TUESDAYS 3PM

Salwa Khan
I am with Gaylan Latimer and Yvonne Thompson, and their show is the Funk Sway Hour, which airs Tuesdays from 3 to 4 PM and replays Saturdays from 1 to 2 PM. Your names on the show are listed as Wailin’ Gaylan and Yaya. How did you come up with those names?

Gaylan Latimer
I didn't. We were playing at a concert and the promoter came back and was asking our names. He said “Wailin’ Gaylan,” and all the band started teasing me about it. Then other people and friends started using it too. That's how it came about. Miguel, our partner who is no longer with us, said, “Use that.” And I said, okay.

Yvonne Thompson
Yaya is my “grandmother” name. Everyone calls me that. But I love it. I especially love it when my grandkids call me that. That’s what they call me.

Salwa Khan
Let me start with you, Gaylan. Tell us about your background.

Gaylan Latimer
I was a musician pretty much my whole life. I started playing guitar at a very early age, five or six, and it went on from there for many years. I did it professionally. I kind of got out of it in the late eighties and went into the workforce, so to speak. I stepped away from music for a little while but still dabbled in it. I write songs, so I still do that.

Salwa Khan
When you say you’re in music, are you singing and playing something?

Gaylan Latimer
I usually was the stand-up singer in the bands, and I play guitar to write with. I’m working with a keyboard player, Lou Cabaza, out of San Antonio. We co-write and have been co-writing songs for 35 years. We’re still having fun.

Yvonne Thompson
Gaylan failed to mention he was picked up by Dick Clark at the age of 15 and was in the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. He traveled throughout the southern part of the United States.

Salwa Khan
Tell me about that.

Gaylan Latimer
I had signed early with a company out of Houston, and they got me signed with MGM. We had a record called Think About Me. I was very fortunate. It started going up the charts, and I was on a radio show called the Weird Beard Show in Houston. That was my first radio experience live. We would play and answer questions that people would call in with.

I was very fortunate at a young age to have that opportunity, and I toured with many different stars. It was intimidating at first, but my dad watched over me and kept me on the straight and narrow path.

Salwa Khan
Who did you tour with?

Gaylan Latimer
Starting out it was Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet, then Percy Sledge, and then the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. It changed depending on who had the hot records at the time: The Zombies, The Shondells, The Ronettes, Tommy Rowe, Del Shannon, and many others from the early 1960s, around 1965 and 1966, before the Beatles era really took off.

Each act would only perform two or three songs. You’d ride in a bus, get out, play your songs, get back in the bus, and go to the next town. It was quite an experience. My dad let me do that mostly on weekends and for about four days at most. The teachers at my high school were very kind to let me make up my work.

Salwa Khan
Are you from Texas?

Gaylan Latimer
I’m from Waco. I was born there, then I moved to Houston as soon as I could get away. I did a few TV shows like the Larry Kane Show in Houston and another in Dallas, along with radio shows. Back then you would go in and be interviewed by DJs, play a song, promote your record, or whatever. So I learned the ropes pretty early.

Salwa Khan
Yvonne, how did you first get into radio?

Yvonne Thompson
When this station first went on the air back in 2015, we were playing recordings about the floods: the Sheriff's recordings, Ken Strange's recordings, the Fire Chief's recordings, over and over. I heard a promo that said, “Would you like to volunteer at KWVH?” So I marched down here, talked to Susan Raybuck, and I've been going ever since. That’s my radio experience, besides calling in for songs when I was a teenager.

Salwa Khan
At the start of our interview you mentioned Miguel Pankratz, who was a co-host of the Funk Sway Hour. Tell me about Miguel.

Gaylan Latimer
He was definitely an important part of the show. He was the man of stories. He could tell great stories and he had many to tell. He was a musician who had been drafted and went to Vietnam. When he came back, he stopped playing for about seven years and then started again.

He was a very accomplished drummer, but he also had a background of travel and experiences throughout Europe and the United States. He was a wonderful storyteller. He played drums for the Mau Mau Chaplains reggae band on 6th Street at the Flamingo Cantina in Austin. He played up until he passed away in 2022 after battling cancer.

Salwa Khan
How did the three of you meet?

Yvonne Thompson
I've known Gaylan for a long time. I knew his wife, who is a broker here locally.

Gaylan Latimer
She sold Miguel and Peggy their house. Peggy still lives here in Wimberley.

Salwa Khan
Let's get back to the show. How did it come about?

Gaylan Latimer
Yvonne was really the instigator of the whole thing. We were visiting at their house one day and Miguel and I were talking. She said, “You know, you ought to put your stories on the radio.”

Yvonne Thompson
It was a pretty hard process because we had to do test sandboxes and prove ourselves, but we did. Then they said, okay, we’re going to put you on Tuesdays from two to three. We said great. We went live out of the fishbowl studio. In September 2024 it will be our fifth year.

Salwa Khan
What inspired the format for the Funk Sway Hour?

Gaylan Latimer
Miguel and I were talking and he said nobody is doing funk around here. We started thinking about what to name the show. I came up with the word “sway,” meaning trying to sway someone’s attitude. It also played off the phrase “feng shui.”

Miguel called me one night and said, “I’ve got it. Funk. Sway.” I said, cool. Let’s do it. So that’s how the show started, playing funk music in all its different styles.

At first we had guests send us 10 or 12 of their favorite songs in the world. Then we began interviewing musicians about what influenced them. They would bring their songs and we’d play them and talk about them.

Salwa Khan
Some people may not know what funk music is. Can you define it and name some artists?

Gaylan Latimer
Funk was derived from early soul and blues. It’s a combination of soul, blues, jazz, and a little rock depending on the artist. You have people like Bootsy Collins, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown who helped start it. It grew and became very contagious because it’s very danceable.

Salwa Khan
How do you decide what music you’re going to play on a show?

Yvonne Thompson
Our guests bring their music, and when we’re playing funk we’re pulling songs from Gaylan’s laptop.

Gaylan Latimer
I love trying to find different kinds of music that people might not be familiar with. There are so many great artists out there. I like to mix in lesser-known ones with the familiar songs.

Yvonne Thompson
We educate our listeners.

Gaylan Latimer
It’s educational for us too because it keeps you searching and discovering new things.

Salwa Khan
How do you find guests for the show?

Yvonne Thompson
Sometimes we meet them around town. One guest is the chef at The Let Go. We see him walking across every Tuesday to get supplies. Sometimes people call and want to be on the show, or we’ll run into someone and start talking about it. We try to get local people.

Gaylan Latimer
She’s great at it. She’ll call them up and introduce herself.

Salwa Khan
So you book the guests, Yvonne?

Yvonne Thompson
We both do, but mostly me.

Gaylan Latimer
She does most of it. She’s better at it.

Salwa Khan
Are your guests all musicians?

Gaylan Latimer
Not always. We’ve covered the gamut. We’ve had Ken Strange, head of EMS, come in and bring his favorite songs. It’s interesting to see the different music that influences people.

Yvonne Thompson
We even had your hairdresser on.

Gaylan Latimer
Yes, a couple of times!

Salwa Khan
How do you produce the show?

Yvonne Thompson
I produce it. I run the board.

Gaylan Latimer
She’s great at the board. All I have to do is sit there and talk. She cues me with hand signals.

Yvonne Thompson
They would get crazy sometimes, so I carried a retractable fishing rod in my bag and would tap them with it. Miguel had a habit of clicking a pen and it would come through the microphone. I’d have to get the fishing rod out.

Salwa Khan
When someone tunes in, what can they expect?

Yvonne Thompson
A change of attitude.

Gaylan Latimer
We like conversational radio when we have guests. Sometimes we talk about the music, sometimes we just play it and hope people enjoy it and sway along.

Salwa Khan
What are the rewards of doing the show?

Yvonne Thompson
We love the show and the station. For years people would say they didn’t know Wimberley had a radio station. Now Gaylan and I work the car shows on the first Sunday and people come up and say they love the station. That’s a huge reward.

Gaylan Latimer
We’re also getting more people streaming the show. Miguel became friends with someone in Germany who listened regularly. We’ve had listeners in Mississippi, South Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, and around Texas. It’s wonderful to see the audience grow. We’re blessed to have talented people contributing their time to a community radio station. Wimberley is a very unique community.

Yvonne Thompson
I totally agree.

Salwa Khan
Thank you both.