Radio veteran turns classic rock into cultural classroom

SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. — On a recent warm afternoon, Al Neff stood in the parking lot of Tri-County Broadcasting’s radio headquarters, affectionately known as the “Red House.”

With towers visible in the distance, he explained how the area’s wetland conditions help the building’s six radio stations propagate signals throughout central Minnesota, and how the station’s founders purchased the land from local farmers who considered the land useless.

“You can’t grow corn in a swamp,” he said. “But you can grow radio.”

Neff, 64, has worked in broadcasting for 45 years and has become a favorite of listeners who know him or who discover him while wandering the dials.

Over the past decade, they’ve found him playing music from the 1960s to the 1980s on WXYG “The Goat,” the station he founded in 2016.

He began his career at St. Cloud State University’s student-run KVSC-FM in 1981, but his interest in the medium began much earlier.

“I grew up in Wyoming and Montana,” Neff said. “My father worked in the oil fields. We moved every year. By the time I left home at 18, we had moved 17 times. So I was always on the move.”

He said cultural touchstones helped keep him grounded despite constant change. Many of its touchstones were constantly broadcast across the country.

“No matter where we went, the radio was always on the local radio station,” Neff said. “But what was even more exciting for me was the late-night reception I would get on the AM Clear Channel station.”

Clear Channel stations are AM radio stations that are specially protected from radio interference and can be used for cross-country broadcasts in emergencies. In the United States, Clear Channel stations were standardized in 1941 to facilitate wartime communications. Because they use AM frequencies, Clear Channel stations can “skip” their signals from Earth’s atmosphere, and some stations can be heard thousands of miles away from the source.

“WLS was probably the most important thing to me, it was outside of Chicago,” Neff said. “Late at night, if the weather was good, you could watch it as soon as the sun went down completely.”

As a child, he tuned in to WCCO, Minnesota’s Clear Channel station, and switched to WLS late at night.

“(WCCO) had a great show called CBS Radio Mystery Theater. It was a spooky radio show that I loved listening to,” Neff said. “Then I switched to WLS and listened to late-night DJs who could play whatever they wanted. It was like a late-night treasure hunt for me. So that’s what attracted me to radio. It was my buddy.”

When Neff was only 12 or 13 years old, his middle school English teacher hosted a class activity in which he gave the students a book and a tape recorder and asked each student to read a passage. At the end of the activity, the teacher played the entire tape. Neff said hearing his voice played on tape was his first hint that he could make a career in radio.

When Neff was 17 years old, his father moved the family to the small northern town of Marble, Minnesota, near Grand Rapids and Hibbing. As a high school senior, Neff decided to follow his passion and took a job at local station KXGR (now KMFY) in Grand Rapids.

“They were playing Beatles, America, Eagles, stuff like that,” he said. “I liked what they were doing. My mom was irritating me, so I thought maybe I should get a job.”

Although he said it jokingly, Neff soon experienced a trial by fire.

“I went there in 1979 wearing bell-bottoms, and there was an announcer whose car broke down while he was on vacation, so we had an opening the next day. It was a Thursday, and they wanted me to be on the air on Saturday, so I had to adjust my whole mindset very quickly.”

It was at KXGR that Al Neff was born.

“My first name is Jeffrey, Jeffrey Allen. If you do the math, you’ll see that I’m growing up as Jeff Neff every year,” he said with a laugh. “So that part wasn’t funny. The skinny kid and I had funny names, and then my dad bought me an accordion. The skinny kid had a funny name, an accordion, and it wasn’t great.”

Still, he had a chance to redefine himself.

“It was pivotal in my development as a young adult. I had to lift that burden,” he said. “But for a while, it was like I was pretending to be a guy named Al. It took me a while to actually become Al.”

Neff built a sizable following at KXGR, but his father eventually moved the family from Marble to Wyoming. Al bounced around between several stations there and in Montana before coming to St. Cloud in 1981 to attend St. Cloud State University. He soon joined SCSU’s student-run radio station.

“Al has held nearly every leadership role KVSC has to offer during his time as a student, so his influence is undeniable,” said current station manager Dan Seeger. “Al was definitely one of the people who regularly advocated for the integrity of KVSC as an outlet for experimentation and a place where people could share their genuine love of music with listeners.”

Throughout his tenure at SCSU, Neff worked at KVSC, where he developed his first radio show, “Into the Music.” The show is designed to entertain listeners while also educating them about the artists, events, and eras behind the music.

“His ‘Into the Music’ program and his general approach to educating over the airwaves will serve as an aspirational role model for many DJs,” Seger said.

During his undergraduate years, Neff also worked at the country-focused WWJO. After his parents had health problems, he became the legal guardian of his younger sister, Tracy, and stayed in St. Cloud, where he earned a master’s degree.

In 1994, he left WWJO for WHMH, an active rock station. This allowed them to play heavier, more intense rock than KVSC.

“My pay was cut,” Neff said. “You know, I have a master’s degree and I work overnight for minimum wage at a radio station that doesn’t even have hot water. For example, I went to the bathroom and realized there was no water heater. There was no money for radio, so I lived in a camper trailer. That was a colorful chapter. So I lived in a camper trailer in the woods for seven years. It’s very rock’n’roll. I remember it fondly.”

Neff left WHMH in 1997 and moved to WVAL Classic Country Station, where he remained until 2002.

Neff began teaching in the mass communications department at SCSU with an emphasis on radio and broadcasting. In 2002, he moved to Colorado to teach, but returned to central Minnesota a few years later and founded WXYG “The Goat” in 2016.

The Goat focuses on music released in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s. The station has a huge catalog of over 4,000 songs from back in the day, making it a source of pride for DJs.

“WXYG the Goat is very different from other stations,” Neff said. “As far as I know, we’re the only station in the country that’s so deeply involved in what I think is the most dynamic musical era in the history of pop culture. Why would we do that? Because we’re a funky little family-owned business next to a swamp, right?”

Neff co-founded The Goat with Lee Arnold, another broadcasting great known for pioneering the progressive album rock radio format.

“I programmed WTAI, the first progressive rock radio station in the South, in 1968. In 1972, I programmed Orlando’s WORJ, the highest rated progressive rock station in America,” Arnold said.

“There’s a lot of audiences out there who are tired of this thing called ‘classic rock,’ which has a repetitive nature of playing the same 200 to 300 songs over and over again. There’s a huge audience out there for people who really love the music.”

The Goat was on the air with Neff as the main DJ and Arnold working backstage.

“He’s really great!” Arnold said of Neff. “Al is the secret sauce. We have listeners all over the world through our (Internet) streams, many of whom are in radio, many of whom I’ve known for years. And every one of them comes back to me and says, ‘Al is the best disc jockey I’ve ever heard.'”

Today, WXYG continues to broadcast from the little red house on the edge of the swamp. Its regular programming includes not only extensive rotation, but also Neff’s iconic “Into the Music” program and special guest DJ features where listeners can join Neff on the air and share their favorite songs.

Neff believes his most important impact on Minnesota broadcasting was combining his two passions: radio and education. In particular, he considers the “Into the Music” program one of his most important works.

“I think if I made an impact, it was my focused intention to make an impact with ‘Into the Music,'” he said. “Because the way I do it, music is such a valuable educational tool. I really think there should be more education about cultural literacy. That can come out in a larger conversation about this music. A lot of generations don’t have points of connection. If people are willing to look beyond boundaries, music is one of the great unifying agents.”