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Say you tune in to the online station Samewave Radio on a Sunday afternoon. You might hear Kate Fagan’s recently revived 1980 post-punk hit “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool,” then “omg” from Brazy, a Nigerian artist bending genres into electronic kaleidoscopes—maybe North London’s Delilah Holliday’s downtempo synthy beats after that.
The selections aren’t from an algorithm recycling what you already know, but from a DJ helping you discover what you don’t. Hand-picked songs by real hands—that’s the way Samewave founder Jonathan Denerson likes his music.
Denerson, 29, grew up in Troutdale but fell in love with radio during his time at Oregon State University, where he worked for the college station. After graduating in 2017, Denerson moved to Portland, taking a tax accounting job downtown working 11-hour days. It didn’t leave him time to DJ, but he did have ample time to listen to online radio all day long. By the beginning of 2020, he’d made his way back to DJing with a group of friends and was ready for a breakthrough moment in his music career. “Me and all my friends, we [were] gonna make this thing happen,” Denerson says. “Then, obviously, the pandemic hit and everything goes kaput.”
In-person shows weren’t an option, but Denerson and his friends needed to keep their DJ skills sharp. So, he started Samewave Radio, “kinda this ad hoc online radio station.”
“Honestly, it was almost a selfish thing,” he says. “I really enjoyed listening to my friends’ mixes, so it was like, ‘Hey, guys, wanna keep making mixes so I have stuff to listen to while I sit and work on my accounting stuff?’”
Just a few years later, Samewave has become a collective of more than 45 DJs in Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. The station is also now a nonprofit, with sponsorship from neighborhood coalition SE Uplift. Through grants and Uplift’s support, Denerson has brought on a small operations team to help maintain the station and “get the basic stuff handled,” Denerson says.
The “station” itself was, and remains, an online hub. Nearly 100% of the shows heard through Samewave are done ahead of time, with DJs taking time to record and clean up the audio, then submitting them to the station, after which Denerson buys all the songs himself to adhere to licensing regulations. “Luckily, I have a good [day] job,” Denerson laughs. “It really is a labor of love.”
The sounds you find on Samewave are wide and eclectic, sometimes skewing slightly more toward techno. The station runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with DJs submitting curated playlists to fill the unassigned hours. While the station does feature local music, Samewave, for Denerson, is really made to promote the DJs themselves, particularly the Portland group, which makes up 50% of Samewave Radio’s contributors.
“We have so many talented DJs in Portland, but it’s very difficult for people to break out and do more outside the city,” Denerson says. “We’re seeing Samewave as a place where we create an even playing field. If you live in L.A., you can hear some really awesome local L.A. DJs, but next thing you know, you’re listening to a couple really dope Portland DJs. We’re trying to interlace all our really awesome Portland talent with the talent from these already big, more established cities.”
Though the station’s online, Samewave does aim for at least a monthly in-person event around town to see DJs in action. The next will be a community showcase at Benchmark on Northwest Lovejoy Street from 1 to 6 pm on April 21, featuring a lineup of some of Samewave’s favorite hosts.
And if you’re curious about DJing yourself, Denerson highly encourages anyone to apply, even if you’ve never DJed before (Samewave recently partnered with local nonprofit Cada Casa to give a handful of free DJ training sessions). Denerson’s not worried about perfect sets; he just wants more people to enjoy curating good music.
“Have fun, do whatever you want with this hour,” Denerson says. “[Samewave] has a lot less constraints and stipulations—we’re all online and don’t operate under the FCC so we don’t have any of those requirements that a normal FM/AM radio would have. You can play any kind of music, use whatever kind of language you want—it’s a little bit more free flowing.”
HEAR: Samewave Radio, samewave-radio.com.