SEQUIM — Walk into Sequim’s noncommercial radio station and volunteer Lynda Perry asks you two personal questions.
“When you think of your mom, what song do you hear?”
“When you remember your grandmother, what song is playing?”
It’s enough to send you sighing back in time, thinking of Frank Sinatra or Neil Diamond or Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Oldies and goodies
And starting tonight, KSQM-FM 91.5 will revel in such reminiscence by pouring out the good, old music and memories — in listeners’ own words.
For the past week and a half, the volunteer staff at the radio station have been inviting people to call in, send in or drop off song requests with memories attached.
Now that nearly 150 have come in, the volunteers are composing play-lists for what they unabashedly call the Precious Memories Weekend.
Starting at 4 p.m. today, disc jockey Pepper Fisher will read aloud the recollections and play the songs — and then his fellow announcers will keep the love flowing through Sunday.
Which, of course, is Valentine’s Day, and KSQM listeners’ requests look to make it a musical interlude like none the radio station has seen.
The young and the young at heart are calling for all flavors of love songs, said Tama Bankston, KSQM’s volunteer coordinator. Lots of Sinatra. ABBA’s “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.” Even Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.”
KSQM, the Sequim-Dungeness Valley’s 14-month-old public radio station, usually dishes out classics from the 1940s through the 1960s.
But this weekend, “we’re going to play songs we normally wouldn’t,” said Jeff Bankston, Tama’s husband and the volunteer community-news director.
Both Tama and Jeff work full time, unpaid, at KSQM, as do the on-air personalities, who range from Fisher, who worked at Seattle’s KUBE-FM, to Sequim Police Chief Bob Spinks, who spins oldies from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday nights.
Tama Bankston came up with the memories-and-songs idea.
Stories varied
Some of the stories are “heart-wrenching,” she said, while others are just fun, like the one about how a listener fell in love with his baby sitter lo those many years ago.
“We are thrilled to death to hear the memories,” Tama added. “That’s our paycheck.”
Another special event is set for Sunday at KSQM: the unveiling of the Heritage Circle of Friends “honor roll,” a list of 607 donors who contributed a total of $46,000 to the nonprofit station in its first year of existence.
To celebrate, the station will host an open house from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, and the public is invited to tour the studios at 577 W. Washington St., meet some of the disc jockeys and talk with the volunteers who pull everything together.
In case anyone else has a song to request and a memory to share, those can be e-mailed in today and Saturday via office@ksqmfm.com, called today in between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 360-681-0000 or dropped off at the station, which shares a building with In Graphic Detail on West Washington Street.
KSQM is on 24 hours a day — live announcers from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., automated programming overnight — with a signal covering Sequim and environs, from Morse Creek to Gardiner, plus spots in Port Townsend and Victoria.
Those who can’t pull it in at 91.5 FM can try listening online at www.KSQM.com.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
