Will Payne Was Hungry for Radio Food Talk, So He Created Sound Bites

Facebook

Payne: Feeding the unmet appetite.

​These days, radio is a medium often relegated to background noise -- buzzing through the kitchen, perhaps, as you prepare dinner. That's why it's so nice of Will Payne of Pirate Cat Radio to host Sound Bites, a fine, filling radio show about food you can really sink your ears into. The program features interviews with local culinary heroes as well as sweet sets of food-themed music. Secret dinner maestro Leif Hedendal, Chad Newton of Fish & Farm, and Letitia Landa of La Cocina have recently appeared; between fat-chewing, the tummy-rumbling tunes of note have included "Vegetables" by The Beach Boys, off Smile, and "Yam, the King of Crops" by The Mountain Goats.

We asked Payne how he got started, and he broke it down like a brittle hunk of old Halloween candy: "There's very little radio programming covering food, from NPR down to smaller local stations, and I saw an unmet appetite," he said. Payne suggested that cooking is a conversation, shaped by what he called "anecdote, memory, quotation, and riffing off the atmosphere of where you are, who you're speaking to." Catch the conversation at 87.9 FM Sundays, 5-6 p.m., or listen online.