Meeting DJ John Richards
On the power of music and connection, of community and radio.
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
Three generations of my family have been college and/or high school DJs, myself and my wife included. Music – and radio – are important to us. If my family has a mutual hero, it’s John Richards.
KEXP, 90.3 Seattle, was one of the first stations to stream all its content. It’s listener-supported radio. It’s all music. And it’s programmed in real time by humans. The morning show is spun by a DJ named John Richards whose show is part Gen-X warm blanket comfort food nostalgia, part new music discovery and part therapy session. He can weave a set from Mozart to punk rock to hip hop in a way that really only a human can make work. Wait, did I just hear the Muppets? Was that really Ministry? Before 8am?!?
KEXP has become a staple for my family, who have now listened for nearly half or literally all of their lives, depending. We hear favorites and learn about new bands. We listen to the Friday song, we invented – and John blessed on-air – Beastie Boys Thursday. A nod to my dad after spinning amazing set I heard while driving back from his funeral.
We’ve connected on social media, too including a funny discussion on Twitter about meeting one of my dad’s hero.
We support the station, and we enjoy the occasional shout outs for graduations, or birthdays. It’s interwoven with our rituals.
Humans have a need to connect with and through music. KEXP, and John Richards’ show, in particular, has three mantras: “Music matters,” “Music heals,” and, most powerfully, “You are not alone.” I keep a KEXP pin that says that on my desk. Arguably, this connection between music and mental health has always existed. For many, myself included, it crystalized during the pandemic when music helped keep me sane-ish. Ipsos research shows that mental health is a growing part of our wellness conversations. The first time I met John, it was over Zoom as I interviewed him for WTF’s Music issue. He told me then,
“Music can heal. Music can also gut you. But mostly, music can get you through if you let it.”
He went on:
“Music is always going to fill in the words that you don't have for yourself. They’re going to sing the songs that are going to tell the story of you. You can’t come up with those words. You don’t even know how to start. And then you hear a song or a mood in a song and it's able to. It could be Mozart or TV on the Radio’s “Trouble” or the Mountain Goat’s “This Year.” Those songs will fill in that blank. You should be doubling down on your love for music and your need for music in troubled times as you get older. You go to music to get lost and fill in the blanks. At least the people who do. There are plenty who don’t, but those are sad people who lead boring lives.”
So yes, humans have a need to connect with and through music. And I have a need to connect, too, with my heroes. It’s not an exaggeration to say that KEXP was top of the to-do list for all of us as we took a spring break trip to Seattle. And it’s no shock that I was hoping we could meet John.
We don’t want to be sad people who lead boring lives.
The station’s physical space is a community center with a coffee shop and record store in an open common area called the Gathering Space. Folks come, hang out, take zoom calls, meet their realtor or attorney or whatever other third place thing needs to happen. The main DJ booth has windows on two sides overlooking the space. Live performances are open to the public and free and take place all the time.
So we got up, headed out and went to watch John. My daughter thought it was like a weird zoo experience. My son stood by the window watching John work, and dance, and rock out. There are a lot of buttons and screens to make radio work now.
While we were standing there, the facilities manger found us and gave us a quick tour of the observation room for the live space, where you can watch the famous YouTube live shows being recorded. A band was setting up to be filmed later. He was really nice, and told us about the reclaimed clam wood on the side of DJ booth with bore holes from the clams.
And just as John’s set wrapped up, John’s producer Owen popped out wrapping up a donor tour. He saw us and put together that we were the family that had emailed earlier in the morning. He said the magic words: “Want to come meet John and see the booth?”
When we entered, John said he saw my son outside watching just like his son Henry would have and he had to invite us in.
The rest is a little blurry, as were the photos Owen tried to take on my camera which has a tricky autofocus. So we redid them with my phone, and Owen also took a selfie.
John showed us the booth and all the screens and playlists and spreadsheets of albums (I’d like a copy of his 450 must-listen album list to work on my kids’ music curriculum). And was kind and charming and disarming as we all couldn’t believe we were there. Owen then gave us a tour of the rest of the station: the library with vinyl going back to their KCMU days with white stickers on the songs that were “too overplayed” to go on their station. Take that REM! He showed us the live space from the other side of the glass. (I saw Aldous Harding perform there pre-pandemic, on a memorable show because the soundboard crashed right before the taping. Ooops) He even showed us the kitchen, which Barry, the facilities manager we met, had brilliantly decorated with food-themed records.
The kids were so excited, as were their parents. They texted their also excited friends, which is the ultimate expression of teen meaningfulness.
John carries the burden of his community, this community which he has forged around the music. People post and write and text every day about the grief and sorrow and victories in their lives. Myself included. It’s a community John curates around proving every day that we are not alone. But it takes a toll on someone who has his own struggles with anxiety and depression.
If that kind of thing isn’t heroic, I don’t know what is.
When I interviewed John for WTF we of course talked about the joy of human curation of music. And we went pretty deeply into that connection between music and mental wellness. I asked him about carrying that burden. That discussion didn’t make it into the issue so I’m posting it here. He seemed genuinely touched that I asked and he told me this about hosting the morning show:
“You are waking a lot of people up, especially in Seattle. They trust you and feel comfortable. I'm glad they do. I don't want them to stop, but yeah, it'll probably shorten my radio career. It'll probably be the thing where I'm like, I think I gotta go take care of John for a while and step away at some point.”
I hope that day never comes. I also hope that I’ll be understanding if it does. As I said, John and KEXP help keep me sane-ish. I can’t wish any less for him.
For all of us: Don’t be a sad person. Don’t lead a boring life. Be as curious about discovering new music as you are about everything else in life. Rocknroll can save your life. It can change your life. So, for that matter, can jazz. I learned that from another hero. All you have to do is take the advice of a different Jon. Jon Hendricks.
Because sometimes you meet your heroes. Sometimes you meet other people’s heroes. Sometimes, maybe the best times – you get to introduce your kids to their heroes like John. All of those are important and all of those are stories I’ll tell. Stay tuned.
And remember: You. Are. Not. Alone.
This post gets a coda. John posted this to his email list and I want to share it here, too. The message is clear: Find the people who believe in you, and listen to them, too.
-==-
I remember the day I wanted to give up. It was the evening. It was just another day in a teenager’s life but life has a way of having things start to build up, to overflow. This bad thing, this slight, this memory, that disappointment….why did they make fun of me? What did I do to make my Dad be that way? Maybe I AM a loser? Now mix that with whatever mental cocktail you have mixed in your head, chemistry, and whatnot….well, things can finally hit that point. I was missing so much school due to this depression and honestly, the way people didn’t understand being ADD. Pay attention? Please, I can’t even remember what room I’m supposed to be in but go on, tell me I’m a failure. We agree. So. I met with my advisor and my Mom was there. He told us the best thing was to have me drop out. I was hopeless.
Well. At least someone told me what I already thought I was. So, I did. My Mom bought me ice cream and told me it was going to be okay. I can still remember walking in the store with her looking for the right flavor like everything was normal. I feel that as a parent. My God man, just make this normal. She was raising kids on her own, no help from my Dad, what on earth did she think? I did ask her and she told me she always believed in me. She still believed in me. Even then. Insanity. I was down to just one person who believed in me it turns out.
It didn’t really hit me until that night sitting on my floor. I had red carpet. I had a dual cassette player. I had mixed tapes everywhere. I had old posters of hair metal bands on one side of my room and Pixies and Love and Rockets on the other, I was in a transitional phase. My Mom once asked me who the women were with all the makeup (Poison) and why there was a naked woman on the other (Surfer Rosa).
I started crying. The kind of cry that you cry with your entire body. Your ability to stop, to control the tears, the snot, the shaking was no longer a thing. Sitting face down on the floor, the floor became an obstacle for me because I wanted to sink into the earth and never come back. I thought the world was a cruel place and I no longer wanted to participate. I thought about how I would end my life. They all seemed like terrible options. I also thought that the last thing I wanted to do to my Mom was this. She deserved better. I deserved better. This world deserved better. Sometimes when you have nothing to lose, you can begin again.
I crawled over to my tapes, I put one in, I hit play. I grabbed blank tapes, I hit record. I made tapes all night. I took the most time I had ever taken on making tapes. Each song had to work with the song before it, each song needed to tell part of a story that the tape was trying to tell. I kept going until I ran out of blank tapes. I then listened to them over and over again.
I listened to them when I woke up the next day.
I listened to them when I grabbed my walkman and went for a run.
I listened to them in the car with my mom when we got dinner.
I listened to them with my little sister.
Life became a place for me to discover music and put it together not just for me but for the people around me. I made friends, some that are still with me to this day, based on this love of music and sharing music. I ran more. I laughed more. I decided every day I wasn’t in school I would work on myself.
I went back. I was a year behind. I took extra classes, and I went to summer school every year.
I made the honor roll. I had a girlfriend. I had the best group of friends one could ever ask for. I. SAW. LIVE. MUSIC.
I graduated on time, with my original class. I caught them. My advisor was there when I got my diploma. I told him that he gave up on me. That he should never give up on people. I found the teacher who was always on my side, I told him he was my hero.
I framed the diploma (and later my acceptance to the UW) and gave it to my Mom. It was on the wall in her room up until the day she died.
I became a DJ on the floor that night. I became a human, a caring human, on the floor that night. Kindness would win the day. No matter what. It took years but it really does.
Don’t ever give up. Don’t give up on yourself, on those around you or those you hardly know…or know at all or on this world. Find the joy. Find the sunshine. Find the waves. Find the dogs. Find the music. We all need someone to believe in us but most importantly we need to believe in ourselves.
You are loved. Know that. I’m glad I’m alive and able to send this to you while I listen to the songs I made on that mixed tape. Go listen to "Hope" from Bauhaus.
You are not alone,
John