Davyne Dial is the station manager of a sharp little cultural giant in Asheville, North Carolina, Pacifica Network member WPVM-LP. In August, they celebrated the 10th anniversary of Dayvne’s leadership with a party at the station. Ursula Ruedenberg, Pacifica Affiliate Network manager, happened to be in the area and attended. Afterwards, Davyne and Ursula sat down to talk.
Ursula: Davyne Dial, WPVM just had an anniversary birthday party. I was fortunate to be in Asheville and able to come and enjoyed it very much. Tell us about the party.
Davyne: The party was to give a great big thank you to the volunteers who have come to the station and given their time, energy, expertise and consistency for this time period. We have some who have been with us for 10 years, some for eight years, some for seven and a whole slew that came after covid happened. So it was an opportunity to have a party.
A lot of people had never been to the station because during covid, we started training people to record at home. Now most people record from the comfort of their home and either use Zoom to bring in an interviewee or a band. But our station is great looking, so it’s an opportunity to show it off to all the people who have not been to the station.
WPVM is in a historic building on Wall Street in downtown Asheville. We have kind of an imitation of Manhattan, because we’ve got a flat iron building there at the end of Wall Street. And off to the side is another street named after a street that’s in North New York City, and Lexington nearby. We are fortunate to have our antenna on the roof. In the lobby of our station, we have a mini museum, for people to observe, about the history of radio, technology and industrial design. That’s kind of like our green room, except ours is a mini museum.
Ursula: You have old radios, types of old audio and also photographs and other images.
Davyne:: We made posters that honor the inventors of radio, Morse, Marconi, Tesla and posters showing the history of some of the significant music, people like Jimmy Rogers and Bascom, Lamar Lunsford. And then we’ve got charts showing how the radio spectrum works, and how it’s different from airline spectrums and ham spectrums, you know, the whole spectrum of the radio system.
And then we have a corner that shows how propaganda was used in radio; that’s part of our mission to do what we can locally to combat BS media. Radio was used in Germany, when radio started and became more assimilated in the early 30s. They were still very expensive, but Joseph Goebbels had a cheap radio designed, called the Volksenfanger, made for people to be brainwashed by Hitler’s propaganda machine. We have an example of that radio in our propaganda corner. It shows certain frequencies that you can be tuned into.
When Voice of America happened, it became a death sentence to be reported or caught listening to anything coming from it. Voice of America, has a very interesting history. It came out of the United States; President Roosevelt basically commissioned it to be created outside of Cincinnati, on a campus called Bethany, and it was a major development of a radio broadcasting system. It used 1,200,000 watts to broadcast across the seas to England, where it was then broadcast out on short wave and any other way they could into occupied Europe
Ursula: You also have a movie on display there.
Davyne:: I started managing WPVM in 2015 and after a while, I started to start thinking,” Well, how did this all happen?” I went on a research tour and ended up with the idea of doing a short documentary for people hanging around the lobby to see the amazing magic and history of radio. The video shows significant radio events like Babe Ruth’s called shot, Roosevelt’s First fireside speech, or Churchill’s “We Shall Never Surrender” speech. We also show what radio you would have heard each on. The video is on our website. If you search World of Radio plus WPVM, that page should show up and you can see the video.
Ursula: So that’s WPVMfm.org, World of radio, cool. IT’S A I. I’ve seen it a few times. It gave me an appreciation of the power behind this medium. So tell us a little bit about WPVM’s people at the party.
Davyne: Our most senior member is Russ Wilson, a musician. He’s hosted his show consistently for 10 years. He brings in his own little portable 78 record player, and he plays his 78 records from the 20s and 30s, maybe sometimes a little bit into the 40s. He’s got his own music company, and he’s got six bands that he plays with, he’s a busy guy. He’s hard working and known as a swing band master conductor and participant and artist. He traveled to Europe and the far East to do special swing band dance events.
Ursula: I think he told us last night that he has some 78 records that play in stereo. That’s a new one to me.
Davyne: Asheville has two recording studios, and they press vinyl, and I think he said one of them has a new technique where they record at 78, but in stereo.
So, about 15 of our show hosts were at the party and they kind of crossed the gamut from talk to music. At WPVM we have most of our talk shows in the morning, partly because the world is so stress-filled lately that I want to get the stress stuff out of the way in the morning and then have good music and fun the rest of the day. Since bad stuff is what makes news, we get an overload of it, so we have our mental health specialist. He hosts a great show on all aspects of mental health. And then we have two or three shows that concentrate on jazz, and then we have a couple of shows that feature local and regional writers and poets. We have one host who has gone totally through the system as a whistleblower with the VA and so she does a show called The Empowered Whistleblower – how to deal with workplace situations. And then we have a lot of musicians, who love music and host music shows. It’s mostly men who come in and do their music they are so into. It’s really like, you know, their car or their mistress or their music. And so for a lot of them, it’s their music. And I find that very interesting.
Ursula: I spoke with somebody, a gentleman who plays Brazilian music on the radio, and he’s interested in distributing that to Pacifica Network. So there were two radio producers that I talked to last night who were planning to put their shows into distribution. It’s nice to hear that WPVM is branching out. But speaking of interesting people at the party, you also made an announcement yesterday about a new staff person.
Davyne: Of course, it’s always a big problem to find the perfect person to succeed myself, as the general manager. I’ve been on the lookout for someone. For me, this person finally came along, thank God. She told me that when she was 17, she acquired a ham radio license because she wanted to play music on ham radio. She found out that she couldn’t do that, but she did stick with being a ham operator. But she wanted to play music on the radio so she looked for a station where she could volunteer, and we happened to be the one that she called. She is very eager to learn more. And so as time went by, she started to help run the station and well, sure enough, the station went down and by golly, she was down there in 15 minutes and got us back on the air. She has ended up doing other things for me that went way beyond the call of duty and in an intuitive way. She’s young, and so I and the station board – we decided to train her to eventually be the manager; and I’ll become the assistant manager. I can age out that way. The thing is, we grew up with some great radio, and that needs to be passed on, and we need to have young people in there doing the management so that they can attract other young people.
Ursula: So at the party, you announced she has become the assistant manager. Okay, so the anniversary that was being celebrated at the party was 10 years of your managing the station. Two questions: How long has WPVM been on the air and what is distinctive about the way you’ve managed the station during the past 10 years?
Davyne: The station was in the first round of the low power licenses to be granted by the FCC. A known reform activist called Wally Bowen ran a nonprofit, an internet service providing company called Mountain Area Information Network that was able to get the construction permit in 2002 and they went on the air for the first time in October of 2003. So, the station has been on the air for 21 years. In 2014 Mountain Area Information Network had not kept up with the technical advancements in internet service – they were still doing mostly dial up. They lost customers and accumulated over $100,000 in debt. Their bank was ready to abscond with the equipment, and basically shut down the station.
Somewhere along the way, I had turned into an accidental activist – I’m not quite sure how it happened – I was a designer of fancy ladies’ hats that were sold to boutiques, catalogs and online for weddings and special occasions. But I had retired by then, so in late 2014, we met with WPVM’s board. We started paying the rent and then started paying the bills and working with the other people who were there. Because we paid off the debt, their board voted to have the license transferred to us in June of 2015, Our attorney was very on top of it. He set up a nonprofit for holding the license in around a month.
Ursula: What role do you think WPVM is playing in Asheville?
Davyne: It provides a platform for the unique and talented people who are attracted to being on the radio. It provides a platform for them to put their message out, whether it’s healthcare, mental health, things like, you know, things that can make life better. Like when you met Russ Wilson yesterday, and you asked him why he was doing it after all these years, and he just said, “I want to share this great music with people.”
We consider it a win – win situation. They have passions that they want to share with the world. And they have fun doing it. It’s got to be fun to do it, because that’s going to translate out to the people listening. And we the community benefit. Radio is curated. The host gets legitimacy by being on the radio because there was a vetting process that put you there; standards you had to reach to be on the radio. And we benefit from that talent and quality. I always work on the principle of win – win. It’s a win for the person doing the show, but it’s also good programming; it’s a win for the station.
Ursula: What talent do you think led you to get involved with radio?
Davyne: I just fell into it. Other things that I’ve done in my life gave me some of the tools needed, because in college, I was a literature major. So I know a good story. I know when somebody’s got something that’s legitimately good. I also have tech skills. But I did not envision, ever, that I would end my life running a radio station. I was planning on ending my life as a jewelry designer, selling my jewelry to the number of different artistic outlets that we have here in Asheville. But when this happened, it was just something that there was no possibility of saying, “No” I just fell into it, but I apparently, I am able to handle it.
Ursula: Any regrets?
Davyne: I have absolutely no regrets at all. It’s been a wonderful experience. I have met people that I never would have been exposed to at all, and it’s a wonderful opportunity.
Ursula: Now, you also did something else unique. You have created a guide to the culture of Asheville, North Carolina, which is renowned as a destination for many people. Tell us a little bit. Tell us where you can find that guide and tell us a little bit about Asheville.
Davyne: So Asheville has been a destination location since the 1890s when the Vanderbilts built a massive mansion here. Because they wanted the best of everything, they brought renowned workmen and renowned designers, landscapers, architects, builders, craftsmen from around the world to not only build the estate, but to build their little village beside the estate for all their workers. And then other people took notice, and they wanted to build these special little buildings in downtown Asheville. So Asheville is a gem in the mountains, a beautiful location. I was attracted to this because of the water, the weather, the scenery, the accessibility to just wonderful nature reserves all around us, the biodiversity of the region -it’s one of the highest biodiverse regions of plant life and animal life in the country because of the location on the hemisphere, but also the weather. There’s one of the oldest rivers in the country, called the French Broad River. It’s called the French Broad because the French, at one time, owned all that central part of the United States, and it was the Broad River then, but it was flowing into the French area.
But the region is also significant in the history of the establishment of the country because it was one of the first areas of the country to have a constitutional kind of government. And I found out about that in a guide compiled by Teddy Roosevelt. He had a great admiration for the settlers in the mountain area of western North Carolina. You had to be as hearty as anybody could possibly be, to make it here, because it’s a hard climb up the hills and mountains. Plus, you had to live off the land, So this was a very hearty group who were able to survive and thrive in this region. There’s a streak of real grit in some of the mountain people who are from here, me included, because my ancestors settled here in the 1740s.
I started making a guide to the area because I was just kind of looking into my own background, but then I started expanding out to a story of the region, how the people survived, how they managed to have a great culture here. Especially musically because, well, partly because in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, there was nothing else to do for fun. People got together and played music. A music historian named Olive Dame Campbell came here in the early 1900s and because of her education, she recognized that the songs people were singing dated back to medieval England. She studied this and when she tried to convince people that this was a unique thing, because she was female, she wasn’t paid much attention to. A movie called The SongCatcher is based on her life. But there was a historian from Britain named Cecil Smith, who was a very renowned musicologist, and she summoned him to the region. Something known as the American Songbook is a recording of a lot of those old songs. So we are part of the origins of some of the music that has gone out into the world, roots of the Folk revival music, Bluegrass, and Country.
When writing the guidebook, I started with music and then just expanded into the architecture of the city. Because, as I mentioned, significant people had come here, and these jewels were here. They got preserved here because Asheville went dormant from the 20s after the stock market crash, to the mid 90s. When I came to Asheville in the late 80s, a lot of the great buildings were boarded up and there were not a lot of Businesses active downtown. Ashville was kind of in hibernation. And then in the mid 90s, things started waking up here, and there was legislation passed creating the Tourism Development Authority. By the end of 1990s they had started accumulating enough money to start advertising Asheville as The “Go-To Charming Land of the Sky” place, and now we have almost 14 million visitors a year to the region, coming through Asheville. So the guide that I did was to piggyback off of the hype of Asheville as this wonderful place.
And so, because of all these historical things that have happened here, plus the music scene, it’s very vibrant here. Rolling Stone Magazine said in 2019 that Asheville is the new music city for musicians to come to. There’s music, the arts, art vibe has been here, actually, since the 1890s and 1900s. Black Mountain College was here starting in the mid 30s – shut down in the late 50s – but there’s always been a kind of a artsy thing going on in the region, and so the guide with maps sends people around to interesting places in Asheville that cover art, the music, and historical culture.
And then there’s other sections of the guide that cover all Western North Carolina and its other significant historical, creative or musical aspects. It gives a sense of what a fabulous place this is, in the world, plus the great weather and good water.
Ursula: There’s a lot of history here, a lot of tradition, but the city comes across as a forward-looking place.
Davyne: Well, it depends on who you’re talking to, because Asheville is considered a progressive city. It’s not as progressive as it likes to think it is, but it’s head and shoulders above the very conservative counties that surround Asheville. Republican legislature, which came into power in 2011 gerrymandered the P-Wadden out of western North Carolina for safe seats now For Republicans. So, we’ll see how it goes in this election cycle. It looks like there’s a ultra, ultra-right wing black candidate for governor (Mark Robinson) against Josh Stein, who’s been our Attorney General, and he is over 10 points ahead of this black guy who is ultra-right wing. So fingers crossed.
Ursula: Okay, one final self-serving question: What does membership in Pacifica Network mean to WPVM?
Davyne: One thing: if someone has a show that fits, I can tell them, “Hey, you can distribute your show at Pacifica, and then there’s over 200 stations that are affiliated with the network. Chances are, your show will be picked up in other areas of the country. They love that, instead of being limited to Asheville. And we have several shows that are really evergreen enough that they need to be heard elsewhere. It’s a selling point for volunteers at a community radio station. It gives them extra perks. Because they’re doing it for free, it makes it more attractive for them to do a show. Another thing: we pull in some great shows from Pacifica, giving our stations great programming to air.
Ursula: Thank you for speaking with me. Davyne. It has been delightful to have WPVM – and you – in the network! And like I always say, it’s a pleasure because I get to work with the best people in America and you’re one of them. So thank you.
Davyne: Thank you for being there. This is a win – win!
Ursula: It’s true.
All WPVM photos used with permission of Davyne Dial and WPVM radio. Asheville photo by Michael Tracy.
