Insomnia, radio, and Syrah

It’s the middle of the night here on the east coast and I can’t sleep. I turn the radio on to keep me company, to hear what’s happening late into the night somewhere far away that will entertain me to sleep. Plus, wine.

KVMR is a community radio station out of Nevada City, California, northeast of Sacramento, west of Lake Tahoe, at the foothills of the mighty Sierras. The Juke Joint show is on, the blues, new and old, and the DJ says he is tired, twice, a kinship between us. His voice is slow and his words stall before he drags them to the end of a sentence. I’ve been that DJ, deep into an an overnight shift, pushing my words forward, the songs getting longer, anticipating the second wind that blows in with the arrival of the next DJ. Our weary DJ has half a show to go, so he hauls ahead into the next set of music. Alas, he’s playing Christmas blues, two days after Christmas day. Exhausted with the genre until next year, I leave our lumbering DJ and tune in to another station.

KMUD is a community radio station based in southern Humboldt County in northwest California, on Highway 101 and about twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean. I tune in just after a live version of the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed” begins. I settle in. I know a thing or two about the Dead, and I narrow the gig down to 1976 or 1977. The spirited song ends and we roll into another live Dead number, “The Music Never Stopped.” Hoping for something non-Dead eventually, I stick with it until it ends and “Help on the Way” starts. Another Dead tune. Either there’s no DJ there, the station on autopilot playing a whole Grateful Dead concert, or the DJ is there and they’re rolling with the Dead every which way. Robot or not, the music is familiar and soothing at this hour. However, the quest for eclectic aural recreation pushes me on. Done with the Dead, I tune away.

Staying on the west coast, I dial in to KMUN, a community radio station in Astoria in northwest Oregon, near the banks of the Columbia River. Our DJ speaks. We’re listening to a program called Son of Dario Charnay. I remember the name because the announcer shared the program’s email address and spelled out the name at least a couple of times. It’s a long and rambling set break, endearingly odd, seemingly lost, and eventually found. Self-referential, mocking confidence, a stream of thoughts and words, weird stories, and a list of obscure and eclectic songs before the drifting DJ flows into a set of gritty and gruff music. This is radio worth staying awake for, and I do until I hazily drift off to sleep.

These late night radio explorations are serendipitously paired with a 2010 Cabot Vineyards Syrah, which I enjoyed just hours before these sleepless miles across the radio dial and swirls us back down to Humboldt County in California. This time we’re in the northernmost part of the county near a town called Orleans, about three hours north of KMUD’s studio. The land this wine comes from is rugged and rocky, a slope down the valley towards the Klamath River. This Syrah is as eclectic and native as the radio we’ve been listening to. Spicy aromas of white pepper, violet perfume, ripe blueberries, and vintage oak. Flavors of blueberries and black plums, savory streaks of spice, tingly acidity, hints of dried herbs, and a long, racy finish. The only thing lacking from this particular bottle is a freshness that a fifteen-year-old wine sometimes can’t bring to the show, and that’s ok. It’s a fusion of smells and tastes as varied and blended as a set of distinct genres mixed by a tired or stoned DJ on a late night radio show. This is wine worth going to extremes for.