Jess Preston
After 18 years—to the best of her memory—helming 98.1 KBAC’s Friday Funk show, Lisa Clark, aka Lisa C. The Motherfunker, is hanging up her mic and headphones and heading to greener pastures. Or some kind of pastures, anyway. Clark will continue as the business manager for Hutton Broadcasting, which owns KBAC, and we caught up with Clark to get the lowdown on why funk speaks to her, how radio continues to be relevant and what her next steps might be after former KSFR DJ Shannon Sullivan takes over the show this week.
Why are you so damn obsessed with funk, Lisa?
Oh, that’s easy. I always say you either come into this world as one of the people who watched Soul Train on Sundays, or you were all about Dick Clark and American Bandstand. Funk music hit me more. Plus, my mother was a big music listener, and she listened to a lot of big music, a lot of Motown...there was a lot of music on at our house. I just gravitated. I watched Soul Train religiously. And I’ve never heard a bad song on Soul Train.
There is just something about that particular music that makes you feel better. You just feel better. It’s not like country, that makes you sad, or some of the rock that hurts your ears—although I was a huge rock fan, too. But I also like jazz. Growing up here in Santa Fe, everybody, all our friends, were jazz musicians, so we’d have these big parties, like, jam session parties that were all jazz. I think jazz and soul and funk are related. Santa Fe in the ‘70s was pretty cool. And not to tattle on myself, but I had my fake ID to go and listen to the music at Casablanca, which was the bar at La Fonda at the time. God, there was so much music in Santa Fe back then.
But when it comes to funk, it’s the groove, I think. The funk on the one. It’s the one. There’s something about that groove that moves your heart.
Why do you think community radio has proven so continually viable?
It’s because people are connected to their communities through it. You can tune in, listen to your favorite DJs—which is how I got into radio. I was a fan of KBAC while I was working in construction for 20 years. I was one of those fans who caught the bug, and radio was my constant companion. I’d work on the plans and listen, and they’re like your friends, you form a connection to them. Plus, you know they’re in the community.
I would think, more so now because people are so isolated, that you enjoy your little radio friends. The voices come on, you know you can count on the same person, and it’s something that just goes on and on in times when everything else is crashing around you. It’s kind of for fans like me. There are a lot of people who listen in different ways, but when I find my station, it’s locked in. I like progressive talk radio, I like KBAC because there are something like 6,000 songs in the catalog when a lot of your other contemporary stations have more like 600. I like the avant-garde of KBAC. Y’know, when I drive down the road, I don’t want satellite radio, I want what people are listening to in their communities. [Former KBAC Station Manager] Ira [Gordon] put it best when he said ‘Radio is the general store.’ It’s sitting around, chatting it up, catching up with what’s going on.
It’s so important we don’t lose that in our radio. Think about it—I got to program two hours of whatever I called funk every Friday. You have no idea in the radio world how rare that is.
What’s going to happen for you next?
Ohhhh. I think that’s the hardest question. I turned 60—I know, it’s horrifying!—and I think that, for me, it’s been in increments of 20 years that I have to reinvent myself, and I do feel like it’s time to reinvent myself and do something different. I know you’re probably going to laugh at me, but I really want to get into quilting. It’s something that my grandmother did, and it’s avant-garde with the colors and patterns they’re using, so I’d like to put my foot in that arena.
I would honestly like separation between my work life and personal life. I would like my hobbies and things I’m interested in. It’s just trying to make a little space to sort of open up and see what kind of ideas I can come up with. I’ve gotta make a vision board, too. I’m working on that. I’d just like my Friday nights back where I can feel like everybody else. But I’m going to miss it. And, hey, you never know—I might pop in. The most important thing is handing it over to someone who loves it as much as you do.
