Originally published Sep 20 2024 at the Supplement St. Louis blog

by Steve Pick

KDHX was designed to work outside the norms of business and commercial radio. It was a radio station started and run by volunteers. On the air, these volunteers played music they loved and discussed topics they found interesting and important. The station was the means to share passions and to increase the knowledge of everybody involved – from volunteers to staff to listeners. And, even more unusual, the very people who enjoyed the station kept KDHX alive through their donations.

I got involved with KDHX and Double Helix in 1985, before the radio station began broadcasting in October 1987. A diverse group of dreamers worked hard to make KDHX a reality. We all had different ideas about what was missing from the airwaves, whether it be jazz, blues, Irish music, underground rock, folk, creative talk shows or less-commercial country music. We each knew that the only way to get what we wanted was to allow everybody else to get what they wanted.

It wasn’t always a smooth ride. From early on, volunteers disagreed about what form the radio station should take. While everybody agreed it should be diverse, there are only so many hours in each week: some shows were given airtime and some were not. Frequent changes became a calling card for KDHX. Shows would come and go; attempts were made to bring order to the broadcasting schedule; and then the station would slide into seeming chaos. But for decades, even as paid staff grew from one to five to more than a dozen, the programming and purpose of KDHX was decided almost entirely by the volunteers who put in the bulk of the work to make it all happen.

Major changes afoot

Eventually, management began taking bits and pieces of control from volunteers. The original by-laws of the Double Helix corporation, which owns KDHX, were clearly designed to divide power equally between the volunteers, the listeners who donated, and the Board of Directors. Slowly, the Board, aided by management, grabbed more than its share of power. As currently written – and there is some dispute about the legality of changes the Board made to the by-laws of the organization – the volunteers are only allotted a total of three representatives on the Board, with the other 12 of the total 15 members chosen by the Board itself.

There are currently 11 Board members listed on the KDHX website, and the number of members has been as low as five. The Board and management have rigged the system so that the volunteers can only vote for candidates approved by the Board. Management now controls all decisions on who can become a volunteer, meaning that Double Helix has become a top-down organization rather than the originally intended bottom-up collective.

In 2019, station manager Kelly Wells was at the head of a firestorm of unfair labor practices involving paid staff members who said there was racism in the organization. When the smoke cleared, all the African American paid staffers were terminated or put in a position where they wound up quitting. An uproar from many volunteers was quelled by the authoritarian responses of Wells and the Board of Directors. To our shame, we, the volunteers, backed down, and then Covid-19 made it difficult for volunteers to work together for a long time.

The original by-laws of the Double Helix corporation, which owns KDHX, were clearly designed to divide power equally between the volunteers, the listeners who donated, and the Board of Directors.

Fast forward to the summer of 2022, when former KDHX DJ John McHenry passed away. Tom “Papa” Ray, one of the original DJs still broadcasting on the station, pressed Wells to honor McHenry on the KDHX website. Somehow this simple request led to a war of wills, which resulted in February 2023 with Wells removing Ray from his radio show. Ray says Wells wanted him to enter into mediation, but Ray did not like that Wells never fully told him what issues would be mediated. Shortly after that, for the first time in nearly four years, there was an in-person volunteer meeting. Many volunteers were angry with Wells for removing Ray, and it was clear that she was only interested in getting us to acknowledge her right to do what she wanted.

Seeking other avenues

Triggered by this situation, a group of volunteers began meeting away from the station to discuss options to try to regain more control at KDHX. The group grew from week to week until about 30 people regularly showed up at meetings. At the time, we all believed that the Board of Directors would at minimum agree with some of the volunteers’ opinions, so we sent the Board a letter of no confidence in Wells as general manager of the station. For a variety of reasons, including financial – some listeners stopped donating because of Ray’s firing – the letter called for Wells to be replaced.

All hell broke loose. Caron House, former KDHX employee and then-current DJ, read the letter of no confidence during the public comment part of the Board meeting, held via Zoom. Board President Gary Pierson treated her rudely, insisting that this personnel matter could not be presented in a public comment period, and he began treating volunteers with a rudeness bordering on contempt. Two months later, the Board decided to remove public comment from its meetings.

In the meantime, Wells decided to eliminate any group meetings between volunteers and management, instead limiting meetings to one volunteer at a time. She had scheduled two group meetings with a mediator. The first one was held last summer, but Wells abruptly cancelled the second one, claiming that volunteers at the first meeting shared information about the initial one with people who weren’t there. This gave her an excuse to prevent any officially sanctioned communication between volunteers and management. She did agree to talk one on one with anybody, but refused to allow people who might have been on the fence to hear from fellow volunteers about how she was working against the long-held values of KDHX.

More and more firings

Late in August, Wells summarily fired longtime DJs Drea Stein and Andy Coco – the former by calling her into a private meeting after her final show, and the latter via e-mail. Media coverage of the firings made the station look worse than before. According to Wells and Board president Gary Pierson, the terminations were triggered by Stein and Coco encouraging people to stop donating to KDHX, something that neither one had ever done. If their accusations were true, it would have been easy for Wells and Pierson to substantiate their claims – just find audio skims showing this – but instead they provided no evidence nor gave Stein and Coco the opportunity to challenge the claims. The real reason seems to have been to test the waters for further top-down changes.

The Board, aided by management, grabbed more than its proper share of power.

On Sept. 21, 2023, ten more volunteer DJs were informed via e-mail that their services were no longer required. That day, a further exodus began. Art Dwyer ended his show, Blues in the Night, by announcing that he was leaving the station. Ital K gave a fiery final show that evening. On Monday morning, when the station’s Fall fund drive began, long-time DJ Tim Rakel announced he was going on strike until things improved. During the next week or so, many more volunteers, including me, announced they were on strike. These departures seem to have hurt the KDHX fund drive, which was less successful than usual.

Wells and Pierson kept changing their stories about why they had dismissed so many volunteers, claiming at times that station attempts at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion were being resisted by these people. There had not been any specific plans in this area, but all those at KDHX were in favor of instituting even more DEI. It was obvious to everybody that Wells and Pierson did not want to entertain any objection to their top-down management style, and that volunteer input would not be tolerated.

Gathering for change

Because the fired DJs were explicitly told that the termination did not affect their status as Associate Members, we went on with our previous plan to hold an emergency Associate Member meeting. The Associates is composed of active KDHX volunteers who are allowed to vote into office one Board of Directors representative per year. We followed all the rules in setting up the meeting, during which we called for the removal of Board members previously voted in by Associate Members and for voting in three new Board members who could better represent us. The meeting was held and the changes were approved, but the Board refused to seat our properly selected choices.

Some of the people involved in this, including the three new members, filed a lawsuit, which was settled out of court on Aug. 23. Under the settlement, KDHX has agreed to take two of the three people we voted in and seat them immediately on the Board of Directors. Kip Loui and Courtney Dowdall, each former volunteers and passionate listeners for many years, are now Board members. This means for the first time in at least 10 years, the Board of Directors has, at minimum, two people actually concerned about the treatment of the station’s volunteers.

Public comment was eliminated from Board meetings.

Days ago, the Board of Directors announced that in addition to Loui and Dowdall, they have added two other members, Ron Butts and Tamika Harvey. Until at least 2014, KDHX DJs had almost always served on the Board. However, for the last few years, we were told that this would be a conflict of interest, placing volunteers serving under management in the position of being above management. This is strange, because KDHX was originally structured so that volunteers, management and the Board would all be co-equals. Butts, as Gee Whiz, has been a DJ for most of the last 36 years, while Harvey, as Lady Jock, has been on the air for four years.

We applaud opening Board membership to programmers, but the timing of this move looks like station management is trying to increase opposition to what we believe is necessary to solve KDHX’s economic and other doldrums. Installing other Board members dilutes the power of our newly selected Board members.

Stay up-to-date

From the time the Board refused our selections and so many people were fired or allowed to leave with no attempts to retain them, we have been raising money for legal actions related to the many mistakes management and the Board have committed. We organized our own non-profit group, calling it the League of Volunteer Enthusiasts of KDHX. This name was picked to purposely represent us as the LOVE of KDHX, because we do love what KDHX had stood for before the firings.

We want to return to the station we love, install a new management team and help regain the success the station had for so long. Our interest is in helping KDHX become an even bigger part of the St. Louis community. We also want to keep alive the community of those who had been aligned with KDHX for all these years, those that have been disenfranchised by the recent draconian, top-down changes. We want this vibrant and diverse group to re-invest in KDHX.

The LOVE of KDHX has a Facebook page (facebook.com/LOVEKDHX), a website (loveofkdhx.org), and a weekly Substack newsletter (loveofkdhx.substack.com) that provide regular updates on our approaches, thoughts and activities. Since last Fall, LOVE members have participated in dozens of events, and many of our people have found other avenues to share their knowledge and passion for music. Nonetheless, we miss what KDHX used to be and want to be a strong part of it again.

The LOVE of KDHX stands in solidarity with everybody who has loved what KDHX used to stand for and what it can become again by allowing volunteers and the community to truly help it be great.

— Steve Pick

Steve Pick is a St. Louis writer, music critic, former musician, record store person, and former DJ and volunteer at KDHX. He is the co-author with Amanda Doyle of The St. Louis Sound: An Illustrated Timeline. He has written for the Riverfront Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and was a columnist for the latter from 1989 to 1994. You can find his music blog, Steve Pick’s Writing Place, at stevepick.substack.com.