Get to Know a WPR Staffer!
by Susannah Michaels

Britny De Anda is not yet old enough to go into most bars, and yet she is everywhere, including bars (albeit in a professional capacity). By day, Britny is a student at UW-Madison and an intern here at WPR. By night, she runs her own production studio and runs the sound board at live venues. We are lucky to have Britny at WPR, and it’s thanks to the Emma Bowen Foundation. The foundation places students at both public and commercial media organizations throughout the country. Her internship is three years long, of which she has completed nearly two so far. As an intern, Britny gets hands-on opportunities to learn about broadcasting, but she also does all kinds of other jobs for us. Britny will run the board if someone is out (i.e., push all the buttons to make the programming run smoothly and make short weather and news announcements), screen calls for talk shows, book a guest, help set up equipment for live shows such as Whad’Ya Know? or remote broadcasts, help with membership mailings, and much more. Britny is majoring in Communication Arts, but her passion really lies with the nuts and bolts of producing music, hence her production studio, Pop-Sensation Productions. True to her generation, Britny is a multi-tasker. “I can’t just do one thing at a time,” she told me. “And because I’m so busy, I’ve had to develop certain systems. For example, I only answer email while I’m walking somewhere.”

RadioWaves: In two years, you’ve done a lot of different things at WPR. Tell us about one thing that you worked on that was particularly satisfying for the challenge it presented or the learning opportunity it provided.

Britny De Anda: Just this past May I was given the responsibility of looking after Here on Earth for three weeks while their technical director was on vacation. A technical director is responsible for booking ISDN lines for guests, preparing music, cuts, and promos, running the board during the show, making podcasts, and keeping all technical tragedies off Jean Feraca’s radar. The challenge presented itself when I had to find a way to cram a more-than-full-time job into less than twenty hours a week, which is a feat in itself, but I also had to take finals right in the middle of this task. It becomes very stressful when computers don’t cooperate, every second matters, and 3 PM arrives every day whether or not you’re ready for it. No worries though, as everything turned out lovely despite some close calls!

RW: When you first started the internship, the foundation sent you on a trip to Washington, D.C., to visit the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio. Many of us will never visit those places, so you are our eyes and ears — did you get to see some cool stuff there?

BD: The classical music studio at NPR was by far the coolest thing I saw. It was a piece of engineering perfection designed with the sole purpose of sounding wonderful. It was big enough to house a whole orchestra and the entire room was “floating” for audio reasons. The guide got a kick out of explaining that short of the floors beneath the room collapsing, nothing could budge it in any direction. Other than that, there are lots of offices and broadcasting studios, which, other than being newer, aren’t much different than ours. The whole trip was kind of a blur of important people, places, names, and occupations.

RW: Map out a day in the life of Britny De Anda for us.

BD: During the summer months I force myself awake at the inevitable 6 AM, make a pot of coffee, and then crawl back into bed, fully prepared with my laptop, to catch up on news and the most up-to-date gifts the Internet has to offer. If necessary, I also tackle the day’s accounting for my business during this time. Close to 8 AM I set out on my three-block trek to WPR to start the day proper. Upon arrival I check email, formulate a mission for the day, start up a playlist on my MP3 player, and jump in to the appropriate projects. My tasks at the station vary from day to day. I do whatever needs to be done, fill in where there’s blank space. Board op-ing is my preferred activity whenever possible, and if there’s ever time to kill, I surf the web and ponder how those Internet gifts can be incorporated into the station’s web of operations.

At 5 PM it’s time to bolt and kick it into overdrive. I reply to any urgent emails on my walk back home, and then the meetings start. Colleague gatherings usually take place over dinner when we discuss everything from the usual (schedules, projects, investments, etc.) down to the seemingly bizarre details like specific playlist structure for between sets at live shows or whether our company is pink or purple. Assuming I’m still on time, I’ll meet with bands starting at 6 PM, and those meetings are either intakes for potential projects or discussions on what to do with newly completed projects. Then around 7 PM I’ll make my way to our studios where I’ll edit or mix until I can’t stay awake any longer. Sometimes instead of editing and mixing we will lay down tracks for a new project, or sometimes we need to bypass the studio altogether for the night and run live sound at a club. The night usually comes to a close between 1 and 2 AM when I head home to sleep until it starts all over again. Every once in a while there are exciting anomalies to this schedule that keep the energy flowing.

The weekends are essentially the same except I replace the time I would’ve spent at WPR with more studio time. Saturday morning breakfast at The Curve or other favorite restaurant is a ritual that keeps me sane. I get pretty grumpy if denied this pleasure. A day in my life does a 180-degree turn when the school year starts, but that’s a whole other story.

RW: What is your favorite kind of music?

BD: I’m a ‘90s rock kid at heart with Nirvana as the long-reigning champ in the favorite slot. Other than that, I have love for all music and I'll listen to wildly different genres every day. It’s kind of a game to find the perfect song that suits your current mood, which of course lasts for less than five minutes before the hunt is on again, but it’s all-important.

Recently I’ve been diving into a newly surfaced Muslim punk movement, contemplating how Eminem is one of the most important artists ever, and anticipating the greatness of Portugal. The Man’s new album due out in July. [“Portugal. The Man” is the name of a group.]

RW: What is your dream for your recording studio?

BD: Go big or go home, right? Unhindered by logic, I’d like to do it all and better than has ever been done before. When it comes down to it, I want to do albums for my favorite artists, and within that dream I want to do at least one project that the people I look up to will respect, something that will warrant my ego’s existence. I guess you could call that the core of the plan, but there are many satellite goals stemming from the core including managing the albums we make, opening a club, doing tours, taking down Rolling Stone and MTV, etc. Nothing is out of the question.

RW: You’re an extremely busy person. Do you have any time for fun?

BD: The answer is, “No, I don’t have time for fun.” But I still have it. Luckily I think working in the studio and owning a business is fun, and it also helps that my partner-in-crime doubles as my boyfriend. I’ve come to find that it’s best to not think about the schedule too hard and just do. I still manage to keep up with what the all-mighty Pop Culture has to offer — TV shows, movies, concerts, books, etc. I try to take a “vacation” once a year, although that’s usually more exhausting than normal life. Sometimes I desperately wish I had more time to create for myself instead of for others. There are just not enough hours in a day to make music, paint, or write, which used to be how I spent my free time. I also wish I had more time to spend with my friends and family, but who doesn’t, right? A few of them got on board with my plans, and the rest have accepted that this is my life for now.

My mom and I are going to backpack (and by that I only mean no rolling suitcases) through Mexico and Guatemala in a couple of weeks. We’re not camping or anything crazy like that, but we are traveling by bus through the countries and staying in hostels, some of which consider a bed to be the same as a hammock on the beach. This is an especially exciting trip since it will be my mom’s first vacation ever.