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Zac Louten, a fifth-year new media student, and Trey Allen, a fifth-year broadcast journalism student University of Maine, host the weekly radio show “We’ll Do It Live”, Tuesdays 9 to 11 p.m.
MC: So what kind of music do you guys play on your show?
Trey Allen: Rock, pretty much, on the heavier side. Some might say metal, but it’s not really.
Zac Louten: A lot of people would call it indie and alternative. It’s really hard to define music because a lot of bands will claim to be certain things and there’s a million people telling them that they aren’t. They say everything’s pop.
MC: Who are some of your favorite bands that you play on your show?
ZL: Circa Survive, The Receiving End of Sirens . I like playing Envy On The Coast because they are like an up-and-coming band, and we’ve seen them several times.
TA: Underoath is good, too because they seem to be a pretty big band, but they’re never played on the radio. I’m actually pretty sure that they sent their CD out only to college stations because that’s the only chance they’ll ever get at being played.
ZL: We pretty much just play our favorite bands and hope that everyone else likes it.
MC: Do you guys mostly play from your own stash, or do you utilize the station’s music collection?
ZL: Usually we’ll get pretty bored with ourselves and go into the music library, and we’ll just try to find stuff that we haven’t heard since, like, high school – really old stuff. We try to play things that we think people will want to hear because they probably haven’t heard it in a while. We get a little nostalgic sometimes just going through “the vaults,” as we call it.
MC: When did you guys first meet each other?
ZL: We met freshman year, like, literally the first day of college and have been friends ever since.
MC: Was your similar interest in music what brought you together?
ZL: Sports was the first thing. Then I started showing him some bands, and then he started showing me some bands. .
TA: I think you [Zac] were more interested in it, and then I got way more interested in it and started showing you bands that you hadn’t heard of.
ZL: I didn’t usually deviate from my specific path. I had these core bands and I really listened to them, and he would find new ones.
TA: One of our favorite bands, Circa Survive, I remember he didn’t even like them in the first place.
ZL: I absolutely hated them. He would play it for me in the car, and I would be like, “This is just garbage.” And now they’re probably one of my favorite bands. I always give music a chance.
MC: What has gravitated you guys toward this specific genre?
ZL: I don’t wanna say teenage angst, because that’s just a joke. For me it’s the type of music that is raw. It’s just people chilling at their place in a garage somewhere making it. They’re not necessarily trying to make it big, or make a hit, they’re just trying to make music that they feel. That’s what I like about it, because you can relate to that.
TA: I think another thing I like about it too is it’s more people on our level, who, if you ever went to see them in concert, they wouldn’t be afraid to come and actually talk to you and stuff. They’re not like too big for you or too good for you or anything.
MC: What prompted you guys to get a radio show?
ZL: We love listening to music, and we’d like to think we’re a couple of funny guys. We entertain each other, so we figured why not throw ourselves out on the air and try to play music that people might not hear [on traditional radio]?
TA: The way I figure it is, we get to play music that you never hear on regular radio. We can play pretty much anything we want, and I just like that. We can give bands that we love a chance to get people exposed to them.
MC: Do you guys have fun working as a duo?
ZL: Yeah, definitely. We have this dynamic going because we have been friends for so long. I don’t wanna say we finish each other’s sentences, but we definitely have a really good chemistry, and I think that shows on the radio. Probably the strangest compliment I’ve heard is when people are like, “I don’t really like the music you guys are into, but I love listening to you guys talk.”
“We’ll Do It Live,” as part of the complete WMEB lineup, can be heard on 91.9 FM, online at wmeb.fm and on channel 20 of campus television.
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