With stints at Edge 102.1 and CBC Radio 2 and 3 under her belt, Raina Douris knows what it takes to get your indie band on the radio in Toronto. Now, as the Music Director and afternoon drive-time host of the city’s newest radio station Indie88, she’ll be shaping the local radio landscape from the left end of the dial. The station, which launched today at noon with a rotation of Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start” after the world’s longest Rickroll, takes over the 88.1 FM frequency vacated by Ryerson’s troubled CKLN with a mandate to play indie-rock, indie-pop and indie-folk. We chatted with Douris to find out more about what to expect from the new station and how it will fit in with Toronto’s crowded music scene.
On Indie88’s mandate:
It’s going to have a very local connection. It’s really important to us to support the community we’re in, in Toronto, and to give a home to a lot of music that right now has nowhere to go. It’s obviously local but we’re going to be exposing bands from a national and international level too that may not have a place on traditional FM radio…
We’re going to be out there. You’re going to see the faces of the people that work at the station at shows, out in the city throwing events. It won’t be us sitting in some office building somewhere. It’s going to be a much more grassroots kind of thing. Which is a lot of fun. And I feel like that in itself is something that would be exciting. It’s not just a radio station.
On filling a niche in the market:
I see a huge hole where indie should be. There’s a whole world of online blogs and all that stuff, and it’s like these bands can sell out a huge venue in Toronto when they come to the city and they never get played on the radio ever. It’s like why shouldn’t that be on the radio? There were tons of applications for this frequency when it became open. There’s always some niche that needs to be filled I feel like this might be the biggest one.
On hipsterdom:
Our focus is being credible and relevant at the same time. We don’t want to alienate people, because I know when you hear the word indie sometimes that can mean, “Ohhh you guys are a bunch of hipsters…” I think you want to be identified as a hipster by the right people. Everyone hates that word, but – did you see that thing on Yelp that was like the hipster spotter map thing? I was like, “That’s where I hang out!” Those are all the places I would go with my friends. And I don’t care, it’s fine.
I think it’s important for us to be credible to that crowd. To not just go with the big, huge songs. But we also those people who aren’t as familiar with the music we’re playing to feel comfortable, so you know that means playing some things that are a little more familiar so that people can get into it and then showing them the new stuff. “And also, you might like this!”
On Toronto’s sprawling music scene:
I want to get a whiteboard, like a huge whiteboard with graph stuff on it, and then I want to write every single band that I hear about. I feel like there are so many, all the time. It’s such a vibrant scene that’s always changing. It’s like, this band started collaborating with this band and made a new band. I need a giant flow chart to keep track of it all. We’re always going to be keeping our eye out for that next band that we’re going to be playing.
On the relevance of radio:
I feel like we’re going to make radio actually relevant again in Toronto. Because I think for a long time people were like, “Radio’s dead. It’s gone.” But I really have never believed that. It’s clearly still there. And it’s I find, when I’m home and I’m bored nobody’s around I don’t have–I have TV but I don’t have cable, I have Netflix — but if I don’t want to sit and pick something to watch, I’ll put the radio on, it’s like having a buddy, like a friend is over and you don’t know what’s coming next and you might here something about what’s going on in the world, it’s sort of like putting on the news but not really because it’s way more fun and I think that that might, especially because you can listen to it online, you don’t have to own an actual radio, you can listen anywhere, I think that this will bring it back. I’m excited to blow up the radio music scene in the city. It’s going to be pretty rad.
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Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg.
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