Walter & Willa Volz / DJ

Walter & Willa Volz, A little back ground how we got to this point.

Growing up as a kid I always loved the picking of Flatt & Scruggs playing on the Beverly Hillbillies, but never knew there was an actual genre for this music. Tuning in to FM radio, rock & roll was what I listened to but gravitated to the singer songwriter type. My wife Willa’s grandfather, uncles, aunt and her father all played instruments as did her sister. So music ran in her family.

One day Willa wanted to take her parents to see the Sally Mountain Show as her father was from Queen City and knew the Vincent family. It was my first live bluegrass experience and I was hooked on the clarity of the music and the musicianship, something I had never witnessed before.

I found a college radio station that played bluegrass four nights and tuned in regularly. One particular DJ was Gene Roberts that I found to be as down to earth as one could be, not to mention the wealth of bluegrass and country music information he contained. I was turned on to another station that played bluegrass on Saturday mornings. We became friends with the DJ’s and we soon became volunteers at that station. A couple of years later the hosts of the bluegrass show moved to another station and another volunteer who we had became friends with filled in for a short time and I told him how cool it would be to be on the radio and he invited me to sit in with him for a short time, until a permanent replacement was found. The permanent replacement was Keith Dudding who I called after a couple of weeks of listening, to see if he needed or wanted any help. I told him I’d pull music, answer phones or just get him coffee. After that first show he asked if I was coming back the next Saturday. After that, you couldn’t pry me out with a crowbar. During the five and half years of being a co-host on that show, I was also invited by Gene Roberts to engineer for him on the other station. I and my wife Willa also filled in for Gary Price for a couple of years on Tuesday evenings. Then in January, 1999 we were offered our own show on Sunday’s and I combined the knowledge from all the DJ’s I worked with and we created the Bluegrass Breakdown which, we both hosted until Oct. 1^st when we decided to leave, but that’s another story.

We were contacted by Jim Grubbs of The Bluegrass Jamboree who put us in contact with Annette Grady and that is what brings us to this point and we are honored to be part of the team. And the story continues.