In this WYSO Weekend excerpt, host Jerry Kenney and Music Director Juliet Fromholt discuss Novaphonic, WYSO's new all-music station, and her love for the horror film genre. She also talks about the local horror film community and her own horror film review podcast called Attack of the Final Girls. Fromholt also hosts Alpha Rhythms and Kaleidoscope music shows on WYSO.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jerry Kenney: This is WYSO Weekend on 91.3 WYSO. I'm Jerry Kenney. Thanks for spending your weekend with us. Joining us this weekend is Juliet Fromholt, WYSO's music director. Welcome to the studio.
Juliet Fromholt: Thanks for having me.
Kenney: So, we're gonna talk a little business, but then we're gonna get to know you a little bit more.
Fromholt: OK.
Kenney: So, let's start off with Novaphonic. How's that going?
Fromholt: It's going really, really well. We've been on the air since mid-November and have been really, really enjoying hearing from our listeners how they're making Novaphonic a part of their daily routine. You can check us out by listening on our app. You can download that in the App Store or on Google Play, or you can stream us right from the WYSO website or from Novaphonic.fm, or if you've got that HD radio in your car like I do, you can just click over to WYSO HD2. You can toggle back and forth, depending on how your day's going. We're really excited for you to check out our music mix, maybe get to know a specialty show that you haven't gotten to listen to yet, and make music a part of your day with us.
Kenney: Another thing that WYSO does is we have a fund drive every so often, twice a year, for the major fund drives. And occasionally we do pet wars, and I know you and I are on Team Cat.
Fromholt: All the way.
Kenney: So tell us who is in your house.
Fromholt: I am proud to be a cat mom to — her full name is Jazzercise Marie Cat. We call her Jazzy. She is a little gray cat, all gray. We've had her for, it'll be four years on St. Patrick's Day. Actually, we adopted her from SICSA on St. Patrick's Day.
Kenney: Oh, nice, nice. Also, I've known this for a while, but you are into the horror genre. Can we talk a little bit about that?
Fromholt: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big film fan. A lot of people don't know that I actually started in film school in college. I ended up switching my major, pursuing some other things and falling in love with radio along the way. But I started off in film school and sort of studying the theory and language of film. So I have a real affinity for film analysis and really looking at symbolism and things like that. And I love to do it with the horror genre in particular. My partner is also a big horror fan, a horror filmmaker as well, and we really love watching movies together and along with our friends. And I particularly love looking at how sometimes scary films help address some of our anxieties as society or as people. It's really, really interesting when you start to apply an analytical lens to those films. And I think horror is a great genre to do it with.
Kenney: So for anyone who may not think of viewing horror films through that analytical lens, do you have a couple of recommendations where people might start on this journey?
Fromholt: Sure, right now, Nosferatu is all the rage, the new Robert Eggers' movie. But the original "Nosferatu" film is part of a tradition of films, the sort of German expressionists, silent films and those filmmakers were kind of the architects of horror. Their movies are highly symbolic. They have like a lot of visual signatures. and you can really, really see the kind of psychological things they're trying to express. So "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is sort of a hallmark of that. It's one of my favorites. You can also look at Alfred Hitchcock. I love to compare "Psycho" and "The Birds," in part because of the sound, bringing it back to music. "Psycho" has a highly orchestrated, beautiful score by Bernard Herrmann that really helps push the story forward, whereas "The Birds" has no score. It is only the natural sound — and in particular, the sound of the birds — that scores that film. So those are some fun, easy, accessible points. There are subgenres, there are all sorts of different things. When people ask me what to start with, I always have to say, "Well, what do you like? What's your tolerance for more extreme movies?" But those are some really good starting points.
Kenney: Great, and can we talk a little bit about the horror film community here? Do we have one?
Fromholt: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Ohio in particular is kind of a hotbed for independent horror. There are a lot of horror filmmakers and fans in the Dayton community as well. We have the Horror Hound Weekend Convention in Cincinnati, where a lot of folks get together and celebrate and talk about this genre. And there are a lot of people within the Dayton community. People like my friend Victor Bonacore from here in Yellow Springs who runs Cult Movie Night at the Neon, who is holding screenings, doing celebrations, things like that as well.
Kenney: That Cincinnati convention, that's coming up.
Fromholt: It is. It's called Horror Hound Weekend. It's at the Sharonville Convention Center, and it's gonna be March 21-23. So if you're somebody that's interested in the genre, if maybe you've been watching a lot of movies at home, especially this winter, curling up, you know, and watching Shudder or Netflix, and you want to commune with some other fans, it's a really good opportunity to meet some people, get some merch, and meet some of the folks involved in the making of your favorite films.
Kenney: I just learned you have a podcast, a personally produced podcast.
Fromholt: I do.
Kenney: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Fromholt: Yeah, so obviously I'm involved in podcasting here at WYSO with the Rediscovered Radio, Women's Voices, Women's Music in the WYSO Archives podcast. But I also do podcasts as a sort of side hustle on my own. So in my non-WYSO life, going back to the film thing, I'm the co-host and co-producer of Attack of the Final Girls, which is a horror film review podcast with my friend Teresa. We watch a film, we analyze it, and we do that kind of deep dive into symbolism, what the films in particular are saying about identity and personhood and how they're reflecting the eras in which they're made — how maybe in some of the older films, we can do better with the way that we portray certain things or how we did it back then and how we're doing it now. so we take a deep dive into a film every other week.
Kenney: And where can they find that podcast?
Fromholt: Everywhere you get podcasts. All the places, Apple, Spotify, anywhere you get podcasts, it should be available.
Kenney: Great, Juliet Fromholt, WYSO music director. It's nice to talk to you a little bit about some non-WYSO stuff.
Fromholt: It's true. I love talking about music, but I rarely get to talk about things other than music, so thanks.
