On the Air with KWVH and Rootin’ Around Radio with Mike August

I have to confess that I find the name of Mike August’s radio program that airs every Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. really entertaining. If you’ve ever watched porcine rooting and snuffling, you’ll find that it is dedicated and somehow dear. It never fails to turn up something interesting.

And so it is with Mike’s program. He asks everyone who appears on his show to bring five of their favorite songs. At first the request feels like you’re being asked to bring your A-game to the stage, but Mike doesn’t see it that way. There’s no judgment, he just wants to get to know you and his program always guarantees a great listen.

Mike is himself a music lover and vividly remembers the day the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show and of hearing “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper on the radio. He likes all kinds of music and knows plenty of musicians from his Houston years. He easily mentioned Eliza Gikyson, James McMurtry, Michael O’Connor, Jeff Plankenhourn, Shake Russell, Billy Gibbons, Lucinda Williams and others when we talked recently. If there’s a music event in Wimberley, Mike will be there.

Like many of the KWVH personalities, Mike is well-steeped in radio and television. His first official gig in Houston was at KPFT, a community radio station that went on the air in 1970. He stayed there for eight years and then went on to become the general manager at Houston’s PBS station, KUHT. For the last 20 years of his career he worked at the Houston NBC affiliate station, KPRC. When it came time to retire, he met Dr. Bob Pierce, the first person to get onboard with Susan Raybuck, the visionary who imagined KWVH for Wimberley.

The first KWVH broadcast was planned for the Fall of 2015. Mike went to Austin to bring back people and equipment and ended up at former Wimberley Mayor Mac McCullough’s house to start broadcasting from his ham radio shack. The Memorial Day flood that year cemented the purpose of the station like no other event could. The station’s early broadcasts focused on how Wimberley could recover.

Mike continues to be committed to furthering KWVH and other community radio stations. He believes that the future of radio is to go local. “Localism is key,” he told me. “People want everything local” and I couldn’t agree more.