess this means you listen to a lot of music.

Mike August
I do love music and I do listen to a lot of music. I listen to a lot of radio stations from all over the country. I think that was one of the big benefits of the internet that hasn't turned out to be a bad thing, is that you can listen to just about any station, anywhere in the world. In my devotion to Wimberley Valley Radio. I've tried to help to make it easier to listen to KWVH across the internet, because I'll drive around, on a trip or whatever and I love to tune in and find out what's going on in Wimberley, even though I may be thousands of miles away.

Salwa Khan
What are the challenges and rewards of doing your show?

Mike August
When you do a two-hour show, it's not that you just spend two hours on it. I may spend over the course of the week, an entire day, not counting the time that I just listened to music, to kind of think about and pull together the show. I usually record the interviews in advance so that I can edit a lot of myself out and make it about the person that I'm interviewing and have them tell their story.

Salwa Khan
Do you do the editing yourself?

Mike August
Yes. I used to work at KUT radio and I would edit probably seven to ten weekly shows as part of my job. That was back in the days when you cut tape with a razor blade and spliced with white tape.

Salwa Khan
I remember those days! What do you use now?
I use Audacity (software), and that's proven to be pretty good. Usually when it messes up, it's because I did something wrong.

Salwa Khan
What are the rewards of doing the show?

Mike August
I think for me, it's not just doing the show. I got a lot of my foundation skills that I use to make a living from community radio. All the time I was in TV, I missed radio because it's really so easy to make a personal statement. It's not like you have to round up twenty people to get the message across, like it is in television. So now I can pay back for those foundation skills.

The satisfaction I get in working with the radio station to get stuff done is a reward. One of the things that I'm doing for the radio station organizationally is I'm helping reconstitute the community advisory board for the station, so that we can formalize a feedback system to ensure that we're doing the job that the community wants us to do, that there's not anything missing. We're going to invite a number of people (from the community) to sit with us and give us feedback on the station on a regular basis.

Salwa Khan
Is there anything else we should say about your show?

Mike August
Well, it's probably the best show that you've never heard. (Laughs)

Salwa Khan
Mike, thank you very much for your time!