Her persistence eventually paid off, but not before she’d cut her teeth on both on-air work and concert promotions at KQDS. When the overnight shift at KQRS opened up, Young was the first person Hamilton called. That was 12 years ago.
Sitting at the console in those long, lonely hours between midnight and 5:30 a.m., it occurred to Young that there might be room for a bit of innovation and imagination during the less-populated time slot. “We played songs right from the playlist log,” she recalls with a grimace, “and if you made a request, you might hear it by 5 a.m., because I’d have about a half-hour of time left over before the next shift.”
Young approached Hamilton with the idea of reserving blank spaces on the playlist for the requests that had begun to accumulate. To her surprise, he let her. She pinpoints this time around 1990 as the era when she really began to take an interest in the music side of radio.
“I was more into the whole idea of radio, and beating the competition, and the ratings game,” she says. “But when I started the All-Request Third Shift, [A.R.T.S.], I learned so much from the callers about music. I spent the next five or six years learning about classic rock. I bought books, tons of records, and that’s also when I became a personality, rather than just a jock. I got to really say what I thought of the music. And that’s what I love about it now.”
An internship with local band booker Gregg Schmidt at The Music Works introduced the rock-curious deejay to the world of live local music. “The difference between working there and working at KQ was that [The Music Works] was for bands, not radio. And I could actually go out and see live shows, instead of big concerts. It was then that I began to see how important other, original-music bands like The Replacements, The Gear Daddies and Soul Asylum were.”
Inspired by the seething hotbed of local bands playing original music that was at least on par with, and sometimes better, than anything she was playing on the air, Young began formulating a plan to create a locally based radio program. “I knew those bands weren’t going to get airplay on commercial radio,” she says, shaking her head. “Frankly, it’s not about the music, but about the numbers they pull. The corporate boss’ job is not to play good music, it’s to make money. They’ve figured out the format, and how to do it. And that’s just the way it is. But I thought it was worth a shot, anyway.”
Young again approached Hamilton with a wild, original idea, and once again, he gave his nod of approval. “He gave me 2 a.m., weeknights, one song, at first. That’s how it started, one song a night, five nights a week. That lasted about eight months, and then we moved to a half-hour on Sunday nights. That was five years ago. Oct. 29 was our fifth anniversary. Now we’re up to one hour, and we still feel like there’s never enough time every week. But I love being able to take this hour at 100,000 watts, and give it to something that’s current. I feel like that’s important. And the more I learn about music, the more I love it!”
Young found a couple of like-minded music fans, Pumkin and Mike Manning, and started offering local bands airtime. Pumkin, she says, gave her invaluable insights that helped her learn to pick and choose what to play from the thousands of CDs that started filling the mail bins. Manning became her erstwhile co-host, and she learned how to play off of another personality on-air.
“I wanted somebody there to throw off of. I’m the straight man!” she says. Pumkin, a local musician, eventually drifted off to his own devices, and Manning left to pursue a more conventional radio career. Meanwhile, Young had recruited Twin Cities native Dave Campbell who was interning in the promotions department.
Campbell brought onboard an innate knack for delivering an off-the-cuff punchline and a life-long love of music. Young says she knew he was perfect from day one. “[Dave] was interested in the show, so we created a position for him at Homegrown as roving reporter,” she says. “He’s the best at it! He’s great!”
At this moment, Mei’s cell phone rings—it’s Campbell. He apologizes profusely for interrupting, and Young hangs up only after throwing him an evening’s work hosting for KQ at a local club. She continues, smooth as if she were on-air. “Dave would go into clubs and bring a bucket and a scraper and report live over a cell phone about how much gum was under the tables! Live, all live! It wouldn’t be the same without him.”
Campbell, who was born in Edina and raised between West St. Paul and Mendota Heights, is both the youngest and, by his own admission, the most driven of the show’s three co-hosts. In an interview prior to a live local show at Lee’s Liquor a few weeks ago, he and Fox were eager to share their musical pasts and promote the show.
“I’m just starting my schooling,” grins Campbell. “I look at it as college, part two: working at the Electric Fetus [as a sales associate], at the station, going out and seeing live shows. I show up every day, I do my homework. I love to read about it, do the research.”
Like Young, music and entertainment deeply impacted Campbell as a youth. “My grandfather was a jazz saxophonist,” he recalls, “and my parents’ record collection when I grew up was pretty cool. I have a picture of me wearing the super-boomer headphones as a baby, and I’m lying there surrounded by Abba records! They had all that pop stuff — Saturday Night Fever, Elton John. It definitely affected me. Later, I got into Poison and Ratt — all the bands that were big with the hockey kids. But I was really into Men Without Hats — “The Safety Dance!” — Men at Work, Queen, The J. Geils Band. I’ve always just loved the pretty pop stuff, that’s what gets me. Great melodies just grab me.”
Though already into his 20s, Campbell exudes a charming sense of innocence about music, radio and life in general. “I didn’t really get into punk and indie rock at first,” he admits, “having grown up on all that sweet pop music, but then a friend turned me onto The Cure, Pavement, They Might Be Giants and The Charlatans UK. My old friends started saying, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? We’re listening to Bob Seger, where are you?’ (laughs) But I’m still learning and I love it!”
A drum kit owned by a friend’s older brother inspired Campbell to pick up sticks and master the skins, he says, and he still plays today, both with musician buddy and Accident Clearinghouse co-founder Quillan Roe, and with an as-yet-unnamed Weezer cover band.
“Sometimes,” Campbell says with a wicked grin, “I put on my guitar, turn it up to 11, and stand naked in my house playing AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck!’ Either that or put on The Clash and play the harmonica parts.”
These days, Campbell is genuinely appreciative of his weekly foray into commercial radio, though he says getting a paycheck wouldn’t hurt. He’s also clearly in awe of his mentor/co-host. “Mei’s been really helpful in [showing me] how the corporate radio giant works, how to act,” he says. “We don’t want to get banned from the ABC building!
“When I first started out, it was completely gonzo,” he continues. “I’d do live reports from club bathroom stalls. One time I stuck bumper stickers all over the Fine Line (cracks up), but she got me out of trouble. She knew I was interested enough that she accepted that side of me. She’s just been amazingly patient with me. She’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.”
Though Campbell and Young clicked immediately on-air, there was still an element to the show missing. That all changed when a young Buffalo, New York-to-Minnesota transplant named Jody Fox came along. Both Campbell and Young give the 20-something Homegrown Music Director full credit for lending the show an authentic, indie music edge, as well as providing invaluable help in sifting through and choosing songs from the literally thousands of releases they receive every month.
“Jody’s a total musical snob,” laughs Young, “but in a good way. He knows his music. And he’s taught me more than I can say about music!”
Campbell agrees. “I wasn’t as musically-educated as Jody in the beginning, but between him, the show, and working at The Fetus, that’s changing. I can hold a conversation about music now; I have things to offer. And we’re growing as a team, tremendously.”
Fox, who was born in Springville, New York (near Buffalo), then moved to Minnesota, grew up with a liberal father (“Oh, who am I kidding?” he quips. “He’s a hippie, always has been, always will be.”) and has always been surrounded by music. In a recent impromptu interview, he conjured up vivid memories of a childhood spent with a ‘60s rock fanatic who still fumes at having missed Woodstock.
“My dad has like, 6,000 albums,” he says, rolling his eyes. “He’s got the shittiest car on the planet, but what a great stereo! So the way I was raised, that corporate America is evil (laughs), it’s funny that I ended up working for free at a corporate radio station!”
After graduating high school in the North Suburbs of Minneapolis, Fox drifted into college at St. Cloud State, but hadn’t yet found his calling. Though the school is home to a well-respected college radio station (KVSC), the life-long music lover never even considered the airwaves as a career choice. He still sounds a bit taken aback at the thought: “I never even interned there, you know that?”
Eventually, Fox dropped out of the higher-learning game and slipped into the work-a-day world. “I got a really lame job at a machine shop,” he remembers, “and did that for about three years. One of the guys I worked with, Andy Young, saw that I obviously wasn’t happy being a press-brake operator, so he asked me what I loved to do. I told him I loved music, so he called his sister, who happens to be Mei, and told her about me. I went up to KQ one night, talked to Mei for about four or five hours. She told me she was thinking about starting up a local music program, and I was like, ‘Cool!’ Then I went back to my factory job for another year!”
Once that factory belt began to wear thin, Fox’s music jones drove him to get back in touch with Young. “I heard the Homegrown show one night, and it got me to thinking again. I started off answering phones, and Mei knew I was a music geek, so every now and then she’d ask me to help go through all the CDs the show was receiving. Later, when she started making changes on the staff, she offered me the Music Director position.”
Fox knows how important his job is to the show, and takes it as seriously as he does his reasons for ditching his youthful love for Guns N’ Roses in favor of a serious indie-music obsession. “We all bring music into the show, but 75 percent of it is stuff I pick,” he says. “New stuff comes in, it gets handed to me, and I sort of grade it.”
Over the past few years, Fox has found himself both continually amazed that he works in a corporate environment (albeit paycheck-free) and by his own ongoing education. “I remember going with my old boss from the factory to see Foghat at the Cabooze,” he laughs “He’s all wasted during the 17-minute encore of ‘Slow Ride,’ and going, ‘Isn’t this great?!’ And this is the day after I’d just seen a great set by [local band] Love-cars at First Avenue. I was like, ‘Yeah, it’d be great if I were 14!’”
Fox’s brush with greatness extends well past his evening with Foghat. “Man, I actually caught Kurt Cobain and Nirvana at a Northern Lights in-store. I shot pool with the guys from Faith No More one time. And I was at The Jayhawks and Soul Asylum at First Avenue, and the guys from Guns N’ Roses and Soundgarden were there. I was talking to Soundgarden drummer Matt Sorum about Soul Asylum, who’d just released ...And the Horse They Rode in On, and they were just kicking ass! I told Sorum I thought they just rocked. He asked me what I thought about the new Soundgarden album. They’d just released Badmotorfinger, and I told him I thought it sucked! And Tabitha Soren was standing right behind us with a video camera. (grins) I just LOVE local music!”

Though his job as Music Director takes up much more of his week than just Sunday nights, Fox plans to go back to school and finish his education soon. In the meantime, he’s relishing his time both selecting tunes and providing hilarious on-air relief for Young and Campbell at the most opportune times.
“The reason I think our show is so great,” he says, “is because it’s so diverse. Mei, Dave, and myself have very different musical tastes, and we all have different biases that we want to put into the show. I think it makes for a really great, eclectic mix. If listeners hear one band that introduces them to something different, and they appreciate it, then I’ve done my job. I really hope the upper management at KQ realizes how important we are to the local music community, and how much people really appreciate us being on the air.”
Fox is still thrilled when he runs across a local band that perks his ears up. “Basically, what I look for from a local artist is somebody with a unique voice and great songwriting, decent recordings.”
Though Homegrown isn’t the only show in the Twin Cities currently featuring local music (Cities 97’s Jason Nagel has a program on Sunday nights as well, a fact the HG staff insisted we note—they’re nothing if not friendly competition), but they are unique in their approach. Young certainly couldn’t have picked a better moniker for the show. From the music to the staff to the audience to the sponsors (Guitar Center, Cheapo and Music-Go-Round), this program really is the epitome of the homegrown ethic—hard working, honest, life-loving people who labor for little or no financial compensation purely out of love for music and their community.
Young says she’ll keep doing the show as long as she’s allowed, and is excited about the future. “If this article does anything,” she says sincerely, “I hope it helps Dave Hamilton’s bosses realize how important we are to the community and the station itself. We’re cultivating that part of the station that really connects with the community, and at the same time getting new fans of new music on board.”
Hamilton, who’s always been a huge supporter of Young’s projects, and Homegrown in particular, harbors no illusions about how much the show means to the Twin Cities and KQRS. “It’s great to have a show with grass roots appeal on KQRS,” he said recently via e-mail. “For Mei and her staff, Homegrown is a labor of love—we’re all proud to see its popularity grow.”
With plans to expand their Web site to eventually include a live web radio station (“KQHG?” jokes Young), a 2000 Minnesota Music Award for Best Locally Produced Radio Program, and what may end up a double CD of live Homegrown performances in the works, the cast and crew of HG has plenty to keep them busy over the next few years. Young continues her regular weekly overnight shift, KQ’s All-Request Third Shift, Campbell has recently expanded his Fetus job to include some PR for the shop’s in-store performances, and Fox, as mentioned earlier, plans to further his college education.
Meanwhile, the live reports from area clubs continue (courtesy, these days, of interns/roving reporters Justin Severson and Jeremiah LaRoche), the on-air magic weaves its way through KQ’s quiet, Gucci-trodden hallways every weekend, and the local CDs keep pouring in like a musical deluge every day. Both Fox and Campbell insist on leaving readers/potential listeners/guests with their own advice: “Potential fans!” yells Fox, “Give us a listen! I think that we’re diverse enough to draw in the indie hipster, and also maybe get the North Suburban jock to listen, because the show is humorous and we might play a band they like. Bands! Send us your stuff, but please make sure it’s a decent recording and you’ve gotten your chops in playing out live first.”
Campbell’s enthusiasm is equally catchy: “Hey, give us a shot! So many people are like, (mock-whines) KQ?! Eww! Well, you know what? Things happen in strange places everywhere. I’m not saying our show is the best, but I’m saying we care about it, and if that doesn’t count for something, then what does? Give it a chance. Don’t let the corporate thing scare you. You’ve got to go out there and find something you like, and find something that’s important to you, and then support it. The more the merrier, too. It’s all in the presentation, and the way you’re introduced to the music. Friends of mine have come to local shows who never had any interest in it, and all of the sudden it’s, ‘Wow! I liked that Mason Jennings show. Does this kind of thing happen around town all the time?’ And I’m like, ‘Um, yeah ... you see all those ads in the local weeklies for bars? All those names listed underneath are LOCAL BANDS!’ (cocks his head again, this time to grin) It’s not a small world, after all, anymore...”

THE HOMEGROWN STAFF:
Mei Young, Host/Producer
David M. Campbell, Co-host
Jody Fox, Music Director/Co-producer
Shawn Paul, Soundchecks & Special Effects
Jenn Schaal, Phone Screener
Justin Severson, Roving Reporter
Jeremiah LaRoche, Roving Reporter
LaShara Parham, Webmaster
Ben Gnam, Moral Support

RECENT HOMEGROWN GUESTS:
Peal
Mark Mallman
Jamie Ness
The Centurions
Quillan Roe
Jonas
Stuart Davis

UPCOMING GUESTS:
Tim Mahoney
Viovoom
The Honeydogs
The Melismatics
Manplanet

HOW YOU CAN GET YOUR MUSIC ON HOMEGROWN:
Send CDs, press kits, promo packs to: KQ Homegrown, 2000 SE Elm Street,Minneapolis, Mn, 55414, or visit any Guitar Center and utilize HG’s drop-off sites. You can also visit their Web site at www.kqrs.com for updates on guests,live local report locations, and tons of other fun, useful info.