Since March 1980, when he was a teenager, Brian Kelm has been spinning the blues on KRCL in Salt Lake City, Utah — currently from 8 to 10:30 Monday nights on his show Red, White and Blues. He has broadcast live national artists at downtown clubs and live blues in the studio, and plays local and national artists, new, old, boogie-woogie, West Coast, swing, acoustic, electric, Texas and Chicago blues, and everything in between. As Utah Blues Society president, co-producer of the Utah Blues Fest, and Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise emcee, Kelm scours the globe to bring listeners the best in blues. He got his start in radio soon after moving to Utah from the Twin Cities to attend the University of Utah. Kelm, a Journalism and Mass Communications student, visited KRCL in the early spring of his freshman year after learning about its brand-new launch. “I told them I liked blues music,” he says, “and they asked what I was doing the next evening.” Kelm was given the slot for the last program of the night, during which he’d spend hours spinning his favorite blues records until he decided to shut the station down. “Sometimes I’d keep the music going ’til 2 in the morning,” he recalls. Kelm suspects that during his time at the helm of Salt Lake’s only prime-time blues radio show he’s listened to over 100,000 blues tracks and made handwritten notes on every track of most every blues album in the extensive KRCL library, noting the song’s rhythm or sound. His music preference leans toward the old blues classics but, he says, “I try to focus on living blues to support the touring musicians today.” And, as is the case with KRCL’s many learned DJs, he always has something to teach his listeners.
