Back in November. you might have chanced upon and listened to a surprise on-air collaboration between Tim Parson, one of the hosts of On the Wing Monday, and his sister, Anne. What a show it was! Tim and Anne together played a selection from their family collection of 45s, all old vinyl spun on the studio’s two turntables. Listening to that amazing show made us want to know more about this co-host of Monday’s edition of On the Wing. Meet Tim Parson.

I’d always liked WERU, but it would not have occurred to me to volunteer until my wife heard an on-air “ad” saying the station needed a new host for Monday Morning Maine. This was back in 2018—I’d recently retired, and it seemed like something I could do to help the community. I asked my son, Ben, who’d had a radio show in high school, if he’d do it with me, and he said yes. Not long after that, we made our debut. Eventually Ben’s real-world work took him away, and I got tired of the very-early hours of Morning Maine (those DJs are heroes!). An every-other-week slot of On the Wing is just right for me.

Growing up, my parents often had music on in the house: country, bluegrass, Strauss waltzes, the Tijuana Brass. No rock ’n’ roll, but eventually I got my own radio and could tune into the top-40 on WRKO (we lived outside Boston). The single “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees was the first record I ever bought. Things just grew from there, aided and abetted by siblings and friends. 

For me, music is a release, a time machine, a companion. Depending on the song, the key element can be lyrics or melody or how it’s played—or sometimes all three. Many people I know care less about music as they’ve gotten older—or just want to hear songs they know—but I’ve remained interested in new music as well as old. The need to come up with approximately 45 songs for each On the Wing show I host keeps me involved!  

If I have a “secret knowledge base” that I bring to my volunteer work at the station, I would say I’m very into maps and geography (which sometimes trickles into on-air trivia questions I pose about “what unites these 3 songs?”). Maps are a key part of my favorite sport, orienteering, which involves navigating through unfamiliar terrain with a very detailed map. I’ve orienteered all over the U.S. and Canada, and in Europe. Unfortunately, there’s not much orienteering in Maine, but sailing among Maine’s islands is a pretty good substitute.  

I am passionate about community radio because it’s free and it’s free-form, and it unites the community. I get calls from listeners who mention what they’re doing while listening—sometimes they’re herding goats or raking blueberries—and I love the fact that what I’m playing is being enjoyed all over this beautiful area, and, via the web, out in the greater world far beyond Maine.  

One of my favorite memories of volunteering at WERU comes from a few months back, in late 2024. I had my sister Anne join me as a guest co-host to play old 45s from our family collection. We have a big box full of them, heavy on early ’70s top-40 and early ’80s punk/new wave. For most songs, we’d have a story or at least a comment, keeping it light, but I think our focus was also a reflection on shared experience and memory, and a testament to the indelible power of music in people’s lives. By the end of the show there were 45s and scraps of paper all over the studio counters: sublime non-digital chaos!

If you are interested in volunteering at WERU, I recommend you talk to the powers that be about what your talents are and give it a try. We need many people in different types of roles to power the station, not just programmers. I never would have imagined myself as an on-air programmer, but now volunteering as a DJ at WERU feels like home.