WERU Community Radio 89.9 FM - diverse and grassroots radio serving Midcoast, Downeast & Bangor, a voice of many voices!
Serving Midcoast,
Downeast & Central Maine
A Voice of Many Voices
Broadcasting from Solar Powered Studios
Join Amy Browne and Pepin Mittelhauser for live election night coverage, on Tuesday, November 3rd. We will be airing special broadcasts from Pacifica station WBAI from 6pm – 8pm, then live coverage from Democracy Now! from 8pm – midnight. You can reach us during the broadcast by emailing news@weru.org, we would love to hear from you about your experience at your polling location, and any thoughts on this year’s election.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a… Microphone…? Yes, It’s WERU’s Fall Membership Drive! From Saturday November 7th to the 14th, you can join all the other superheroes of our community and support WERU! Join us for some special programming – and consider becoming a new member, a sustaining member, make an additional gift, or perhaps increase your existing gift – it all adds up and will help make this final drive of 2026 another great one! Call in at 207-469-6600 during the drive, or if you can’t wait, you can give anytime online here. Since losing our federal public service grant in 2025, it has taken heroic effort to make up for that lost funding, and our listeners have truly risen to the challenge – you’re our superheroes!
WERU’s new FM transmitter is on-the-air at full-power! It was a lot of slow and careful work, but thanks to our Chief Engineer, Gil Maxwell, and the great WERU team, we turned on the full-power transmitter on Tuesday, October 6, and it worked – of course! (We’d been running on our small back-up transmitter for several days.)
Last Friday, after great deliberation, we found a solution to safely deliver our new 500 pound transmitter to the top of Blue Hill Mountain. It took a bit of legwork to find a way that was safe for our equipment, people, and the mountain trail, but thanks to the generous collaboration of Blue Hill Heritage Trust, Timberline Communications (a New England outfit coordinating the helicopter transport and labor for T-Mobile’s new cell phone equipment for the tower), and North American Helicopter, we were able to get the transmitter up there!
We are also proud to announce that thanks to generous anonymous donors, we were able to support our local economy by buying a unit made in Bangor at the Nautel US headquarters and factory. How cool is that? We feel grateful to have a local resource to go to if we have any issues with our infrastructure. Hooray for WERU and the support of all those who have made this possible. Thank you!
Calling all teens! Are you into music, painting, pottery, poetry, theater, storytelling, or any other form of artistic expression? Would you like to produce an arts festival featuring the creative work of Maine teens?
There’s a new space called the Youth Arts Council for teens in Downeast and Midcoast Maine to explore arts and culture with other students from across the region. Support for this initiative is coming from Field Note Music in Ellsworth, Torchlight Media in Belfast, Cultural Alliance of Maine, and WERU Community Radio, with funding support from the Maine Arts Commission.
There will be a Kick-off Party on Thursday, October 29, at Field Note Music, 6 State Street in Ellsworth. The gathering will begin at 3 pm with an open mic, free headshots, free pizza, followed by a youth arts meeting and brainstorming session from 4 to 6.
In July the Board of Directors of WERU announced that Kristen Spalding of Orland, Maine would become the next General Manager of the station, and as of September 8 Kristen is on the job!. Kristen grew up in Bucksport, is a graduate of Colby College, and most recently worked in development at Bagaduce Music in Blue Hill, and has also been integrally involved in several music-related initiatives in the region.
In an exclusive for WERU, Noel Paul Stookey and A.S. Aubrey (the pen name of Noel’s daughter, Anna) share songs, poetry, and conversation in radio special that was originally broadcast on July 25 and again August 1.
Hosted and produced by Matt Murphy, the program previews Noel and Anna’s “Listening for the Notes: The Gift of Word & Song in Challenging Times“ which was presented live at the Camden Opera House on Saturday, August 1, where they swapped poems, songs, and stories about the power of listening in these times. We invite you to listen to the program, which is archived here. Many thanks to Noel and Anna for sharing their creativity and insights with us on WERU!
David Dodson is our “Featured Artist of the Week”! Tune in each weekday morning at 7:45 AM (ET) to hear our volunteer disc jockey play at least one song from his Yee Ha! album and then give you a chance to win a FREE pair of guest list passes to see him perform with the following musical guests at First Congregational Church of Camden at 55 Elm Street on Saturday, November 7th from 7 to 9:30 PM:
Michael Nickerson
Will Brown
The Day Family Singers
Stephen Huyler
The Lowdown
Grove St. Extension
DJ Denis will interview David live by telephone on Friday, October 30th at 8:30 AM (ET)!