Long story short(ish): I wanted to change the way I freelance in 2018. Part of that would simply mean working a little harder; that’s controllable. What’s not as self-contained is figuring out funding, as outlets continue to cut budgets and rates; concurrent to this, our culture’s become somewhat numbed to patron-based, crowdfunding appeals, what with so many good, solid things needing that group push.

That climate be damned, I set out on a crowdfunding appeal.

It’s pretty-simply named, this idea: The KDHX History Project. The notion is to gather pre-existing items from the KDHX archives, like posters, flyers and the old Airwaves magazines, digitizing as much as possible. And then adding interviews with a wide range of folks: volunteers; (current and former) programmers; (current and ex-) staffers; musicians who’ve appeared on the station; basically any stakeholders in the station’s 30-year history. And because this is an online project, why not add the vast array of media already available and online, but possibly scattered across multiple platforms.

At the end, it’ll be something of a book and something of a website. Free for all, in the spirit of the station.

Trying to line up about that many chapters, I sketched out a few immediately: the history and context of KDNA; histories of the buildings that’ve housed KDHX (on Magnolia, Delmar/Euclid, Washington); profiles of affiliated programs and businesses (Squatter’s Cafe, Folk School); remembrances of programmers who left our airwaves (and world) too soon; reminders of the local origination/cable access programs of lore. I’d love to address bigger picture items, like the role of radio today vs. at the time of the station’s debut. It’d be fun to summarize what the St. Louis music scene was like 31-years ago. And why not check in with stations of a similar bent, like WWOZ or KEXP?

And while some folks were kind enough to kick in on the early portion of the Indiegogo campaign, I didn’t do a few things that I should’ve done prior to launch. I might’ve shared sneak peeks with more key members of the KDHX stakeholding community; planting seeds, if you will, for the later effort. I heard from other folks who encouraged the project, but I didn’t nail down specific help that they could/would offer and I’m reaching back out to them now. And, to be honest, this type of fundraising’s a little tough for a private, self-conscious person to do; I can’t help but feel that the project’s up-or-down-success-or-failure future is somewhat tied to me, as a human, not just the project. In a social media age, I imagine a lot of us have had that feeling when shaking the digital cup. It’s awkward. It kinda sucks. It also makes some projects happen. Hopefully, this one.

I wanna do this project. I have a good resource for copyediting/proofing and research, a just-departed KDHX staffer in Allison Jane Wilson. I can dedicate the time needed to pull this off in a first-class way, if given the financial support to do so; that would allow to trim back on other, short-range work. To repeat: I wanna do this project.

So it’s time to get to real work. Time to close the gap of funding with two-weeks-and-change to go. Time to show some resolve and to get past high-school-era neuroses, on a personal level. Time to make the case, as… I wanna do this project!

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