This year WYSO welcomed Tom Salvatierra to the team as our new broadcast engineer.
He's a Wright State grad, and while there he was the chief engineer for WWSU. He has a PhD in electrical engineering.
After working in the private sector for a major wireless energy technology company, he came to WYSO in February, just as the radio station was prepping to move Union Schoolhouse.
Salvatierra sat down with WYSO Weekend Host Jerry Kenney to talk more.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jerry Kenney: So, Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself. You're very new to WYSO and you're here as a full-time engineer.
Tom Salvatierra: Yes, I am the new guy and I am the staff broadcast engineer, which means in a nutshell, I'm the guy that fixes the electronic boxes when they go south.
Kenney: We're very happy to have you on staff. You worked with another colleague of ours in the ‘way’ past.
Salvatierra: I did, I'm a former colleague of WYSO Music Director Juliet Fromholt, and we both worked at Wright State University's campus radio station, WWSU, many years ago, I won't say exactly how many, but it is a long-time working relationship for sure, and thrilled to be working with Juliet once again, in more or less the same capacity. She was the production director at the time and then station manager. But I was chief engineer of the WWSU operation at the time as well. And so its kind of cool for things to come full circle and to be back here now working at WYSO.
Kenney: Are you a Wright State grad?
Salvatierra: Yes, I attended grad school at Wright State and got my masters and then a PhD.
Kenney: So, outside of radio, are you a Dayton area, Southwest Ohio native?
Salvatierra: For many years, yes. I'm not originally from this area, but did my undergrad at UD and then having grown up in the Midwest and then bounced around to the East coast for many years. But came back here for college and then just sort of never left. Although I did finish at Wright State, I did take a detour back up North to Michigan where I am originally. From, and I worked there for a couple of years and came back here for the opportunity that came along at WYSO and I'm very happy to be back.
Kenney: That's great. So we're a mix of news and music. Where do your interests fall in that spectrum?
Salvatierra: I would say mostly in the music sphere, although I do my level best to keep tabs on what's going on news-wise and have always been very impressed by the caliber of both the local and national reporting carried by WYSO. So that's very cool to be a kind of a part of the ground now too, at least in the operational aspect.
Kenney: What kind of music do you like?
Salvatierra: I tend to gravitate towards rock, pop, both modern and older stuff. But I definitely cut my teeth in college radio and beyond and on the music side of things. So that's, again, probably what I know the most and was certainly central to my prior role at WWSU because of our programming there and I think currently still consists primarily of music.
Kenney: What was it like growing up?Were you a musical family?
Salvatierra: That's a great question. My parents always pushed me to do well in the traditional STEM fields, although neither of them are engineers per se, but that was always emphasized in terms of academics and thinking about what you should do when you grow up. Both my parents are also pretty big into music, or at least there was always music playing in the house growing up and in the car. So both, the radio and it was interesting for me several years later and talking to friends of mine, just it was very interesting to find how many households didn't have a lot of music growing up. And so I guess I sort of took that for granted, but we did not always have the latest and greatest tech at home, but we always had music playing. And it, I would say in hindsight, pretty good music. So hats off to my parents for exposing me to that at an early age. And I would say engendering a lifelong love of music for everything from classical to pop, Top 40 radio to more straight up rock and roll. Got a little bit of all of it growing up and that was pretty cool.
Kenney: Anything else you want to talk about, any hobbies?
Salvatierra: Well, like many folks at WYSO, I am — well, in my case — I would say I'm a very amateur musician. There are, I wouldn't say most of the folks here who are musicians are a bit more talented than I am.
That being said, I enjoy playing keyboards, piano and organ. I have played live music in the past, but that has been an ongoing interest of mine for the past several years. And I would, say most recently though my musical hobbies have drifted a little more towards collecting as opposed to playing, although I obviously still play for my own amusement, but presently my thing is cassette tapes and I can't get enough of them. I buy them, I listen to them, some of them don't work and I have to either fix them or toss them out the window, but I have just been enamored with the roots scenario because I do remember going back to the music in my house growing up there was always a Walkman and a cassette tape lying around handy somewhere and many memories of enjoying that particular format and as I have sort of rediscovered pop and rock of the 80s and 90s I have drifted back into that period appropriate format I guess you could say, and have gotten into collecting cassette tapes.
Kenney: Well, that's something I'm gonna hit you up on because I've got a lot of cassette tapes that I haven't heard for obviously decades. I don't have a tape player. I'm not sure if they would even make it through a run at this point. So we'll have a conversation about that off air. Tom Salvatierra with WYSO, one of our newest employees. Really glad that you're here and thanks so much for the conversation.
Salvatierra: Well, I'm very glad to be here and thank you Jerry for taking the time to chat.
