Station Manager / Program-Music Director / Producer-Editor:
NR DAVIS
Natalie Davis is the founder of Grateful Dread Peace Media, a nonprofit sole proprietorship in existence since 1996 to use media to make a better, more informed world. GDPM is an activist/journalism community service venture that works with small businesses, individuals, progressive organizations and other nonprofits to provide business services including content creation and management, SEO optimization, freelance journalism and investigative reporting for print, broadcast and Web, copywriting, proofreading, transcription, publicity and public relations and consulting. The company also provides activism media services including direct action and event organizing, public speaking presentations on progressive issues and media training for activists and community organizers. (Being nonprofit, GDPM does not and cannot work with political candidates and campaigns.) Also under the GDPM umbrella are Grateful Dread Public Radio and The Armchair Activist. Davis has worked in professional journalism and as a progressive issues activist for more than 30 years. She is co-founder and moderator of the Baltimore Activists Coalition and the GLBT direct-action group Soulforce. She is long-known in the blogosphere for the award-winning All Facts and Opinions (still active via Twitter) and will be blogging under PROGRESSIVE NASHVILLE. Formerly Davis was a reporter and editor with the Baltimore Alternative and the City Paper alternative weeklies of Baltimore and Washington and Patch Media, a talk show producer-co-host for Sirius Satellite Radio, and has worked for WMUC (College Park, Md.), WCVT and WTMD (Towson, Md.), WCAO/WXYV (Baltimore, Md.), WCBM (Baltimore, Md.), WRKA (Louisville, Ky.), CBS Radio Baltimore, and WRNJ (Hackettstown, NJ). Her print and Web journalism has been published internationally and honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Vice Versa GLBT Journalism Awards. The Baltimore native and mother of two is the co-author of Real Estate Careers, available on amazon.com, and an occasionally actively performing singer-songwriter and guitarist. Now based in Music City, she is in the process of writing and seeking a publisher for Kyndnotes, a series of essays on kindness, and when time allows, writing songs.
News Director:
KIM BEAVERS
Journalist – photographer – poet Kim Beavers is a native of Atlanta. Her family relocated to the hills of East Tennessee and then to rural Western Maryland, where she graduated from high school in 1979, the same year her poem “A Platonic Request” was published in the Gay Sunshine Journal. After a few brief stints in college (studying media communications and social work), Kim she became a newspaper reporter in Baltimore. Her work as a reporter and arts writer for the Baltimore Alternative startiing in 1995 was the beginning of her working relationship with editor Natalie Davis. Her interview subjects have included such notable figures as Adrienne Rich, Angela Bowie, Kate Clinton, Debra Chasnoff, Janis Ian, Suzanne Vega, Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, and many others. She was the founding host of “Second Thursdays” at Baltimore’s Cafe Diana, a critically-acclaimed feminist poetry reading series featuring such poets as Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove and Jewelle Gomez. She has performed her own spoken word in venues from coast to coast. Beavers’ articles and poetry have appeared in such publications as Maryland Poetry Review, The Pearl, Art in Progress, Baltimore Evening Sun, Baltimore Chronicle, Baltimore Alternative, Baltimore Gay Paper, The Independent (Southern Humboldt, Calif.), Reclaiming Quarterly and Deneuve. Her first book of poetry, Sleeping With Ghosts, was published by Mountain Laurel Press in 1992. Her second poetry manuscript, Tattooed Heart, was nominated for the 1996 Artscape Literary Award. In 2003, she recorded and produced a spoken word and tribal/techno/jazz CD titled “Silent No Longer” with the legendary Bishop Mayfield. In 2009, Beavers joined the staff of GDPR as West Coast News Bureau Chief. She became News Director in 2011. Beavers lives in Oakland, Calif., and works as a progressive issues fundraiser when she’s not covering protests,the Occupy movement, police misconduct, environmental matters and other stories for GDPR and snapping photos.
Contact Information:
GRATEFUL DREAD PUBLIC RADIO
c/o NR Davis, Program/Music Director
301 Ezell Pike #17729
Nashville, TN 37217
(615) 216-7187
(888) 416-8777 – toll free
Open during regular business hours.
Studio Line: (615) 490-1221