Community Radio in St. Louis Comes Back from the Dead
By Chris King
February 9, 2026
St. Louis—and any place where music can be heard over the Internet—became a better place as of last week when Community Radio St. Louis began streaming at http://Crstl.fm.
This online community radio station is the new evolution of what had been KDHX Community Radio (R.I.P.), formerly 88.1 on the FM dial in St. Louis. The new initiative aspires to acquire an FM frequency one day, and these volunteers who banded together to save community radio in St. Louis are a smart, tough, resourceful crowd. I expect to report their further success one fine day.
I will point you to the music streaming at http://Crstl.fm so you can hear for yourself what provocative and fascinating curators of music have kept this fire alive after the disgraceful failure of KDHX leadership to save the station (and its invaluable FM license). The new station’s Instagram account posts daily reminders of the program schedule. The website has a live chat full of goodwill and gratitude for the music. We are promised a permanent online archive of past shows.
Thus far, due to other commitments, my listening has been sporadic. I had to hear the returns of “Feel Like Going Home” (Roy Kasten) and “Memphis to Manchester” (John Wendland) on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Like many people in town, I am blessed to know Roy and John as good friends and frequent collaborators. I lucked into catching “The Back Country” on Saturday afternoon and luxuriated in the speaking voice of Jeff Corbin, with the softest and sweetest drawl in town. My last-minute shopping before the Super Bowl on Sunday was detoured into previous centuries and distant cultures by (best folk music radio show name ever) “No Time to Tarry Here,” hosted by the incomparable Pablo Meshugi.
Pardon me if I take this good news event to look back at my own long, tangled history with this community radio endeavor and adventure.
Earthworms. My first direct encounter with KDHX was also the most impactful beyond the immediate moment. I was babysitting two boys for a summer job as a WashU student, starting to write songs and form rock bands. The boys and I listened to the new KDHX whenever we were in the house, building miniature golf courses or eating meals. One morning, a woman on the radio was saying that this was KDHX’s new environmental talk show and they needed a name. I called the station to suggest “Earth Words.” Host Jean Ponzi misheard this name as “Earthworms,” immediately carried on about the essential role these beasts play in aerating the soil, and she named her show “Earthworms.” It aired as such for decades.
Live at The Tap Room. When Schlafly Beer opened St. Louis’s first microbrewery in 1991, KDHX was a toddler of four. Though many local bands had played KDHX benefits, my WashU band Enormous Richard played the first KDHX benefit at the Schlafly Tap Room in downtown St. Louis—and, indeed, the very first gig in our city’s very first brewpub.
“High Anxiety.” KDHX grew along with our band and helped a great many local bands grow. There is no local equivalent to this phenomenon today. Enormous Richard developed a deep relationship with Doug Morris (R.I.P.), host of “High Anxiety” on KDHX, which aired after midnight on Saturday. As we became a traveling band, Doug issued a standing offer to call him from the road during his show, so we huddled around a payphone all over the country to call Doug Morris with a road report and spontaneous song.
Yo-Yo solos. Eduardo Vigil, for many years the station’s operations guy, had an affection for Enormous Richard and invited us into the studio to perform live on the air. Our band, in high goof mode at the time, hit upon the idea of an all-band Yo-Yo solo. At one predetermined point during our live performance, we all dropped our instruments, pulled out Yo-Yos, and (according to a tape of the show that is now lost) you could hear about 15 seconds of dead air with whispers of Yo-Yos crawling up and down Yo-Yo strings before Ed exclaimed, “That was phenomenal,” and we picked back up our instruments.
Bob’s Scratchy Records. The great St. Louis songwriter Bob Reuter (R.I.P.) was a seasoned dean of the local music scene when Enormous Richard came along. Given that we could be described as more goofy than good and more popular than talented, some more-talented musicians in the scene dismissed (or even resented) us. Not Bob. He was an early adopter and remained a fan. By the time Bob was invited to host a new show on KDHX, Enormous Richard had evolved into the band Eleanor Roosevelt. More often than was merited, given the vastness of Bob’s collection of scratchy records, he played our song “Creepy Part of Town.” I always thought, if Bob Reuter is playing my song on the radio, then I can’t totally suck.
Larry Weir’s beer. The band Eleanor Roosevelt evolved into the arts organization Poetry Scores, which built community by translating poetry into other media. To raise money for our projects, we would host Experiential Auctions, where guests bid on things like being a private guest of Maestro David Robertson at a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra rehearsal or having local artist Dana Richard Smith paint your band. One Experiential Auction, Larry Weir (R.I.P.), who succeeded Ed Vigil as KDHX operations guy, won the bidding war to have a case of beer brewed to your specifications and canned with a label of your design. A homebrewer buddy made, canned, and labeled a case of Highlander Scotch Ale to honor (of all things) Larry’s dice baseball team.
That auction happened in Fall 2007. Larry died in January 2010 after a freak fall on New Year’s Eve. Larry’s death was not the beginning of the end for KDHX, but the new station facility, later named in his memory, arguably played a role. The former bakery on Magnolia Avenue off South Grand Boulevard seemed a more humble and proper home for community radio in St. Louis than a pricey, multi-purpose facility (in a contrived branded arts district) that included KDHX’s own performance venue. Suddenly, KDHX, perhaps the biggest booster of local music venues, was competing against them for shows. I screened one of the two zombie movies I made at the Larry J. Weir Center version of KDHX. The room felt deader than a zombie.
But now, so much better than a zombie, what once was KDHX lives again as Community Radio St. Louis, streaming now at http://Crstl.fm. At a time when most news is really bad, this is pretty good news.
