Paul Hefti
              Semi-Twang     Sacramento, CA
 

 Paul Hefti as seen with Dave Alvin (or vice versa)

I am a genealogist, historian, and probate researcher by trade and music fanatic for life.  Currently a volunteer programmer at Access Sacramento Community Radio, I host a show called " Semi-Twang" which airs Thursdays from 6-8pm and again Fridays from 6-8 am. (www.angelfire.com/indie/semitwang)  I have been obsessed with music ever since my dad brought home a stack of 45s saved from an old tavern jukebox.  That first box included the Turtles, Dean Martin, CCR, Jimi Hendrix, Perry Como, Cream, the White Plains, and countless others not forgotten.  Eventually I saved my snow shoveling and grass cutting money to buy whatever they were playing on WSPL in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  Somehow, WSPL survived as a hippy-dippy freeform album station, for a time, in a town of less that 50,000 people.  It was then I became a radio junkie. Although I already had a healthy record collection, my life was forever changed in 1977 when I bought and obsessed over “My Aim is True.”  Elvis Costello and his music have, from that day, continued to push me from musical pillar to post.
 

I have worked in record stores, written music reviews, taken concert photos, made mix tapes, and sweated in countless bars and arenas.  I fell totally backwards into radio during graduate school in Grand Forks, North Dakota.  I hosted every type of music show imaginable at KFJM for four glorious years.  I even had my own little three hour slice of self-indulgence, “Progression:  A Weekly Step Further in Music.”  Eventually I found my own WSPL in the form of WKXE in White River Junction, Vermont.  There, like-minded music junkies, programmed nothing but the best of whatever they liked all the time.  Not a bad commercial radio gig.  I was program director at KEDT in Corpus Christi, Texas and then headed to Salt Lake City.  It took me way too long to end up in the Zion oasis of KRCL.  I now spread the good word in the form of “Semi-Twang” in Sacramento. 

Presently obsessed with singers and songwriters, a little twang, a good hook, and a clever twist of phrase, my show focuses mostly on the here and now.  I nicked the name of my show from John Sieger’s gone but not-forgotten band from Milwaukee.  I see plenty of excellent shows at the Palms in tiny Winters, California and am a die-hard Packers fan.