The Air is Better Here: Everett’s 90.7 KSER

Editor’s Note: Originally Published January 31, 2017. Republished November 3, 2022.

The year is 2017. The airwaves are filled with commercialized radio. Conglomerate stations pump out robotic playlists: the same dozen auto tuned pop songs repeat on seemingly infinite loops.

But there is hope.

In a house in downtown Everett Washington, one radio station is broadcasting 6,000 watts of pure bluegrass, folk, and jazz into Snohomish County. There are no commercials and the station is supported by the public.

90.7 KSER is Everett’s best kept secret. The volunteer-based nonprofit station has been on local airwaves since 1991, broadcasting content you can’t find anywhere else on the dial: music, news, opinion, and public affairs.

I got hooked on KSER when I moved here in 2007. I spent many Saturday afternoons listening to Frettin’ Fingers (vintage country, rockabilly and surf), and Pull The String, a sadly defunct show that played psychedelic spaghetti western and honky-tonk.

The DJs were live and personable, broadcasting a mile from where I sat on my couch. The retro tracks they played were often complete with the warm cracks and pops of a needle on vinyl.

The independent music vibe of Everett was exemplified by these shows and digging through crates of 45s at Bargain CDs Record and Tapes on Broadway.

The Stereo Wire is a weekly program that often features local musicians. — The Stereo Wire was a weekly program that often features local musicians.

There was something weird and unique to Everett here. Where else could you have radio access to Nordic folk music, reggae, and commentary by the League of Women Voters?

This weird vibe feels more threatened than ever in an age when digitized music comes to us in streamed algorithms; an age when mainstream radio hosts do little besides hand out cash prizes to lucky caller number seven.

I recently decided to check the station out for myself.

I visited on a Sunday afternoon. Local artist John McAlpine was my tour guide. John’s show Made in the USA is a weekly multi-genre program offering two hours of songs and narratives about US history.

John, who used to serve as the president of the board at KSER, is one of the many volunteers who make the station happen. A total of 95% of the programming at 90.7 is created, produced, and hosted by volunteers like him.

He showed me a room with walls lined with row upon row of CDs, organized by type of music: Celtic, kids’, heavy metal, EDM.

McAlpine pointed out that almost anyone from the community can land a gig at the station. KSER offers a broadcasting class where would-be DJs can learn how to run the boards. Initiates usually start off by subbing in for current programming and by making a prototype of a show they’d like to pitch.

I followed him into the studio. He sat in front of a microphone and a bank of production boards, monitors, and CD players.

The last strains of twangy music from the show Bluegrass Express faded out. McAlpine got on the mic and announced some of the artists he’d be playing on that week’s program: Ethal Merman, Lead Belly, Edwin Starr. He had a record on the desk, earmarked for airtime: “A Tribute to Jack Teagarden.”

The Kanye show this was not.

McAlpine’s radio-smooth baritone wove in between songs, reading PSAs and conversationally guiding the listener down the strange annals of this week in American history.

I stayed for half an hour before excusing myself. As I walked out, Eartha Kitt was comically mewling, “I want to be evil,” in a sultry voice that would make Katy Perry’s hair curl.

Kitt’s non-Top-10-Hits sentiment rushed into the afternoon air, transmitted through a transistor tower in Lake Stevens, and bounced across the stratosphere into the far reaches of Island and Skagit County.

This exciting content could only be broadcast from Everett, Washington.

The air is better here.

P.S. 90.7 is listener supported. You can donate to KSER here.

Editor's Note: If you enjoy local music, make sure you check out Everett Sounds Volume One over in the Swag Shop.