Special report about WRUU’s host, and program manager Dave Lake, on the “Savannahian” by Rachael Flora.

Rachael Flora is a writer for “The Savannahian” newspaper as well as a volunteer host at WRUU and cohosts the show “Women on Top” with Tatiana von Tauber on Wednesdays at 7 pm. The article that she wrote stems from her personal experience working with Dave Lake, and describes his career at WRUU as a volunteer radio host and programming manager since the beginning of the community radio station.

It is important to note here that this has been an unpaid job for Lake, as it is for everyone who dedicates time to WRUU. The station is run entirely by volunteers, with any funds raised going towards upkeep and operation.

We at WRUU feel very proud of Dave Lake’s radio career at WRUU, and we are very thankful for the generosity of his time and knowledge shared with all the volunteers and listeners, and we hope you take the time to read this article on the Savannahian that Rachael Flora wrote about Dave Lakes career.

Savannah Stories: Dave Lake
A seminal figure at WRUU, Dave Lake steps down from studio manager on Oct. 1 to focus on
the music
• RACHAEL FLORA
19 SEP 2022 • 5 MIN READ
CHANCES ARE good that if you’ve ever turned on the radio in Savannah and tuned through the stations, you’ve heard the voice of Dave Lake.
Lake has been the studio manager at WRUU since 2016. In that time he’s developed three shows, both music, and talk, and recorded plenty of PSAs and promos. He’s revived our community radio station and overseen just about every aspect of its production since.
Now, it’s time for Lake to retire from his position and settle into being just a host again. On October 1, Lake will depart as studio manager and the rest of his numerous administrative tasks will be doled out to other hosts.
“It was time,” Lake confides. “I was starting to make mistakes I shouldn’t be making, both for my shows as well as because I was just so overwhelmed with everything I had to do and getting things done. It was time to start shedding some of the responsibilities.”
(Full disclosure, I am a volunteer host at WRUU and cohost the show “Women on Top” with my friend Tatiana von Tauber on Wednesdays at 7pm, which I’ve done for two years.)
Lake’s involvement with WRUU began in the summer of 2015, when he came across WRUU’s website asking people to submit shows. A very recent retiree with lots of prior radio experience, Lake pitched the show Savannah Music Local and Sustainable.

“I knew I was right on target because I gave the proposal, and there was a question period,” Lake recalls. “One of the people said, ‘You’re proposing a weekly show, an hour a week. Are there 50 musicians in town?’” Lake’s show proposal was accepted, but then he didn’t hear anything back from the station hosts. Turns out, that the three volunteers trying to start the station had quit and didn’t inform potential hosts. Lake was inspired to keep the fledgling station alive and connected with some other hosts.
“I spent many hours in here, playing around with the computer system. I loaded everything you see here into the system to create basic programming for automation,” Lake says, gesturing at the hundreds of CDs filling the WRUU studio. “By February 2016, we felt we had enough here to really go on the air.” Well, not quite—the station didn’t have a tower yet, so they began streaming content on wruu.org. Lake and the rest of the WRUU team began fundraising for a radio tower, and by March 2017 they officially went on the air. “Although we celebrate the anniversary the first of April, I’m not sure why,” Lake says with a smile.
At the time, Lake was bestowed the title of studio manager because he had the most radio experience. In the 70s, he hosted a rock show at KTXT-FM on the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock while he attended grad school. Soon, he was recruited to run the classical music programming that ran for three hours in the middle of each day.
“I always joke I was given the role of directing classical music at the station because I was the only one who could pronounce Prokofiev,” Lake remembers. “The hosts who were subbing in for that show didn’t know anything about classical music and they were murdering the names.”
Lake’s love for classical music, and really music in general, began at a young age. There were always things to listen to at home; his two older sisters brought home 45s from the ’50s, and his mother loved Mario Lanza, a singer who performed both opera and popular music. Lake grew up in Arizona and Southern California, so beach music was most prominent—“I listened to more Beach Boys than the Beatles,” he shares.
After his stint at KTXT, Lake moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and hosted a classical music show on WKNC in the early 80s. That lasted a few years, and then Lake began his career and didn’t go back to radio until he got started with WRUU.
As a music lover, curating a show was easy for Lake. “When I was simply on that side of the mic, I said, ‘This is cool, I love this,’” Lake says. “And when I came back, I expected to be just on that side of the mic. I put in a show—one show—and that’s what I was going to do. All the other stuff was things that had to be done, and I was the one that could do it. This became my job, so to speak.”
Important to note here: this was an unpaid job for Lake, as it is for everyone who dedicates time to WRUU. The station is run entirely by volunteers, with any funds raised going towards upkeep and operation; Lake notes that the station replaces computers on a regular basis.
Lake’s administrative tasks have been divvied up between the 60-plus hosts. (If you’re wondering what task I took, I am now on the Programming Committee to review and approve new show proposals.) Now, he can focus on  hosting his three shows.

Savannah Music Local and Sustainable is his longest-running show and consists of interviews with local independent musicians. He has surpassed the expectations of his former radio peers, playing a show each week and having few repeats.
Contemporary Classics, on Tuesday nights from 8 to 10 p.m., began because of Lake’s interest in the eponymous genre.
“I hate the term [classical], but there’s no easy way to say it,” Lake says. “Basically, it’s composers and musicians who are playing concert music and writing it.”
Originally, Contemporary Classics was just a music show, but Lake found that musicians and record companies like to have airtime to talk about their recent releases.
“They like the style—it’s conversational, and we have a two-hour program, so we can go in-depth to the music,” Lake explains. “They love people who have listened in-depth to their music. Also, there aren’t any shows like it anywhere, not even in New York City!”
Lake’s third show, Evening Eclectic, is on Sundays from 8-10 p.m. and allows him to play just about whatever he wants.
“One episode, I did the song ‘Yesterday’ for two hours from different covers,” Lake says. “I could do weird things like that. Weird to me is not a pejorative—weird is good.”
Lake describes his musical taste as a three-legged stool; the legs are contemporary classical, roots music, and progressive jazz. “But in addition to that,” he says, “I’m interested in everything.”
Now, Lake can revel in simply being behind the board, but he’s proud of what he’s helped the station accomplish in just five years. The eclecticism of programming on the station is unrivaled in our community and just about guarantees that you’ll find something you want to listen to.
“It’s appointment listening,” says Lake. “I don’t think anybody listens to the entire day every day—we’re not that kind of station, and we’re not a station where you can turn it on anytime and have hits. Everything is unique. But it is the uniqueness of each of those musical genres that I think feed this station. If there’s not something on our station you like, you don’t like music.

Read this article in “The SavannahianThe Savannahian” newspaper.