Beyond Diversity Radio

Here's a piece I wrote recently looking back on my days on Diversity Radio and looking forward to the new community radio project for the Lancaster and Morecambe area. There's an open mic fundraiser event tonight (Friday the 5th) at the Gregson Centre in Lancaster. Starts 8pm, £3.50 on the door. I'm planning on reading from my "Drum Solos, Bottles & Bands" book and will be selling copies at the special price of £5 with any profits going to Beyond Radio.

When Diversity FM was closed down by the YMCA last year it meant the end of a community project which had been running in the Lancaster and Morecambe area for several years. My involvement started in April 2008 when I applied to become a volunteer, initally to help with the IT side of things. Part of the induction involved sitting in with one of the existing presenters and seeing how the studios worked. I sat in with “Boogie” Bill Roberts on his weekly show and he encouraged me to start chatting with him about the music he was playing as a way of getting used to speaking into a microphone. This wasn't too difficult as he and I shared similar tastes in music and one fateful week when he couldn't make it in, I was asked if I would record a show to cover for his absence.

I can remember sitting in the downstairs studio with my CDs at the ready and somehow managed to get through recording an hour of blues and folk music. I then would have had to edit the show to correct any mistakes, of which I'm sure there must have been a few, but it went okay and my first show was broadcast on the 18^th of June, 2008. I still have the playlist and see that along with well known names like Richard Thompson and KT Tunstall I played tracks by local bands The Low Countries and Turnstone.

Duncan Moore, who was the Volunteer Co-ordinator, must have thought I did a good enough job as he asked me if I would be interested in doing my own show with an emphasis on folk music. I thought this would be much more fun than working on their web site so a couple of weeks later my first show, which would be called Off The Beaten Tracks, was broadcast and that was the start of my four years on Diversity radio. Not having a huge selection of folk albums in my collection I thought I would email some bands and ask for CDs. One person I contacted was Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention and to my delight not only did he send me a copy of their latest album but also four other discs including one by The Dylan Project. At that time this Bob Dylan tribute band featured Simon along with the Fairport rhythm section of Dave Pegg and Gerry Conway plus PJ Wright and Steve Gibbons.

In August 2010 I asked a friend of mine, Wes Martin, if he would be interested in co-hosting the show with me. I was finding that I wasn't enjoying presenting the show as much as I had been and getting Wes involved was a good move. I never knew what he was going to say next and as we were doing live shows, there was the odd occasion when I struggled to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing into the mic. But we had some great times in the studio and it was a sad day when we presented our final edition of the show at the end of March last year.

For most of the volunteers that was the end of their radio experience but a few of us have kept going. Gordon Smith and Philip Cowles have been involved with Red Rose Recovery Radio in Morecambe, Jomar De Vrind presented a classical music show on Bailrigg FM at Lancaster University and in September last year I started doing a weekly folk music show on the internet radio station Acoustic Spectrum. Others, including Reza Mills and Murray Hamilton, have been doing occasional shows on Mixcloud.

But hopefully community radio will be returning to the Lancaster and Morecambe area with the station Beyond Radio. Duncan Moore is involved with this new venture along with ex-Diversity DJ and sound engineer Chris Brookbanks and they are currently broadcasting over the internet. The next step is to get a community licence and they are looking for somewhere to base the station and find sponsors to cover the running costs.

While I enjoy recording my shows at home for Acoustic Spectrum, and I'm still being sent plenty of CDs, it's not the same as going in to a studio and doing live shows. It would be great if myself and others from Diversity are able to bring our shows back to the local area on FM radio with Beyond Radio. Here's hoping!

For more information see http://www.beyondradio.co.uk/. My Folk and Acoustic Music Show goes out on Mondays at 9pm on http://www.acoustic-spectrum.co.uk/