WESU DJs in the World with Babe Howard ’19

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We hope you enjoy WESU in the World, a series that will feature interviews from various WESU DJs and fans from around the world to check in with them to see how they’re doing and what they’re up to as we face the covid-19 crisis together. We hope these interviews will remind you of the value of the non-commercial content WESU provides to the Middletown community, and the world.  Right now, WESU must raise more than usual to balance our books. If you are feeling particularly inspired or generous, please feel free to donate to our Spring Pledge Drive at http://wesufm.org/pledge to keep Free-Form Radio alive! We recognize that times are tough for all and not everyone has the ability to give, but we would be grateful for any amount you can contribute. Even a penny counts!

For our first guest in the series, we’ll be talking to Babe Howard ’19, former vice-president of the WESU Board of Directors. Check out the interview below!

Luke: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me Babe! First off, where are you and how are you?
Babe: I’m in New York. Sitting at a kitchen table I’m just realizing has the mark of every single glass of anything I’ve had for at least a month. I’m doing alright.

What do you miss most about pre-quarantine life that you weren’t expecting to miss?
There is a family of three – young parents and their baby – whose kitchen is directly aligned with ours. It’s very easy to look in while you’re washing the dishes – I’m not saying I do it consciously, but any time I  happen to look into their window, they’re feeding that baby. Every time. Luckiest baby. And I do a fair amount of dishes, at irregular intervals. Feeding that baby 24/7, I swear. But they left the city – I saw them packing up. Miss them and their meals.

What are some of the things that have been on your mind while staying at home? A lot of my thoughts – and they are rare – resolve into the same sort of question, which is mainly about the not-great ways I feel, and how to square those with the fact that I am in most senses Okay. So I suppose I’m thinking a bit about people I don’t actually know. And the people I do know, and how to talk to them, why it sometimes feels different than it used to. Actually, I think the strangeness of that last part is comparable to the way you’d talk to a caller on your show.

Any new hobbies?
I’m not sure I’d ever watched an Instagram Live before that wasn’t just someone I knew messing around. In the past two months, I  think I’ve tuned in to at least a minute of every single one I’ve come across.

How long have you been a DJ?
First semester WESU trainee! Three and a half years? Four?

What show(s) have you broadcast in the past at WESU?
Future President Beth Townsend and I started out with a 2am half-hour called Scripted Sounds, soundtracks and movie-inspired music. Meg West and I were proud cohosts of a show called Mixed Media from 2016-2019. The form changed on the season and sometimes the episode, but generally we’d pick a broad theme and spend the week (or hour) before the show picking out a handful of writing, movies, shows, memories to loosely connect to each other beneath it. That sounds pretentious but in practice was (I think) very loose. And then I got to help Beth run Wild Wild Live! our last two years at school. Crazy fun to listen to every campus act we could convince into playing Studio B, and bother them about their music afterwards.

Do you remember your first show?
Not much, other than the Panic. It’s one thing to hear your voice back in a recording, but it’s a whole other deal to hear it something silly a shred of a second after you actually do it – even if you’ve already convinced yourself no one’s listening. I do vividly remember walking up Church Street with Beth after our show, talking about our soundboard gaffes and what might make next week better. That might be the most advanced show prep I’ve done.

Do you miss being on air at WESU?
Big time. Whatever overcalibrated energy there is here used to be expelled there. I miss being on air and everything about WESU for many other reasons, too.

Do you have any favorite moments or memories associated with WESU?
Operating the sound board for a 6^th grade metal band on Wild Wild Live.

Why should people care about WESU?
There aren’t a lot of things that ask so little and give so much. To plagiarize every fundraising pitch: a station like WESU is everything that’s good about college and everything that’s good about radio. It tosses a bunch of people together – some of whom are at a wildly formative part of their life, some who have been doing this for decades – and asks them to do the same thing in wildly different ways. And they do it. I’m still subscribed to the email list.

Any final thing you’d like to say to the people out there?
Listen to a WESU show from the archives! Or roll the dice and tune in live! If you listen online you get to hear Ben Michael say, “There’s no listener-supported radio without listener support.” I know that by heart and I don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance. Support can look a lot of different ways. One is money, so if you are able to support WESU – or anything/anywhere/anyone else now – in that way, please do.

Thank you to Babe for spending time with us and keeping WESU in mind! As always, you can donate to our Spring Pledge Drive at wesufm.org/pledge. Free-Form Forever!