Since January of 2006 I have been the 6-10am (Eastern time) morning drive host at ann arbor’s 107one, WQKL-FM. We’re a Triple-A radio station, a/k/a/ adult album alternative, which basically means we play rock music from the 60s to the present. And it also means we have a far larger playlist than most other commercial radio stations, which is very cool indeed. 107one is dedicated to covering the many cultural happenings in the greater Ann Arbor community, which is one of the smartest, most caring and most creative in the USA. I also host the Fine Tuning program on 107one every Sunday from 4-6pm, and that program is format-free, which means I can and do play anything I want to play: rock, blues, jazz, folk, classical and more.
I also write extensively about music for the Detroit Free Press, with my Playlist review column published in the Sunday paper and many other articles hitting both the Sunday Entertainment section and the Thursday Play section. I also have a regular column which appears the first Sunday of the month in Ann Arbor.com.
I trace my intense passion for music back to when I was a little boy and my father Ted Bandyke brought home 45s and albums from the record store he worked at in Detroit. Basically I’ve been in love with and devoted to music ever since then (we’re talking 1960 or so!). I played drums in the Zooks, Retro, Assembly and the Ralph/Martin Combo during the 1970s and 80s, and worked at brick-and-mortar record stores Dearborn Music and Car City Records during that same time period.
I started as a radio host in 1983 when I began co-hosting the one-night-a-week Dimension program at WDET-FM in Detroit along with Ralph Valdez. Then in 1990 I started working fulltime at WDET, became a weekday host in 1991, and was Music Director at the station from 1995 until 2005.
I’ve been married since 1995 to the beautiful and captivating Kim Silarski, and we are the proud parents of two feline children — Mocha and Alison — adopted from the Humane Society of Huron Valley in 2007.
