Jeff Gill was
born in New Haven, Connecticut on August 16, 1954, and grew up in a
nearby rural town. At the age of 11, he discovered a fascination with
radio in all of its aspects -
Return to Troubadour 1710 After some false starts, Jeff did eventually develop a radio career that lasted for the better part of 20 years. By 1978, he had his first paying job as an on- One day while on the air, he had what can best be described as an epiphany. He recalls saying to himself, “Somehow, if it were ever possible for me to have a real career in this business, I want to do this kind of programming - His first full- However, if there was one involvement with a radio station that Jeff would consider his crowning jewel - Along with his broadcast duties, Jeff produced the acoustic music concert series at Concord’s Colonial Inn in 1995 and 1996. His previous concert producing experience had come in the summer of 1993 when he originated and produced an acoustic series at the Hatch Shell in Boston. "The memories and people I met through WADN had a powerful effect on my life," he remarks. "It was a community with its own values and way of life - it was what homespun, independent, local commercial radio should be about. I had to carry on the legacy." And carry on he did. In late March of 1997, Jeff teamed up with former WADN intern and IT networking wiz Jim Black, purchased the station’s music library, and founded Folk Image, one of the first web sites to stream folk music on the internet. Then, in April 2004, Jeff hitched his wagon to the emerging Part 15 AM micro broadcasting movement and established "Troubadour 1700" (now Troubadour 1710) - the 100 milliwatt Folk/Americana/World/New Age station that transmitts from his mobile home lot. With his discovery of progressive talk hosts Thom Hartmann and Mike Malloy in late 2003 - Alex Jones, Jim Fetzer and the 9/11 Truth movement in 2006 - and the subsequent demise of Progressive Talk radio in Boston later that year, there was a growing need for a full time talk station featuring voices that contradicted the prevailing din from the mainstream media's overpaid corporate mouthpieces. Since Jeff didn't wish to canabalize his folk station with increased talk programming, he did something unprecedented in the Part 15 radio world: in 2008 he built a second station - Liberty & Justice 1640 - on the same property with an antenna and transmitter only 12 feet away from Troubadour 1700's. Not surprisingly, the two stations have pretty much the same coverage footprint. In 2010, Jeff began to refer to his multi-micro signal enterprise as Minimum Wage Media. "Every job I've held in my life, whether in radio or elsewhere, has been either at or somewhat above minimum wage," says Jeff. "As a result, I had to build these stations on a shoestring. There were only three occasions when I spent over $100 on something - the automation software, transmitters, and parts to build computers. I also like the name because it makes corporate media types and those who have sold out just to get rich in this business uncomfortable," he quips. As the 2010's moved into the Trump years ("the best economic times for even a deplorable who names his company 'Minimum Wage Media'"), followed by the oppression and divisiveness of the Covid lock downs, along with the baffling election of 2020, Liberty & Justice 1640 evolved in a more populist/nationalist/pro-MAGA/pro-freedom direction, but still with far more cutting edge information and insight than conventional conservative talk radio. "The times we are now in are so critical and so outrageous, and knowledge of what the elites are trying to do to us is spreading so fast, I am now spending an inordinate amount of time on the programming of Liberty and Justice 1640. Sadly, Troubadour is suffering as a result," he admits. "Furthermore, so many people in the folk music world are still "woke" leftists who are impossibly brainwashed and hive minded. I simply don't want to put up with their blindness, childishness, and hypocrocy any more. What they want defies common sense, God, and nature. It's too bad, because I still utterly love the overwhelming majority of the folk music I've played over the years." "However, recently I'm making up for it," he adds. "I've begun a project to restore the original Folk Image website, including all the archived shows and interviews I did from 1997-2004, and integrate them into the t1700.net domain. Stay tuned. It's a work in progress." Return to Liberty & Justice 1640 Return to Folk Image Return to WADN.com |