Originally on Facebook on September 29, 2023

I will not be doing my show on KDHX until further notice. I am joining my DJ brothers and sisters in solidarity against the autocratic machinations of the Double Helix Board of Directors (BoD) and senior staff. This Saturday’s show is during the Fall Drive at KDHX and I cannot in good conscience allow my Back Country platform to be a tool to support Corporate Radio. We are, and will be until we’re extinguished, COMMUNITY RADIO. The senior staff has decided that perhaps having angry DJs pitching for dollars is not a good strategy to ask the public to support, so they have pre-recorded segments. But I won’t countenance their message on my show, recorded or otherwise. And if I hear the phrase “the power of music” one more time, I’m going to be sick. Power can be used for good or evil.

If you are interested in some background and personal observations, you’ll find that by reading this.

First, they came for Tom Ray. A 35-year volunteer who co-signed the original loan to help establish KDHX. Kelly Wells, Executive Director and Gary Pierson, current Board President. Then they came for Andy Coco and Drea Stein, 20 and 28-year volunteers at the station. Then they came for ten more DJs in last week’s Friday Night Massacre. Roughly another 250 or so combined years of KDHX volunteering. All of those dismissed—with the exception of Tom Ray—were signatories to a letter expressing no-confidence in Wells and Pierson’s BOD precipitated by Tom Ray’s dismissal. Now they are coming for the “Dirty Dozen”, me included, who must attend mediation (read woodshedding) in order to keep doing our shows. Several other DJs have left in sympathy and support of all the others, whether they have stayed or left.

Let’s look a little more closely at each of these. Tom Ray was dismissed for alleged bullying, threatening and intimidating Kelly Wells over KDHX’s reluctance to honor longtime DJ, the late John McHenry. Tom Ray was given no opportunity to rebut those charges, no objective evidence was presented to substantiate the charges, and Tom had no opportunity to refute those charges. After 35 years, he was ambushed at a Zoom meeting and summarily dismissed. His public persona and employer history militates against those baseless charges.

Andy Coco and Drea Stein were allegedly dismissed for urging people to defund KDHX. Next verse, same chorus. No evidence was presented to support the allegation, no opportunity to refute the charge. Drea was dismissed immediately following her show, Andy was notified by email. KDHX has a conflict resolution policy, but they ignored it in both of these instances.

Gary Pierson’s press release on the dismissal of the Ten DJs from the FNM cited their unwillingness to support anti-racism and sexual harassment efforts in KDHX’s new strategic plan. Even the tone-deaf Mr. Pierson, lawyer that he is, realized his statement could be the basis for slanderous or libelous (since it was communicated via email as well) action against he and the BoD. So, he walked back that claim this week quicker than a Michael Jackson moonwalk. Did I mention that no evidence of how these ten harbored racist or sexist values which were at odds with KDHX’s strategic plan was presented and there was no opportunity to rebut the charges? 

In a textbook example of projection, the only time I can recall where charges of racism and sexual harassment at KDHX occurred were those leveled against Kelly Wells in 2019, when several staff were fired. Gary Pierson was on the BoD at that time too, just not president at the time. That fiasco resulted in much bad will and the need to spend a hundred thousand dollars on consultants. For the record, I am not racist, sexist or anti-progressive nor have I met anyone else in my years at KDHX who espoused such values. To believe the most musically diverse station in St. Louis would have DJs who hold these values is absurd.

I have worn many hats in 26 years at KDHX, all as a volunteer. My relationship with KDHX has been this. I came to KDHX via its airwaves in 1988, about six months after it went on-air, and I was working at a group home attached to St. Marcus Church at Russell & McNair. I met my wife there and we got married at St. Marcus in 1991. I marveled at the music I was listening to every day. The schedule changed many times over the years, but at the time I recall starting my Monday morning work week with Larry Weir and Songwriter’s Showcase and when the whistle blew on Friday afternoon, I had the incomparable Art Dwyer and Blues in the Night. Ear-opening radio. 

Like many listeners, it was several years before I opened my wallet to support the station, but I finally did. And once I did, I faithfully donated each drive thereafter, finally donating at the Sound Investor level. Then some time in 1997, a musician friend of mine suggested I help answer phones for the fund drive and my wife and I did just that. We sat in the front room at the Magnolia Avenue studio, answered phones, and in a nod to low-tech at the time, we wrote the name and message of donors on little scraps of paper and walked them into the air room. It was a very welcoming attitude and the camaraderie of the volunteers gathered for a common purpose was infectious.

Within a couple of years, I was supervising phone volunteers during drives, often for 6-8 hours a day (drives back then lasted ten days), and we were in the renovated backroom at Magnolia, next to our renovated middle room. There we were able to present live music from local and touring artists and begin the very popular Live at KDHX annual compilations of artists who played there.

Kip Loui, a veteran of the St. Louis music scene even back then, began a program around 1999 called The Back Country, featuring classic country music, but with a focus on more contemporary artists. Kip’s dad answered phones for him for a time but then couldn’t any longer. I spoke with Kip and began answering phones on the show. For a while, the station still subscribed to the syndicated program Democracy Now, and the show was only an hour long. We were on Tuesday mornings, 8-10, just before the legendary Gene Roberts came on with Country Function and Bluegrass Junction. That dovetailing of shows let me soak up some incredible country music history that was, in a word, mighty fine.

Kip is a schoolteacher by trade, special education at that, and in 2002 his situation became such that he couldn’t continue the show. By this time, Kip had generously allowed me to suggest some of the music, and he thought I could do a good job if I took over. I submitted a partial show demo to the Program Committee for consideration. Back in the day, children, KDHX had a program committee comprised of staff and DJs, who auditioned new shows and approved them. They also did periodic evaluations of programs to suggest improvements. This practice was, unfortunately discontinued by the new regime, and it’s essentially the judgment of the Executive Director as to what new programs will get on the air.

In the period September through November of that year, I was aided tremendously in doing the show by two very generous souls, Glenn Steinkamp and Ed Vigil (yes, the Duke of Ducats, who worked for years with the venues in promoting shows and providing we DJs with tickets). They shared their knowledge and passion for the music with me, as well as their music collections. As best as I can pinpoint it, on December 10, 2002 I took over as host of The Back Country.

I was approached a couple of months later by then-Executive Director Bev Hacker to run as a candidate to represent the Associates on the BoD. By this time, I had worked in non-profit organizations for 15 years, some of that in upper management positions, so I had a clear idea of how a BoD should work. I was elected to a 3-year term beginning in March 2003 and I was re-elected for two more full terms, serving a total of nine years. [Note: The by-laws at that time allowed for 6 members to be chosen by the Associates, 5 members were chosen by the members (donors) and 4 members were chosen by the board. The current by-laws have been changed—when and how is unclear–and allow neither members nor Associates to choose board representatives. Associates cannot nominate candidates, only vote for the one(s) pre-selected].

Kelly Well’s explanation why Associates cannot be on the BoD is that she, as Executive Director, is our boss (although a curious one, since she neither supervises nor evaluates us). If an Associate were elected to the BoD, that person would then be Kelly’s boss. This sophistical argument conflates one board member with the BoD themselves, the part with the whole. If we ask the question, “who is Kelly’s boss?”, the obvious and correct answer is the BoD is her boss. Not one board member out of 15, not even six Associates out of 15—but the total BoD. Such reasoning isn’t worthy of a first-year law student, is it, Mr. Pierson?

As a member of the board for those nine years, I made a number of contributions to KDHX. I recruited a businessperson to serve on the Community Advisory Board (CAB). [Note: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting REQUIRES that member organizations have a CAB, who functions as a community sounding-board for its organization. The current CAB has not met in several years, and it is treated by the Executive Director as a minor inconvenience. How does one do community radio and represent the community’s interests if one is enclosed in a bubble? That Kelly Wells is sanguine about having no community input into KDHX is a feature of her administration, not a bug. 

The CAB can also serve another function: as a feeder to identify candidates to serve on the BoD. They are already members of the community and are familiar with the mission and operation of the organization. The by-laws call for a 15-member BoD; there are currently 7 vacancies on the board, despite their having an ad hoc recruitment committee. Hmmm…No CAB and seven vacancies—maybe there’s a connection? A number of well-qualified individuals have come forward offering to serve on the board, but they have been unable to get management to even send them an application. You would think an organization having trouble filling their board roster would welcome this initiate, but they’re not. The CAB member I recruited did indeed go on to serve on the KDHX BoD. He also made a six-figure donation to the capital campaign to move to Grand Center.

We can debate until the cows come home about the move from Magnolia Avenue to Grand Center, but the reality is a hundred-year-old building is a money pit itself, and we were out of room if we wanted to do some new things as well. You might have come to the same conclusion had you sorted through water-soaked CDs in the basement. 

Our grand plans for Grand Center did not come to fruition, for several reasons. First, the capital campaign fell far short of its goal. This put a heavy debt service load on the organization, which strained financial resources. Second, we were overly optimistic that we could run a café and venue. We can’t—we know radio. Recently a couple of longtime KDHX donors have taken to social media recently to remove KDHX as a benefactor in their estate planning. If the amounts they state are accurate, those two alone could wipe out most of the remaining debt on the building. That would put KDHX on pretty strong financial path for the future. But we won’t see that money with the current powers in place.

As a board member, I approved our move to Grand Center. So did Jeff Hallazgo and John Wendland, two of us now requiring mediation, the third dismissed. I still believe it was the right call. I also arranged countless tours of prospective capital campaign donor during construction, leading folks around a dark building in the dead of winter, usually accompanied by dismissed DJ Caron House, at the time the Director of Development. I was also asked to personally contribute to the capital campaign, as were all of the board members, which I did to the tune of $2500, despite my limited income. I left the board voluntarily in 2012, about nine months before we moved to Grand Center. I firmly believe that rotating board members is essential to keeping an organization fresh and focused on its mission. On the other hand, Paul Dever has been a member of the board for more than twenty years, often in a leadership capacity. Of course, he has no experience in radio, having come from Double Helix’s short-lived efforts with television back in the day. When you have fossils on your BoD, your organization fossilizes.

I have seen folks on social media dumping on the Kranzbergs for this mess, and they are just wrong. The Kranzbergs have been supportive of KDHX for years and have bailed us out a couple of times. Why, you may ask, have they done that? Why would a wealthy couple care about a free form radio station? As I recall, it was around the time of Larry Weir’s death that Nancy revealed that she started her Arts Interview segments only because Larry was so accepting of her, a wealthy county resident. So, please aim and fire, but do it at the right targets.

I also want to comment on Gary Pierson’s statement to the effect that KDHX is not dependent on one sole donor. How about two, Gary? Three? A dozen? At some point even he has to realize that there is a tipping point in this mess he and Kelly Wells have created. Should I tell Speedy, who supported multiple shows on KDHX that his donation is not needed? How about Mike in Columbia, who has never missed donating during every drive while I’ve been hosting my show? Is his contribution no longer important? For twenty years, I have almost always made my member goal during drives, getting 15-20 people to donate because of the way we do community radio. I guess Gary doesn’t value you folks, but I sure do.

What I think concerns me most about the current regime is their determination to erase the 35-year legacy of KDHX. We saw it when Tom Ray wanted the station to honor the legacy of the late John McHenry (a member of the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame, by the way) and they deflected, deferred and finally refused, firing him for having the impudence to ask. DJs with 30 years of experience at KDHX are supposed to get a plaque on the wall on the second floor. Several DJs have reached that mark, but not been recognized, and may not. These include Paul Stark (gone in the FNM) and Fred Gumaer and Keith Dudding (both on the Dirty Dozen list). Incidentally, Keith was just named DJ of the Year by the Riverfront Times. But I think another small example is emblematic of the rot taking place at KDHX. 

Our Grand Center building is dubbed the “Larry J. Weir Center for Independent Media”, named for a KDHX legend as a DJ and Operations Manager. Larry died tragically in a 2010 New Year’s Eve accident and with Larry’s widow’s blessing, our new building was named. Larry usually closed his excellent Songwriters Showcase (with co-host Ed Becker) by playing Emmylou Harris’ version of Rodney Crowell’s classic song, Til I Gain Control Again. Rodney Crowell is a world-class songwriter and he thought enough of Larry and KDHX to send a copy of the handwritten lyrics to the song with an inscription, “To Larry Weir—with respect”. The lyrics were framed and hung on the wall in air room 1, directly behind where DJs faced the mic.

One day several months ago, I noticed the framed lyrics were gone. In their place, was a sign about what to do in different emergencies. The same sign is available five feet outside the air room and there was sufficient room elsewhere in the air room to post it. But, no, it’s now gone from the air room where it belongs. DJ force of nature the late Bob Reuter passed away just four months before KDHX moved to Grand Center in another tragic accident, and his cremains are embedded in a wall in the air room. Under present management, I expect them to soon rip Bob’s cremains out of the wall and get rid of them. May as well take down that “Larry J. Wier Center…” sign in front while you’re at it.

We finally had a Special Meeting of Associate Members Tuesday night—which Gary Pierson had refused to convene. It was well-attended and showed St. Louis media that we are way more together than this disengaged, half-vacant BoD. Gary Pierson rudely interrupted the proceedings to declare that the meeting is illegal. Ruling by fiat seems to be his default mode. We are taking steps to save KDHX and the community is squarely behind us.

Since I am on the list to get my head right or lose my show, I may have done my last show last Saturday. But I’m not in 2nd Grade and Gary and Kelly aren’t inhabiting the principal’s office, so that meeting isn’t going to happen. There is nothing I would believe from these duplicitous fabricators, who hide everything in secrecy and think they’re answerable to no one. Well, I would say the DJs, who produce and deliver 95% of KDHX’s content and for 35 years have raised more than half of the revenues are stakeholders of considerable import, but they refuse to seriously engage with us. So, I’m off to strike with fellow DJs Tim Rakel, Ital-K, Glenda Volk and Mr. Roots, Al Swacker and the esteemed Sunny Boy Mason until such time as this board and senior staff are gone, DJs are once again serving on the BoD, and everyone who wants to keep their show and time slot is reinstated. Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?

Be safe, be smart, be respectful…and maybe we’ll see ya on down the road.

– Jeff Corbin