Records and Ramen: Anna Lundy and Emily Hines
by Dave Sharp on Nov 22nd, 2010
Anna Lundy and Emily Hines searching the vinyl at WRVU. Photo credit: Ashley Curtis
Records and Ramen is a series focused on the lifestyle sacrifices many people are making to be a part of the music industry. They are pillars of a forward-moving industry and their stories deserve to be told.
Part 2: Anna Lundy and Emily Hines
WRVU, Vanderbilt University’s student-involved radio station embodies the diversity, competence and passion of music fans in Nashville. At any given moment, turn the dial to 91.1 FM and you’ll hear traditional Brazilian tunes, two-tone ska, 80’s girl-punk, metal, folk and everything north and south.
Its also a unique college radio station setup – the broadcast range spans most of middle Tennessee, the students fall into trainee roles and the more prolific shows are run by non-student community DJs like Pete Wilson — who spins for Rock and Roll Rent Control and the Nashville Scene’s Critic’s Choice winner Nashville Jumps — and the knowledgeable girls behind Curse of the Drinking Class: Anna Lundy and Emily Hines.
Anna, who came here by way of Jackson Miss. and Chattanooga, Tenn., doubles as a manager at Grimey’s New and Pre-Loved Music. The depth and breadth of her familiarity and passion radiate, especially when given the open-ended opportunity to discuss her favorites.
Emily, an extra-educated English PhD student, is relaxingly intelligent with a poise and edginess that surely comes from the music she listens to and shares.
The combination of the two creates a Nashville music ambassadorship that props up our alternative-to-country scene. They’re approachable, blue-collar activists with white-collar educations and a passion for mixing with all the scene’s constituents, which is evident in the name “Curse of the Drinking Class” and its genesis as told by Lundy: “I think [listeners] can [relate to our show] and its pretty fitting for our show considering we do both go out a lot and we enjoy drinking. I believe the conversation we actually had about doing a radio show together was at a bar. It made sense.”
Anna and Emily took some time to sip on drinks and chat about their journey to Nashville’s music scene, the influences that have kept them moving and the campaign to “Save WRVU.”
Although its tough to miss the ubiquitous “Save WRVU” posters up and down Elliston and each DJs on-air plead, it’s important to mention that WRVU’s 91.1 FM frequency is on the chopping block. Vanderbilt Student Communications, a corporate board that governs WRVU and owns the broadcast license to 91.1 FM is considering selling the license to alleviate financial concerns built from declining media revenues.
According to the VSC website (http://www.vandymedia.org/wrvu), the current situation is exploratory. Amidst the exploration, students and community DJs alike have hit the front lines petitioning and garnering community support. There a many things you can do to forward the process. Here are a few recommended starting points:
- Send correspondence to the VSC Board and provide compelling reasons to keep WRVU on the air.
- Join the WRVU Facebook page, invite friends and help it go viral.
- Go to Grimey’s and purchase a Save WRVU t-shirt for $10
- Read this interview, get to know Anna and Emily and the reasons they are such staunch supports of WRVU then start talking to people about the impact the station has on individuals and the community.
- Go to SaveWRVU.org to learn more and find other ways to help.
The punk aesthetic
SZ: The show is your most visible face musically. Based on that perception, what would be the most surprising influence of yours, musically?
AL: A number of callers have been really shocked that we play some of the old and obscure music that we do. Every so often there will be some old due who calls “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re playing this! How old are you guys? I still remember when I heard that song in 1973!” For the most part, people don’t seem to be too shocked or curious about that. I don’t know. [To Emily] Do you experience that?
EH: I think people would be surprised at how often I wind up listening to softer, wussier music. A lot of times, especially when I’m studying, I’ll end up listening to Hall and Oates or John Denver or Linda Ronstadt or compilations of ‘60s bubblegum music. We play some of that on the show, but we try to focus on a harder music.
SZ: I noticed this last week that you played the Louvin Brothers. I was excited about that, but I thought “These guys are kind of the antithesis of the punk attitude.” Especially when punk in its original form, so what’s the draw to artists like the Louvin Brothers?
AL: Good songs, first and foremost. Also, I can tell you that Charlie Louvin is a wacky old man. He’s got a lot of spunk in him. So, would Charlie Louvin listen to punk rock? Maybe, I don’t know; we can ask him next time I see him. He’s around, you know.
We also really like to mix it up. It may be some punk song that’s really edgy and heavy and fast and aggressive; you’re really going to notice how fast and aggressive it is if it’s followed by a Louvin Brothers track. Just the contrast between stuff sometimes is enough of a motivator. But, with that track in particular, it’s a great song and they were a great band that wrote some awesome music. If we can throw that in the mix, it makes it more exciting.
EH: I think a lot of those earlier styles of music – old country and old R&B, even though they’re far outside of the punk aesthetic – have a more raw sound. They have more eccentric aspect to them compared to the popular music today, which tends to be very smooth and overproduced. So, with that stuff, you can hear something that’s wilder or sounds weird to our modern ears.
SZ: Outside of the Louvins, who can you think of that fits that mold?
AL: Emily really likes to play trucker songs and that’s some kind of strange country music.
EH: That’s a good example in the country world. Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves that’s a great compilation and it’s the name of a songs people should check out.
AL: I love Wanda Jackson and more honky-tonk-orientated music and stuff that verges on being rockabilly. I like the guitar sounds.
EH: There’s a lot a of older souls musicians that fit that idea like Bo Didley, Lee Dorsey or guys who had some interesting stuff that doesn’t sound like what you’d think of the early ‘60s.
Awful, heinous stuff
SZ: You’re in the country music capital of the world and, obviously a little more enveloped in different genres, but what role does country music play in your life?
AL: I listen to way more country music now than I ever, ever did as a young person. In fact, I really hated most country music I was exposed to riding around with my friends’ parents listening to country radio. Awfulness, just heinous terrible stuff. It may be that stuff I still wouldn’t care to listen to now and I do not want to hear Garth Brooks albums or anything like that, but definitely listening to rockabilly music and honky-tonk stuff and country and western music, western swing. That’s something I really can appreciate now. Bluegrass music as well. I didn’t even know about bluegrass until I worked at a record store in college. I knew it was a kind of music and I guess I knew who Bill Monroe was, but I dint really know what that music was like. Living here, its actually funny because I do listen to more country music now and can appreciate it, but people just think Nashville is all country. So, more than anything, with what I do at work too, I spend my time reminding people that Nashville isn’t just country music; that there’s a lot more going on than the new Faith Hill album. When people think of Nashville as Music City they should think of it as just that, not County Music City.
EH: When I moved here, I really enjoyed one aspect of musical culture here, which is that there seems to be more – among music fans – appreciation for different styles outside of the rock genre. There’s country, but there’s also more people that influence it in bluegrass and R&B. The indie rock music fan here is more likely to know about old country, old soul that kind of stuff, whereas in other cities there’s more of an indie rock fans think they’re just supposed to listen to rock. I’ve really enjoyed that. I can listen to classic country from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s really good too that it’s so easy to find that stuff. If you want to find old Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson records, you can find them used all over the place.
The birth of diversity
SZ: I’m curious then, you have this real diverse interest in music and, some people grow up listening to one thing and it’s engrained in them for a long time, others grow up and can’t stand to listen to it. How did you fall in the middle where you could go up and down the spectrum?
AL: I grew up with my parents owning and listening to LPs. I wasn’t allowed to play my parents records, but I could play with them; I could pull them out and look at them. I still vividly remember certain album covers that were so fascinating to me as a child because of the art. I grew up listening to classic rock like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, Simon and Garfunkel, listening to oldies radio when my mom wasn’t listening to NPR and classical music. When I was old enough to move beyond my record player which I played my Disney say-and-speak records on and my Electric Company records, my parents got me a tape player and I really wanted a radio so I could listen to Madonna and the stuff I could listen to at my friends’ houses that my parents weren’t all about. Instead of getting a radio, I got a tape player. It was pink and lavender, I’ll always remember. No radio on it. Instead of getting Madonna tapes like I wanted, I got Beach Boys tapes and ‘60s girl group tapes and Anne Murray. I never listened to Anne Murray. I’m sorry, I appreciated the gift, oh parents’ friend who gave me Anne Murray cassettes. The ‘60s girl groups tapes and the Beach Boys tapes, I loved. Did that influence me? Yes definitely. That’s probably why I like some of the stuff I like now. I was always encouraged to listen to music, read books and explore arts.
SZ: Emily, how did you wind up with such a diverse musical taste?
EH: My parents were constantly playing Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello. I’m not sure how they go into Elvis Costello…
AL: But, lucky you, right!
EH: Their music collection mostly consisted of ‘60s stuff, so I got to listen to Simon and Garfunkel and all that stuff. When I was a little kid, I hated it and I thought Bob Dylan had a horrible voice. That ended up being the stuff I came back to the most. I ended up really loving Van Morrison and his early garage rock recordings. I just added on to that. I really like the ‘60s garage rock sound. I added on to that during high school and college, as I got exposed to other people who knew a lot about music.
AL: During junior high was when music started taking off for me. Sure, I had some CDs in 5th grade, I think that’s when I got my first CD player. In 7th and 8th grade and especially in the grade, I moved in 9th grade, and my good friend from 7th and 8th grade would send me mix tapes all the time with all these 45s on them – our old friends from Oklahoma, their bands. Just crazy punk rock mix tapes. Living in Jackson, Miss., I was super excited because there were not places for me to buy music like that. It really broadened my horizon. Later in high school my parents moved to Tenn. and there was a great record store in Chattanooga called Chad’s that turned me on to a tons of bands.
Being happy and not so wealthy
SZ: When you had that epiphany, fell in love with music, came back to roots, and I ask this because of how much you devote to music, what was or is the career ambition? Is it in the music industry?
AL: I didn’t really set out to manage a record store. I’m glad I do, I love my job. When I went to college, I thought I wanted to work at a record label and started off trying to get a degree in business so I could get a marketing degree. I hated that and changed my major to women’s studies and got a women’s studies degree. Meanwhile, I started working at a record store and doing a radio show and, even though that’s not at all what my scholastic interest was in – I guess I did write about radical feminism in punk rock – I didn’t devote too much time. I took one music class, which was history of rock and roll, which was a joke. I didn’t learn anything.
EH: Did you have to hear about crappy stuff like the Eagles? That’s what happens, you’re like “Oh, I’m gonna hear about Chuck Berry!” and half of its U2!
AL: No, but it was teaching me stuff I already knew about the history of rock. Its sort of what I intended on doing and then not at all what I thought I would do. But, when it came time to apply for graduate schools or work at record stores, I was much more interested in working at record stores than filling out graduate school applications.
As far as ambition beyond what I’m doing, I don’t know that I really have any – it’s such a difficult idea to open a record store. Where would I do it? Obviously not here, because there’s any awesome one that I manage! I’m pretty happy with where I’m at, and if I were to change things up maybe I would want to work for a record label, but god, it would have to be the right one.
SZ: What about you Emily? What’s your graduate degree in?
EH: English. I never really had a career aspiration at all in music. I just got into college DJing because I thought it would be a cool way to meet people with similar interests and make people listen to the music I like whether they like it or not.
I’m just interested in continuing to do that for a while at least. I have ended up doing a little bit of music writing for Nashville Scene, which has been cool. I don’t really intend to become a record reviewer or anything like that, but I got to get into some shows for free.
SZ: It sounds like it wasn’t totally planned to be where you’re at; is that a fair assessment?
AL: Oh yeah, that’s fair.
SZ: [To Anna] It sounds like you had a turning point where you said “Do I pursue academia and go toward business or do I go somewhere I feel more comfortable?” Were there other sacrifices you were forced to make along that path?
AL: I don’t think so. Maybe I could make more money doing a job that I hate. Perhaps that’s a sacrifice, but its not a hard sacrifice to make at all. I would rather be happy and not so wealthy than wealthy and not so happy.
SZ: Well said.
EH: The only thing that’s really been unexpected is that I ended up moving here. I never expected to move to the south, but I ended up really loving it here. I always planned to go to graduate school, so I didn’t think of it as sacrificing career options, but it kind of is. I realize now that it sucks to be an old poor student.
WRVU’s shocking sale
SZ: Was there a buzz around WRVU when Pete Wilson’s Nashville Jumps was named the best radio show by the Nashville Scene?
AL: No, there was stuff that went up in the station. Honestly, everything this semester has really been overshadowed by the sale. Nothing is not nearly the news as the sale of the broadcast license.
SZ: It looks like it was just put on a delay for a while.
AL: That just means that if and when the station is sold, it wouldn’t happen before that date in mid-January. That’s when they’ll start officially entertaining offers, I suppose.
SZ: Was it a huge surprise to find out about the potential sale?
AL: It was a big surprise to find out the VSC Board was considering selling the broadcast license, mostly because that just doesn’t happen all that often. I don’t know how familiar you are with radio in Nashville, but there’s not really any free bandwidth here. The dial is full. Of course, where WRVU falls on the radio dial is a space set aside by the FCC to be used for community, governmental or educational broadcasts. So, no matter who it is that ends up with the space, if it doesn’t stay with Vanderbilt and VSC, it’s going to be a church or another college or the Department of Transportation. Maybe a community group, I don’t know.
That was pretty shocking, just the idea that it would be sold.
EH: I was surprised. I don’t know if I had known it previously or not, but it was not on my radar that the license was owned by this corporation VSC Media. One would suspect that such a thing would be owned by the university. I didn’t know they were in need of funds or in a position to consider something like this.
AL: That was shocking. I guess people have the misconception where Vanderbilt is a huge, private school with a prestigious reputation that costs a lot, so they assume there wouldn’t be a shortage in terms of budget.
EH: They’ve got Benjamins; they just spent $6 million fixing up the library, which wasn’t in that bad of shape. Apparently, their endowment didn’t take a big hit from the recession.
If it belonged to Vanderbilt, they probably would not be selling it.
AL: Again, I’m not a Vanderbilt student, so my involvement with the university is just by virtue of being a DJ. In the four years I’ve been a DJ, I’ve never been made aware – and I feel like most of the DJs are in the same boat – never been aware that there were money troubles or that there would be a need to do fund-raising. That’s one of the most disappointing things. Instead of the VSC Board deciding that they would sue their paid staff to train the student DJs – the elected staff – to run a non-profit, to run a community or educational radio station and teaching them to do fund-raising and underwriting and how to do this in real life, they’ll just take away the broadcast license.
Hidden reasoning
SZ: Have they given a reason why there wasn’t a forewarning or an opportunity to raise funds?
AL: They have not explained to us. They’ve been in meetings with the E-Staff, perhaps they’ve explained to them why it would be an easier and better way to raise funds to sell our only asset the broadcast license instead of encouraging fund-raising. We could have been doing fund-raising for years.
EH: I think the feeling of board is, and I can’t speak for them, but perhaps they feel the amount of money they need is out of the students ability to fund raise. Because people have been talking about raising enough funds to cover operating costs, but that wouldn’t be enough to cover multi-millions of dollars they need.
AL: It’s a confusing thing and I can’t pretend to understand their reasoning, except that it would be easier to sell one thing and get a lump of money than it would be to set up new plans and a new way of doing things; more thorough training and make the station something different. When I was a student DJ at WUTK at UT, there was a broadcast program at the university. So, some of the DJs were not just music fans like me, they were actual broadcast students learning to do this professionally. Vanderbilt doesn’t have that, but they do have a really stellar music school. The Blair School of music often does things With the NPR affiliate, WPLN and I wonder why they don’t do things with the student radio station. It seems like the Blair School of music could potentially take WRVU under its wing. I’m sure many students to attend to study music are not into playing popular music and are more interested in classical or avant garde or jazz and there certainly would be space for that on our station. There was a show for a while on WRVU called Camera Obscura, which was avant garde and jazz music which you wouldn’t hear on any other Nashville radio station. When you realize programming like that could exist on WRVU, you wonder why there couldn’t be more involvement of student musicians at Vanderbilt.
WRVU’s effect on Nashville
SZ: If the sale does go through, what does it mean to Nashville to lose 91.1?
AL: I think it would be a very sad day for Nashville. Just to think of all the diversity WRVU offers the radio dial. There are no other stations in town that play the diverse programming WRVU offers. The number of times we get calls on our show from some dude who’s doing his deliveries – beer or milk or whatever – he calls and say “I love that you guys are on during my drive time!” I think this is a guy who might not hear about Ty Segall otherwise and he might not be buying 45 records or have a turntable. He may not spend every waking moment of his life trolling the internet looking for downloads of this stuff, but he may have just been turned on to something he didn’t know about. I know so many businesses in town will play that music in their shops. They play at Hatch Show Print, we listen to it at Grimey’s sometimes. All of that will be gone.
In terms of what it would mean to lose the license to WRVU as an entity, the plan that has been presented to us is that the radio station will move to an online-only format where it streams its programming and maybe uses podcasts.
EH: I think that as Anna said, it would be a sad day if that were to happen because on the radio dial, there’s already such a lack of diversity and a preponderance of Clear Channel style radio stations. They’re playing the same 40 songs over and over again. The format that radio once used to be of an uninhibited DJ playing the records they want to play has almost been completely lost. Listeners lose the chance to find out about interesting music from someone’s personal taste. Having a little respite from that as an alternative is really valuable. It would be sad if it was replaced by something that replicates what people could listen to on other stations.
Nashville wish list
SZ: Well, let’s end on a hopeful note. Who are you looking forward to that’s not on a calendar somewhere yet, to come through Nashville?
AL: Our Nashville wish list?! My goodness.
EH: I know!
AL: There are a lot of bands I’d love to see. There’s this band called The OCs, who I’ve never seen. They’re from San Francisco. There’s a band called Here We Go Magic, and they played at Mercy Lounge a while back with The Walkmen. They have two great records and I would really like to see them headline a show. That’s two off the top of my head. Even though I know they’re coming, I’ve never seen Nick Cave, so I’m looking forward to Ginderman. And next spring, Godspeed You Black Emperor are playing.
EH: I have been dying to see the Guinea Worms and I just missed them this year at Gonerfest.
AL: I would love to see the Guinea Worms too, just for the record.
EH: I’d like to see that band Happy Birthday.
AL: I’d like to see them as well. They were a band called King Tuff that reformed themselves into a more poppy band. I don’t think they’ve ever played here.
Notable links
Diesel Smoke
Wanda Jackson
Happy Birthday
Guinea Worms
Godspeed You Black Emperor
Gonerfest
Here We Go Magic
Ty Segall