Mini Media

L.A.’s biggest music fan builds the Little Radio that could.
By Lucinda Michele Knapp
Photos By Timothy Norris

Seattle, 1991- Dave Conway stands in a basement at a house party on Capitol Hill and watches Nirvana play to a small group of friends. The music washes over the little room. It’s one of those moments when life coalesces into a single moment, one expanded to the infinite by sound, color and motion, a blaze of life distilled into a perfect storm of sensation. Any music fan knows what it’s like to stand in one of these rooms.

In November of 1992, Conway watched under Seattle’s gloomy, shivering skies as Nirvana performed onstage at the Seattle Coliseum. “You could feel it-something had totally changed. It couldn’t be a small fun show any more.”

Shortly afterward, the Seattle scene imploded.

Dave is now in Los Angeles. He stands in a room full of people, laughter, music. A brilliant grid of crimson Chinese lanterns hangs low overhead. A dapper band belts out Brit-pop onstage; the crowd’s exuberant. Lighting shifts, dims, and grows vibrant again. An internal slideshow of memory moves across the room as Dave looks around. Except now this is his room, this is his show, and this is his life.

“I never wanted to do what everybody else did,” he says.

Little Radio is more than just a warehouse in a seedy area of Downtown, but at first glance it is exactly that. Indistinguishable from the surrounding jungle of industrial buildings and blank façades, it hunkers low in a featureless grid of blank-faced buildings, boarded-up windows and sinister alleyways. The one nearby building with any character is Sam’s Hofbrau, glittering scarily with Vegas-style lights advertising its beer, back rooms, and Girls Girls Girls. There isn’t much that can recommend this miserable stretch of Alameda, and it doesn’t seem a likely locus for art or culture. But enter past the foliate security bars on Little Radio’s front door and you walk into a separate space that seems to breathe possibility. Giant panels of artwork sit heavily on the bare brick walls and repeat in wheatpasted patterns from ceiling to floor. The dim half-light is punctuated by a rotating chorus of red, blue, yellow and chartreuse oscillating across the rear wall. Music blasts from the raised loft in back, from a sparse set of turntables flanking a laptop atop a table built from 2×4s. The concrete floor-soon to be painted red-echoes nothing but Black Pine and the footsteps of Dave Conway and his partner, Jimmy Brayl.

Both Conway and Brayle sport beards a lumberjack could be proud of. They are unassuming and approachable, Conway with a Gilligan-style hat pulled low on his forehead, Brayle with a gentle, barely-audible voice. Brayle busies himself in the back of the studio where a second floor bisects the rear wall to create a cozy top floor surmounted only by the DJ table, six or seven beanbag chairs and a KISS pinball game. Conway flops onto one of the chairs and uncorks a bottle of cheap red wine: it’s been a hell of a day, in a busy week, in a busy month.

In the few months since opening, Little Radio has hosted shows by rock stalwarts Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Warlocks, and recently, Charlatans UK. The Internet radio station that webcasts from here is home to a group of diverse shows, hosted by music authorities from around the world-including Anton Newcombe of Brian Jonestown Massacre and even a DJ in Italy. “The girl in Milan, she’s dating my friend from the Raveonettes. She came to town and Jimmy and I picked her up at the airport to take her down to San Diego to see the Raveonettes show, and we immediately hit it off.” DJs hook up to Conway’s server and broadcast their shows on Little Radio, making it possible to DJ from anywhere on the globe. The Beastie Boys were the latest to host a show, and they already have plans to return.

Little Radio’s position in the sweet spot of poised-to-break pop culture didn’t just magically appear, though. It’s been a long slog: Conway has financed everything himself from his job as a location scout. “It was fucking hard. Harder than anybody would wanna know. But otherwise I’d go crazy. I love having all this stuff going on; I love being busy. I love to bring my daughter down here and she rides her bike around inside the space. It’s something about Little Radio, that things just seem to work out. When it seems like everything’s gonna fall apart, when I don’t have enough money to pay all the bills, something falls into place… I get a big job, or someone shows up who wants to help.

“Little Radio stems from me always wanting to tell people about bands they don’t know,” explains Conway. “In Seattle, as a younger kid, there were always people turning me on to new bands-Sonic Youth, Tree People, Dinosaur Jr., all these new bands. We were the kids that were like, ‘Such and such record label has a new release coming out Tuesday!’ or ‘Oh my god, this is a side project from blah blah blah!’-just total music geek type stuff. When I moved out to L.A., I started out living in a hostel in Hermosa Beach, mopping the floor of the bar down below for one free meal, free booze and 20 bucks.” But there was no one around to really geek out with about music-”just a lot of 40-year-old singer-songwriters and bar bands,” Conway says of the Westside scene. “Slowly, I got into production and ended up working on a job where I was a location manager. I was really burned out. I was trying to work in music videos; it seemed like the obvious choice. But creatively, music videos had become really shitty. I was just kinda like, ‘Well, I love music, but I hate music videos.’”

Then lightning struck during a chance venture to the Eastside: “I ended up going to a Silversun Pickups/Pine Marten show and getting jolted back to life… I was like, oh yeah, this is what I like! Going out to shows, being a part of the music scene.”

Conway went home with his brain bubbling with ideas. Many people lay awake at night with visions of the future flickering through their heads, only to wake and remember nothing-or if they do, it’s only a vague feeling: “I should really do that someday,” and they drive to work and wonder why they’re so listless, and why every day seems the same. Dave Conway, however, didn’t.

“I immediately dove into it and started thinking of what I could do. I thought, ‘Radio here is really bad.’ KXLU’s got great shows, and KCRW has a few good moments, but that’s about it. I decided to try to do something with pirate and Internet radio.” As an additional measure of his disdain for local radio, he bought the domain name of indie103.com-which automatically routes visitors to the Little Radio site. “I was disgusted with how they were controlled by Clear Channel-even though Clear Channel didn’t own them directly, it was still supplying all their advertising, trying to get around the FCC restrictions of how many stations a company can own in one city,” he explains.

Little Radio’s pirate broadcast hovered over Los Angeles for over a year, with occasional location shifts to flee the FCC.

“The coolest thing, my favorite thing, was crawling on rooftops and being under people’s houses-it was this world of adventure,” says Jenny Caloca, Dave’s first partner in crime and helpmeet with all things related to Little Radio. “There was the time we met with the FCC and broadcast it simultaneously.”

“The FCC had shut us down one time, explains Conway. “The antenna was actually on top of Rob Turner from BRMC’s house, and I got a call from him at 5:30 in the morning. He’s never up that early [laughs]. And he tells me over the phone, ‘Uh, the FCC would like to speak to you.’ I said, ‘Alright, sure-they can meet me at my house.’ So we ended up mic-ing the room, and actually did a broadcast of my meeting with the FCC.”

But the cloak-and-dagger angst with the pirate broadcast was getting to Dave. “It kept getting shut down, and the whole setting equipment up on rooftops, risking life and limb just to mount an antenna, it was like, ‘OK, I’m kinda over it.’” Conway shifted focus to the Internet station and went strictly to online broadcasting. “It’s become much more than a station; it’s a media company that can provide lots of things that I felt L.A. really needed. Plus, with the physical space we can provide a different venue. There are so few places right now that are able to book any good shows.”

And Little Radio doesn’t just book good shows; it draws a good crowd as well. At the recent Charlatans UK show, the exposed brick walls, large art installations and warehouse-party style bar could have one shrinking on the inside: everything smacked of an event populated with snobby hipsters. But there was an odd lack of pretension in the room. There was no one too cool for school. A marked openness and sense of camaraderie pervaded the crowd. It felt like someone’s living room. But larger, maybe, and with a better sound system than the shitty old speakers you got at a garage sale down the street, and with the Charlatans playing in the middle of it.

“I want a venue that’s different from other places, that’s only open once in a while, and each time it’s special,” enthuses Conway. “We plan on redressing the space regularly so it looks different almost every time. Every month we’ll be doing an art show combined with live music. The first one is March 10th. In May we have a show with Storm Thorgenson [iconoclastic designer of many a famous record jacket, including that of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel and Catherine Wheel], which will coincide with a band playing that he’s done art for.” Conway lists other projects: a movie night once a week featuring independent artists, directors and film companies; barbecues on Sundays with bands playing acoustic sets; a theatre night; even a roller skate night. The smooth concrete floors are perfect for more than his daughter’s tricycle wheels.

Other projects have already begun. Little Radio has started producing CDs and will soon create DVDs as well. They’ve begun with pressings for Amoeba Records and Dim Mak, as well as a Little Radio comp created for the South By Southwest music festival. “We have a Sony plant willing to work with us, and we can produce CDs at cost now,” Conway says.

He calls it his “Swiss Army Knife” business plan: “It’s where you figure out what you need, and what you would normally pay someone else to do-and then ask, what would it cost to just do it ourselves? That’s where the CDs came about. It’s eventually going to evolve into a record label. Getting CDs made is so expensive for bands-there’s a huge mark-up. The cost of CDs compared to the price of what they sell them for is so absurd, there’s going to be a tipping point. More people are doing illegal downloads than buying CDs because of CD prices. You’re talking about something that costs 40 to 60 cents each, and then you turn around and sell it for $14, $16, $20? So now we can print a thousand to a million CDs, and we can do it for cost.” Also in Conway’s Swiss Army Knife: music supervision for films and commercials (they’ve already begun working with Harvest Films and independent film producers); a soon-to-come recording studio; design and printing; a washer, dryer, and shower for grungy bands on tour; and schwag, like buttons. Little Radio aims to be a one-stop shop for musicians-from filming their videos to getting airplay, from making CDs to getting placement in soundtracks and on commercials.

Conway’s grand vision of a latter-day Warholian Factory would seem grandiose except for the exponential growth Little Radio’s already demonstrated. Jenny Caloca, Dave’s very first collaborator, recalls their modest beginnings. “I started working with him two years ago last December. I went to the first Christmas party at his first location at Fais Do Do, and he recruited my ex-girlfriend’s band and recorded them. I thought what he was doing was amazing, so I approached him and said ‘Hey, can I help you?’…Eventually it was he and I running the station, the shows, the pirating. At Fais Do Do we had the theater next to it, so we’d do shows and broadcast them live, and people could listen in the car on whatever frequency we used.”

But attendance was anemic. “It’s almost impossible to get people down to Fais Do Do,” said Conway, shaking his head. They moved to a small office adjacent to the Echo, but the staid and tiny room was stifling. Then Conway looked at one space advertised on Craigslist-”the very first one I tried,” he says. Little Radio moved into the Downtown location shortly afterwards.

“Now we’ve got shows and the website gets 50,000 hits a month, and bands we like are interested-the BRMC show was the first one in the new space,” says Caloca. The show was a huge success (and also inspired Conway and Brayl to sandblast the white walls and ceiling into their current au naturel state, as BRMC’s riffs knocked paint flakes adrift from the ceiling in flurries).

“We just had our first meeting with all our DJs Saturday,” continues Caloca, referring to the ramp-up for March’s big website launch. “We discussed everybody’s roles, and I’m enjoying coordinating them. It’s difficult to balance life, work and Little Radio, but when it’s in your heart you have to do it.”

Conway’s wife Christina agrees. “He told me what he wanted to do, and I said, ‘That’s a great idea, you should do it.’ As it went on I said, ‘Oh no, what have I done?!’” she laughs. “Right now it’s really taking off, but it’s been tough. There are no investors or anything; it’s been a labor of love, like anybody starting as an entrepreneur.”

“Luckily I have an amazing wife,” acknowledges Conway. “Little things can be tough, like getting the space dressed up nice: you don’t have to spend money on it, but we want to go the extra mile to make it worthwhile. KISS pinball,” he says, gesturing at the game flashing orange and yellow over in the corner. “You gotta have KISS pinball. Christina is like, ‘I totally support you, I totally believe you.’ At New Year’s Eve we came upstairs and looked at the crowd, and they’re doing the countdown, and we were like, yeah! We did it! We’ve struggled financially, but we’re doing it. I think 2006 is going to be a great year.”

Little Radio’s art curator, highly regarded poster artist Alan Forbes, agrees. “In L.A., the best art is coming from the underground,” he notes, “but a lot of these artists don’t get shown in galleries. We plan to show art that goes along with music; the whole idea of having art and music coincide was what I was into. People can send in submissions to Little Radio on the website. Most of the new art is below the radar, but if people actually see it, they’ll love it.”

If people see it. That’s the one hitch, and hopefully Conway and Co. can hurdle it. Many Eastside venues have encountered challenges in the form of obscure zoning laws, uptight permits, absurd parking regulations and irritable neighbors. Other underground D.I.Y. web stations have launched out of L.A. only to encounter rough times in the form of financial woes, lack of organizational support, and server spottiness. Killradio.org is scrappily outlasting its travails-and continuing to webcast its own unique blend of radical social commentary, weirdo music and edgy comedy, but, like Little Radio, it too broke on the scene with great fanfare (an LA Weekly cover story). As time passed, the waters got rougher. In L.A., time is not kind to any form of entertainment. Both Killradio and Little Radio seem flexible enough to weather what growing pains may come, but it certainly won’t be a bed of roses.

Inevitable thorns, slings, arrows and fire marshals aside, Little Radio launches its new web magazine and revamped radio station March 1st. A two-year-anniversary celebration sometime in March (TBA) will feature DJ sets from Shepard Fairey and Myles Hendrick, as well as secret musical guests. The new radio shows begin Monday, February 27th at 9 a.m., with Natasha Slater from Radio Populare in Milan, Italy. Live broadcasts will come in from Portland hot spots Vine and Doug Fir. Other shows will include Filter magazine’s staff, Anthem magazine’s Mark Ziemke, Kevin Bronson of the L.A. Times, Myles Hendrick from Pash, Mark “Cobrasnake” Hunter, Laurel Sterns, Jax from the popular blog Rock Insider, and the return of the Beastie Boys. With so many shows coming out of L.A., the local music scene stands a real chance to break on a nationwide scale. A new sampler will also be available, including tracks from Wolfmother, Harlem Shakes, New Pornographers, Minutes to Midnight, Lousey Robot, the Grabs, Morning After Girls, Bloodcat Love, Ariel Pink, Wiskey Biscuit, the Concretes and more.

Conway’s excitement is infectious, and rare in a jaded town like L.A. He smiles at the brick walls and heavy wooden beams, and you can see the memory of a Seattle basement behind his eyes-but with a newfound love for his adopted city. “It just kinda happens in all these weird ways. When you least expect it and when you really need it, something just comes out of nowhere. Good things beget good things, when you’re trying to do something right.” LAA

For more info, check out www.littleradio.com.

Little Radio’s Dave Conway’s Top 11 L.A. Bands
(In No Specific Order)

The Moon Upstairs: ’70s psychedelic classic rock done right. Don’t miss them live.

The Grabs: Eleni Mandell’s beautiful voice over infectious guitars and catchy beats.

Brother Reade: Underground hip-hop by way of North Carolina. Def Jux fans take note.

Indian Jewelry: A soundtrack for dreams and nightmares. Droned out guitars, echoing drum machines and reverb-soaked vocals.

Wiskey Biscuit: Rock’n'roll for starting bar fights. Get your rock/country fix here. Future Pigeon’s other band.

Ariel Pink: Taking Lo-Fi to new depths. Like mixing Pop Rocks with Coke to confuse your music tastes and make you miss your tape player.

Bloodcat Love: Dirty rock’n'roll for clean hipsters that like to pounce at Pash. Ready, Steady, Go!

Kind Hearts and Coronets: Sad songs to make you happy. A rock/folk style backed by horns, giving it a Jon Brion soundtrack feel.

Colored Shadows: Dreamy melodies over floating keyboards and flowing guitars.

The Morlocks: Could be straight off the Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack.

Lion Fever: Supercharged guitars led by Jennifer Pearl’s power wail, reminding me of early PJ Harvey.