Music Head

By the mid-1990s, Wheat was programming and hosting a weekly Zone 105 show, Across the Pond, that featured imported European music. Then he heard that Radio K’s program-coach position was open. “For five years, it was a dream job,” he says. “I got to do radio every week [a weekend show, The Music Lovers’ Club], and I got to help young adults and give them a place on campus to come as music heads”—Wheat’s term for people, like him, whose lives are ruled by music.

For more than a year, one of his Music Lovers’ Club listeners—German ceramics artist Maren Kloppmann—frequently called the show. They bonded over electronic and downbeat music, and she occasionally sent him albums she liked. When they finally met, they realized they had much in common as expatriates and self-defined “world citizens,” as successful members in their chosen fields, and as lovers of water—both grew up in port towns, which accounts for their new apartment in a Minneapolis high rise overlooking the Mississippi River. They’ve been married for almost three years. 

Wheat joined The Current a couple of weeks before the station went live. “How often do you get the chance to be involved in creating a radio station?” he asks. “And not just any radio station, but one run by Minnesota Public Radio? This is probably the best place to be in the nation right now. I feel like I’m at the top of my career.”

Some listeners have made Wheat a local-scene icon, creating pop art and seed-art images of him and writing a biographical entry about him on wikipedia.org, a popular online encyclopedia. He’s praised on blogs and shows up everywhere: cohosting the Minnesota Music Awards; reviewing music on American Public Media’s national radio show Weekend America; reading the shout-outs on the last track of A Tiger Dancing, the newest album by St. Paul hip-hop band Heiruspecs; and being featured in such glossy metro magazines as this one.

After twenty years of hard work, he’s becoming more than just a faceless radio voice.

“I’m conscious of fame,” he says. “I’m conscious of not letting it spoil me or go to my head or all those things. But I enjoy it. I’ll admit to always wanting a certain level of celebrity status.”

John Peel’s formidable presence is with Wheat every night: “He never lost that genuine enthusiasm of the fan,” Wheat says. “He never thought he was bigger than the music, and that’s one thing that guides me.”

Wheat appreciated the Twin Cities’ music scene—especially the Replacements and Soul Asylum—years before he lived here. “I used to help out a WFMU DJ who’d come to Minneapolis once or twice a year to check out what was happening,” he says. But Wheat’s affection and respect for the scene aren’t simply nostalgic. Last year, when Minneapolis’s Rhymesayers Entertainment label had three releases in the College Music Journal list of top ten hip-hop albums, Wheat interviewed LA-based rapper and spoken-word artist Busdriver, who said that Rhymesayers is the thing in independent hip-hop. Wheat agreed, then “explained that you can go down the list, and in pretty much every genre, we have strong artists working in the Twin Cities.”

He says The Current’s success depends on the scene: “Some people have said, ‘The Current has totally re-energized the local music scene.’ I back off that. The scene was very strong and healthy anyway. We happen to be here. We couldn’t play as much local stuff as we do if the scene weren’t so strong.”