Show Host Profile: Tom Roche

--Written by Melissa Milton

A 12-year-old boy wins a radio contest on WFLA in Tampa and goes to collect his prize, a case of cold drinks. Before he can open a bottle, this adventurous child asks for a tour of the station. He sees the DJ booth, and lightning strikes. As WWOZ show host Tom Roche remembers it, “I saw that DJ, and I saw that room, I saw those piles of records, and said, ‘This is it! This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!’”

Since the age of 11, Roche had been exploring the sounds of the air waves via his transistor radio, but that visit to WFLA sparked his interest in the unseen aspects of radio, and soon he began visiting every radio station in biking distance from his home. This would become a lifelong pursuit. Before long, he’d discovered nighttime stations and began listening to stations transmitting from places as far away as Nashville, Little Rock, and even Cuba. The whole world opened up to Roche when, at 13, he discovered short wave radio, a precursor to internet streaming radio.

“All my life I have knocked on the doors of radio stations, and said, show me what’s going on here,” he explains. Knocking on those doors has brought him into studios all over the country and in Europe as well. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. WWOZ *is* the greatest station in the country. It’s not hyperbole.” And the universe? “Scientists will quibble with the universe thing,” he says with a smile.

Radio has been very good to Roche. He met his wife, Cheryl, at WFSU, then the Florida State University station in Tallahassee, having chosen that school because it had a college radio station when the campus in Gainesville did not. His first radio program aired in 1978, and he even remembers the first song he played, “Running Away” by Roy Ayers Ubiquity. Roche found his way to Atlanta and a career of sound editing, peppered with work in video editing, music writing, and newscast directing.

Fortuitously, Roche met longtime WWOZ show host and fellow sound professional George Ingmire while working in New Orleans on “The Big Uneasy,” Harry Shearer’s documentary about Katrina. Roche remembers, “As soon as I heard that George was at WWOZ, I said, “Let me come and sit in on one of your shows and take pictures.’” After the film wrapped, Roche returned to Atlanta with the idea that it was time to relocate to New Orleans.

Once he engineered that move, it wasn’t long before Roche began filling in at WWOZ. This January will mark nine years of hosting shows on 90.7FM here in the Crescent City, always as a substitute, a specialty position he loves. Roche always has a show or two at the ready, so when the call comes to fill in for whatever program, Roche makes his way to the studio - these days on an electric bike - with music culled from his extensive vinyl collection, one that reflects his wide range of musical tastes and in particular a love of African music.

WWOZ is, in Roche’s deeply researched opinion, unique. “There is no face of WWOZ among the radio hosts. If you ask the average listener, who’s your favorite host, just name one, that person will probably say, no, I gotta name three, no wait, I gotta name six, no wait, there’s that guy on Sunday I love, and suddenly there is no favorite WWOZ host, there’s the team. The good music and the eccentricities of the hosts come together, and that’s what the listeners are tuning in for.”