Our DJ of the Month for the springy hunk of April is our very special squaky dj, McSquawk! A figure highly involved in the world of radio for many moons now, has been spicing things up with his show "Flight of the Squawkatiel" this past month. Check out the interview down below to get the lowdown on his adaptation of March Madness that his show has been centered around, and make sure to tune into his action-packed show every Saturday from 6 to 8 pm on 90.1 fm on your radio dials!

 What brought you to WRUV?

 I had a radio show at WSCS at Colby-Sawyer College for all 4 years I was there, and I was the station manager in 2008. After I graduated in 2009, I moved to the Burlington area because I got a job at Creative Labels of Vermont in Winooski. I discovered several community radio stations shortly after I moved and was especially impressed with WRUV because they played a lot of good music (I discovered a lot of great new music that way) and they were much more organized than WSCS ever was. I went to an informational meeting in 2010 but didn't pursue it because the whole graveyard shift thing wouldn't have worked well with my living situation at the time. In 2011 I moved to a different apartment, where my roommate was Lucy Couture, another WRUV DJ, and she encouraged me to apply to be a DJ at WRUV. I trained during the summer semester and then had my first full semester on air that fall.

 What came first-- McSquawk or Flight of the Squakatiel? Where does the squawk come from?

 The names "McSquawk" and "Flight of the Squawkatiel" were inspired by my first two years in the Burlington area living with my first roommate who had a pet cockatiel named Buddy, and he would also sometimes take care of his parents' cockatiel Genie. Cockatiels are very funny birds and very friendly and I enjoyed having them around. I would sometimes call them "squawkatiels" because they can be very loud; they like to whistle and squawk. "McSquawk" was one of my several nicknames for Buddy and I actually used it for my Youtube account before it was my DJ name. The picture I use for the Flight of the Squawkatiel logo on my blog, Facebook and Soundcloud was actually traced from a picture of Genie.

Talk to us about your Squakatiel madness that you've organized. Where did you get inspired? And how did you choose your artists?

 One of my favorite things to do on my show is my end of the year countdown where I play my Top 20 songs of the year, and I thought it would be fun to have something where my listeners could choose their favorites of the year, and a March Madness style tournament seemed like a good way to go. I had heard something similar that the radio station I listened to back home had done one year, and more recently, an internet radio station that I would sometimes listen to at work had a March Madness tournament with some of the artists they play. Listeners could vote online for who they wanted to advance, and it was a lot of fun. I chose the 64 artists for Squawkatiel Madness based on the ones I played on my show the most in the past 12 months. I looked through my past radioactivity playlists to see who I should put on there. I made sure my personal favorite artists of the year like Wild Nothing, Kitten, Beach Fossils, and Frank Turner were on there. I also included the more well known artists I played so people would know more of the bands they're voting for. I put a few up and coming artists in there that I thought deserved some promotion too, so people could use this as an opportunity to discover something they've never heard before. I'm pleased with how it turned out, I'm planning on doing it again next year, with a few changes like splitting the first round into two parts so people don't have to vote for 32 different matches at once.

 What do you like to do besides being a DJ?

In addition to my radio show, I work a full time job at Creative Labels of Vermont where I work in the prepress department. Between my job and doing stuff for my radio show, I don't have a whole lot of free time. But I like spending time with my girlfriend Althea and our two cats Piper & Elwood. I like going to concerts, whether it is seeing one of my favorite bands at Higher Ground or seeing someone I've never heard of at Radio Bean. I also play guitar and compose music on the computer, though I haven't had time for either of those things lately, but I'm looking to get back into it.

One last thing, I'll talk about my show a bit more if you want to include anything here. What I do on my show is first play an hour of new music that I want people to hear. Most of it is stuff from WRUV's new music CDs but I also play a few tracks that I've discovered online recently. Most of this stuff is indie/alternative/rock/pop but I'll play anything that I think sounds good and I've included RPM, urban, metal, punk, folk and world music in my sets before. The second hour is usually a playlist of music from my collection. I do a different theme for this set each week and recent themes have included: Celtic Rock (for St. Patrick's day), music that fits well with the end of winter, fun catchy songs, hard rock, and Mardi Gras (zydeco and New Orleans blues/jazz). I like exposing people to new music that they haven't heard before and doing my part to help lesser known artists become more popular. I'm also working on expanding my online presence so I can promote my show and WRUV outside of Burlington. Soundcloud has been an excellent way for me to do that, because it is a social media site that connects artists, labels & music journalists in addition to being a way to stream music.

We're at it again!