as posted on www.worcestermag.com May 19-May 25, 2005

Where The Curtain Society meets Aerosmith

For many years, it's been believed the Worcester music scene would explode if there were a way to get the music heard by a wider audience. Since January, one Worcester resident has given Internet audiences the chance to enjoy the music of Central Massachusetts alongside better-known commercial sounds.

Jim McElhiney's WorcesterTunes.com studio is located in his living quarters near downtown Worcester. As I enter, "Riverful" from The Curtain Society's Life is Long, Still CD is playing, soon to be followed by James Taylor's "That Lonesome Road," former Worcester resident Bret Hart's "So What Now," and Strongbatch's "Baggage."

Currently, all of its programming is automated; the rotation includes approximately 450 locally produced selections, many the result of a donation from the collection of former Worcester Rocks host Doc Siddall after his local music showcase ended a four-year run on WORC-AM last November. Local legend Bob Jordan; Mike Mars of Dynamo's New & Used Music, Movies and Comics; former WCUW DJ Fred Dusak; Paul Provost's Muse Recording Studio; and Snakes & Ladders frontman Steve Blake's Toad Hall Studio also opened up their archives to assist the station.

You'll rarely hear McElhiney, a former musician himself, on WorcesterTunes. "I didn't want to program," he says, as local singer/songwriter Ron Carlson's "The Fire Glow" fades out and a track from The Cookie Makin' Satan Haters, who recently played Ralph's comes on, to be followed by Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle." On the other hand, he hopes people will take him up on the option of hosting their own show at the station.

"This is open to jazz, this is open to blues, this is open to anyone who wants to play the music they have a passion for," he says. Programming doesn't have to be music-oriented. "It could be spoken word or poetry or commentary on local issues." The station also regularly runs calls for DJs, content providers, or people interested in doing voiceover announcements.

Those tuning in can make requests that are normally aired a short time afterward. In the weeks ahead, listeners will be able to win CDs by Disarm and Snakes & Ladders.

One local performer happy to have another outlet for his music is Dan Kirouac, whose solo material and Strongbatch project is regularly aired there. "Personally, WorcesterTunes is a helpful showcase for my music because my style of writing doesn't really fit on, say, WDOA.com or other harder-edged venues," he writes in an e-mail. "Since WORC-AM shut down their local show last year, there really aren't many media outlets left for the local music scene besides a handful of Internet sites and WCUW-FM."

While no one's taken him up on the offer yet, McElhiney's arranged to have the soundman for the Tuesday night open mic at Tammany Hall record a performer's set for future airplay on Worcester Tunes. Any live recording that comes his way is normally scheduled for airing on Sunday evening. "We'll do that for any club that wants to provide us with live material," he says.

Having only been in operation a little more than four months, McElhiney doesn't claim to have hundreds of listeners, but he is working to form alliances to build up the station's audience. Neil Grossman's Congress Alley program, whose '60s and '70s rock aired out of his Millbrook Street office, had been heard on the Washington state-based MODRN, will begin airing on WorcesterTunes on Tuesdays from 5-8 p.m. beginning May 24.

The station also airs "Takin' Ya Back," a '60s through '80s music showcase hosted by former Massachusetts-based DJ Kurt David, and John Anderson's independent music heavy "On the Horizon" show that is already carried on a wide variety of Internet stations.

While some local music fans feel WorcesterTunes should play only Worcester music, McElhiney prefers to mix it up with hits from the past, believing they might introduce new audiences to what's available here. When a great track sounding much like San Francisco's '60s legends The Youngbloods turns out to be a song by local favorites Uncle Billy's Smokehouse, his point couldn't be clearer.

Brian Goslow may be reached at .