BELLOWS FALLS-WOOL-FM 91.5 Black Sheep Radio in Bellows Falls is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and looking to the future with fundraising plans to replace the station's aging transmitter and get more volunteers involved in broadcasting.
As one of only two full-power FM noncommercial community radio stations in the state - and with fewer than a dozen in New England - WOOL transmits diverse programming, much of it locally created.
From polka, Celtic, bluegrass, the Great American Songbook, alt-country, K-pop, death metal, gospel, world music or whatever might be your musical passion, WOOL radio is open to it all as it broadcasts this wide array of genres to listeners within a range that covers approximately 1,700 square miles in southern Vermont and New Hampshire.
The WOOL station broadcast can be heard as far north as Woodstock, as far south as Brattleboro, and from Newport, New Hampshire, to the east over to Manchester in western Vermont.
The station broadcasts from across the Connecticut River in Walpole, New Hampshire, atop Fall Mountain, also known as Mount Kilburn. Its tower's elevated location gives the station its considerable broadcast footprint.
In addition, Black Sheep Radio listeners can stream the station live online.
WOOL's stated purpose in its bylaws is "to inspire, entertain, and educate our listeners and to amplify the voices of our community." That has been the station's focus since its first conception over two decades ago.
"I think Nancy Stefanik [a local entrepreneur] first brought the idea to me back in 2000," remembers Tony Elliot, one of the founders of both WOOL and the early Vermont internet company Sovernet, "and Gary Smith and I kicked the idea around and decided to pursue it."
Years of work
In 2001, Elliot, Smith, and a few other local citizens filed for a Low Power FM (LPFM) broadcasting permit.
From the original idea and license application, it would take three years to pull everything together and launch WOOL's on-air programming. The group received a LPFM broadcasting permit in 2004 and created the Great Falls Community Broadcasting Company to oversee the operation.
The IRS approved the entity as a tax-exempt, tax-deductible nonprofit in 2005, the year WOOL-LP officially launched.
Smith, who had recently moved to the area from Boston, would become one of the founding directors of WOOL; at one time he served as the board president of Great Falls Community Broadcasting.
For many years, Smith had also owned and operated Fort Apache Records, a production, management and recording company where he worked with several well-known recording artists including Billy Bragg, Natalie Merchant, Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donelly, and Warren Zevon, and groups like the Pixies, Radiohead, Throwing Muses, Dinosaur Jr., Yo La Tengo, Uncle Tupelo, and many others.
Those music connections would play a role in WOOL's future broadcasts.
Smith moved Fort Apache's operations to Bellows Falls in 2002, and from 2002 to 2006, he and local artist and music promoter Charlie Hunter created a live music venue in the lobby area of the former Windham Hotel on the Square. Nearly 200 live concerts were recorded there and broadcast on WOOL during those years.
In 2012, Smith and a handful of partners opened the Italian-inspired Popolo restaurant in the hotel. The popular farm-to-table eatery and WOOL often worked together to continue promoting and hosting concerts and other cultural events.
In 2014, WOOL-LP became WOOL-FM, an official full-power Non-Commercial Educational (NCE) FM station. "That was a super move for WOOL radio," Elliot said.
During those years WOOL continued to be an important focus of Gary Smith's life. Then, in September 2022, he was diagnosed with cancer, and he died in January 2023. Evan Parks, one of WOOL's current directors and DJs, said he remembers that one of Smith's last projects for the station was upgrading the station's control board.
"Gary loved the station," Parks said. "He put a lot of his time, effort and money into it."
Round-the-clock programming
With license in hand, the station's founders began training any community member interested in hosting a radio show. Elliot said it didn't take long to get "25 or 30 local participants doing shows, and most of them were live shows. We had some great program hosts."
Elliot said he was often the one recording and broadcasting those early performances at the Windham Hotel and other Bellows Falls venues, like PK's Irish Pub.
"It could be a bit chaotic," he said, remembering the times he was running back and forth between the venue and the studio during the shows to make necessary adjustments. "But it was fun!"
Also fundamental to the station's success was an early partnership with the nonprofit Pacifica Network, which provides national programming for more than 200 independent community and public radio stations.
"We joined Pacifica and used their library of programming very early on," Elliot said. "It gave us a lot of material to work with. And they helped us in dealing with the complications of running a nonprofit station like this."
Over the last 20 years, hundreds of people have been trained, certified and began producing shows focused on an eclectic mix of music, news, sports, talk radio, interviews, community forums, and more.
Federal restrictions on the station's broadcasting license limit advocacy of political agendas or religious proselytizing, while opportunities to share musical tastes are wide open. WOOL also continues to broadcast a wide range of content from Pacifica.
Elliot had years of experience in college radio, including some time at Dartmouth College's WDCR. He said he started by creating playlists for WOOL programming. Local real estate agent Bob Ross got involved with creating the community radio station and suggested that they take advantage of readily available automation software to assist with the programming.
"It was a great idea," Elliot recalled, and added that using the software really made making the radio programming much easier. "But the most important thing when we started was to get people on the air."
To this day, WOOL broadcasts 24 hours a day with the help of automation.
Parks has been with the station for six years. A sound engineer by profession, Parks also serves on the volunteer technical team for the station.
"It's really not as complicated to learn how to broadcast as most people imagine," Parks said. "It only takes about two or three hours of training."
Technology makes it convenient for volunteers to create their own content at home and download it to the station.
"From the beginning, people learned that they could tape a show from home and upload it to the station," Elliot said. "That made it a lot easier for everyone. We're still doing it that way today."
Being able to create shows from home also made it fairly smooth sailing for the station during the Covid pandemic, he added.
A permanent location
The WOOL broadcast studio eventually located to the 33 Bridge Building in Bellows Falls, a former paper mill that has become an incubator for the area's creative economy. In addition to WOOL, 33 Bridge houses a photographer, painters, glass blowers, a potter, a film maker, and the Stage 33 listening room performance and recording space.
"I really want to thank The Island Group," Evans said, referring to the owners of the 33 Bridge building. "They provide this space for our broadcast studio for free."
WOOL-FM continues to have no advertising, and is totally supported by memberships, donations, and underwriters.
With a minimum donation of $40 - with discounts for seniors and students - a listener can join 131 card-carrying members of WOOL as of July. Businesses and organizations can join approximately 20 current underwriters at $150 for six months or $250 for a year and receive on-air acknowledgment.
The station is managed by a 10-member board of directors and when issues need to be addressed, ad hoc committees are created to address them.
One of the station's current needs, and a focus of its 20th anniversary fundraising, is the upgrading of its broadcast antenna. The year's entire operating budget for the station is only $25,000, Evans said, and a new transmitter will cost $20,000, a sizable fundraising goal for the nonprofit.
For donations of time, volunteer broadcasters are always welcome.
"We are always looking for DJs, and there are lots of good slots open," Evans said. "We also try to get live music here in the studio as often as we can."
Volunteers are also needed for off-air duties.
To reach Evans, email the station at [email protected]. For more information about WOOL-FM, visit blacksheepradio.org.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.