Back in January of 2005, The Current crackled onto the airwaves as a 1940s-era generator chugged away in the basement, keeping the station on the air despite a power outage in the building. Steve Nelson, The Current's founding program director, was at the helm. Now, Nelson is preparing to move on to new adventures as he leaves Minnesota Public Radio — a place he's worked since November 2002 — to become Director of Programming at National Public Radio.

Before clearing out his desk, Nelson joined Brian Oake (whom he's known since 1992) and Jill Riley (whom he's known since 2005, when he hired her to work at The Current) to reminisce about past radio stations and about the early days at The Current.

The first song ever played on The Current was "Say Shhh" by Atmosphere. "We picked it for a lot of different reasons," Nelson reflects. "First of all, it's a hip hop song, which you wouldn't necessarily expect from a public radio station out of the gate. Secondly, it talks about building something amazing in Minnesota, which is what we wanted to do. That's why we picked it."

Oake, whose shared experience with Nelson includes past morning-show stints on defunct stations REV105 and Zone 105, bristles just a bit at the demise of those early alt-rock stations. Nelson sees a bright side. "The great part about starting The Current was there were so many people — well, it wasn't great that everyone had been fired from those kinds of radio stations — [but they] were available to come work and help start this radio station, which was awesome, like Lucia and Thorn and Mark Wheat and Bill DeVille and many of the great people you still hear on the radio today."

Another person still heard on The Current today is Jill Riley, who just about missed a chance to work at the station when she hung up on Nelson's phone call, thinking it was a joke from her brother. "I gave her a call to set up an interview," Nelson laughs. "She answers the phone, I said, 'Hi, this is Steve from the new radio station from Minnesota Public Radio,' and she hung up on me. She literally hung up on me."

Hear more from Nelson, Oake and Riley — including memories involving artists such as Land of the Loops, Wilco, Soul Coughing and DeVotchKa — by using the audio player above.

"It was really fun," Nelson says about his time at The Current. "There are a ton of great people here. The beautiful thing about this radio station is that it sort of came from the community and is a part of the community, and I'm really proud to have been a part of it, and there were so many people here at Minnesota Public Radio that helped make it possible and continue to help make it possible, so many people behind the scenes helping to support the station, and it's just been great."

More from Steve Nelson

Following the time he spent on the air with Oake and Riley, Steve Nelson sat down to share a few more thoughts about his time at Minnesota Public Radio, and to talk about where he's going next.

Your entire career has pretty much been spent in radio. What were some key formative moments for you?

I think that there are a couple things for me. One, like a lot of people who are interested in radio, I grew up obsessed with radio. I used to make cassettes of countdown shows in my bedroom, and I would pretend to talk up songs, like the songs I was listening to, I would pretend I was on the radio and talk them up when I was driving around in the car and stuff like that. I think there's something about the idea of one person sitting in a box and saying something and connecting with this huge, broader array of people. I think that was a big draw for me to radio.

When it comes to my career, I think for me, personally, one of the things I learned relatively early on — and it was working with Brian Oake as his co-host and news guy at Rev 105 and Zone 105 — I had wanted to be a famous DJ, but I learned working with Oake that my best skills were actually not behind the mic, but behind the scenes and making other people better at what they're doing. So I really switched my focus from trying to be talent to trying to be a producer: editing things, mixing things, trying to conceptualize things, and really working behind the scenes. So for me, that was a big moment when I figured that out that, not only was I not going to be a world-famous DJ, but that that was OK, because I really liked all this other stuff and helping other people be better.

You've also always been a musichead. Who are some of the artists whose music moves you today?

Number one is Bully; they're fantastic. Chance the Rapper is another. I really love the Record Company, super excited to see them in October, think they're playing the Entry, that's going to be great. I'm a huge fan of Jason Isbell — who isn't brand, brand new — but man, his music has been amazing. And then I'd say another person in hip-hop land is Open Mike Eagle, who is an indie hip-hop rap star, rock star. He's great. So those are some of the artists that I'm listening to a lot right now.

As The Current's first program director, you saw the station lift off the ground and carried it to 2008. What have you seen that makes you particularly proud as you look at how the station has grown since then?

Jim McGuinn has done an amazing job of taking The Current from its first phase and transforming it into something bigger and better for the community. It has been such a pleasure to watch what he and the team and this whole organization have done with the station. They've taken it in directions that I never thought of and never could have conceived, and it's been so fun to watch these people, who are not just coworkers but friends, succeed in really achieving this goal that we set out when we started: We wanted to make Minnesota a better place to live. Which is a crazy thing to say for a radio station, but it really was at the heart of what we were trying to do.

And since I've left, that goal has only been more amplified, and I think the station's become more and more successful, and it's been great to watch.

In 2008, you decided to work as the program director for MPR News. Besides the obvious content thread, what was a major difference between programming for music and programming for news?

I think that The Current and Classical MPR and MPR News are all sort of linked. The people who work on those services are all sort of linked in the same way in that they're very passionate about what they do. I don't think anyone who works on those stations are phoning it in or just here to get a paycheck. They really believe — you can hear it on the classical station, you can hear it on The Current, you can hear it on the news — everyone really believes in the mission of what they're doing.

And at MPR News, the big difference was, rather than trying to bring together this awesome Minnesota music community, the passion was about keeping people informed and letting them know what was happening in their world locally, nationally and internationally. And while it seems like those are a little bit different from each other, they really spring from the same place: this idea of making Minnesota a better place to live.

So it was actually a lot more similar than it was different. But if you talk about what the big difference is, it's when there's a big news event, and you have to respond and change. it's very rare that something happens in the music world — like what happened when Prince died, for example — whereas in news, it's like, who knows what's going to happen and what kind of big thing is going to happen? In that case, everyone is going to have to jump and respond, whether it's a local story or a national story. So that was probably the biggest difference for me, adjusting to that sort of rhythm and knowing that the entire room had to be ready to go whenever.

After spending time working on American Public Media's on-demand service, Infinite Guest, you're moving on to be Director of Programming at National Public Radio. What can you tell us about your new job?

I'm going to be working closely with the NPR programming team, including N'Jeri Eaton and Izzy Smith, and one of the things that we're going to be doing is coming up with great new radio shows and podcasts for the NPR audience. And we have some ideas, but we're also going to be looking for brand-new talent to bring to the public-radio world, and that's going to be really exciting.

As you move forward, what to you best exemplifies or best embodies the experience of working at Minnesota Public Radio?

For me, what best embodies working at Minnesota Public Radio is the community coming together. You can see that in a big event like Rock the Garden. You can see it at a big news event, like a debate, because people are physically together, and you kind of know, "Oh, we all have the same sort of interest."

I feel that the people who listen to public radio are curious about their world, they want to help make positive change, and they want to learn — they're lifelong learners — and they're connected to each other through this invisible radio, and now, digital connection. That connection exists all the time, but when people are physically together, and you can feel that energy, to me, that is where you can really feel what Minnesota Public Radio does for this community.

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