Dave Michaels – An Xperience Interview

Dave Michaels – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

RRX: Happy to talk to you. You’re one of the first guys I ever worked with in radio, going way back to what we call the “4 Central Ave” days.  A lot of it is a blur to me, but I do remember I was an engineer at that time, and I was always assisting DJs on remotes when we went out to places and broadcast live. One in particular, I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I do know it was in Schenectady, and we had the big Marti antenna system that you pointed at the Helderberg Mountains to get it to broadcast and … I remember, we were inside the place and somebody ran over the wire and brought the whole Marti antenna down. I thought I was gonna get fired that day!

DM: When I was an intern at a radio station in Glens Falls, I accidentally ran over a microphone with the station vehicle, put a windscreen on it, went into the GM’s office, and handed him the microphone. He lifted the windscreen off of it and looked at this flat pancake of a microphone, then put the windscreen back on. He goes, “Don’t worry about it.” I thought I was gonna get fired and released from my internship. He just said, “Don’t worry about it”. He knew I was frazzled going here to there, everywhere, running this remote vehicle places, and boy was I scared giving him this microphone.

RRX: I guess that was the best case scenario right there.

DM: Yeah, it was. I could have been out of radio right then, before I even started. I could have ended the whole thing right there.

RRX: So I mentioned the 4 Central Avenue days, and there was a cluster of radio stations there. You were with Classic Rock 102.3. Like I said, you were one of the first people that I worked with, but I don’t know how you got to that point. You mentioned Glens Falls,  what was your experience before I started with you?

DM: I started my career in Glens Falls. I worked at I107, which quickly changed to Magic 107, and then I went across town to KD100.  From there, I went to the Edge. I was the imaging and production director there, and then they started up Classic Rock 102.3. They bought ZRock out of Schenectady, brought the studios into 4 Central Avenue, and made me the morning guy there. I was still the imaging and production director there. And then Mason and Sheehan got let out of their contract from PYX 106, and they came over and started doing the morning show, so I got moved to afternoons.

RRX: That makes sense.

DM: Then I moved to Albany Broadcasting, and then here to WEXT and WMHT. I just celebrated my 20th anniversary at WMHT; started there in December of 2004.

RRX: Oh wow, I was gonna ask … time flies when you’re having fun.

DM: You were mentioning the blurred memory of that ‘90s event there. I can hardly remember the ‘90s. It was a fun time but it really was a blur that was a long time ago.

RRX: I’ve always thanked my lucky stars that I have been blessed to be able to work in radio, and I’m sure you do too. I mean … maybe we’re not making the boatload of cash that we could be making, but we have a job that we go to and we enjoy every day.

DM: I still say that to myself to this day. It’s not an easy gig, but it’s not a hard gig. It’s not a manual labor, putting in 60 hours a week kind of gig. It’s very satisfying. I fell into it, and I’ve been lucky enough to be doing it now for 35 years. I got my start in college radio in 1990, professionally in 1993, and here we are in 2025. It’s a long, crazy road, but yeah, I thank my lucky stars every single day to be in this business. It’s fleeting, and it’s easy to be gone in this business. It can be discouraging, and it’s easy to be let go, you’re replaceable. I work at a great company now; that’s just fantastic. They treat their people great, I love it!

RRX: Congrats, celebrating 20 years over there is amazing.

DM: Thank you.

RRX: I’ve visited WEXT several years back to do a “My Exit” show and oh man … your studios are amazing, I did some TV work over there too, and I was very impressed by those studios as well.

DM: Yeah, they’re mammoth studios.

RRX: I’ve been to just about every radio and TV station in town, and I was very impressed by what you’ve got going on over there.

DM: Very cool. Yeah, not bad for a public radio station.

RRX: Yeah, I’d say so, man! Anything you’d like to say to our audience while I still got you on the line?

DM: Well, I hope people tune in … I’m on the air 5 am until 10 am Monday through Friday on EXIT 97.7FM and 106.1FM WEXT. I have a few features in the morning. I play Stax at Sunrise at 6:30 am, which is Stax Records artists. I also do Breakfast with The Beatles at 7:20 am, which is three from the Fab Four. I do Dawn of the Dead at 8:30 am, which is just playing a Grateful Dead tune out of their archives, and at 9:30 am, I do a thing called Dave’s Daily Double, and I play a double shot from a band or artist. But yeah, we play a great mix of music from around the world and all around the 518. We play local 518 bands every hour. We really are very supportive of our local music community. As you well know, there are a lot of great artists right here in town, every town around here. The Capital Region has some amazing talent, and they’re a part of our programming. They have been since day one. In fact, we went on the air with “Ash Wednesday,” a song from the Kamikaze Hearts, at noon on that Saturday, July 7th of 2007. So we kicked it off with the local 518. That’s what we’re all about. We love exposing people to brand-new artists, and we get jazzed about new music. When we discover something, we want to share it with folks, and we do that on a daily basis.

We’re always just trying to turn people on to the radio station and get them excited about what we’re doing. It’s a 100% listener funded radio station and it’s not government funded. We’re non-commercial. So there’s a variety of aspects that I think people would love to tune into and hear.

RRX: And if you’re reading this, of course you can’t hear it, but Dave’s got one of the best radio voices in the business.

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