If the voice on the other end of the phone line is familiar-sounding and engaging, that’s because Bruce Patrick McWilliams, known to his fans as Bruce Patrick, is used to talking. After all, he’s been doing it Monday through Friday from 6-9 AM on the WHCP 101.5 in Cambridge.
McWilliams, who started in 1988, was at that time making music as a drummer for a local band, and DJ’ing for a radio turned into a natural progression rather than something he was inspired to do. But once he started, it took only six months of working for the local Cambridge station before he found himself holding down the afternoon drive.
He was hooked. “It’s not often,” he said, “you get to sit and listen to music all day, talk about the weather, and, in some cases, get paid for it. But it’s just is one of those things that is a lot of fun.” He continued to have fun at other stations, including ones in Annapolis and Salisbury.
Then five years ago, former NPR’s Chief Technology Officer, Mike Starling, started a non-profit community station in Cambridge, known as WHCP (We Help Cambridge Prosper). McWilliams approached Starling. “Mike, you need a morning show,” he told him. Starling agreed and then asked what kind of music McWilliams had to play. “Well, you don’t tell a DJ who’s rolling around with a four-terabyte hard drive with 40,000 songs on it ‘what kind of music he got.’” That response was enough for Starling, and the Midshore Wake up with Bruce Patrick began airing.
Despite his massive library of songs, McWilliams gravitates toward classic rock on his show, and he has developed plenty of ideas on how to play them. “I do a ‘Theme Tuesday,’ and ‘Flashback Friday,’” he says. “I pick a year from the original Casey Kasem list of the top 40 songs of each week and play those. And I’ll do an artist of the day, and that’s usually driven by their birthday or maybe what they did in music history.”
We also wondered if this DJ had favorites. “My one go-to song,” said McWilliams, “(and it’s crazy and kind of funny) is Ronnie Milsap’s Smokey Mountain Rain. There’s just something about that song; I don’t know what it is. I’m also a big Pink Floyd and Rush fan.”
Of course, playing music is one thing, but keeping up a one-way dialogue and making sure there is never any dead air, is another. Many of us can relate to having to keep our end of a conversation going when the other person isn’t actively involved—or needing to find interesting tête-à-tête, when with a group of strangers. But what would it be like, we wondered, to have to come up with entertaining topics, not knowing who, or even if anyone was on the other end? “You hear some of the big stations,” McWilliams said, who have two or three guys and gals and producers going on, but I’m alone in there in the morning, sitting in a 12-foot square room talking to myself because I don’t know how many people are listening,”
Which begs the question, who is the audience? After all, WHCP is a low-power 250-watt station, meaning it will reach a 10-mile circle (compared to most radio stations, which are in the 50,000 to 100,000-watt power), but what they lack in wattage, they make up in internet streaming, meaning that they’re all over the world. This translates to: “We don’t have an exact number,” says McWilliams, “but we do know that based on our internet pings, we’ve had 33 countries log in and over 25 States.”
Not bad.
So, with an audience of half of the United States and a reach worldwide, what does McWilliams talk about? “I focus on music history,” he says. “I also like to find what type of special day this is, for example, national chocolate day. Sometimes I like to fly by the seat of my pants. We have a program that the late great Dr. Tom Flowers had done for another radio station in 1992, ’93, and ’94, which we use daily as little vignettes. The irony is that what he talked about on his shows then is surprisingly similar to what’s going on now.”
The other thing McWilliams talks about, of course, is what’s going on in Cambridge. Since WHCP is a non-profit community radio, their focus is on what’s happening around town. He explains: “For lack of a better cliché, we’re ‘for the people by the people.’ We’re in it to be the voice of different non-profits in town who need to get the word out about upcoming sales or fundraisers that they’re doing to raise awareness for a cause. And as such, we’re a lot more laid back since commercial stations are based on ratings, and your ratings drive how much you charge for your commercials.”
Like all community stations, WHCP is funded by listeners and local businesses. As McWilliams explains every morning to his audience, “We’re like Maryland Public Television but without the cameras because you don’t want to see this face early in the morning anyway.”
Perhaps. But what his fans want, McWilliams is eager to give. “People are not really 100% paying attention because we’re just noise in the background as they fix breakfast, get in the shower, and get ready for work. And I try to make a lightheartedness out of what might be a bad day, or try to get somebody off on a good foot.”
As for the future, Morning DJ Bruce Patrick says, “As long as there’s a comfortable chair, I’ll be there.”
That’s a pretty good gig.
Val Cavalheri is a recent transplant to the Eastern Shore, having lived in Northern Virginia for the past 20 years. She’s been a writer, editor and professional photographer for various publications, including the Washington Post.