AMR welcomes Sage Tanguay, new morning dj

Correction from audio:  Sage’s e-mail is  sage@amrmail.org

In the last few days of August, Allegheny Mountain Radio welcomed their new morning DJ. Now, just barely a week into the job, Sage Tanguay shared some of her thoughts on broadcasting, listening to different kinds of music, and on coming home.

Sage graduated from Bath County High School in 2012, and then went to UVA where she took up broadcasting at the community radio station, WTJU. Most of Sage’s performance background until then had been in dance and theater, but she quickly took on the challenge of learning technology to share art, music and other culture. She experienced an organization in transition when WTJU decided to involve even more university students in the radio station, and started up WXTJ.

Sage Tanguay,

“That’s the student run station. At first it was just on line broadcasting over the Internet, and now it’s a fully functioning FM station. So, that’s a little bit of what I did. I was a DJ, and I did some longer pieces, and some podcast pieces with some of my radio friends.”

Now she faces pleasing a long-time listening audience who likes a large range of music from bluegrass and country to classic rock and jazz, and ranging geographically from Iron Gate to Pendleton County, West Virginia, and as far east as Goshen to the western parts of Pocahontas County. AMR also has a solid online listening audience.   When I asked Sage which was easier to catch on to, the button-pushing, lever switching, monitor-watching aspect of being a DJ or, the side that selects music to create a sound or mood, or even conversations, she replied.

“I’m constantly thinking about, I’m constantly hearing what I broadcast as an audience member as well, trying to take it in and understand what my audience is hearing as well.”

So listeners don’t be shy. Please help Sage out with requests for your most favorite kinds of music; she’s very aware of being a different generation than many of us, and would welcome friendly requests on the answering machine at the WCHG studio, or at- sage @amrmail.org. As we say, more than several times a year, this radio station is your radio station.

It’s always a pleasure talking to such open and honest youth, and Sage did share, she had a certain amount of disillusionment about what people consider both success and culture in more populated areas.

“I was confronted by the fact that in most other places they don’t have nearly as much home-grown culture as we do here.”

In a lot of other places, like cities especially, everything is just what I would call ‘Everywhere America’.”

That trend-driven, pasteurized, corporatized lifestyle definitely isn’t easily practiced around here. Yet, frequently young people in the Highlands are told by adults, they must leave the area to make it in the world. There is “nothing” here for them.   What if youthful energy and enterprise, could change that? Again Sage,

“If we don’t make it ourselves, it’s not going to just magically appear.”   So the combination of a place to live, a love of diverse types music, stories and current events, and a small, local community radio station all came together for Sage to share her gifts. She concluded, “ Why am I not going back? I’m who I’m talking about?”