The Austin Chronic: KOOP’s Sunday Reggae Lives On With Roots Train

Art Baker (left) and Dale Smith in the studio (courtesy of Dale Smith)

What does a Sunday sound like to you: church bells and echoing prayer? The accents of nature on an afternoon hike? The din of a busy outdoor market?

To myself, and thousands of others in Austin, Sunday sounds like reggae. Since the Nineties, our community radio station, KOOP 91.7FM, has aired two hours of tranquil dubs, righteous roots, and open-hearted rocksteady in the early afternoon. It’s a match made in Zion, one might say: because Sunday is the purest day and reggae is a music of purity.

When the genre’s most famous unit, Bob Marley & the Wailers, released their second live album of the Seventies, its art design included a ticket stub for a concert at the Austin Municipal Auditorium – July 27, 1978. Of course that record’s title, Babylon by Bus, implies that the band was touring into societies that were hellish systems of struggle and corruption. Still, the argument could be made that Austin is a solid base for lovers of Jamaican music. We have a 30-year-running reggae festival, a dedicated venue in Flamingo Cantina, and record stores that stock full sections of the art form. The best evidence of reggae’s high regard in our city, though, is that Jamaican Gold was consistently KOOP’s most popular show.

Until it ended in May.

Since 1998, Art Baker drenched listeners in equally portioned pools of ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dub – mostly representing a 25-year arc from the early Sixties to the mid-Eighties. A low-key presence on the air, Baker spoke through selection and sequence, allowing connections to be drawn psychically and exquisite moods to be nurtured on Jamaican Gold, which became widely respected by music connoisseurs and generations of Sunday stoners.

When a long run ends, the obvious question is, “Why did you stop?” – Baker cites a need to “refresh and recharge” after 1,300 shows and holding elected leadership positions at the station – but it’s more reasonable to wonder what kept Baker going for a quarter-century.

“At first it was probably just sharing the music, which I think is pretty universal for music DJs, but the synergy of doing live radio was the unique draw that kept me interested,” he reasons. “Making that compact with the listeners: If I play strong stuff that flows and present it in an engaging manner with as few hiccups as possible, they’ll keep coming back. We earn each other’s trust every week, and it all goes out [in] real time with only a delay as a safety net. It’s a really fun wave, and we all get to ride it.”

Two months into his radio retirement, the Austin-raised DJ isn’t ready to contextualize what Jamaican Gold meant to Austin.

“I get a little wary of legacy, since I think it’s usually others that define it, but I have had people tell me their children grew up listening to me... questionable choice, but flattering!” he continues. “Some of those children now have kids of their own, repeating the cycle, which actually boggles my brain a bit.

“Listeners have also shared some truly moving stories in which the show was a part of an important personal moment for them – some sweet, some rough, but each deeply meaningful. Those stories really hit me in the feels.”

In the late spring, when Baker announced that he’d be signing off, sadness spilled out on social media and message boards from longtime listeners professing how deeply they’d miss Jamaican Gold. As it turned out, though, they wouldn’t have to change their radio presets.

“Big shoes to fill,” laughs Dale Smith, the new Sunday reggae general on KOOP.

Smith has been volunteering with KOOP since 2017, serving as the station’s webmaster, trainer, and tech team leader, while also putting the needle down on reggae records every Tuesday via his Roots Train program. So when Baker announced the retirement of 91.7’s flagship show, “Selector Dale” was tapped to keep the Sunday vibe unbroken.

“They gave me the spot and nobody complained,” he shrugs.

Smith became fully enchanted by the righteous sounds of Jamaica when he witnessed Peter Tosh perform at Southpark Meadows in 1983. He quickly exhausted Austin’s reggae vinyl market – then mostly consisting of a small section at Waterloo Records – and began collecting imports via mail order as well as making trips to Jamaica to hit the record stores.

As I observe him in the studio on a Sunday in late July, Smith is building into a theme of singles – the essential format of Jamaican music’s golden era – with cuts like Bobby Thomas’ “Dread In a Babylon” and Linton Haughton’s “Hustling Man.” Avoidant of any song you might hear on another radio station, he pulls from a deep bag of recordings that you can’t even find on streaming services.

Asked about his archives, Smith tells me of a magical source: this record collector and DJ he’s twice visited in L.A.

“He has a storage warehouse just full of reggae records,” Smith says, gesturing floor-to-ceiling. “And he’s been selling his collection for 10 years, but every record he sells he records it first and he’s just loaded me down with them. I have folders and folders of music you can’t look up with Shazam.”

Exposing listeners to rare music is an honorable community service, and Smith – who admits that cannabis is a performance-enhancing drug when it comes to sequencing reggae radio playlists – is seeing listenership from the community. Saturday’s Lounge Show is now KOOP’s most listened-to program, but Roots Train clocks a close second. Meanwhile, Baker’s pleased his successor is keeping the candle burning.

“That time slot and frequency are definitely associated in Austin with archival Jamaican music, so I’m excited my friend Dale’s the new tenant, as it were,” he says. “The music is as near and dear to him as it is to me, and he’s got a fantastic collection and knowledge base. The listeners are in great hands.”