Today we’d like to introduce you to Barry Lee.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in Independence, Missouri. When I was 8 years old, I was given my first portable radio by my grandmother. Music became my passion, my sanctuary, my happy place. When I started buying 45s, I pretended to be a DJ and had my own top 10 records each week. Once I got a transistor radio with an earphone, I would listen to music until late at night, searching out AM stations around the country. When I was in college at UMKC, I had the chance to do a radio show at Rockhurst College in the fall of 1974. I did a free-form underground show for a semester there. After graduation, I got a job that let me travel the country doing Federal hearings as a court reporter, giving me an opportunity to see much of the country while still young. In the fall of 1986, I attended a Communiversity class at UMKC called “Radio For The Hell Of It.” It was a recruitment class for what became KKFI, Kansas City’s first community radio station. When we went on the air in February of 1988, I was there at the first broadcast. Films of this event are on You Tube. My radio show started in April of 1988 called “Matrix.” It was a free-form show much like the one I did in college. A few years later, I changed the name to “Signal To Noise,” which airs on Thursday mornings at 10:00. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of having as guests many of Kansas City and Lawrence’s finest musicians, poets, and writers. I’ve also interviewed national artists such as Townes Van Zandt, Tom Russell, Rosie Flores, Vince Giordano, and Elijah Wald, I recently broadcast my 1000th show on KKFI. When COVID hit, I got it early on. I was sick for a month. Since I had to avoid contact with people, I started traveling around to small towns in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. In every small town, I would find unique and beautiful old buildings, which I started to photograph. I’ve amassed over 200 photos of unique buildings throughout the Midwest. I’m fascinated by not only the unique architecture, but how the elements change the colors and textures of the buildings. Around this time I also began doing audio restoration of old records, removing flaws, surface noise and restoring them to their original sounds. I’ve collected over 300 albums of remastered recordings. In 2016, I started a band called Broken Arrows with four of Kansas City’s finest musicians. We made two albums and played most venues in KC and Lawrence until our last show in 2019. I was also in a band called the Jubilee Mystics, where I played guitar and sang a few songs. Before they became popular, I produced a series of tribute concerts as benefits for KKFI involving close to 75 KC and Lawrence musicians. I did six or seven Beatles tributes, a tribute to Pete Seeger held at Unity Temple, a Cosmic American Music concert at Knuckleheads with members of Gene Clark’s family in attendance. Gene was a founding member of the Byrds and a KC resident before that time. I also participated in poetry readings with poets Jose Faus, Mary Silwance, Frank Higgins and Maria Vasquez Boyd. I started writing prose and poetry at UMKC in the early ’70s. In recent years, I mostly devote myself to audio restoration, my radio show, and traveling. If asked, I will perform solo concerts these days, or duos with friends.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve been lucky. My life has mostly been smooth and pleasurable. If there were struggles, they were in the early days of KKFI when we never knew from month to month if the station would be able to stay on the air. I’m proud to say, we’re on solid ground, now, and a fixture in Kansas City media.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My radio shows are my proudest achievements. I don’t play random tracks. Each show takes almost a full day to program. I create my shows with a combination of subconscious memory and free association. Each show is a journey into another musical world. I don’t play a lot of familiar music. I try and give listeners a variety of genres and present artists and bands that I feel could inspire people, or make them happy, or change their minds. I show that good music is timeless. A song recorded in 1925 and a song recorded in 2025 are the same to me, if they are beyond category and transcend time. I also use the songs to tell stories, create dialogues between the songs, present new ideas or a new take on an old theme. This is what makes my show unique, I believe. When I have local musicians, poets, or writers on my show, I give them an hour to present their art so that they have time to unwind, relax without worrying about time constraints. I love doing interviews, which I frame as conversations, rather than questions and answers. I’m proud of my poetry, which I have been able to read in a variety of venues over recent years.
How do you think about happiness?
Music makes me happy. It’s my meditation. When I was young, confused, depressed, it was a different world to enter where time ceased and problems vanished. Each song could be a different universe to inhabit. As a writer, reading words artfully used would unlock my brain and stimulate creativity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Barry+Lee%22&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22audio%22
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry.lee.1428/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barry.lee.1428
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrylee614
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/signaltonoisekkfi
