From WSFM in Asheville, NC

For Gray Wheeler, co-host of the weekly one-hour series “Just Say It with Confidence: A Talk Show About Music,” the greatest compliment may not have been meant to be a compliment at all.

“A listener told me our show was like sitting in a coffee shop overhearing two music nerds at the next table goobering out,” says Wheeler.

Indeed, the genesis of the series came from the multi-hour discussions between Wheeler and co- host DJ Erik Mattox at local Asheville, NC coffee shops.

“I knew it was a potential radio match made in heaven when we simultaneously proclaimed McLean Stevenson’s deejay character in the 1979 sitcom ‘Hello, Larry’ to be unheralded,” says co-host DJ Erik Mattox, a prominent local event deejay, as well as a founder of community radio
station 103.3 Asheville FM. Soon thereafter, he proposed to Wheeler that they create an original weekly show talking about music.

“I hoped the show might fill a void,” says Wheeler. “We agreed that for community radio to differentiate itself versus algorithm-based options, it needed the human voice, with discussion and context, along with the songs played.”

Each week, “Just Say It with Confidence” features a theme that is carried throughout the hour. Sometimes that means the history of Hawaiian music, how the word ‘ain’t’ has been used in songwriting over the decades, or by playing bonus cuts from overpriced box sets to save listeners
some money. Mattox explains, “Sometimes we do these ‘Non-Obvious Maniacal Compendiums’ in which we go deep on what at first might seem an overly-familiar topic. For example, we did a show on Van Halen without playing the band itself. It was mostly an exploration of the classical music roots of their song ‘Eruption.’”

Currently, Wheeler and Mattox are in the midst of a three-episode arc entitled “Walk This Way, Talk That Way” about “found” (aka faked) accents by singers. The first was a faked Southern accent, the second a faked Cockney, and the final one about faked Patois. The two deejays are also excited about a live feed into the Burning Man Festival in late August.

Within a year of launching the series, Wheeler and Mattox were honored in Boston by the Alliance for Community Media with the 2025 Hometown Media Award for the single best episode of entertainment in community radio. The winning episode was entitled “Connections,” in which the co-hosts traded songs with tangential connections to each other to emphasize how radio might be a cure for loneliness, especially in light of the regional devastation brought by
Hurricane Helene in Autumn 2024.

“Just Say It with Confidence: A Talk Show About Music” originates live on WSFM, 103.3 “Asheville FM” every Sunday from 6-7 pm, and is posted on Pacifica’s Audioport each Monday evening for re-broadcasting by Pacifica Network Affiliate Stations.