After Hours Radio (taken from afterhoursradio.org)

My name is Ryan Quinn. I am one of three hosts of After Hours Radio. Let me first say, it is truly exciting to find you here! AHR started in October of 2011 out of my desire to try something new and get a little more practice with radio. I graduated from Brown College in March of 2010 and soon found myself engulfed in the music scene back in my hometown of Rice Lake, WI.  The show started out as a half hour featuring the music of the Midwest along with interviews with only Mike Kelly and myself as the hosts on BlogTalkRadio.com. On November 23rd 2011, we held our first “public event” at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Rice Lake, inviting Steve Nagel, Cait Leary, Seth Gamble, Mike Kelly and Andy Nelson to perform. What a night! If you get a chance to hear the audio, do it. You never will. But if you get a chance…

We debuted on ErrorFM.com on December 4th, 2011 following a performance by Deep Run and Voodoo, broadcasting live for the first time ever out of Badger Brew Express. At the end of that month we went back to the Silver Dollar Saloon, this time broadcasting the performances of  The Adam Hutton, Andy Nelson, Jason Dirkes, Voodoo and more live for 5 hours ringing in the New Year. (Twice! Once in Rice Lake, WI and Once in L.A. for the folks on ErrorFM).

Since then we’ve talked with some amazing artists. Both planned and unplanned. In April of 2012 Andy Nelson called me about a half hour before we were to go live to tell me that he had run into this rapper from Texas and wanted to know if we could put him on the show. I told him to bring him on down thinking it was going to be some scrawny punk pushing a laptop mixtape. I was wrong. Andy brought us Playdough. He had just finished up with a show and was at the hotel Andy was working at, so he came and gave us his “Hotdoggin’” album. In my excitement of how cool this guy seemed I totally forgot to press the record button for the first ten minutes of the show, missing our intro, Playdough’s song “Rhymer Reason” and the Playdough interview.  Luckily he was nice enough to stay past 1am to re-record the interview, which is what you will hear if you listen to the 4/22 AHR podcast. Admittedly it may have been “The Show” that lent it’s hand in the rookie mistakes, but thank God Playdough was understanding.

We’ve made plenty more mistakes, but we’ve learned a even more along the way, and I can’t wait to take in more. Personally, what I am most excited about for the coming year is watching the artists that were releasing their debut EPs, full albums or were just starting work on new projects when we started last October, start the next chapter in their journey. This fall will be exciting. With Rice Lake native Austin Nivarel recording work for his new album, Cait Leary also prepping for her next release, and a new West of Aldine release this fall as well, we can expect more goodness from “The Best Of The Midwest”, along with staying up to date with our friends in Texas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Kansas City and all points in-between! There’s a lot to hear, and we hope to share it all with you!