A few weeks back, our comrade Dan Barry sent us an invite to appear on a radio show called Voices From the DMV. We didn’t really know what to expect, but it was an offer to be on the radio, and we felt the world needed to hear us. We haven’t been on the radio since our previous band A Compass For Rose was playing on a local Austell, GA radio station back in college. So we were excited.
First thing we did was google the radio show, and we were astounded to find very little information about it online. We found a Youtube video with gospel singers with the similar title and we both gulped, and wondered what we’d gotten ourselves signed up for. Turns out, Voices from the DMV is a very new local radio show produced by Antonio Villaronga. The show airs on WERA-LP 96.7 FM in Arlington, VA every Friday at noon. Each week, Antonio invites a new local artist to showcase their talent. The show is pre-recorded live in the Audio Production Suite at Arlington Independent Media, although some folks play pre-recorded music.
The Arlington Independent Media building is in Clarendon, right around the corner from Galaxy Hut and Iota Club. That means its geographically close to some neighborhoods with very good taste in music. Josh used to live a few blocks away from this building and jogged past it thousands of times (okay, okay, jogged by it a few times). Each time Josh ran by, he thought it was a place that sold tickets to music events for some reason. I guess the giant satellites on top of the building just weren’t enough of a clue, but it leads to a nifty fact: This building actually broadcasts on a local FM station. It’s the only local station that actually gets picked up at the FCC’s headquarters across the pond in DC. Noice.
We learned all this when we met our new best friend Antonio. We walked into the studio and found it to be remarkably posh. This place has state of the art recording equipment that’s available to rent at shockingly low prices to Arlington County residents. So if you’re local – look into it.
When it became time for us to use the studio, we all got to work. Antonio setup mics, stands, and other recording equipment that was needed. We got our instruments out of cases and into working order. First things first, Antonio asked us to do some self-interviews, where he’d ask us to describe our music, our influences, and the local music scene – and we’d ramble an answer his way. We’re not sure how, but we ended up talking to ourselves for like an hour, and thankfully Antonio chopped this down to a few minutes. After we got done talking – it was time to make some noise!
We came prepared to play 2 songs. Turns out… Dan had played like 6. So we were already behind. But whatever, we setup our video camera, pushed play and did a few takes. Antonio ended up mixing and mashing a few takes together via his workstation to get the best outcome. He was really cool about all of it and we had a great time playing. We’ll admit we were a little nervous at first, but Antonio cheered us on and we got into the swing of things. As we were all packing up, Antonio said that we could’ve played a few covers if we were worried about it being a short show… D’oh! Since we didn’t have a lot of original material to offer, we followed up afterwards with our home recorded track Sequestered Together to help make our set a little longer.
With everything packed up, we left the studio, and headed over to Galaxy Hut for some camaraderie. A few days later, Antonio got back in touch with us after doing a little bit of mixing, and voila! We had finished tracks. The results were astounding. The Voices From the DMV setup is amazing and the quality is just as good as professionally recorded live albums released by big name acts. Do yourself a favor and be prepared to feature the best originals from your catalog. Listen to our show below.
Once the show aired we asked if we could put the tracks on Soundcloud and YouTube. We took a still from the video and used it to create some simple album artwork. The album was called Live on WERA 96.7 FM. We hated not using Voices From the DMV in the album name, but we thought it was useful from a marketing standpoint to show that we had played live on the radio. In our Youtube videos we made sure to feature ‘Voices From the DMV’ loud and proud.
If you get the call to be on this radio show, we really recommend that everyone come ready to play LOTS of songs, bring a video camera to turn it into a Youtube video, and offer up some desserts to Antonio for his time. He’s a great guy doing a wonderful service for the local music community. He’s also got a huge sweet tooth. He informed us his favorite dessert is apple pie. Bring that too.
See below for us playing Spec, VA, which is hosted on our Youtube channel.
Here’s the Soundcloud album, and both tracks are downloadable!
