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Hi
there. I’m Nick Francis, producer and host of "Quietmusic." I
currently live in the Seattle area with my wife Sharon and our
two cats, Franny and Zoe.
Right
now I am the Music Director of KPLU-FM, a
successful public radio station which serves the Seattle-Tacoma area .
I have also programmed several Smooth Jazz stations around the country,
including WJJZ-FM
in Atlanta, and KYOT-FM
("The Coyote")
in Phoenix.
Once upon a time, over 20 years ago, I started DJ-ing at a very cool eclectic music station in Santa Fe,
NM. (KLSK). Because I was just
starting out, my first air shifts were at night, usually from 8pm-2am, with one
interminably long overnight shift starting at 11 on Saturday night and going to
8am on Sunday. The station’s
music mix was primarily instrumental, and covered a wide palette of
styles—jazz (both contemporary & traditional), classical, folk, light
rock, mellow R&B, and a type of music later referred to as “new age”.
With an amazing library of music at my disposal, I got to mix all kinds of
music, and was often thrilled to find many combinations of seemingly different
styles blend together seamlessly.
That interminably long overnight
shift led to a breakthrough of sorts. Every week, by 4am, it became a major challenge just
to stay up and function without falling asleep. But like clockwork, just when I thought I was totally wasted and not even able to think straight, I
would get my “second-wind” at about the time just before sunrise. I could
see the Sangre De Christo mountains come into view through the window of the
studio; the early morning light was beautiful; I could really feel some magic to
the beginning of the day…and for some reason, I would pick out the most quiet,
peaceful, contemplative, and compelling music in our library, and play it from
5am or so, until the end of my shift. I rarely got phone calls at night; but
when I started to spin the quiet stuff in the morning, the phone would just
light up! And people were actually
starting to tune into the station specifically for that “special feeling”.
There was something about that particular time that hit me…and
others…deeply. Some of the music you’ll hear on QuietMusic goes back to
those days. Anytime I hear Michael Hedges, or Vollenweider, or Liz Story or Pat
Metheny—I feel those early mornings in Santa Fe as if they were yesterday.
A few years later I landed an
amazing job, as the first music director of KKSF in San Francisco.
It was then that I convinced my Program Director to run a Sunday Morning
program, in the spirit of my early days in Santa Fe.
The show, called “Sunday Morning” still runs on KKSF to this day.
I did the same thing in the early 90’s at KKNW in Seattle. And when I
arrived in 1994 to program KYOT, I decided to do the show and also host it
myself. I called it “Quiet Moods”. The
show became the #1 Sunday Morning show in Phoenix. It was a real labor of love.
In the summer of
2000, I started a syndicated version of the show, under the aegis of my own production company. The first official "QuietMusic" program aired on July 16,
2000. One year later, I signed an arrangement with WestStar Talk
Radio Network. They are the exclusive national marketer and
distributor of the show. The program now airs in over 70
cities and towns in North America.
Also in 2000, I
began putting a handful of QuietMusic shows on the Internet.
The webcast on live365.com logged over 1.4 million hours of listening
from computer users all around the world. In 2004, I moved on to a
new web project----a daily internet radio show at
quietfm.com,
where I produced over 200 programs within a span of two years.
Most of those are still available on the site. Check it
out sometime.
Again, thanks
so much for your interest in my show. Keep listening!
Send
an e-mail to Nick
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