Creston station celebrates four years on the air

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

It's been four years this Saturday since KXZI, the Montana Radio Cafe, went live at 101.9 on the FM dial.

And the "on-air" sign is still lit at Scott Johnston's Creston home.

What began as a dream and a sound-proofed front porch has grown into a beloved local establishment and a station whose reach extends far beyond the bounds of its radio waves.

"I just love it," Johnston said. "It's been an incredible four years."

The station has grown in sophistication if not size, and thanks to its Internet broadcast, has found fans all over the world. In the last month, Johnston said, listeners have tuned in from all over the world, including most of Western Europe and parts of South America and China.

Operating from the font porch of his 100-year-old Creston Farmhouse, Johnston broadcasts an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, folk and pretty much everything else, as well as hosts musicians for informal interviews and jam sessions.

A longtime radio man, Johnston took a window of opportunity given by the Federal Communications Commission a few years ago to file for a "low power" license to run a non-commercial station. A few computers, microphones and a hand-cranked antenna later, Johnston was on the air.

It's better than waking up at 4 a.m. to drive to Polson to host the morning show, anyway.

"I've killed five deer on the East Shore making that drive," he said.

Getting the station up and running was no easy task, and might have been even harder without a healthy dose of luck.

Johnston said that when the project was just getting started, a friend from Colorado who was moving to Montana asked if he could park his truck and trailer in Johnston's yard while he looked for a place to rent. Johnston agreed, and soon noticed what looked like a telescoping radio antenna in the trailer. The friend had no plans for it and sold it to Johnston at just the right time.

"I thanked him for driving it up from Colorado for me," he joked.

An aspiring jazz trumpet player when he was a 13-year-old growing up on Colorado's front range, Johnston musical path changed when he got to meet one of his idols, jazz legend Louis Armstrong after a show in Denver.

"I was 13 and starting to get interested in girls," Johnston said. "I saw that big callous on his upper lip and decided to be a guitar player."

All these years later Johnston can play a mean guitar, but the picture of him and Armstrong shaking hands is hung over his studio chair.

Because of the restrictions placed on a low power, non-commercial station like KXZI, Johnson's means of support are limited. He can't sell

advertising — which is fine with him — and relies instead on sponsors to whom he can give occasional mentions on air, so long as he's careful not to say certain words like "sale" or give prices.

"I prefer to tell a story about them anyway," he said.

As the station has grown, so has Johnston's music library. He has about 18,500 songs on his playlist and that selection is growing all the time as local artists and some record labels send him their latest stuff.

Beyond the music given or sent, Johnston has amassed a small collection of live performances that have occurred right in his studio, from folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliot to Canadian songwriter John Wort Hamman.

"We've had some magic moments here," Johnston said. "I've heard some music in this studio that was just incredible."

While listeners drop off CD's or e-mail or phone in requests, Johnston said he still just plays the music he loves and that it doesn't matter what type "as long as it's good music."

"Most listeners call in and say, 'What was that?'" he said.

Just last week he got a call from an emergency room surgeon in Jacksonville, Fla. who keeps his operating room computer tuned to the tiny Creston station.

"He said everyone in the O.R. likes it," Johnston said. "And if they don't, he tells them it's like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes and it'll change."

But while the songs may change, very little else has for Johnston who's still living his dream on his front porch.

"My wife came down one night not too long after we started and I was sitting in here (the studio) drinking a glass of wine."

She asked what he was doing out on the porch at that late hour.

He told her, "I'm just listening to the radio."