Jockeying for air

Barry Jorgensen is not just a disc jockey at KOCI-FM (101.5) — a newly formed radio station in Costa Mesa — he’s the only DJ.

In fact, he’s not just the only DJ: He’s also the only engineer and the only producer.

In lieu of a detailed description of his on-air style, suffice it to say he hosts a three-hour blues program using the name Dr. Barry, despite having no medical degree.

If that’s not enough detail, imagine a man in his 60s with a deep, gravelly voice leaning back, sipping a can of Budweiser and staring at the dials of the sound-mixing equipment in front of him while listening to Muddy Waters play a 12-bar blues over the air waves.

Along with two partners, Jorgensen recently rented a multiroom office on the third floor of a tower at the corner of 17th Street and Irvine Avenue. They furnished one room — the broadcasting booth — with an L-shaped desk loaded with all of the necessary equipment and microphones. From behind the desk you can see the Santa Ana Mountains over the tree tops through a panoramic window. On the thick magenta carpet sit many small stacks of blues CDs.

An antenna is planted on the roof of the building, broadcasting Dr. Barry’s blues with a power of 50 watts. Just for a little comparison, the nearest station broadcasting on the same frequency — San Diego’s KGB-FM (101.5) — puts out a signal with 60,000 watts of power (more than 1,000 times stronger).

Listeners can hear KOCI pretty clearly throughout most of Costa Mesa, but even on the Balboa Peninsula, less than a couple of miles from the station, the signal is weak and broken up by interference from competing stations.

Three men run KOCI. Two have day jobs and one is retired. Jorgensen is a lawyer in Riverside, about a 90-minute drive away. When he’s in town doing a radio show he often stays at the home of one of his partners, Brian Helvey, who lives close to the station office in Costa Mesa near the Back Bay.

Helvey first came up with the idea to start a community radio station. He initiated the long application process with the FCC to get a low-power broadcasting permit almost a decade ago and then bankrolled the start-up expenses with $15,000 of his own money when the permit was finally granted this year.

Among the three men, Helvey is the only one without a radio background, but he was drawn to the station by the prospect of performing a community service.

“I’m having lots of fun with it. I’m passionate about it, and it’s fun to be doing what you’re passionate about,” he said.

On a recent Sunday afternoon Helvey joined Jorgensen in the studio for “Dr. Barry’s Traveling Medicine and Blues Show,” which airs Sunday afternoons.

Jorgensen operated the switchboard, played the songs and provided the banter between tracks, while Helvey and a younger man, Don “Foosh” Fuschetti continually fed him new CDs to play and wrote information like song titles, release dates and other trivia down on note cards and white paper napkins for Jorgensen to use as cue cards.

“You’re listening to Dr. Barry’s Traveling Medicine and Blues Show. This next track is…well, I don’t know who this is, but I’ll find out for you. I know it’s blues,” Jorgensen said, staying calm, confident and collected and maintaining a professional sound despite being thrown a curve ball.

A rendition of the old blues hit “Trouble No More” performed by the Jimmy Rogers All Stars started playing as Jorgensen flipped his microphone off.

Turning to Helvey he said, “You can’t be doing this to me,” in a slightly peeved but not angry tone.

Before Jorgensen decided to go to law school, he was a DJ in the ’60s and ’70s, with strong ties to the blues scene. At one point he even opened a night club in Los Angeles at the behest of Muddy Waters, along with one of Muddy’s backup musicians.

Eventually, big radio stations gobbled up all of the airwaves and forced him out of the business, he says. Practicing law was just a welcome diversion.

“I needed a steady job, and it’s worked well for me,” Jorgensen said of his legal career, which he hopes to leave behind altogether if the station takes off.

He’s not the only one that feels that way. Brent Kahlen, the third director of the station used to be a DJ for KROQ-FM (106.7) in the late ’70s. He now works in debt consolidation, but says radio was his first love.

In recent years, federal legislation focused on getting more community-based programming on the FM dial gave him and his cohorts another chance at making a living in radio.

If you find yourself in Costa Mesa flipping through the FM channels and the digital display on your radio that tells you which station you’re tuned into goes blank, there’s a fail-safe way to find 101.5. Just flip through the channels one by one, and listen to each for an hour. If you don’t hear a single break in the music, chances are you’re listening to the right station.

Helvey and crew, being so new to the scene, have only four sponsors that pay money in exchange for little sound bytes mentioning their names. With such a small coverage area, and nonprofit status that makes it impossible for them to sell standard advertisements, KOCI sponsorship is more or less limited to local small retail businesses and restaurants.

A couple of other sponsors who don’t give money help out in other ways. Workers from Westside Bar and Grill on 19th Street, for instance, bring the guys free pizza to eat while they’re on air.

Because the blues and classic rock tracks on KOCI are played interruption free, people who happen upon the station get drawn in, and sooner than they know it end up getting involved as guests and workers. Such was the case with Fuschetti, the station’s jocular, 38-year-old protégé who grew up in town.

“I was listening at a bar and I hadn’t heard a commercial in a week, and then a DJ came on and said, ‘We need some volunteers.’” He grabbed a pen, wrote down the station’s phone number, called Helvey and was part of the team.

During Jorgensen’s blues show a few weeks ago, a couple of local musicians — the pianist and saxophone player from Balboa Blues — stopped by the station in denim jeans and T-shirts, and had an impromptu interview with Dr. Barry on the way to a nighttime gig at the Westside Bar and Grill.

The amazing thing about the station — operating alongside so many nationwide mega stations — is that it’s so unscripted, unplanned and raw. The guys are all energetic and love to talk about music and the station’s future. Sometimes Helvey and Fuschetti would continue a heated conversation in the broadcasting booth while Jorgensen was addressing the radio audience, to the DJ’s chagrin. At one point Jorgensen — clearly a little distracted by the chatting — tried a preemptive strike. “OK, quiet!” he said as a track wound down.

The others in the room were silent. Then, as the music faded out and Jorgensen prepared to speak Helvey tried to discreetly grab a bag of Sun Chips on the desk next to him and ended up spilling them all over the DJ’s lap.

With an ironic smile on his face, Jorgensen, ad libbing into the mic, said, “I’m joined here in the studio by Brian Helvey and Don ‘Foosh’ Fuschetti, spilling my chips and eating my pizza as we have a party here.”

Mistakes are made and corrected, issues are worked through, but at the end of the day the show goes on.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.