For the past 10 years, Mo Rodriguez has trained a spotlight on the local music scene in Phoenix as the host of an hour-long specialty show titled Homegrown With Mo! that airs 9 p.m. every Sunday on Alt AZ 93.3.
Rodriguez, who was born and raised in Mesa, had been with the alt-rock station for two years, since it launched in 2014, when she suggested carving out some time to give the local scene some well-deserved attention.
“I just kept thinking I wanted to do something locally focused,” she says. “I love music so much and I'd been wanting to dive into the music scene more because I wasn't as familiar with it as I should have been. So I felt like it was my responsibility to learn more about … you know, the Valley.”
Mo Rodriguez was a fan of the local music show on The Edge as a kid
She’d developed a taste for what
that show could be growing up on The Edge in the ‘90s and early 2000s, where the Local Frequency show introduced her to bands like Authority Zero when she was 12 or 13.
“‘One More Minute’ was one of my favorite songs when that came out,” Rodriguez says. “I was just like, ‘Wow, this band's from Arizona?! That's so cool’. At the time, I wasn't listening to bands from Arizona. I thought it was really cool that there's a band in our backyard that sounds this great.”
When she got the gig at Alt AZ, she says, “It kind of felt like, ‘All right, I'm the only one that's here from Arizona. I want to learn more about this music and I want to showcase it.’”
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'I think everyone deserves a shot': Mo Rodriguez on supporting local acts
Rodriguez approached Nancy Stevens, the Alt AZ program director at the time, and was given a green light to give it a try.
“I felt like, ‘We're missing a really important element of alternative music,’” Rodriguez recalls. “And it's featuring these bands in our own backyard. We need to show some love because there's no other radio stations really doing that except for KWSS. And their signal isn't as strong as some people would like.”
Rodriguez believes it’s important for local radio to support the local scene.
“I think everyone deserves a shot,” she says. “We have so many great artists in Phoenix, but I would love for more of them to break out of here because our music scene is, I think, underrated. It's such an underground community that just needs a little bit more of a spotlight. And if I could help with that in any way possible, then yeah, I want to be a part of it. I want to help.”
Homegrown with Mo! started as one song a night in 2016 on Alt AZ
She’s pretty sure the show debuted on either Aug. 26 or Aug. 28, 2016.
“It started off as one song from one band a night when I was doing nights,” she says. “Monday through Thursday would be a new band each night. Then, on Friday, whatever song people loved the most, I would play it again that night.”
The idea eventually evolved into an hour-long show on Sunday evenings in 2018, by which point Rodriguez had gone from hosting nights to the midday shift before finally settling into mornings.
“Since then, it's been this show for an hour every Sunday,” Rodriguez says. “And it's wild to think about all the incredible bands that have come through, that I’ve gotten to feature, that have been interviewed. It’s been such an interesting ride.”
Those featured acts include The Technicolors, Upsahl, the Kaleidoscope Kid, Sydney Sprague, The Maine, Baseline, Playboy Manbaby, Fairy Bones, Weird Radicals, This Modern, Doll Skin, Divided Minds, The Deadbeat Cousins, Barefoot and Katastro.
A few have even made the leap to regular rotation.
“Katastro was one of the biggest ones,” Rodriguez says.
“And The Maine, even though they'd been a name for a long time, for some reason, we were not championing these incredible bands that have such a legacy. Eventually, I started pushing them over, like, ‘Hey, we should be playing this,’ doing as much as I can to try and give them more airtime. Same with Upsahl, who ended up doing a bunch of stuff with other people, which ended up getting her on the station anyways.”
Mo Rodriguez explains why, to her ears, alternative music is ‘like a quilt’
What’s nice about hosting a show on alternative radio is that the genre allows for a certain amount of elasticity in terms of what the DJ even thinks of as alternative.
“I think that's the beauty of alternative music,” Rodriguez says.
“I use this example because I think it makes the most sense, at least to me. Alternative music is like a quilt. There's so many different fabrics, so many different styles of music that all make up this giant fabric of amazingness. And sometimes I make exceptions for something that's really, really good that feels like it deserves a chance to be heard.”
Rodriguez chooses the music herself.
“It was heavily monitored in the beginning,” she says. “Now it's completely hands off."
It took a minute for the show to hit its stride.
“I was scouring all these different publications, even just going on Instagram of venue websites, trying to find bands doing local shows, getting to know them and hear them and reaching out to them, whereas now everyone is reaching out to me and that's really nice,” Rodriguez says. “So it's been really cool to see the growth of it. I think at first, the audience was just whoever was listening to me at night."
Homegrown with Mo! shares a name with KDKB's old local music show
As to what she’s looking for when she’s deciding who to feature on the show, Rodriguez says, “It definitely has to sound great. It needs a great mix, a great master, which is a hard thing to come by sometimes, because a lot of these artists, they don't have money to get all that done, so it’s more of a bedroom production for them sometimes. But ultimately, it comes down to the sound. I just need it to capture me within the first five seconds.”
When she called her show Homegrown with Mo!, Rodriguez didn't realize KDKB had a local show called Homegrown.
“This had to be at least 20 or so years since it like last aired on KDKB,” she says. “Someone sent me a vinyl of the local bands at the time that they had put out. And the cover is an Arizona license plate that just says ‘Homegrown’ on it. I thought it was a wild full circle moment that this is what it is now. I feel like I'm continuing that tradition that the station had for such a long time, or at least I'm reigniting it. Very serendipitous."
Mo Rodriguez was raised on radio in Mesa
Radio was the soundtrack to the future DJ’s childhood growing up in Mesa.
“My mom loved listening to the radio,” Rodriguez says. “One time, she won tickets to a movie that I really wanted to see from Power 92.3. It was with their morning show, Bruce Kelly and Maggie Brock. I met the DJs and just kind of fell in love with the idea that you could hear your voice on the radio.”
It took a while for her to come around to the idea of pursuing that as a career, though.
“I'd never really given it much thought during my teenage years until my early 20s,” Rodriguez recalls. “I was a massage therapist at the time. And I was loving it, but I felt like something was missing — an entertainment factor because I do love talking and I love entertaining people.”
How Mo Rodriguez talked her way onto the air at X103.9 and KUPD
In 2011, Rodriguez applied to a broadcasting school in Denver but ended up not going.
“Two weeks before I was supposed to go there, my appendix burst and basically all my money was gone to pay upfront for co-pays and everything like that,” she says. “So I couldn't go and live there anymore.”
Instead, she started reaching out to local stations, looking for an internship.
“I did bend the truth a little bit, saying I needed an internship because I was in college, even though I wasn't,” she says. “But they never asked for any of that info. So I just kept going with it. And they really enjoyed my personality and my drive.”
Her first gig was an internship as KEXX-FM (X103.9), where she worked her way up from a promo assistant to a morning show producer before leaving in 2013 for KUPD-FM (97.9), where she went back to being a promo assistant, then a morning show producer before moving to on-air weekends and fill-ins.
Mo Rodriguez was the first voice on the air at Alt AZ in 2014
When KUPD switched its sister station, KDKB-FM (93.3), from classic rock to Alt AZ in 2014, Rodriguez was the first voice listeners heard when they tuned into 93.3 that morning.
“The night before they flipped the station, they called me into the office and told me I was leaving KUPD to be the first voice on Alt AZ,” Rodriguez says. “It was crazy. I was like, ‘Are you sure I'm the right person?’ I mean, at the time, I felt I was still green. But to be given an opportunity like this, you can't say no, especially if it's something that you’ve always wanted. I was like, ‘Let's go. Let's do this.'”
Alt AZ was a much better fit for Rodriguez.
“I mean, yes, I love the music,” she says. “But I think it’s the community of people that make it feel like this is home for me. It's no surprise that a lot of KUPD fans are a little more aggressive, a little more misogynistic. I was growing out of it, getting more in touch with my feminine side than I realized, my softer side."
At first, she was a pre-recorded voice explaining what was going on. She’s pretty sure it wasn’t until January 2015 that she was actually an on-air personality.
“They were still looking for other on-air talent, and they didn't want me to be the only show on here,” Rodriguez says.
"So yeah, I was the first voice, but it was just a pre-recorded voice you heard throughout those first few months before we started getting actual DJs. I remember the stunt we pulled, playing nothing but Richard Cheese lounge covers of alternative songs. That really confused people. I’m pretty sure the first real song we played with ‘Come With Me Now’ by Kongos.”
For Rodriguez, the best part of being a DJ is giving people experiences they probably wouldn't have enjoyed without her intervention.
“I love calling our listeners if we're doing a big giveaway it's for a flyaway to somewhere or a private experience with a band,” she says. “Just today, I was on the phone with this girl, Jaden, who’s a massive fan of My Chemical Romance. And I happened to have an extra pair of tickets that I didn't give away earlier this week because I was out of town.”
So she offered the tickets to Jaden.
“I was like, ‘Look, I know you really want these tickets. I've known you for a long time. Let's just hook you up,’” Rodriguez says. “And she immediately started crying because she can't necessarily afford them, especially right now with this economy. It's hard to pay for tickets to a band you love. And to be able to give someone a night of happiness, I mean, what more can you ask for, you know?”
Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How a local kid became a voice for Phoenix's 'underrated' music scene
