Hi. I’m here. Let’s listen to music.

Our fourth post in association with JAZZ.FM91 is a conversation with program host Brad Barker. Conversation about, communication with, impact of - music. And appreciation of the little things.

Who are you?

My name is Brad Barker. I am the music director and afternoon host here at Jazz.Fm91 in Toronto. 

How did you end up being a host?

I was a musician out of high school. I wanted to be a musician and that’s what I pursued for the first part of my life. I went to university and studied jazz as a bass player, never in a million years thinking it would have any connection to my job when I was in my thirties. I didn’t even really want to be a jazz musician! I didn’t distinguish what was going on - it was a big bath of music that was teaching me.

Jazz was just something I loved from age twelve or thirteen. I grew up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia (east coast of Canada) - a very small suburb of Halifax. I went to university to study jazz, not to be a jazz musician, but thinking that it was a great foundational kind of approach to being a musician. If you can play jazz badly, you can probably play everything else at a pretty good level. As soon as I got there, people were in practice spaces for five, six hours a day. I was like – ‘Oh - dedication... This is going to require something of me.’

At the same time, it was an incredible experience for me. I was at a very isolated university in Nova Scotia, so there wasn’t really anything else to do but study. So, I went off and started a musical career that had some success. I was in a band that had quite a lot of popularity here in Canada, called The Pursuit of Happiness. I used to tour all over the world and do all the kind of things that I thought would come from that experience.

It kind of wound itself down and I was minorly petrified at what would be in front of me. I decided at a thirty-whatever-year old to go back to school and study broadcasting. There was a course here in Toronto that had a one year program that was fast-tracked and seemed like, even if it all goes wrong, I’ve only set myself back another year and a half.

I had great success at school because I’d never gone to school thinking that it mattered so much. This was about career, a level of desperation, as opposed to filling some need in my heart. I had to get through it and get a job. That kind of fire made me try really hard.

I started interning at a radio station and got a job there, which was very lucky. One of the people I went to school with started working at what was called CJRT which was JAZZ.FM91. Every time he talked to his boss he would say, “You know, I went to school with this guy, he has a jazz degree…”  He kind of softened him up and the CEO at the time, triggered a meeting. I went in there and pretended I knew something – “This is what your radio station should be, it should be inclusive and get away from where everyone’s a professor. You should make it open and…” He liked the cut of my jib, so to speak and he knew he could get me for a dime (!). He offered me a job. 

This was twenty years ago, just as the station transitioning from being a hybrid community station that had folk music and blues, jazz music and stories for kids in the evenings. It was like an NPR radio station. When I was hired, it went to an all-jazz format. It took all the other things off the radar.

When I got here twenty years ago, my job description was very undetermined - I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in an office with a phone, wondering what would come next. It took a while, there was a lot of culture change going on. So, I’ve just been kind of hanging around for the last twenty years, quite honestly. It’s been an interesting ride but that’s how I ended up here.

What was the attraction to broadcasting?

When the band I used to be in did press, it got left to me and the leader to do it. It went well, whether it was on television or radio. I wasn’t mic shy, I wasn’t overly anything. I wasn’t trying to hold onto a persona. I would go in and be goofy and try to make things work. I remember a couple of times, being told I should work in radio. I felt that I could dialogue, I liked asking questions. I didn’t want to give into something that felt like it was just getting a job. I still wanted to do something I liked, something I still felt good about. That was the drive to do broadcasting.

Twenty-something years later, what is the attraction to broadcasting?

When it’s at its best, it’s like, “Hi, I’m here, let’s listen to music.”  I am the audience, it’s not a case of trying to be like them. That’s who I am. For me, it’s so fun when you get a chance to dialogue with someone and you can feel it’s a real conversation, even though it’s public. We’re doing something that’s normally quite private but we’re talking into microphones and it sounds as though you’re in the room with me answering these questions. I’m here, really listening.

I certainly love serving music up. I love creating the playlist for our radio station. The real joy is when we are on the air, being the people that we are, hopefully entertaining people, bringing them in. Sometimes, after those moments, I can sit back and think – ‘that that was really great.’ Those moments aren’t daily. In some ways, it is a job, a thing you have to manufacture sometimes. You are paid to do it. That’s fine too. It’s a job talking into a microphone in a comfortable chair, which makes it a pretty good one.

I do feel that it is small, intimate. I’ve never come in here, thinking of people listening. I think about the room I’m in or the person I’m talking to. I hope it translates in a way that’s broad, as opposed to coming into the room and shooting to the back of it. It’s not my style. Most of the things I’ve been entertained by, whether it be radio or television, have been intimate and seem real.

That’s what I’m trying to do - have a real conversation with someone, or talk like I would really talk to you. Whether it’s everyone’s cup of tea or the right way, I’ve been doing it this way for twenty years, so…!

Has that communication changed in any way through the pandemic?

I was in the United States when lockdown was declared, so when we came home, we had to isolate ourselves for a couple of weeks. I started doing the show from my basement. There was a very interesting energy from being down there for a couple of months. For a while, it felt like we were having a slumber party. Let’s get all our groceries and close the door. Let’s watch TV. Even if you didn’t quite know what was happening, it kind of had that feeling of a snow day.

I don’t think I changed how I was on the air but people were reacting in a different way. You got the feeling that JAZZ.FM91 was acting like a lifeline, in the broadest sense. It was something important to people in a way that I didn’t realize. People were seeking friendship and security. They were seeking voices that had been with them for a long time. Behaving in a normal way that made things seem more normal.

In those early days, the feedback that was coming from listeners was ‘thank you for doing what you’re doing’.  What are you talking about?  After a while, I told myself not to deny it, that thing I do. At this point, it was more important than I ever thought it was, because of the impact, the music, the vibe has for people. It’s been a real eye opener for me to see how people have responded to the radio station and to what we do.

With that realization, was there a growing sense of responsibility?

I think there is something to that. I think that’s maybe why I didn’t want, at first, to accept the importance of people’s reaction. In accepting it, you do have to take on more responsibility. Whatever people are responding to, you don’t want to change how you do it because that would then not be the same, what they were used to. Privately, it did make me think about the responsibility in a different way. 

What has the ‘magic’ of the pandemic brought to you, personally and as a host?

It’s funny, I wish I had come to a bigger revelation in this time. I am still betwixt and between all the things I was betwixt and between before, only they’re shaded slightly differently because of what’s gone on. I look at people who have made big changes during this time and I have great admiration for them, that they were able to take whatever was happening and make something new.

For me, it makes me think about life after the pandemic, it makes me think of the things that have been carved away by all of this and I’m not really sure that I want all of that stuff back, to some degree. I can now understand how little I can live with, to a certain degree. Put me in my backyard, with a glass of wine and some music, that can be as good as it gets. Before, with that wine in that backyard, the thought would have been, “Wouldn’t it be great to be in New York City right now?”  I don’t have those moments of wishing to be somewhere else anymore.

With age too, I think you get a little smaller in your life. This, maybe, has accelerated it slightly, to make things a little bit smaller. In some ways, it makes me happy, as I move through these ‘other’ last years of my existence on planet earth, that it can be small, I can be happy. My partner, Caroline, and I, we’ve been together for twenty-six years and we did really well during this time. We enjoyed our time together, we still enjoy our time together. 

What will you take with you as we come out of the pandemic?

There’ll be some things I’ll really value and enjoy. I would still like to go to New York. I’d like to be sitting at Smalls, watching some jazz. That will be a very exciting experience in a way that it was never before, without the pandemic. It’s going to feel like I won the lottery because it has felt like it would never happen again. To go in and out of the businesses in my neighbourhood with freedom and buy what I want. It gets small for me. The community experiences, without a mask on, to go to a meat or veg market and have more of a normal exchange with someone. I’m really going to value that, in a way that I wouldn’t have thought of, ever before. 

Who are you?

That’s a question I’m trying to answer every day. The thing I’ll take away from this - how I’ll be a better person. I can be driven by frustrations - these are things that are in my head all the time. I’m not quite sure why they’re there but they’re useless. With everything that’s gone on, I’m really interested in the next twenty, thirty years, to get to a place where my default isn’t to think of what’s wrong, what the problems are, but to cling to the things that I know are great in my life.

That seems to be what I’m most focused on, through this time. To be a better person sounds like the most stupid answer to that question. But so much stuff has been torn away and there’s so much space now...and a partner who’s good at recognising what goes on in my head…

The radio station has been through a lot of things, a lot of waves to ride and things to process. Those have left some scars because of the enormity of it all. To get past all that and have it be about music, a great city and the incredible artists that make the music… And I’m healthy. I’m just hoping that balance doesn’t get out of whack. I’m trying to get the balance better. I don’t know if it answers who I am but I’m working on being more of this and a lot less of that.