In recent years, Tufts' student-run radio station, WMFO Tufts Freeform Radio, has been a bit neglected.
That is to say, in everyday Tuftonian conversation, it was not exactly normal to hear a friend say, "Oh, did you hear that show on WMFO yesterday?" or "I heard about this band on WMFO."
But fear not, collegiate media enthusiasts, for the times, they are a-changing.
Campus Radio Gets a Makeover
Not only is the station beginning a new series, the WMFO Acoustic Café, which will feature live acoustic performances of up-and-coming artists from the Boston area as well as the rest of the nation, but the entire platform of the station is being revamped.
Junior and WMFO General Manager Drew Frankel said he's extremely excited to kick off the new semester, and more importantly, a new era for WMFO.
"One of WMFO's biggest accomplishments of the last semester is that we have a completely full weekly program schedule," he said. "That means that we're broadcasting entirely 24/7 during each semester."
The station has also made changes off the airwaves.
"Other big news at WMFO is the creation of our brand new Web site, which was launched officially last Sunday," he said. "We worked really hard on the new site and even hired an outside firm to design and test it."
The new site, WMFO.org, features not only the same functions of the old site such as simultaneous Web casting and digital show archives but now has extended features, including DJ blogs and profiles, guestbooks and photo galleries.
Live On the Airwaves
The full DJ schedule and new Web site may seem like small steps in the growth of WMFO, but the newly interactive radio station will reach even more listeners with the creation of the Acoustic Café series spearheaded by Frankel himself.
The acoustic concerts will function as only one part of the Acoustic Café, which includes on-air performances and interviews with each week's artist. The shows will also be recorded for posterity and may be played on the air after the event.
WMFO-sponsored shows once occurred on campus quite often, but their frequency decreased rapidly over the last few years.
Frankel said he's glad the station will be bringing them back.
"The more I thought about it, the more I realized how cool of an idea it really would be because it benefits all of the groups participating," he said. "There's a major incentive for artists to play in front of a college crowd and an even bigger incentive to get some concentrated airtime. We're essentially offering these artists a full one-hour feature on-the-air entirely devoted to them, which is something that you don't see coming from other radio stations."
Building a Reputation
The timing could not be better for such an endeavor, according to Frankel.
"For us, we're getting the opportunity to show Tufts what a tremendous resource we are and we get to make some noise - albeit acoustic noise - on campus. For Brown and Brew, they sell more coffee. All in all, it's a win-win-win, especially for the Tufts student community," Frankel said.
And so the Acoustic Café idea was born. But it takes more than one man to get a project of this magnitude off the ground, so Frankel brought his idea to the WMFO community for help.
"We assembled a group of both student and community member DJs and started working on it ... It was truly a group effort open to anyone on staff who was interested in helping out."
After getting the idea into motion, the issue of finding artists became increasingly important.
"Just as a test," Frankel said, "I posted a classified ad on Craigslist[.com] in early December to gauge interest, and within 24 hours we had already received close to 30 responses."
If you build it, they will come
Choosing artists to play became an entirely different animal. The WMFO board has chosen a series of artists that they think are up-and-coming and will appeal to a college audience, the majority of whom have not heard their material before.
"The board held 'listening parties' to sift through the artists who had expressed interest and pick the ones we thought best suited the series. We sought to book a broad range of artists spanning different styles of music, and I think we did a pretty good job," Frankel said.
Some of the artists also came from personal contacts within the station itself.
"We also made use of a bunch of connections that folks on our staff have to touring artists and booked some performers through those connections," Frankel said.
In order to book artists from a diverse range of musical genres, Frankel and company enlisted a taskforce of listeners and advisors to help choose the performers. "We invited all of the members of our staff, over 100 students and community members, to get involved in the planning process, and all who expressed interest were involved in the selection of the artists," Frankel said. "The artists are a pretty diverse group, which should make for a pretty interesting and unpredictable series, which was one of our main concerns. We didn't want the same act week after week."
Getting ready for opening night
This Thursday brings the inaugural Acoustic Café with acoustic guitarist Tim Blane, who has recently released his sophomore album "Clockwork" (2007). The album was produced by Chris Keup and Stewart Myers, who have worked with the likes of Jason Mraz, Rachel Yamagata and Mandy Moore.
Blane and his band, consisting of bassist Adam Olenn, drummer James Williams and keyboardist Steve Mossberg, have been nominated for numerous awards and played at this year's WBOS Earthfest with acts such as Guster and KT Tunstall.
According to Frankel, Tim will be performing with an acoustic trio, made up of guitar, bass and hand drums.
As the semester continues, artists including Reilly James (of Casual Fiasco), Mieka Pauley, the Scarecrow Collection, Ian Axel, Jesse Ruben, Barefoot Truth, Kobie Ali, Kirsten Price, Amy Fairchild, Earl Pickens, and Pete and J will come through Medford to play in Brown and Brew and have their turn being grilled on the air.
A full schedule of who is playing when, as well as more information on the artists and DJs, is available on the WMFO Web site.
Heading into the future
And so, with the dawning of a new semester, a new era begins in the history of WMFO.
"The WMFO Acoustic Café Series is definitely just the beginning of our involvement, Frankel said. "We have plans to discuss collaboration with Concert Board to get WMFO involved in Spring Fling. We're in the planning stages of a concert with Oxfam Café featuring John Vanderslice in early April. We're also doing some work with outside promoters at several concerts at the Paradise Rock Club in February and March. There's a lot going on at WMFO, both on and off the air, and it's all very exciting."
The Acoustic Café premieres tonight at Brown and Brew from 8:30 to 9:30 with performer and Berklee Alum Tim Blane. Admission is free.
