Bill Ashford by James Pagliasotti Bill Ashford is standing in front of the big oak consul in the living room, listening to show tunes, waving his arms to the rhythm of the music like a symphony orchestra conductor. When a voice came on at the end of the song, he realized a little man lived inside the radio and he thought it was a great place. Soon enough a time would come when Bill was the man in the radio. He still couldn’t think of a better place to be. He’s six years old but already for him the music is everything. His father is an Army General, so home is all over the place. One thing is consistent. The big oak consul and the music. And Bill conducting. Back to Fayetteville, North Carolina near where he was born. A teenager now, he starts hanging out on the sidewalk where the big glass window at the local radio station WFNC gives passersby a view of the deejay inside playing the tunes. Bill doesn’t pass by. He hangs out day after day and when he’s a little older night after night. Finally gets invited in. Made it. He’s 14 years old and soon has his own show! The die is cast. Bill will spend the rest of his life in radio. And spend it making the music matter. He does freeform radio in North Carolina, in Denver and Boulder, in San Francisco, in Denver again, and in Lake Tahoe. Then Denver again at KLAK, progressive country, and later a series of gigs in the Midwest. When the glory days are past, he does The Rock Garden from his home with his wife, Gail, in Florida, four hours live each evening and another twenty he programs and plays from the can on the internet. Back in the day, he knows the Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man, and he knows all the rest of the promo men, too. But he also knows the musicians, guys like Mick and Keith. They’ve done pop, rock, blues, some psychedelic music, Studio 54 disco. They’re doing country-tinged tunes these days, trying to crack that audience, too. “How can we get to the country and western market,” they ask him. “A good place to start,” he tells Mick, “would be to quit making fun of them.” Good advice for a guy who wrote Far Away Eyes, Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, country flavored with a wry twist. Bill commands respect from everybody in the business because, like him or not, his shows are awesome. Nobody disagrees. Ask who does the best shows in the freeform era and you’ll hear a lot of different names, because all these folks took their music seriously and a lot of them did great work, but anyone who ever heard him on the air will tell you Bill Ashford is right up there with the best. Bill knows his music and he wants you to know it, too. As music director at a lot of important stations in the day, he built libraries that were essential to doing the shows these radio artists wanted to do. “The idea,” as Thom Trunnell said, “was to be in a room playing a tune and whatever song you wanted to play next, it was there where you could grab it and keep the mini-orgasm going.” Bill was the one who made that a reality. He was infamous for visiting folks, looking through their record collections, pulling out one or two albums and saying, “We need this for the library,” and confiscating the records. It was for the greater good, after all, and many of his victims would tell you they felt honored to have music that Bill wanted.