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| Joe Duley hanging out with Roger Daltry |
Our "Castaway" is Joe Duley, a native of Annapolis, Maryland who now calls Portland, Maine his home. Duley and his wife, the "Lovely London Lass" Charly, co-host the weekly radio show Dining With The Duleys on WMPG every Tuesday evening at 7:30pm. The Duleys share conversation and information sprinkled with humor and heart. Imagine Bridget Jones and Tony Soprano hosting an upbeat, good vibe radio broadcast in a cynical and wacky world. The Duleys cover everything from pop culture to current events in a cool culinary style. On Dining with the Duleys you never know what's going to be served-up. Joe Duley's journey through life is unique; he's worked for NBC on Friday Night Videos and Saturday Night Live, he's been a contributor to BBC Radio Wales, and a national traffic and weather reporter for XM RADIO. These days Duley busies himself writing an online restaurant review column, and doing voice overs. He still is trying to figure it all out, - and he's still moved and inspired by the songs in his key of life.
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| Bill Audette |
Every Saturday afternoon from 1:30-3:00 PM our "Castaway", Bill Audette, hosts The Night Train on WMPG Radio. His program is a recreation of a mid-sixties, big-city radio show, complete with professional-sounding, slickly-produced station IDs & promos, song intros/outros/segues, and especially a hyped-up presentation from him, "Bill Audette - Your Old time Rock & Roll Rebel." The flavor of his radio show is unique. Each week Bill and his famous Night Train crew cruise through the first 25 years of the History of Rock & Roll. You'll hear some of the famous platters that used to matter, the somewhat familiar platters, that might have mattered and especially those long-gone and forgotten platters that never quite mattered. From the pre-rock, jump-blues shouters of the late 40's to the piano-pumpers and big-bass-thumpers of the 50's - from the birth of soul music during the late 50's & early 60's to the music awakening brought about by the British Invasion of the mid 60's.
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| Ben Weinstein |
Our Castaway, Ben Weinstein is the host of "Hip Hop Is Alive", a rap heavy tour of the "Hip-Hop Nation" from old to new, - local to national; heard on WMPG every Monday afternoon from 3 to 5pm and is stylistically influenced in the traditions of former WMPG DJ's like Seen London, Gabe FM, Braden Biddings and Say Love.
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| Karen Morgan |
Our castaway, Karen Morgan, was born in Athens, Georgia. Her southern accent is somewhat of an anomaly in Maine, where she now resides. After years as a successful trial attorney, she became a full-time mother before stepping on the comedy stage. She made her national television debut only months later and has since appeared in theaters, comedy clubs, and on radio and television all across the country. Selected as one of the seven finalists from 1,000 entries to appear on Nickelodeon TV's Search for the Funniest Mom in America, Karen appeared in two seasons of SFMA at the beginning of her comedy career. Since then, she has appeared regularly on television, including her humorous parenting segment, You Gotta Be Kidding Me, as host of The Home Show, and as host of NESN's Lobster Chef of the Year which was recently nominated for a NE Emmy Award. Karen's radio spot, The Mother Load, can be heard each week on The Coast Morning Show, where she brings laughter to morning commuters and radio listeners. She also appears on other radio stations around the country, including a one-hour comedy special and clips on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio.
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| Barb Truex |
Our castaway on this episode is Barb Truex the host of "Crossfade" heard every Wednesday morning from 10:30am - 12pm EST on WMPG Radio. Barb thought "Crossfade" was an appropriate name for a global music show; a show that moves from one culture to the next, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. Cultures do the same thing when they intermingle traditions, language, populations, etc. Humans are always on the move and changing. The music of the world is always on the move and changing. Barb tries to bring as many different sounds to ones ears as she can find. It might be a traditional piece from Africa, a rock band from Scandinavia, jazz from Asia, or country from North America. She says, "I guess you could describe the show as "music from the planet Earth. That should cover it."
Barbara Truex has been absorbed by music for as long as she can remember. Encouraged by her father with his banjo, she continually explored the instruments that collected in the basement playroom: piano, guitar, banjos, mandolin, accordion, ukuleles, etc. She learned old American folk songs like "Camptown Races", sang in the church choir and longed to have hands big enough to play the guitar, which was the instrument of choice for the late 50's and 60's. There were also many hours spent in that basement "noodling" on all those music machines, making up melodies and simply exploring sounds. Much later in her life she realized she had been planting seeds for her work in improvising and sound experimentation.
In the mid 1980's Barbara got involved with community radio in Bridgeport CT on WPKN. With a move to Maine in 1989, she continued her interest in radio and joined the staff of WMPG in Portland, where she hosts a world music program weekly. Her work in radio coupled with collaborations with artists of all types has introduced her to music and cultures worldwide and is constantly feeding her creative projects, whether it be writing music or designing a soundscape for theater, dance, audio drama, visual art, film or her own repertoire. From her perspective there is a sound or a piece of music for every emotion and situation. Barbara's passion is to find and create those sounds.
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| Matt Powell |
Our castaway is Matt Powell born and raised in "The Gem City", Dayton, Ohio; the hometown of Orville and Wilbur Wright and a hotbed of the emerging genre of Funk music in the 1960's when Powell was a teenager growing up in the "Buckeye State." Today Matt hosts "The Rhythm Of The One" every Sunday afternoon from noon to 2PM EST on WMPG Radio in Portland, Maine. On his show Powell serves up heaping platters of New and Old school funk with tasty sides of Soul, Disco, and Afro Beat. In the late 60's Dayton and Ohio were hotbeds for the funk. Back then they didn't call it "funk", it was just plain music. As a youth Powell has fond memories of watching both The Godfather of Funk: James Brown and the legendary funk bass guitarist Bootsy Collins performing in local venues. Eventually Funk evolved into a music genre that originated while Powell was still in high school when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk: the only musical genre ever to have transformed the nation into a throbbing army of bell-bottomed, hoop-earringed, rainbow-Afro'd warriors on the dance floor. Its rhythms and lyrics turned bleak urban realties inside out with distinctive, danceable, downright irresistible music. Funk is uniquely American music born out of tradition and community, filled with energy, attitude, anger, hope, and an irrepressible spirit. Matt Powell was hooked.
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| Rock Bergeron |
Our "castaway" is Rock Bergeron, the host of "Something Or Other" - a weekly music show heard every Friday morning from 6:30am to 8:30am on WMPG. In a former life Bergeron was a commercial radio deejay who says he "truly misses the days when you could make a living entertaining folks by playing records and CDs, even at 3am." Rock grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire where, at an early age he developed a fascination with radio, wondering what went on behind the scenes while the DJ played songs and commercials. He rode his bike to area radio stations and pestered receptionists for tours. At home he would use his dad's cassette player to record himself reading stories and advertisements from the newspaper. When he played records on the stereo he would talk over the intros of songs, trying to time his raps to end when the song's vocals began. During his junior year of high school the Boy Scouts offered Rock an opportunity to learn about radio through their Explorers Program and soon he was working part-time at the local AM station, WGIR, playing local ads during Red Sox and Bruins games. Being an on-air announcer was what he really wanted to do and by the time he graduated he was working the overnight shift on 'GIR's sister station, Rock 101. That began nearly twenty years of jobs on stations in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts.
Unfortunately, Rock had a habit of rebelling against the narrow playlists at many of the stations he worked for and would frequently get in trouble for playing deep cuts not approved by his bosses. And in 1997, after a leave-of-absence dispute, Rock found himself out of radio while living on Martha's Vineyard. For a short time he tried commuting off-island to a station on Cape Cod, but ultimately Rock had to find work outside radio. Since his exodus from commercial radio he's worked in the warehouse for an internet bookstore, as a clerk at a CD store, at the counter of a local bakery and currently in an assisted-living facility for the elderly. While certainly missing his career in radio, Rock enjoys the freedom he has hosting a show on Southern Maine Community Radio at USM on WMPG.
Lately, Rock has embraced the phrase "work to live, don't live to work" and he's enjoyed several European vacations, been in two improv comedy troupes and has just completed his first attempt at writing a screenplay based on his early days in radio which he hopes will someday find its way to Hollywood.
