© 2021
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our Redding transmitter is offline due to an internet outage at our Shasta Bally site. This outage also impacts our Burney and Dunsmuir translators. We are working with our provider to find a solution. We appreciate your patience during this outage.

Staff Profile: Nolan Ford

Sesar Sanchez

North State Radio’s (NSPR) Nolan Ford is nothing if not a multitasker.

He began working for the station in 2013 as a part-time board operator hosting during All Things Considered. In the four years since, he has assumed the full-time role of music director, taken on the production of local programs Nancy’s Bookshelf and Blue Dot, and launched the station’s in-studio musical performance series, Songs From Studio C.

These duties make for a busy week, but Ford enjoys the juggling act. It forces him to be organized, he said, but within each role he gets the chance to exercise creativity.

“I like the challenge of needing to be really good with time management and kind of design a consistent routine,” he said. “I know it’s a bad habit to multitask, but it’s fun and it makes the week go by fast.”

Ford grew up in Chico, moving to the city at age eight from Southern California and attending local schools including Pleasant Valley High School and Chico State, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in media arts and later earned a teaching credential. Before landing at NSPR, he held a series of long-term substitute teacher positions, teaching math at schools in Red Bluff, Oroville, and Chico. Teaching was rewarding he said, but he found himself wanting to pursue a career that was aligned with his passion for media production and his love of music.

In 2012, he became managing editor of the former Chico entertainment paper the Synthesis Weekly, for which he had previously contributed articles. He loved the job, he said, because it allowed him to be creative every day and leveraged his connections to the local music scene. But he didn’t get paid much, and it was tough to make ends meet. When a part-time board operator position at NSPR opened, Ford applied and ended up getting the job—right around the same time as he accepted another position as a refund processor for LuLus.com. So he suddenly found himself working about 60 hours a week, working all day at LuLu’s before heading to the station for his evening shift. It was a busy, intense year before the opportunity to become full-time at NSPR presented itself in 2014.

“The skills they needed were kind of in my wheelhouse—both with audio editing and the music director duties, and continuing to host in the midday,” Ford said. “But my favorite thing about the job has been the opportunity to produce Songs From Studio C.”

Songs From Studio C, which Ford launched in November 2015, is an in-studio music program à la NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert that highlights local and touring artists through interviews and live performance. The show's mission is to provide a platform for lesser-known musicians and to share the stories behind their songs as well as the methods behind their craft. The show is edited into four-minute segments that can be heard within All Things Considered and Morning Edition, but Ford and his team also produce high-definition videos of each guest's performance that are available online.

“I feel like the happiest I am when I’m here is right after we’ve finished recording a session because it’s just a thrill to set these artists up for success and give them a platform, and then conduct interviews that show a sincere interest in their art and what they’re doing,” Ford said. “And it’s really creative. It’s always been a dream to be a career musician or a producer, so to even experience a taste of that and get paid for it is really great.”

In his free time, Ford plays music in a band called The Rugs, and has also put out one solo album. Currently, he is rehearsing for a reunion show for the first band he was ever in, called The Secret Stolen, and is in the early stages of developing a comedy show with his brother. Though continuing with his passion projects on the side, Ford says he loves having a role in bringing public radio programs to the North State, and being a part of the community of people who listen to NSPR.

“I love being connected to what's happening in the world,” he said. “I love coming here in the morning and listening to Fresh Air and The Takeaway, and the hourly news updates, and then being able to feel like I can have an intelligent conversation about what's happening. I invite challenging conversations, and I feel like being a part of this station makes me even more able to participate in those discussions in a mutually beneficial way. So, I’ll stay in the industry as long as they’ll have me.”