The Daily Catch

Heartbroken but Healing, Barb Stanley Reconfirms Her Commitment to Radio Station WKZE



Barb Stanley, though grief-stricken, has redoubled her commitment to local radio station WKZE (photo by Emily Sachar)

It was a pleasant afternoon in mid-June when Barb Stanley looked down at her phone and smiled. She saw a text message from her husband, Will, who was trying to bake a chocolate cake. He’d never baked, not once. 

Barb and Will texted a lot. They had to in order to stay connected. Since 2014, the two had lived 1,100 miles apart: Barb in Ocala, Fla., and Will in Red Hook. Barb’s love for horses pulled her to Ocala, where she owns and operates a horse farm. Ocala is renowned for its extensive farms and horse training programs. It’s one of those places, like Kentucky, where horse lovers want to be. 

Before the Covid pandemic, the two frequently visited each other. But, when the pandemic took hold, they were apart for a year-and-a-half, from January 2020 to May 2021. They didn’t want to risk transmitting the virus to each other or among family and friends. 

So, to be safe, Barb and Will stayed put. In 33 years together,  it was the longest they’d ever been apart. 

“We’ve always had a really strong relationship,” Barb said. “It takes a strong relationship to make something like that successful. We talked almost every day and if we weren’t talking, we were texting.”

Will visited Barb in Ocala for a month in May. By then, they felt it was safe, and they needed time together. 

Will had never joined Barb full-time in Florida because he held down the fort on their passion project in Red Hook. Since 2004, Barb and Will co-owned WKZE, 98.1/105.9 FM, a radio station known for playing deep cuts — that is, lesser-known tunes — from a wide range of genres: folk, funk, blues, and rock-and-roll. The station is located on North Broadway near the Elmendorph Inn. Artists like Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, Van Morrison and Emmylou Harris have frequented the KZE airwaves. 

Barb Stanley at her horse farm in Ocala, Fla. (Photo courtesy of Barb Stanley).

Will never pressed Barb to leave Florida. He understood the depth of her horse-loving passion, which originated in New England during childhood. And there was always a lot to talk about during their phone chats. Barb remained involved with the station, inquiring about the latest staff news, and Will jokingly provided real-estate counseling; Barb also works as a real estate agent in Ocala, selling horse farms. 

But on that day back in mid-June, when Will sought to make a chocolate cake, work wasn’t the topic. Baking pans were. 

“What kind of a pan do I need?” Will texted. 

A slew of potential pan images followed. 

“No, no, that’s ceramic,” Barb replied. “No, you can’t use that, either.” 

One pan picture after another and no luck. In fact, it took another 24 hours and several trips to the store for Will to find the right pan and produce his first cake. He then texted a photo of the finished product, with just a small sliver missing. 

“You need to have more than just one piece,“ Barb texted back. 

Will wanted to watch his weight. He told Barb he had eaten a bit too well during his recent Florida visit. He had to lay off. Barb held her ground, jokingly. 

“You earned it, you need another piece,” she texted back. “You didn’t have one yesterday, you can have another.” 

Then, Barb put down her phone and continued her day on the farm. 

That was the last time she would speak with her husband. Three days later, on June 20, Father’s Day, after a day of radio station business and conversations with passersby in Red Hook Village, Will laid down on his couch to relax. Soon after, he suffered a stroke. He died with his beloved dog, Willa, a Schnauzer mix, by his side, and an empty cake pan in the sink. 

“I am literally in heartbreak,” Barb said in a far-ranging interview. “Everything in my life changed. I was in shock then and still am, but I knew I had to get [to Red Hook].”

Heading North

The week after Will died, Barb drove from Ocala to Red Hook, leaving her six horses in a neighbor’s care. After a month of going back and forth to make sure her farm and real estate business are in order, she now has returned to Red Hook, her three dogs with her, ready to take charge of WKZE and answer a question that has lingered on the lips of many in the Village for weeks since Will’s death: What will become of the radio station?  

Just over a week ago, at an Aug. 19 staff meeting, the first since Will’s death, Barb led the team in a reminiscence of his life, began to chart next steps, and reaffirmed the truth she says she always knew: that WKZE will stay very much alive, operating at full strength.

Lydia Pidlusky, WKZE operations manager and Weekday Midday Show host (photo by Emily Sachar)

“I owe it to our staff, to the listeners, and to the entire community to not let this fail,” Barb said. “I need to pick this up. I owe it to everyone who has been part of the station.”

Now, Barb, 67, is breaking in her new day-to-day role, essentially learning Will’s job. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fully licensed her as sole owner, making Barb one of only about 300 female owners of commercial FM stations nationwide.  She’s mastering the ins and outs of staff schedules, familiarizing herself with the revenues and expenses of the station, and staying in touch with the station’s lawyers. 

The WKZE Legacy

WKZE’s history is intertwined with much of Barb’s life. She grew up in New England and moved around as a child and young adult in New Hampshire and Vermont during the 1970s and ’80s. Music and horses were two constants.

“Music has always touched me deeply, to the bone,” Barb said. “I’m one of those people who cannot listen to a song without some part of my body moving.”

To feed that passion, Barb got into the radio business in the 1980s. She took a sales position at a station in Springfield, Vermont, which was near WHDQ-106, where Will was sales manager and one of three owners. The two ran into each other at a sales mixer put on by the U.S. Air Force, one of Barb’s clients. 

“Will asked me to dance, and later that night he asked me to dance again,” Barb said. “By the end of the night we were just talking and dancing together.” 

They started dating in 1988, which also marked the beginning of their joint radio journey. They moved around to stations in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and got married in 1993. In 2004, they bought WKZE, which was then in Connecticut, and decided, in 2006, to move the station to Red Hook, where its signal reaches the Hudson Valley and Catskills region of New York, stretching up to Albany and down to Newburgh, as well as Southern Berkshire County, Massachusetts and the Northwest corner of Connecticut. The station has about 40,000 listeners with between 4,000 and 7,000 tuning in at any one time.

The computer guts of WKZE (photo by Emily Sachar).

Barb and Will wanted to move to Red Hook, and bring the station along with them, because of what they saw in the people — an openness to listen to the range of music the station plays — and also because, in the pre-Internet days, Red Hook was an optimal location to locate a transmitter to maximize listener access.

“Red Hook people are very down-to-earth,  progressive and open-minded,” Barb said.  “It’s just a real organic town and the right kind of audience for the station.”

After buying the station, Barb and Will expanded on its original mission to provide an alternative to mainstream radio. In the radio business, it’s called Adult Album Alternative (AAA), a format that operates on the fringe of mainstream pop and rock as well as many other music genres such as indie rock, Americana, pop rock, classic rock, alternative rock, alternative country, jazz, folk, world music, jam band and blues.

“We wanted to build a station that was really about music,” Barb said. “We wanted to reach the people who weren’t about the corporate dollar.”

Today’s Music Focus

That remains the mission today. WKZE’s framework is diametrically opposite to the mainstream radio music format. Where mainstream stations have formulated corporate advertisement breaks and a fixed top-40 song rotation, WKZE maintains a hard drive of more than 10,000 songs from all over the world, ready to be hand-selected for play by the station’s 10 DJs. The majority of listeners are within the local regions the station services, but about 40 percent come from across the country and the world, as far away as New Zealand, tuning in via the station’s app, “WKZE Live.” 

Since the 1970s, the so-called “hot hits” model has been at the core of mainstream radio. Platforms such as iHeartRadio, the largest radio broadcaster in the country, typically program songs to be played from the Billboard Top 40, the most popular songs in the United States.

Will Baylies, WKZE production manager and host of Afternoon Drive (photo by Emily Sachar)

WKZE takes a far different approach. On the weekdays, the station plays music that originates from all over the world that fits WKZE’s eclectic mix. On weekends, music is interspersed with a talk show called “The Garden Show,” along with music events dedicated to specific genres. For instance, a program on Saturday called “Movin’ and Groovin’ ” plays funk, reggae, salsa, and rock.

While the station still plays well-known groups like The Rolling Stones and Steely Dan, DJs call up songs that aren’t as well-known. Among them: the late folk-and-country artist Nanci Griffith, Habib Koité from Mali, and blues musicians Taj Mahal and Guy Davis. The station will also play up-and-coming artists like bluegrass guitarist Billy Strings. A smooth 1950s Miles Davis tune can be heard opposite a hard-hitting Chuck Berry track. This is the type of variation that Lydia Pidlusky, WKZE’s operations manager and weekday host of the Midday Show, said she most enjoys. 

“I find it really fun to announce, ‘this was a recording from 1936 and now we’re going to hear something that’s being released next month,’ ” Pidlusky said. “I just get a little bit of a thrill from that, because you’re not going to hear that anywhere else.”

Barb and Will, back in the day (photo courtesy Barb Stanley).

It’s those types of decisions that DJ Rick Schneider, who is also the station’s music director, said make the station unique. Schneider’s car is filled with hundreds of CDs, sent to him by record labels and independent artists from a range of genres. A trained vocalist who has appeared with several bands in the Hudson Valley, Schneider picks through them to decide what new music WKZE should play. 

When he hears songs that stand out, those he wants to hear again and again, he adds them to the hard drive, the data storage device that contains all WKZE’s well of tunes. Any one tune gets a maximum of 14 spins a week or twice a day. 

“That way a really big song for us three years ago is still something that somebody will consider to be new,” Schneider said. “The songs become like old friends, you remember them from a long time ago.”

Keeping a Tune Alive

A perfect example is the attention the station has paid to the country music singer Jack Grace. Grace, who has been in the music industry for 30 years and lives in Peekskill, said WKZE has kept his song “Sugar Bear” in rotation since 2008. 

“People come to my shows in the area, and they’ll shout out for ‘Sugar Bear,’ ” Grace said. “I almost always say yes to them. WKZE has made that song of mine kind of a classic in the area.”

A more recent Barb and Will Stanley (photo courtesy of Barb Stanley).

Schneider said keeping the sound refreshing is his main goal. 

“I’ll think to myself, ‘There’s something very special to that song and I want to play it on the radio first thing tomorrow morning,’” Schneider said. “The staton is like a boutique, where everything is hand-picked for listeners.” 

This format, the same formula Barb and Will established in 2004, remains her vision for the future. Other than bringing more awareness to the station’s streaming app, Barb doesn’t want to tweak much of what’s worked for decades. 

“The station is so interesting in itself that I would be a fool to change too much,” Barb said. “It’s one of those things you just don’t want to mess with.” 

Over the years, companies offered to buy the station, but Barb and Will turned them down. Barb and Will have four children and four grandchildren, who are not involved with the station, but who live and work across the country, in Vermont, Maine, Washington, and Massachusetts. 

“They’re just going to change it,” Barb said of potential suitors through the years. “Sure, we could have had more money in the bank, but that was not what it was about.” 

Kathy Burns, who lives in Ulster County, has been listening to WKZE since 2005. As a blues fan who is also open to other genres, she appreciates the station’s lack of repetition. 

“It’s a community of people who love music, that’s the bottom line,” Burns said. “I find that really important and refreshing. Music is a huge part of my life, and it’s just exciting to have people around me who are as fired up about it as I am.”

Barb said WKZE might be the best in the country at executing this rare format, and she wants it to continue to flourish. 

“I am so incredibly proud of what we do,” Barb said. “Everybody else is trying to fit into a formula and we aren’t. We’re trying to be the opposite.”

WKZE’s Take on Advertising

The approach also factors into how the station makes its money, through advertising. WKZE accepts no corporate ad dollars from national advertisers, instead driving revenue through local business support.

Will Stanley with his beloved Schnauzer mix, Willa (photo courtesy Barb Stanley)

Paul Higgins, the station’s sales manager, is in charge of creating the ads, which typically involve a client voicing a script Higgins writes up. He tries to let each client’s personality shine without laying down over-produced sounds that drown out the message or that sound overly professional.

“I want to bring out their identity,” Higgins said of his clients. “I don’t have a dentist script, for example, that I just plug an individual dentist name into like Mad Libs. I want to get to the essence of who they are.”

WKZE has over 100 advertisers, largely spread across New Paltz, Red Hook, Kingston and Litchfield County, Conn. During the pandemic, Higgins said about 80 percent of them had to cut back to contain costs. The station began accepting weekly listener donations to make up for the shortfall. 

However, since April, advertising has been steadily on the rise. 

“We’re still not quite where we were in 2019 before the pandemic, but we’re having a good year,” Higgins said. “It’s an encouraging sign that we have a lot of momentum. We got through Covid, and we’re growing.”

Barb said this success, even throughout the pandemic, comes from the station’s tight, cohesive and supportive community. 

With over 400 million music listeners using streaming services, not radio, to listen to music, this sense of community is what makes stations like WKZE important and viable, according to Jeremy Morris, a University of Wisconsin professor who publishes on music and radio. 

“What radio does extremely well is offer a tie to local communities and local music scenes,” Morris said. “It gives a different sense of place than what you might get from more mainstream kinds of conglomerate radio or streaming services.”

Balancing Ocala

Barb said it will be a delicate balance navigating time between Ocala and Red Hook. She’s not quite sure how she’ll split it up. Leading WKZE, Barb said she aims to protect what she sees as a valuable niche. 

“We’re making a difference in people’s lives,” she said. “We’re bringing change and diversity, something listeners can’t find anywhere else. It’s a treasure that needs to be protected.”


Editor’s Note: A celebration of Will Stanley’s life will be held Sunday, Sept. 19 at 1 p.m. at Hardeman’s Orchard. Please RSVP to Barb Stanley at barb@wkze.org

5 responses to “Heartbroken but Healing, Barb Stanley Reconfirms Her Commitment to Radio Station WKZE”

  1. Barb Stanley says:

    I’m honored and so appreciate your time in creating this article!
    Thank you
    Barb Stanley

  2. Paula Geraghty says:

    Beautiful article. Well-written and comprehensive. Good luck, Barb.

  3. Lynne Vickery says:

    What a wonderful legacy for Will. We love Barb and know she will put enormous energy in preserving her love for this entity. She gives all to her passions.

    Lynne and Stan Vickery
    Citra, Fl

  4. Mat Zucker says:

    What a beautiful story. I wish I had known Will and glad I’ve met Barb and the people at WKZE. Also a great reminder to all of us to support local radio just as it supports all of us!

  5. Jane Diamond says:

    I’m so sorry for your loss, but I fully understand the comfort of grooming, riding and conversations with your horse(s). I’ve lived in the village for many years and I’m so glad that your will bring something new to the community.

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