Jeff Angione, Kith and Kin Interview

Name of Company:  Rural Free Delivery on WLVB

Name: Jeff Angione

Location, email, phone, website: 303 Rte. 15, Morrisville, VT,  http://www.wlvbradio.com/, (802) 888-4294, https://www.facebook.com/RFDonLVB/

Description of your business/work? It is off the beaten path real country. Real traditional country but not necessarily old. It airs on WLVB 93.9 on Saturdays from 10am-2pm. I do honky tonk, bluegrass, swing, rockabilly. I don’t play pop country. The greatest thing about this job is it is local and community oriented and it doesn’t cost anything for people to be involved with it. You can tune in and clean your house and stack wood. And you don’t know what I’m going to play. That’s old school radio. Free form. It is an art form. It is a theatrical presentation. Real country is based on stories of real life. 

How long have you been in business? WLVB has been in business since 1993 and I have been here for 10 years of it. I was asked if I was interested in doing a show and I started doing the show every other week. I loved the local, independently owned and operated and talking about community events aspect of it. And that’s why I really got in. And also to appeal to people who had another kind of country music taste. I wanted to open up the breadth of music to people. People like WLVB better than other country stations because it’s more personal and here’s an opportunity to get personal. I hand pick these songs for listeners every week. 

How did you move to Morristown? I moved to Morristown so that my son could go to Morristown Elementary back in 2001. Before that I lived in Wolcott. 

What do you like best about Morristown? Small town community.
What new business would you like to see move to town?  I thought a long time about this. And it’s tough. I would like to see another restaurant come in. I think there’s room in Morrisville for a higher end of tapas-style restaurant. I think food trends are changing. People want a value. Enough with the fried food. 

What is on your wish list for the next five years of your business/career? My wish list is that WLVB starts streaming. I think streaming worldwide for this station would be a plus. 

Personal background: I have a culinary arts degree, cooked and ran restaurants for many, many years- 15 years. Then I owned my own record store, Tones in Johnson, for 10 years. Then I did plumbing and heating for 11 years. Now I work in the library at Johnson State College. I run the community radio station there also.

What was your first job? My first job was actually two jobs: picking tobacco and golf caddying where I grew up in CT. Martin Luther King, Jr. picked tobacco in the same fields as I did.

What was your most fun job? Record store owner.

Favorite quote? “Do you know that your soul is composed of harmony?” -Leonardo Da Vinci and “Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything” -Plato 

If you could have dinner with one person dead or alive, who would it be and why? That’s a hard one. That’s like picking your favorite song. There’s so many people that I would want to have dinner with and most of them would-be musicians. I guess I’d have to say Sid Nathan, who owned King Records out of Ohio. He recorded The Stanley Brothers, The Swallows, Hank Penny, Little Willy John, James Brown. King Records was a record label that changed the way things were done, mostly because he owned other labels too. He had enough foresight to say, ‘Geez, you know, I have these black performers but need to get them to the white market because these songs are racy and white people like that kind of stuff too.’ 

What book did you read last? Insane Clown President by Matt Tiabbi and before that it was Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.

Wild card? I just want people to do the right thing. They know what it is. Everybody has a heart. Everybody bleeds the same blood. 90% of humanity is good. If more people knew and did the right thing could can you imagine what a utopian planet this could be? 

I need a radio person in the novel. Gal holiday. Honky two review set two. Plastic jesus. Yes mam I met him in a honky tonk- leone wills.