My friend Jeremy Butler, originally from Phoenix, Arizona but for years a resident of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has announced his retirement from radio doing the weekly show “All Things Acoustic.”
But since the feed for the show will remain online and air as reruns, we plan to pick up the feed and run it on Yosemite Radio.
“I have made the difficult decision to retire from radio,” Butler announced on Facebook this week. “All Things Acoustic will continue on Alabama Public Radio, but we are going to transition it to encore broadcasts of recorded programs. And there are a lot of recorded programs.”
He has been hosting the show for 32.5 years, he says, since August 27, 1993.
“That’s almost 1,700 Friday nights. And I’ve managed to record hundreds of those broadcasts.”
And so, starting on March 13, 2026, Alabama Public Radio will be broadcasting programs from the ATA vault on Friday nights, 8-10 PM Central Time. Additionally, the online ATA archive offers over 200 of these recordings for free streaming anytime of the night or day. It will remain online: https://www.mixcloud.com/jercomradio/
“Folks, I’m Worn Out”
“I know I’m going to miss radio,” he said. “It’s been a large part of my life since I began doing it in college my freshman year, on WBRU-AM, in 1972. But it’s not as exhilarating as it once was. And, now that I’m 71, spinning tunes until 10 p.m. every Friday wears me out.
I Have a Lot to Be Grateful For
I’m grateful, first of all, to Alabama Public Radio for allowing me to commandeer weekly its airwaves for all these decades. I must thank former APR General Manager Roger Duvall for taking a chance on acoustic radio in 1993. And APR program directors since then, including current PD Brittany Young, have given me total freedom to program music as I saw fit. The “corporate suits” never gave me a single “note” in 32 years.
As I think back on my 53 years in radio, there are others I must thank:
- The radio listeners, for giving me a reason to sit alone in a dark room, spinning vinyl/CDs that I loved. I fancied myself a curator of outstanding, unique music and being able to introduce it to listeners gave me great pleasure. The highest compliment I received as a disc jockey was a listener telling me that they heard a song on my show that they’d never heard before and it had become a new favorite of theirs.
2 Peter L. Masi, for being my mentor (we called them “big brothers/sisters”) at WBRU and teaching me both the mechanics of DJing and the art of the segue. - WBRU management, for hiring me to work radio full-time during the summers of 1975 and 1976. Honestly, the experience taught me that I would not want a full-time career in radio and so I continued my college courses in film studies. There were many benefits to working in radio in the 1970s, but it was also a very demanding profession.
- George Hadjidakis, for allowing me to alternate hosting a punk and new wave show he created on WVUA-FM, the University of Alabama student radio station. “Progressions” was a solid gas to host circa 1981-1987. We got to introduce Tuscaloosa listeners to some truly depraved music. Even today, I get people thanking me for that show. An online Progressions archive may be found here:
https://www.mixcloud.com/jercomradio/playlists/progressions/ - All the fabulous musical artists that I was exposed to as a result of doing radio shows. DJs are in a privileged position of receiving promotional copies of music well before their releases. It gave me great joy to discover new music through these promos and attending Folk Alliance conferences.
My Future Plans?
“I’m not giving up on music!,” he says.
He’s an active member of the Druid Ukes ukulele club and Jil Chambless and I organize monthly Social-Justice Sing-Alongs in Tuscaloosa to raise people’s spirits during these dark times.
Additionally, after I retired from teaching in 2020, I became reengaged with a longtime passion of mine: fine-art photography. I send out two or three emails of photographs each week on the JerCom Photo Newsletter. Check it out and maybe subscribe if you’d like to keep tabs on my current activities!
https://jercomphoto.substack.com
“And remember, save that last dance for me!
“Yours in acousticity,”
Jeremy
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