Julian Booker, the new Associate Program Director for Jazz at WRTI, is a familiar voice to many music lovers in the Philadelphia area. For more than a decade, he’s been the Sunday-morning host of Sleepy Hollow, an eclectic, reflective show on WXPN. He has also worked for years as a Production and Project Director with Rising Sun Presents, which presents shows in and around the city, at Ardmore Music Hall and elsewhere.
An alumnus of Temple University (Class of 2009), Julian comes to WRTI with a lifelong connection to radio: his father, Pete Booker, recently retired as General Manager of Delaware Public Media, wrapping up a 50-year broadcast career. Some of Julian’s formative childhood memories took place near a control board. Radio, he says, “was just something that was always there, and that I always kind of loved.”
In addition to working with WRTI’s roster of hosts to shape the sound of our jazz broadcast, Julian will be on the air once a week: he’ll take over as host of The Get Down on Saturday evenings, starting June 7. As he begins his new chapter at WRTI, I sat down with Julian at the station to talk about his path as a listener, broadcaster and curator.
I’d love to talk about the path that brought you here, and what you’re thinking about as you step in. Let’s begin with you and Philadelphia.
I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware — so, about 40 minutes down the road. And I was there through high school, but I came here to Temple in 2005 and never left. I grew up coming to Philadelphia a lot, obviously, going to sporting events and a lot of concerts here. But once I came here full time, I kind of immediately knew this was the place for me, and that’s why I'm still here.
What was your area of study at Temple?
I came in as a communications major, but I had been working in radio with my father for a few years leading up. So after I was at Temple for a semester or two, I left that and got really into creative writing and the English side of things. So I got a writing certificate and took a ton of writing classes. And I taught English at a couple of community colleges, before I decided to get back into radio.
Do you remember the era of WRTI when you were here on campus?
Oh, yeah. And even before that. I mean, I came to WRTI as a listener when I was probably 15 years old, about the same time I came to WXPN as a listener as well. But I can very vividly recall sitting out on my back deck just outside of Wilmington, listening to Bob Perkins and trying to absorb what was happening there. When I came to Temple, I definitely listened a lot of overnight — I think Ms. Blue was on already by then, as I recall. Certainly in the last couple years, at least when I was a student. There was a request show then as well, and I remember calling in from my dorm to make requests.
What would you have requested?
I know that I requested something off of the classic album Jazz at Massey Hall.
Let’s go back to your father, and the fact that you were born into radio. Tell me about his career, and what it was like for you to be surrounded by this medium and the people who work in it.
It was just always there for me. I was born in Delaware, but my family moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia not long after that. So I spent the very early part of my life there. And I can remember there was a guy on the air named Mark Clifford. He did evenings on B101.5 FM, a station that my dad was working for. I can remember being probably four years old and going into the studio and sitting there, knowing to be quiet. It just felt so magical to me, that there was this medium where somebody, one person in a studio late at night with a microphone, was broadcasting out to all of these people. And radio was a little different in the early ‘90s than it is now. So I was always drawn to that.
Did you feel a calling?
I think eventually I did. I started working at WSTW-FM / WDEL-AM, which is the radio station in Wilmington where my dad worked, as a summer job because it was the closest thing to me. It was something I could wrap my head around. He said, “Hey, if you want to come in, that’s cool, but I’m gonna hand you off to other people and they’ll tell you what to do.” So at first, it was just what I knew. Eventually when I got more into public media and eventually started working at XPN, it did feel more like a calling — putting shows and playlists together, trying to execute this vision of introducing listeners to new music, and creating a sonic tapestry. That’s when it started to feel more like something that I was meant to do.
And how did that come about? What was the path that brought you to Sleepy Hollow on XPN?
I don’t know if I ever told this to them, but I actually never really listened to Sleepy Hollow until I started hosting it. I listened to a lot of XPN and a lot of public radio. But I hadn’t listened to the show very much. They had a host named Keith Brand who was on for 20-some years. He retired, I think there was about a year in between, and then they just put a call out, inviting people to apply. I had actually moved to an HD station with my dad down in Delaware. That was kind of a college radio format type of thing. So I was there when I applied for Sleepy Hollow, and I put in a sample playlist. I remember Bruce Warren said to me, “Well, you’re one of the more experienced people that applied, so this could be good.” Then I had a little tryout live on the air. They just gave me the mic for three hours, and it went well. I was there for 11 years.
So for anyone reading this who doesn't know Sleepy Hollow, it's not a jazz show.
No.
It has a clear temperamental identity. I don’t want to say it has a clear genre identity, although at one point I think it did.
Yeah.
When I think about it, the thing that comes to mind very quickly is, like, Emmylou Harris.
I think that’s right, or at least that is a sometimes-accurate stereotype. What I learned with Sleepy Hollow, and what I wanted to bring to it from the very beginning, was that there are no genre constraints. Because it is about creating this certain vibe on weekend mornings. To me, that just meant you could do whatever you wanted as long as it fit this vibe. And I think for the most part, that was well received by listeners. It's funny that you say that it’s not a jazz show, because at times, interestingly, some of the most subversive music that I played was jazz.
Yeah.
Some people didn't totally see how that fit. But it was always interesting to me, because these pieces that I’d play, I would get the most negative response and the most positive response about the same song. So it was like, “Well, I can’t look at that as an all-bad thing.”
Right, right.
Hosting that show really helped me and just made me understand that the best way to look at music is to get rid of as many boundaries as possible. It’s OK to have classifications, and we kind of need them for categorizing — but to me it’s always like anything can go with anything else, if you do it thoughtfully and you have a reason for doing it.
You’re reminding me of something. One day a few years ago, I was in the car and tuned into Sleepy Hollow. There was an Elvis Costello song, then something from Willie Nelson’s Teatro album. And then the latest single by Melissa Aldana.
Yep.
I was just thinking, “This is really a mind at work. Because it all flowed beautifully, but these are different plot points. Bruce Warren and I got together shortly after that, and I mentioned this. He said, “Oh yeah, that’s this guy, Julian Booker. He’s a genius at playlists.
It’s very nice of him to say.
And so what you’re saying I think as a philosophy, it makes so much sense. And it would seem to me that Sleepy Hollow then presents you with this really fun challenge.
Yeah.
And you did it for more than a decade. Over that span, were there any flashes of insight that you had along the way? Is there anything that you attribute to that appointment that you’re carrying forward now?
Yeah, I think a lot of things. And interestingly, I think doing that show also made me really consider the audience more than I would have when I started doing it. I think I’ll admittedly say that earlier on there was some sense of: “Well, I have this vision and I’m gonna execute this vision, no matter what.” And the more that I got to know some of the listeners, the more that I paid attention to some of the feedback. Not that it drastically changed how I was programming, but it just made me always think about that in the back of my mind, and made me a much better programmer and presenter. It was also helpful to remember: “Oh, people are listening and actually paying attention.” That was one of the most striking things to me when I announced that I was leaving: I started to get all these emails from people who wrote, like, “Eight years ago you did this thing.” And I don’t even remember that. That’s incredible, that people are paying that much attention.
Yeah.
And also just thinking about sequencing — and not just within a show, but within a month or within a year, and thinking about how there’s a larger story that should be told, if this is being done well.
So how would you apply that to WRTI and the way that our jazz signal plays out?
I think a good starting point is that I have listened to RTI for a long time, and I’ve been such a fan for a long time, that it feels pretty natural coming in and being involved. But I guess the biggest thing for me — and this is true of a show like Sleepy Hollow or it’s true of a jazz format or frankly anything else — is that I always want to be thinking about presenting the listener with something that they know and love, and is familiar and feels good, and also something that is really surprising and exciting and making them sort of turn their head and say, “Oh my gosh, what’s that?” And that doesn’t have to be something new. That can be maybe something older that doesn’t get as much play. I think a lot of people have a thought or a feeling or a box that they feel that jazz is, or can fit in, and it’s a real opportunity to be able to try to expand that. We recently had some programming with Ms. Blue, where it was all Stevie Wonder covers, and people could tune into that and say, “Oh my gosh, I know this song, but I’ve never heard this version. Maybe I do like jazz.” Or maybe in the other direction, taking things that are a little outside of that box but fit. That is something that I will always carry with me. And like I said, I think there’s a lot of really great opportunities here to apply that.
As you talk about the vibrancy of the art form and its relationship with an audience, that reminds me that we haven’t talked about Rising Sun, and the depth of your involvement in live music. How long were you affiliated with them, and with presenting music?
Rising Sun officially started, technically, in January of 2022. So I’ve been involved since then. That being said, the core group of people that started it have actually worked together since 2009. So it was over 15 years with that group of people. Building up that company from a venue at 38th and Chestnut, which is where the old Chestnut Cabaret was. We all started there and it was called the Blockley. Worked for a few years as a very scrappy and inexperienced group of people to build it into something, and then transferred that over to Ardmore Music Hall and grew that from there. So yeah, all told it was over 15 years with that group.
What are some shows that people may have gone to that you had a hand in putting together?
There’s a lot of them. To go back to the Blockley, somehow we had a late-night license there. It was very gray, but it was also technically legal. So we did these late-night shows, and one that will forever stick with me is that we had the Soul Rebels come in after a show to play with Marco Benevento for a second set. Marco had done maybe an 11 to 12:30 set or something, and then Soul Rebels showed up at 1:30 and played till 4 a.m. Those were the kinds of things there that I think really endeared us to a certain group of people, and was just something that wasn’t happening in Philadelphia a lot. But since then, if anybody has been to Ardmore Music Hall basically since it opened in 2013, I almost certainly had a hand in those shows. There have been a lot of outdoor events as well.
Now we’re not comparing apples to apples here, but with the excitement that you’ve seen with audiences around these shows, what do you think you picked up that is going to be helpful to you in your role here?
For lack of a better term, a lot of the bands were sort of jam bands or improvisational bands. And I am always really encouraged when I see how many people want to go and see that. They would come all the time and they’d go to a show a week or two shows a week, and they’d kind of be all over the place. Somebody might come to Mike Stern or Soulive, but then they’d also be there for one of the Dead tribute nights or a hip-hop show. I am always pleasantly surprised at how wide a lot of people’s listening is, and again, I think it is as much a question of great programming — in terms of the music you’re putting in front of people, but also making sure that you’re doing a good job of creating the expectation for people to understand what they’re going to get. I think that there are plenty of people out there that want to experiment with what they’re listening to, that want to hear new things. They just need to know where to go for it.
In addition to your work as an assistant program director, you will be on the air. And I’m excited to get this word out, because I know that when you signed off at XPN, there’s an audience that was like: “Great. Where can we hear you next?”
Yeah.
So The Get Down is a show that Greg Bryant developed with Josh Jackson. It’s a unique spot in our programming week. And you signed off from Sleepy Hollow with Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues.”
Yep.
Which was beautiful, and the way you talked about it was so great. Have you thought about how you’re going to sign on with The Get Down?
Oh, definitely. I’ve known what song I’m going to sign on with since there was talk of me taking over that show.
OK. We don’t have to spoil that here. Let’s talk instead about the broader stroke. What are you excited about, taking over this show? What do you think you’re going to do that feels different from what Greg was doing?
What’s funny is, when I said that I hadn’t really listened to Sleepy Hollow before I hosted it — if in 2014 you had been like, “What’s your ideal show,” it would probably have been a show like The Get Down. So I feel pretty excited to be able to stretch those programming muscles in a way that is different from Sleepy Hollow. There will certainly be a lot that is similar to what Greg brought to the show. Definitely a heavy dose of jazz funk and there will certainly be a lot of emphasis on the kind of ‘70s classic period. One thing that he did that I always loved was bringing in stuff like DJ Shadow, and the stuff that’s a little even further out. But I probably want to take that as far as I can and have it make sense, without alienating anyone. I would love to have people listening say, “Oh my gosh, I never thought about hearing this artist on WRTI. But man, it makes total sense in this show.”
Related to that, I’m thinking about the identity of WRTI’s jazz programming. And on the one hand, as a programmer you are striving for continuity and coherence.
Right.
And on the other hand, variety, and each show having an identity. So how do you balance those two things? How do you bring that all together in a way that makes sense?
Well, that is the question. But I think what you’re describing again is what I have really come to fall in love with radio. It is always understanding where those connections are, and you brought up that set with Teatro and Melissa Aldana, and I’ve always thought there’s got to be a reason that you’re playing every single thing that you’re playing. There has to be a connection from one song to another, or from one set to another. And I think as long as that is at the heart of what is being done, then it will translate. Always having in mind that there is a wide variety of people listening to this radio station. There are people that have listened to this station since 1970, and there’s people that probably just learned that Temple had a public radio station last week.
Yeah.
How do you cater to both of those people in a way where they feel like a part of the station and don’t feel alienated? So I hope that's not too much of an amorphous answer, but that is always what I’m considering, is: how can you bring the broadest section of people together and make them all stay?
It’s definitely more an art than a science, it seems.
Right.
And it’s about trusting your ears and hoping that it just feels right, and nobody’s noticing the thinking — like, you’re putting all this thought into something that you hope just feels inevitable.
Yep. I hope this isn’t too big of a metaphor here, but I spent many years as a live audio engineer, too. And what I tell younger engineers is that if you’re a really good live audio engineer, nobody has any idea that you’re there. Nobody thinks about who’s mixing this. Nobody thinks about that. They just come in, the show starts, and all they’re thinking about is, “This is a great show. I can hear everything.” If you’re invisible, then you’re probably doing the right thing. And I am very fortunate coming to WRTI, that there is a great team of people here, and I am certain that together that will be achieved, where hopefully it’s just great programming every day, all day. That’s what people will think about. They just turn it on and know what to expect, and enjoy it.
Hear Julian Booker on The Get Down, Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m., starting June 7.
