Photograph by Dilip Vishwanat
The awning at 3524 Washington, black-and-white with two simple words, “CREEPY CRAWL,” leads at least one passerby to pose the question, “Was that a haunted house?” It creates a strange juxtaposition against the backdrop of more regal buildings throughout Grand Center, the indie girl in a room full of beauty queens.
On a summer afternoon, KDHX co-executive directors Nico Leone and Beverly Hacker examine the one-time rock club’s remains. The entryway, once covered with concert flyers, is now bare. Down a hallway is the former concert space—“all painted South St. Louis green,” notes Hacker—and a shoddy bar constructed of PVC pipe.
It’s not much to look at, but through his wire-rimmed glasses, Leone sees the future of KDHX Community Media.
With a gift of space from an anonymous philanthropist, the station plans to upgrade from its existing space inside a century-old former bakery. This fall, the nonprofit is launching a $4 million capital campaign, the first of its kind in the station’s 23-year history. Plans for the renovated space include a performance area, café, radio studio, and offices. It marks a significant step for the community radio station—and adds a new face to the neighborhood.
“Our mission statement for years has been ‘building community through media,’” says Leone. “And all of a sudden, we’ve got the opportunity to do that not just through media, but through a physical space.”
For those who know the call letters only from red bumper stickers, the radio station broadcasts an eclectic mix of songs, stories, and discussion. The selection spans a broad range of genres, with programs like Gabriel’s Tin Pan Alley, Ska’s the Limit, Super Fun Happy Hour… One hour Jean Ponzi is discussing the environment, the next veteran journalist Ed Bishop is deconstructing corporate media. And sprinkled throughout are announcements about concerts, nonprofit events…all things arts. (Full disclosure: SLM also does monthly podcasts from its studios.)
Leone and Hacker casually explore the new space, climbing from the ground floor to the fourth, pointing out changes they hope to make during the next year. Near the entryway, there are plans for a street-level cafe (at press time, it hadn’t been determined whether KDHX or an outside restaurateur would operate it). The sizable former concert space will be reincarnated, hosting myriad events—performances, live video and radio-show tapings, film screenings. “This just opens up so many more options for us,” says Leone.
On the second floor—currently an artist’s studio—architects from the Lawrence Group discuss how the area will eventually lend itself to studios and work space for KDHX’s many volunteers. On the building’s top floor, there’s more open space and large windows that look out over Grand Center. There’s even a freight elevator—a luxury, compared to the capabilities of KDHX’s existing building—for bands and DJs lugging heavy equipment. And on the roof: an enormous billboard.
Of course, the location doesn’t hurt, either. “As we talked to other stations, one of the big things that came up was ‘Get yourself in a place where there’s a lot of foot traffic and a lot of vibrancy, because it just raises your profile so much, and you’re right there with the folks who can enjoy what you’re doing,’” says Hacker. They imagine Live at Noon sessions where locals can listen to live music during their lunch breaks, as well as jointly hosted concerts at nearby museums.
And the fact that the station plans to move into a one-time rock club?
“It’s meant to be,” says Hacker.
For a station whose roots go back to an apartment in Gaslight Square during the late 1960s, the move’s been a long time coming.
It was Lorenzo Milam and Jeremy Lansman—veterans of the first-ever community radio station, Pacifica’s KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif.—who worked with a group of Wash. U. students to launch independent radio in St. Louis on 102.5 KDNA-FM in the late ’60s, at a time when AM still dominated the airwaves. “It was pretty much chaos and whatever anybody felt like bringing in,” says Hacker. After broadcasting in the Central West End, the station briefly moved to the Continental Life Building in midtown, she recalls. But as FM caught on, the founders sold their spot on the right side of the dial.
Undeterred, former KDNA volunteers formed the Double Helix Corporation in 1971, and ran a storefront video-production facility. In 1981, a federal judge ruled that Clayton High School—which only broadcast on 88.1 MHz from 5 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday—had to “use it or lose it,” and the Federal Communications Commission gave the frequency to Double Helix.
In October 1987, KDHX was born.
The station’s initial broadcasts came not from St. Louis, but from a new radio tower in Jefferson County. Because it generated so much heat, the station’s co-founders decided not to install a heater, even running the A/C during winter. “They would have to flick the bugs off the records to play them,” recalls Hacker. “It was primitive.” After 18 months, KDHX briefly moved to Campbell Plaza in south St. Louis before planting roots in a two-story former bakery in Tower Grove along Magnolia Avenue. (You can still see the outline where an oven once stood, notes Hacker.)
Running a community radio station can be a delicate affair, especially during its early days. “The stories are endless and comical,” says Leone, who recalls a Texas station that caught fire three times, the last because a former volunteer was unhappy with a music lineup. At another station, Hacker says, an executive with a degree in conflict management who’d spent two years at a Buddhist monastery resigned
and recommended not hiring a replacement because the atmosphere was so chaotic.
Yet for KDHX, a core group of music fanatics held the radio station together.
At the time, St. Louis only offered a handful of places to discover music beyond the mainstream—Vintage Vinyl, Euclid Records, West End Wax, the Riverfront Times, and independent music zines, some of which were started by current KDHX DJs.
Like today, there were few places where local musicians had access to airtime. “The thing that’s great about our folks is, they’re not afraid to put on a local act if the quality’s there, where the DJs at most other stations simply are not in a position to make that decision,” says Hacker.
Over the years, KDHX helped launch the careers of an impressive list of artists: Wilco, Son Volt, The Avett Brothers, Matisyahu, The Dresden Dolls, Gogol Bordello, Andrew Bird... In the current building, bands perform in a small room, where onlookers watch from a window in a neighboring studio. “Bands will come in, and they’re constantly amazed by what we pull off out of that building,” says Leone.
What the station lacks in space and finances, it strives to make up for with zeal. “The people who are on the air really are experts in whatever music they are presenting, and they are experts with a real passion for it,” says Hacker, adding that the DJs curate the playlists in a way unlike commercial or satellite radio. “I’ll hear a DJ put something together that in my wildest dreams I could not even conceive,” says Hacker. “I heard Bob Reuter one time put Mahalia Jackson next to Lenny Bruce, and it was brilliant. It fit so perfectly—but who would ever do that?”
Dr. Jeffrey Hallazgo, an emergency physician who hosts The Big Bang! on Wednesday afternoons, joined KDHX in 2001 and serves on its board. “Almost all of us have primary careers,” he notes, “but we are all brought together by our passion for music and our desire to share it with our audience.”
With fewer than 20 staffers, a limited budget, and nearly a thousand volunteers, Hacker admits that the atmosphere often resembles “controlled chaos.” Besides the radio station, Double Helix produces documentaries and local programs on cable channel 21. (The TV station is run out of a separate facility, in the Central West End.) It sponsors concerts and festivals including Twangfest and The 48 Hour Film Project. And it streams online, getting feedback from around the world.
Yet for all of its progress over the years, KDHX has still struggled to grow. A few years ago, the station was at risk of losing significant funds as it dipped below the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s audience and fundraising requirements. Its federal aid had fallen to a reported $15,000—nearly $75,000 less than it could receive had it met CPB’s requirements. Fortunately for KDHX, in 2006, the CPB created a one-time station renewal program. Consultants assessed a handful of what the corporation dubbed “underperforming” stations, and then chose just five stations across the nation—among them KDHX—to receive two-year grants to spur development.
With the grant, the station hired media consultants. Soon, it coined the tag line “Independent music plays here,” hosted formal training sessions for staff and volunteers, and shuffled the programming lineup. “We had become a station of a bunch of individual shows, where each show had its own personality and its name, and it sort of stood alone,” says Leone. “We transitioned that into each show being part of a whole.” Finally, KDHX began exploring other facilities.
It wasn’t unprecedented for a public media station to look toward Grand Center: KETC-TV Channel 9 already called the neighborhood home, and 90.7 KWMU-FM announced plans to move there following a record fundraising drive in 2008. KDHX initially eyed the Sun Theater, an enormous space built as a German playhouse, and commissioned a feasibility study. “What the study said is, ‘You’re not ready to do a $6 million project,’” recalls Hacker. The study indicated KDHX could complete a project elsewhere for less.
Where—and how—remained to be seen.
In 2006, the Creepy Crawl moved from downtown to Grand Center. At the time, owner Jeff Parks told the Post-Dispatch, “We had to ease concern we’re not a crazy, Satan-worshipping rock ’n’ roll club.” While the nearby Jazz at the Bistro and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra welcomed its alternative neighbor, “Third Baptist Church across the street was a different story,” the article noted. The new location never gained the same traction as its original space, and the club quietly closed in late 2008. The building remained largely vacant, closed to the public.
In the meantime, KDHX continued to broadcast from its Magnolia Avenue studios. Among those steering the station forward was Larry Weir, longtime operations manager and host of Songwriters Showcase. Weir was among the station’s five original employees, helping lay the foundation for the Jefferson County radio tower himself. He’d launched countless musicians’ careers since joining the station in 1985, even before it went on-air. “We cycled through a lot of stuff at this station over time, but he was sort of the one link from the beginning of the station to today,” says Leone. “Virtually everybody who walked through the doors over our 23-year history knew him.”
This past New Year’s Eve, Weir fell and struck his head on a chair. After he was rushed to a hospital, doctors reportedly discovered he had sustained traumatic brain injuries, and he remained in a coma for nearly two weeks. The beloved KDHX contributor died at 1 a.m. on January 13.
There was a huge outpouring from the community. A website created by his wife, Kathy, filled with posts about Weir’s lasting impact. Among his longtime friends was a St. Louis philanthropist (who wishes to remain anonymous), who offered the former Creepy Crawl space to KDHX in Weir’s memory. In the meantime, the station would be responsible for raising the $4 million needed to renovate the building’s interior.
The resulting capital campaign means the independent station will be approaching a new audience—and asking for new levels of
contributions, far larger than those it has sought during its annual pledge drives.
“It’s a lot, especially with the economy the way it is right now,” says Heather Rich, corporate and foundation relations officer at Saint Louis University and a longtime KDHX listener, adding that many companies and foundations already honor multiple-year commitments. She suggests the station try connecting with donors and entrepreneurs among the neighborhood’s nearby businesses.
KDHX already collaborates with other Grand Center institutions. “We’ve played with those people for years, but we haven’t necessarily told people about it,” says Leone, estimating that the station currently collaborates with three-quarters of Grand Center’s arts organizations.
“I can’t think of many other organizations in town that touch everything from the symphony, the Sheldon, the Pulitzer, the Contemporary—sort of our largest arts institutions—to the guy in his basement or in a loft down on Cherokee Street,” he adds.
The station’s co-hosted the Sheldon Sessions at Sheldon Concert Hall, for example, as well as a summer courtyard series at the Contemporary Art Museum. “KDHX can add youthfulness to the neighborhood,” notes Paul Ha, the Contemporary’s director. “For the future, I see us partnering on education opportunities for our youth programs.”
As Hacker observes, “There are so many nonprofits that are struggling with bringing a younger audience in, and we already have it.”
Indeed, KDHX will bring a new crowd to Grand Center. “As great of an arts district as this is, we’re fairly different from a lot of the other organizations,” says Leone. “We’re a lot more street-level arts and culture. There’s a much stronger grass-roots element to a lot of what we do.”
And how will the move affect the station’s culture? “Our history at KDHX is marked with pivotal moments of change, much like rings on a tree, even stemming back to our ancestral days of KDNA in a small upper-floor apartment in Gaslight Square,” notes Hallazgo.
“I see any change in the culture at KDHX as a natural evolution.”
Hacker smiles. “We spent a long, long time being one of the best-kept secrets in town. Now we’re going to be front and center.”
