notes on radio.

farewell to Sound & Vision.

New Year’s Eve 2021/2022 was how I found out you’re not supposed to eat lobster on NYE. It’s true. It’s bad luck. You’re not supposed to eat anything that can crawl backwards, because we’re going forward—dammit! On New Year’s Eve, this fateful year, our friends the Bergarts and us got a to-go lobster dinner from a place in Seattle and it came with fancy hats and blowers and manhattans and champagne. It was a glorious night… and then 2022 was the WORST YEAR. Fuckin’ lobster.

I won’t list all the hard things that happened in that year, but a big one was in January: my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were in Mexico at an all-inclusive resort a few days after I found out and it was so interesting to be so depressed in such a bright place. I won my money back at that resort by drinking copious amounts of mezcal, trying to numb myself.

I traveled to Texas eight times in 2022, mostly to be there with my momma for her treatments.

Another big, horrible thing is that Marcelline, two a the time, kept having seizures. It felt like my mom and my daughter were falling apart and I couldn’t keep it together.

A wonderful part of 2022 was that Emily Fox, senior producer of KEXP’s Sound & Vision, saw something in me that she believed in. She asked me to take the helm of the show while she went on maternity leave.

As a storyteller who is obsessed with radio and music, this was everything.

@rachelstevenssss

Rachel Stevens on Instagram: "year two ✌️year one 👉 day one.

…

It was happening. I was telling stories on the radio. Just like I had gone to Marfa four years earlier to train for. It felt like this was destined—in my blood. My dad has always been the music-lover and terrestrial radio champion and storyteller of the family and I glommed on to that as much as I could. Just a few weeks ago, he sent me this novel of a text story:

“‘I KNEW HIM!’ for about a week.  Here’s one for your vintage Seattle friends. In ’79 just before I met Mom I was Washboard Leo’s manager/roadie/sideman etc. Artis was passing thru & someone took him to see Leo; it was the Big Bang of Unique Kindred Spirits. Artis was getting us excited telling us we needed to move to Seattle where Leo could be appreciated more & collaborate on fringe music with Leo’s electric washboard talents. I was also working at the bar I met Mom in as those two disappeared together for about a week.  Because I was Leo’s mgr Artis gave me his business spoon & demo tape, I’ve never listened to it but I did witness live his amazing talents that quieted a room full of disinterested cowboy drunks to roar with a standing ovation at the end of his short set.  Artis’s arms were buffed from all his spoon playing. He also played forks, knives, & pens to name a few. The pic of you & I are 10yrs later in ’89. The strip is from headlining a bluegrass festival in Oklahoma in ’79 shortly after I met Mom, it was our 1st roadtrip together. The festival was billed as a straight family affair. No Dogs, No Alcohol, No Drugs, No Fun. Mom, I, & band broke every rule within 15 minutes of arriving but they didn’t bust us (they could off) because we were the draw headliners. The night before it was all going to start we couldn’t sleep so around midnight in the dark some of us took to the stage & played Jimi’s ‘Third Rock From the Sun’ for a long time on banjo, washboard, beancan & maybe mandolin. The whole song is in one chord, D. Luv’ Ya To Pieces, moresoonlater……..”

My dad sends me these gems about once a month and I love them. (Artis is Spoonman, if you didn’t catch that.)

The stories. The music. The community. My parents. My north stars. So in 2022, I spent six months of the year interviewing some of my favorite artists, connecting with a lightning-in-a-bottle caliber team of writers/radio makers, creating and implementing Segue of the Week (which became my favorite thing), and really honing in my audio skills. There were so many late nights in the studio. So many exhausted and frustrated days. So many gentle notes and feedback from my assistant producer, Roddy Nikpour, who made our work so much better. So many cuts for podcasts and then cuts and collages made for social media. So many tears. So many laughs. And in the end, every week, on Saturdays, from 7-9am, there was Sound & Vision.

my beloved DJ Kennady took this photo for me one Saturday morning while I was in Texas.

I would lay in bed on Saturday mornings, with a toddler who came into our bed way too early and a husband who was already making coffee, listening to the show on our clock radio. Marcie would note every time she heard my voice. Friends around Seattle, usually driving their kids to soccer tournaments or the like, would text: “Is this you on the radio??” And every Saturday afternoon, my mom would call me. We would catch up, but then she would then go into all of her favorite parts of Sound & Vision. She usually had questions and always had comments. Dad would chime in and ask if I knew about the bass player who used to play with a band I mentioned or if I was going to do anything for Roky Erickson’s birthday or something random/awesome like that. By September, it felt like my mom’s feedback got real specific. It became a funny and lovely part of my week: Mom’s Sound & Vision feedback.

My time as the host of Sound & Vision ended at the end of 2022. We went home to Texas for Christmas that year, as did my sister and her daughters. Forty minutes after our plane landed, my dad tested positive for Covid. My mom tested positive a day later. Marcelline was still having seizures and kept getting her MRI punted, so I was very protective of her against Covid. (fuck off, 2022.) My parents stayed at a hotel for a week or so. Evan and I stayed at my BFF’s home, because her mom went to London to be with her, because her dad passed away in October. (honestly, 2022, wtf.) We didn’t get as much time with my parents as we wanted, but when we finally did, it was magic. We got a beautiful photoshoot. We got time in the backyard. We had laughs. We had time together, listening to music. And as I was about to leave my parents’ home, my mom told me to wait a second, then left and came out of her bedroom with a stack of notes and asked, “Do you want these?”

They were all the notes she had kept from listening to Sound & Vision.

It made my heart just ache in the best way. Through 2022, things had been so hard, Mom had been through so much, and yet, I had made art, friends had made art, and my mother sat down and listened to this art and then wrote down—with a pen to paper—her favorite things about this art. Wow. Here it was. In my hands now. This love.

There are little notes that give me so much joy:

“Trap music?”

“Welcome to this Ted Talk
–Rachel”

“Who said it’s Sound & Vision baby?”

“Martin Douglas loner”

These out of context are amazing. Martin was probably a self-described loner in some conversation we were having.

I pulled these notes out a couple weeks ago, after they lived for two years in a special box of things I keep. It made me miss so many of these KEXP friends and these stories and this music. That lightning-in-a-bottle team.

And then the one that went on beyond my time at Sound & Vision and then beyond my time at KEXP. It made me so nostalgic and grateful for these moments.

My mom’s cancer is gone. My daughter’s seizures stopped. Life went on and we all try to hold on to the moments we loved.

Sound & Vision’s last show airs this Saturday, January 11, from 7-9am PT. The show—and all of its team—were victim to the CPB cuts. (it’s heartbreaking what’s happening to radio and the arts.) I’m gutted for that team. (almost all laid off.) And for that time. And for that art.

If you can, I hope you tune in to listen to the last episode of KEXP’s Sound & Vision. Maybe sidled up close to your favorite radio, with coffee near. Maybe with a paper and pen in hand, noting your favorite parts. Maybe with your heart a little softer for the artists and journalists and storytellers who deliver you love in the way of creation. Turn it up louder. Listen closer. The crackle of the radio might just line up with the cracking of voices of one of your favorite hosts/bosses/mentors ever. The one who saw something beautiful in you years ago and believed in that beauty and instead of feeling competition, she trusted you and gave you a chance at leading something truly epic that probably made your parents the most proud of you that they’ve ever been. Listen for that.

---

Quick Hits:

• Jam(s) Of The Week: A$AP Rocky – Punk Rocky.
  (the artistry of this track, this video, this rapper? undeniable. I immediately listened to it three times in a row. also, “Introducing Winona Ryder” is sending me. the full album is out January 16th.)

• Jam(s) Of The Week: Jean Dawson – GODISADJ.
  (heard this one on Troy’s show on KEXP. I missed it last month and now I’m obsessed. ahhh… once again, the magic of live DJs.)

• I Wanna See This Movie.

  (what’s the over-under on it coming to theaters in Wyoming?)

• HUGE News For Wyoming!
  (remember when I talked to Ani DiFranco about abortion for Sound & Vision?)

• Poems.
  (a third more hopeful thing. now subscribed to her Substack.)

• I’m Still At The Cottage.
  (Evan and I BREEZED through Heated Rivalry and now I cannot stop watching reactions to episode 5. and I cry every time.)

• January Is A Great Month For Some Reality TV Faves.
  (give me more drag queens. and TRAITORS IS SO GOOD TELL ME YOU WATCH. also, I’m counting the Australian Open as reality TV.)

• Ha.

• Ha!

• Ha…

Okay, 2026! Here we go! Support art, public radio, your favorite Substacks. Also, I feel like 2026 is gonna be better than 2025. We got this. You deserve it.

xxo,
Rachel.