A coffee with Matt Reilly

Don't blame DJ for displacing KUT radio stars

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, July 30, 2009

Matt Reilly can't blame people he has never met for hating him.

"I'm not surprised by the reaction at all," Reilly says, drinking coffee and hacking into a piece of quiche at Flightpath Coffee House.

Here's why: On July 3, public radio station KUT announced Reilly, its 33-year old assistant music director, would launch "Music with Matt Reilly" Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 8 to midnight, displacing "Paul Ray's Jazz" and Larry Monroe's "Phil Music Program" and reducing the veteran DJ's on-air appearances to one night a week. At the same time, the station also announced plans to air "Undercurrents," a three-hour national music show at midnight Monday through Thursday to replace overnight programming hosted by Monroe and Ray. Ray and Monroe will continue to host their popular weekly "Twine Time" and "Blue Monday" programs, respectively.

"Paul and Larry are amazing guys who have been at the station a long time," Reilly says. "If anything, I'm feeling enormous pressure to fill those very large shoes."

Too large, according to some. Comments on the Austin Music Source ranged from dismissive ("unacceptable") to money-based ("I see a community nonprofit trying to make the right decisions to stay afloat in a terrible economy. Matt Reilly is a local guy hosting evenings.") to a plea for an presumption of innocence before a judgment of guilt ("you might want to give old Matt Reilly a try before you decide to dog him").

Reilly knows that all this is par for the course. The Houston native has been working in media since he left college at Texas Christian University in 1998.

"I've always listened to the radio more than anything else," Reilly said. "Growing up in Houston I just realized how bad Houston radio is. I would just listen and say to myself, 'I can do better than this.' "

He ran camera and hauled cables for the KEYE news operation, a bit of a shock for a recent graduate. "I lived south, the KEYE studios are north, so I was waking up at 4 a.m. to be there at 5. A 22-year-old reconditioning himself to go to bed at 9 p.m. is tough."

Soon after, Reilly got a promotions gig at KLBJ. "They needed twentysomethings to drive the van to remotes, and the nice thing is that you get to know the DJs really well," Reilly said. KLBJ DJ Johnny Walker took a shine to Reilly and got him on the air doing fill-ins.

In 2000, Reilly stumbled into a permanent on-air spot at KGSR, one of KLBJ's sister stations. "They had an opening from 6 to 11 a.m., Sunday mornings," Reilly said. "One hour on the air and three hours running the pre-recorded jazz show." Reilly's hours expanded later that year when program director Jody Denberg needed an overnight DJ quickly.

"Jody essentially said, 'You can have the overnight shifts, but you have to tape all your shows and meet with me every week. It is not going to be fun and we are going to go over these tapes and I am going to work with you.'

"I was very fortunate to have him take the time to work with me," Reilly continues. "There are so many people in radio who don't get any direction. They're just told 'OK, go on the air' or they do something wrong and they get yelled at and don't know why."

In addition to his four-year stint at KGSR, he was holding down a shift at the old Austin Music Network hosting "AMN Classics." Which meant he was working about seven days a week for about $9.50 an hour.

Meanwhile, Reilly's girlfriend was getting her master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania. "When I would visit, I got into listening to WXPN," Reilly said, referring to the high-profile public radio station in Philadelphia. "They're huge; it acts more like a commercial station."

A tour of the facilities turned into a job interview. "One of the executives there said, 'I'll pay you $20 hour to do weekends.' I was like 'Fine!' " Reilly said.

It was Austin's well-known "velvet rut" that got him to leave KGSR. "You love living here, everybody's friendly but you're not making any money and you're not moving up," Reilly says.

WXPN chucked him in the deep water immediately. "Three days after I arrived they had me fill in on a midday shift with a 'Oh, by the way, you're interviewing Warren Haynes today.' It was like, "Okaaaay..."

Reilly says he learned a new view of public radio's possibilities. "Those guys foster a lot of interactive-ness. They would host costume parties, half of the building was a live music venue and bar. And the listeners could not have been nicer." But Philly has winter and sleet and, after four years, it was time to come back home.

"I knew I didn't want to go back into commercial radio, Reilly says. "It's the lack of job security. You can wake up and the whole station is gone."

It took a year for Reilly and his now-wife to extricate themselves from Philadelphia, but Reilly was talking to KUT program director Hawk Mendenhall the whole time. When he got here in 2008, he started filling in. Now he's the assistant music director with a new show at night and plenty of controversy.

"It's been great," Reilly says. "It's sort of terrifying when you've been told what to play for years to suddenly go to place where they're like, 'You have freedom!' and you're like 'Really? That doesn't make any sense' "

Last Friday morning, Reilly sat in for John Aielli on Eklektikos. Listeners heard everything from the Eels and Iron & Wine to the Damnations and Miles Davis. U2's "Lemon" rubbed shoulders with Ocote Soul Sounds' "The Revolt of the Cockroach People."

It was new, but it still sounded like KUT. Sounds good so far.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926