Local filmmaker Tom Bell has made an enthralling documentary about community radio station WMPG, which broadcasts from the University of Southern Maine in Portland and just marked its 50th anniversary on air.

WMPG was started in 1973 by college student Howard Allen, who broadcast music to the campus from his dorm room using a console made from washing machine parts he salvaged from the Gorham dump. Bell interviewed Allen for the film, called “An Extraordinary Place,” which you can see Tuesday, Jan. 16, at Space.

I’ve seen “An Extraordinary Place,” which has a 30-minute run time, and you’re in for a huge treat, regardless of whether you’ve ever listened to the station.

Bell said making the film was a passion project, and it is indeed passion that’s at the heart of it. The station’s heart and soul are its hundreds of volunteers who fill the airwaves with multiple genres of music, public affairs discussions and in-studio musical guests.

I get it. The highlight of my time at Keene State College was my stint at the college’s radio station, WKNH. Along with being music director for two years, I held a three-hour Sunday night shift that started my sophomore year and continued a couple of years past graduation. My last shift was the night before I moved to Maine in the mid-’90s.

Many of us would “hang” at the station in the lounge room between classes. It was a clubhouse of sorts and a place where I felt I truly belonged.

Best of all was the music.

I’ll never forget going into the station’s production studio to listen to the debut album from Sarah McLachlan and being floored by one of the most incredible voices I had ever heard. Soon after, I interviewed McLachlan for the station and aired it during my show, along with many songs from the “Touch” album.

I still have anxiety dreams about running late to get to the station in time for my show (which never actually happened). Also, there was a speaker in the bathroom down the hall so that the DJ could hear what was being broadcast, and I had a few close calls sprinting back in time to segue into the next track.

Those were the halcyon days of spinning vinyl, some from my own collection and some from the massive library next to the broadcast studio, and WMPG keeps me anchored to that feeling.

The station has been pre-programmed in every car I’ve owned since my arrival in Maine in 1994. It’s always there, at 90.9, offering a huge swath of programming that delves into countless genres of music. From the longtime folk and Americana offerings spun by Chris Darling during Us Folk, to Matt Little-Farmer’s rockabilly parties during Get Hot or Go Home, to the metal shows Songs to be Murdered By and Minor Chord Mayhem, there is, and I really mean this, something for everyone on WMPG. Do you love K-Pop? They’ve got that. Industrial goth? They’ve got that, too.

Tom Bell, who was a reporter at the Press Herald for 16 years, came to understand the importance and impact of WMPG when he started volunteering there during the fall of 2022 as part of the public affairs podcast and then show called Let’s Connect Greater Portland.

Bell said that, every week when he’d go to the station, he’d notice there was always a lot of people coming and going from the fun, colorful and chaotic place. “If you gave a Hollywood art director a million dollars to build a set for a blockbuster movie about a community radio station, he couldn’t build anything as cinematic as the WMPG studios in that creaky white house on Bedford Street,” said Bell.

He’s right about this because, from the outside, there’s nothing all that remarkable about the house. But once you open the door, you’re in radio Narnia, especially when you see the basement vinyl collection.

Bell also said that some of the music he heard being played was strange. But then he realized something else. “It is a crazy assortment of characters, but they all share a passion for music and community.”

Once Bell decided to make the film, station development director Annella Linton was fully on board and helped to produce it. She and program director Jessica Lockhart helped him figure out who to interview, including DJ Shaxx (Bobby Shaddox), host of Left of the Dial on Wednesday from 5:30-7 p.m.

Shaddox does something during his show called the karaoke weather report, during which he sings the forecast to the tune of a popular song. This is a joyful man. I’ll have what he’s having after I stop hysterically laughing from the scene in the film with Shaddox singing the forecast to Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.”

Bell also interviewed Rosita Reyes, host of Latinos on Saturday mornings. She’s been hosting the show for 25 years. “I like to uplift people, especially women, especially women in my Hispanic community, because I know that sometimes we are always second. We are not first. We don’t think ourselves as first because that’s how we’ve been taught,” said Reyes, who got emotional during her interview with Bell during the film.

In a world of gargantuan corporate radio titans who own hundreds of stations across the country, there’s something acutely local and wonderful about a station like WMPG. It’s entirely live, run almost entirely by volunteers and is a melting pot of cultures, musical tastes and personalities.

“An Extraordinary Place” will bring you into the world of community radio in a way that is warm, informative and bursting with music.

If you go to the Space screening, you can chat with Bell, as well as WMPG staff members and volunteers.

“An Extraordinary Place”
7:15 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 16. Space, 538 Congress St., Portland, free. space538.org

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