John Beaudin - Hi Doug and Mary. I'm so very pleased to have you both as guests on the site.

Doug Kirk - Thanks for having us John.

John - When you started the Wave were there people who thought you were nuts for going with Smooth Jazz?

Doug - When we decided to do it I don't think there were enough people who knew enough about Smooth Jazz to even know if we were nuts or not. (laughing) I know you know the history of it John but I'll explain it. Of course we knew the history of the format, I'd learned about it through my visits to the U.S. and vacations there. So we decided to put something together, found a frequency in the market and just put the thing in. We just thought it was something that should have been in Canada.

John - But it's a huge leap of faith to go from being a fan to starting a radio station. You put your money where your mouth was. Through the years I've had my share of rich business men come up to me and say they wanted to start a Smooth Jazz radio station. Interestingly, there was not one man standing after I explained to them what needed to be done in order to get a license and then comes the costs.

Doug - It was a huge investment that came from an idea that was intriguing enough for the C.R.T.C. to give us a license to try it and we've been working four years since to make it work and it's really starting to happen now.

John - I think we should point out that The Wave is not a specialty license.

Doug - That's right it isn't.

John - Because you could change formats any day with out reason or excuse but you've stuck to it.

Doug - Yes but even though it's not a specialty license we're still doing what we proposed and remember we have made some adjustments in the format. I'm sure the Wright brothers didn't have the airplane right on their first flight. We've used the first couple of years to really sell the format and now it's really becoming accepted especially since we've increased the coverage.

John - How far back do both of you go with this format? How long have you both been fans?

Mary Kirk - I think we go back almost to the beginning. We first discovered it in Florida when we were down there on vacation. We got there and we listened to Smooth Jazz out of Fort Meyers and really when we travel we try to tune in every Smooth Jazz station we can pick up. We really love the format and we shook our heads every year when we heard there was nothing at all like this going on in Canada anywhere.

John - Well nothing 24/7, no actual Smooth Jazz radio stations but there were specialty shows, not many sure but they were there and I was playing between 28 and 42 hours of Smooth Jazz each week between 1986 to present day and that's on commercial radio.

Mary - I don't think we thought we were nuts for trying it though, we thought Canadians were nuts for not having tried it a long time ago. (laughing) I think we've proven that we're not nuts. It's been embraced for people like us who have been starved for this kind of music. We felt there was a huge gap in the Toronto market that wasn't really being filled.

Doug - By the way John the Toronto market is more now than just Toronto, it's the greater Toronto area. It's Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa, all those stations are to some extent overlapping areas and so on.

John - Doug for you how far back do you remember hearing some semblance of the Smooth Jazz format?

Doug - It would have been the Brazilian wave in 1963. It was Wes Montgomery in the 60's prior to his very premature passing. I think those to me were the origins of Smooth Jazz with Dave Brubeck and "Take Five." This was a different type of Jazz. You know John people often question us by saying "Smooth Jazz isn't Jazz." Well, it depends how you define Jazz because Jazz is a very broad musical style. If you go to the U.S. Jazz is broader than the 1950's and 60's improvisational Jazz and unfortunately there seems to be that definition in some parts of Canada. There are Jazz elements in the Guitars and Saxes concerts. We have people taking something and building on it, that's part of the music so is it Jazz? Well, maybe it's not Jazz the way you think of Jazz but maybe this Smooth Jazz is the new Jazz. It's contemporary instrumental music and if you want to call parts of it Jazz you're right it is. Smooth Jazz is a brand where all this music fits together with the vocal music interspersed in it. I think the other thing you can call it is music for grown ups. There's a marvelous phrase from BET where they call it grown up music.

Mary - It's funny though when you see those grown ups attending live Smooth Jazz performances all they want to do is act like kids. (laughing)

John - (laughing) Well said. One thing I like about Smooth Jazz it combines a lot of the elements of where we adults all came from and in concert there isn't always a lot of Smooth at a Smooth Jazz concert. These artists can really play.

Doug - Oh yeah they can rip it up and the audience is on its feet for half of the concert. I think once an audience experiences it then it becomes cool to them. Remember though it's not ear shattering loud blasting music. It's played at tolerable volumes and it's exceptionally played and that's where people get wowed by it because the artistry is just phenomenal.

John - Well, this is for both of you, who has just floored you live?

Doug - You go first Mary. (laughing)

Mary - (laughing) No, you go first.

John - Come on Mary I know your dying to say Warren Hill? (laughing)

Mary - (laughing) Well, Warren is pretty eye popping live, he puts on a pretty spectacular performance and there is no sax player anywhere that plays with more passion than Warren does. People in these parts are still talking about his part in the Guitar and Saxes show. The audience was really moved, they were emotionally overcome particularly by Warren's performance.

John - How about you Doug?

Doug - Larry Carlton. Carlton I think taught younger guitarists like Jeff Golup and people of that ilk.

John - I know you both just saw Jose Feliciano.

Mary - We really didn't go there as Smooth Jazz aficionados but you know some of the stuff fits and he's really quite a riveting performer. (laughing) He also does wonderful impersonations of people like Gordon Lightfoot, he's a very funny man.

John - You have had with the exception of Mike Marshall leaving and a few tweaks here and there the same core line up since the beginning.

Doug - Yes, the same core line up of voices are still there other than Mike Marshall leaving and the people working news are all original from the beginning so yes the one air consistency has been there at the station. The thing that we have really worked on is getting the music evolved so it sounds really sweet.

Mary - Bob Farrow deserves a lot of credit for that, Bob and I have worked really closely on the music.

Doug - (laughing) You have to give Mary a lot of credit she's really underselling herself.

Mary - I think one of the primary reasons we've been able to keep our on-air staff so consistent is that we've hired people who have all fallen in love with the format. I don't think they were very familiar with it when they first came on board but I think you know John because you and Vickie correspond often that she doesn't listen to any other format than Smooth Jazz.

John - You now have a stronger signal with The Wave in Hamilton. What was the problem before you were heard in Toronto, right?

Doug - Toronto? Not even that far.

John - Did you reach Toronto before and are you in there now?

Doug - If you really tried you could haul it in with noise in Toronto.

John - Well, I get emails from some of your fans in Toronto.

Mary - Doug, we are in Toronto.

Doug - Yeah, we are in Toronto now.

Mary - You could get us in the car before but you couldn't get it in too many buildings with any consistency but now it's coming into Toronto especially in the west end. In the car it's pretty solid right in the core of Toronto.

John - There's your validation right there.

Doug - Sure but the real reason for the change was that there were parts of Hamilton and Burlington that couldn't get the signal well when we started.

John - We have stopped doing the Canadian Smooth Jazz chart on this site but when we last did it 4-5 months ago I was surprised to see you spin your top currents only 6-7 times in a week. That's a really low weekly spin for a current.

Doug - Well since then that number might have gone up a bit.

Mary - Never the less we do play a less repetitive rotation than a lot of the Smooth Jazz stations do.

Doug - We have a current list that may cycle through maybe once or maybe twice a day at the most. It's enough to build familiarity but not enough to burn it into the ground.

John - Where do you think the format is going, some think it could be Chill and these people are a minority but others think it will go more retro.

Doug - Did you hear about the New York station?

John - Yeah CD-101

Mary - I don't know if they will go Chill but they're re-labeling the station and putting in a lot more Chill into their play list.

John - Well, obviously that's where they think its going and you know.....

Mary - I agree with what they're doing to a point but I think that it can go in several different directions at once.

John - Well, market for market there could be......

Mary - We are incorporating a little bit of Chill and we're working on incorporating even more in the evening programming.