🎙️ Meet WSCA’s DJ of the Month for January 2026!

WSCA is powered by the passion and personality of our volunteer DJs — the voices that fill our airwaves with music, stories, and the kind of energy you can’t fake. To celebrate them, DJ Rob Howell kicked off a new series highlighting one of our on-air hosts each month.

You’ll get to know the people behind the mic — their shows, their favorite tracks, and what keeps them spinning for the Seacoast community. Keep an eye on our website and socials for each new feature, and join us in showing some love for the folks who make community radio what it is: real, local, and full of heart.

Meet this month’s DJ –Nicole Seaward, Kaleido-sonic, Mondays 3-5pm

Can you tell us about when and how you got involved with WSCA?

I’ve been a Portsmouth Townie for a long time, a local. And there used to be a magazine called The Wire, distributed locally, and they had WSCA ads in there. “Come down and train to be a DJ”. So in 2010 I saw that, and I was like, I gotta do this. When I was in high school, I job-shadowed two DJs at WERZ and WHEB because I thought that’s what I wanted to do with my life. And the guy at WERZ was like, “Well, if you want to live off of boxed macaroni and cheese, then this is definitely a profession for you. If you want more than that, you might want to look somewhere else.” And so growing up as a bit of a have not, I was like, “Nope, I want something else.” But then I found WSCA, and I was like, “Oh, I’ll come down and try.” 

So I came down. Tim Stone was running the place at the time, and he was running the training program. And so I got trained in the old Studio A & B, back when our PSA and Underwriter messages were in a box of cards, and you would pull the card out and read it. And I came in, I trained, and then I didn’t start a show. I was really enamored by the community feel and how everyone coordinated to make the radio station stay open. So I got involved with Jean, who had an assembly line of stuffing envelopes for our annual campaigns and other fundraising stuff like that. So I would stuff envelopes and we would have the annual On Air fundraiser. I sat with Jason Brown way back 2010 and did the whole, you know, “Donate to us today,” or whatever.  And so then I just kind of stayed involved as a background volunteer.

Never doing a show? 

Never. Never even got to the point, remember, you used to do a demo in studio. B, a one hour demo, submit it to programming to approve if you had a show or not? The schedule was like it is now;  it was really full. There wasn’t a lot of space. So it was a coveted thing to be a DJ. I decided to stay a non-DJ volunteer. 

And so then I went to college, and I came back after finishing my master’s degree, and was like, “Hey, I’m here. What can I do?” And there wasn’t a lot of leadership at the time. So I started running the Thursday night jazz we used to host. Every Thursday, jazz on the Button Factory Stage. So I’d come here and set up. And then one thing led to another, and I ended up on the board, and then I got nominated to Vice President, and then the President stepped down. And so I was like, “Oh my god.” So then I literally was just thrown into the ocean with no floaties. I mean, I’m here, so it was good.

You survived. Sharks didn’t get you.

No, no, no. But you learn a lot when you’re running from them,  so it was a really good experience. And then after a few years, I was done. 

You were glad to be done?

Yeah. It felt like it came full circle. And I was also, like most people who run nonprofits, just burned out from the same old, same old after five years. You know, having volunteers is different than having paid staff, right? I always say it’s like herding cats because you can’t really, there’s no control or prediction, really for anything, so you’re constantly living with, like, the sense that the bottom could drop out at any time. And so then when I stepped down in September, I started a show in July of the following year.  So July of 2026 will be my two year anniversary of being on the air with my own show. 

Can you tell us about one accomplishment as President of WSCA  that you still think was a really fantastic thing to accomplish?

Reuniting the community, really like the whole  WSCA community. People  felt distant. And I feel like it was an us (Board) and them (DJs) kind of thing, and people didn’t necessarily feel like they had a voice as a DJ. And I feel like I tried to break that barrier down so that people could feel like they had more to contribute to the station than just showing up every week for a show. I felt like belonging was really important, so I really tried to work on the you’re part of a community thing.

And what was something that you knew you were going to be leaving for the next president, Courtney, to tackle?

Herding cats. Still the same thing. And no money.

Let’s talk about your show, Kaleido-sonic. 

Yeah, I mixed a word with a word. I feel like my musical taste is a kaleidoscope, because any playlist that I’m listening to is going to jump from the 60s to 2025 to the 80s. You know what I mean? I’m really all over the place. That’s my sound, I think it just has a certain feel to it. So my show is intentionally upbeat. I try to be light-hearted on the air. I don’t really talk about anything too heavy. That doesn’t mean I don’t throw a comment in there every once in a while, but my intention is that it’s Monday, yeah, and it’s from three to five, and you’re either working and you’re at the last two hours of your Monday, which could have been hell, you probably want to get home. Or you’re a parent, and you’re slogging your kids. You pick them up at three or whatever, and you’re bringing them to their events or whatever.

And you really, really need something to sing along to.

Yeah, just something so that you don’t go over the edge, right? So typically, the show starts slow and down tempo, and I increase it as I go. I tend to hit a really hard point in the middle where it’s either, like, some pretty hard  70s, what they would have called Hard Rock back in the 70s, or like, 90s ALT or, you know, something like that.  And then I’m always tossing in new music. Generally, I span the 60s to today, so I always love that you don’t know what’s coming at you, right? And so that’s just generally my thing. 

I love when people text me and request songs. I take requests even though I have a fully-planned out show. I always leave about 10 to 15 minutes of playtime in case someone sends something in. I love that.

It’s a Monday for me personally, I now I actually look forward to Mondays, and most people don’t look forward to Monday. Now, I start my week excited and like, “Yeah,” you know? It’s a good way to end Monday at work, you know, get into the rest of week, it almost feels like an extra weekend day.

Sometimes, if no one’s at work, I’ll re-listen to my show, because I always like to hear “how were my fade ins and outs? Sometimes I’ll talk over the beginning of a song, if there’s no lyrics or, like,” Did I push it?” I don’t want to be “that DJ”. Remember how you’d make a tape recording from the radio, and you’d have, like, “record” and “play” and” pause” pressed, waiting for your song to start? I used to get frustrated if the DJ talked over the song intro. 

Oh, yeah, right. I remember that. 

You know, who’s amazing is John Supersport. I don’t know if he practices, or if he has a cheat sheet or what, but he knows when the lyric is going to start on every one of his songs. How does he do that?

I don’t know how he does it, but if there’s a long intro, like I have a song today that’s really quiet until 22 seconds, I actually make a Word document. I feel like I’ve never met anyone other than Chris Hislop that knows his music as well as Scavo, and Chris was local music. But Scavo is just everything from classic Italian, you know? I love that he mixes his show up, even though he plays “classic rock”, he throws in new stuff all the time, and so it keeps it fresh, which I love.

Let’s talk about your musical taste. Tell us about the first band that you absolutely went bonkers for when you were a kid.

That’s a toss up between Collective Soul, Smashing Pumpkins and Bjork. My parents were not music people, so I didn’t find it until I was a teenager. Dave Matthews, I went nuts over. I was 12 when I first started listening to him. So the first CDs I ever owned were the Aladdin soundtrack, and I also got Smashing Pumpkins at the same time. 

What about the most recent band that you’ve fallen in love with? 

Oh, the most recent? So I would say Wet Leg and Big Thief. I think those would be two I’ve been listening to lately. I like that they have, like, really cool, poetic lyrics, but the songs are really dynamic, and they hit in all these different areas. And it’s, like, exciting to listen to. It’s like watching a thriller. You don’t know what’s next. And they’re, they’re sonically complex, and I like to listen to a producer that can add all kinds of other sounds in that when you have a tuned ear,  you can hear all of that stuff. I really like that.

What do you want to do with your show that you haven’t so far?

Play slow songs that I like, slow sad songs. I’ve pigeonholed myself into wanting to keep my show upbeat. But I actually really love songwriting, and I love stripped down songs, and I really like super-emotive voices, like Jeff Buckley, and so I would love to play more stuff that I emotionally resonate with, rather than just “yeah, this is fun.” 

Best compliment you’ve received as a DJ?

I just, I really like… There’s this guy, Alan from Rye. He’s listening pretty regular, but every once in a while he’ll send in a message, and he always makes a comment about my personality on air, not necessarily the songs, but he likes the tone and the attitude and whatever. And it’s cool. Everybody has different music tastes, but I think people also go to the radio to listen to a DJ specifically, and so I kind of like that, that I can at least bring the listeners some happy times. There used to be a DJ, he used to be on Wednesday, Ryan Sherman and he used to come down from Manchester, and he used to crack me up. He would just be talking to himself out loud and crack me up. And so Wednesdays from six to eight, I wanted to listen to his show, just because I was like, “He’s gonna make me laugh.” 

What are you doing outside of WSCA? You’re working for Arts in Reach?

Yes. I’m the director of operations there, which is fun, because it’s different every day. I kind of call myself the dad of the organization, because when things break or need to be fixed or taken care of, people usually ask me to do it. It’s good. I also get to be part of the program. So I get to meet the teenagers. Sometimes I’m driving the van.  So I get to, we don’t have kids, so it’s cool to hang out with my other peoples. You know, teenagers and stuff, right? They’re awesome, right? So that’s what I’m doing.

Tell us about the program a little bit.

It’s free. It’s out of school, so it’s either after school gets out, or it’s on a school vacation, or during the summer. In the summer, we offer eight weeks, 10am to 3pm free. So it’s a free summer program. Every one of us is trauma informed. Every one of us works to design the program so there’s a lot of social, emotional learning components that go into the program structure. The teens show up for a program, and they have to all leave their phones in a toy dump truck.. All the students come from different towns and schools, so sometimes they’ve never met each other. So if they don’t have a lot of friends in their school, they might meet some cool people through A.I.R. And then the cool thing is that they want to come back, because that’s the only place they see that friend. So this becomes like a really cool, special thing for them. 

Our teaching artists are actually local artists, so they students are learning from local artists. But also we have guest artists come in from the area, and they show what they do for art, and they run a class. And so students are not only exposed to different types of art, like junk journaling or painting or theater or whatever, but they’re also exposed to artists in the area that are doing what they want to do. We just started to accept all youth. We used to only focus on girls and gender expansive. But then we just decided to let everyone in, and that’s been a really big change for us. We did it because there’s a lack of stuff for young boys to do, things to do  outside of like a sport at school.

What’s your favorite thing about being part of WSCA?

I like the combination of art and media together a lot. I really like that you can tune into the station and it’s not programmed to sound the same all the time, and that people can find new things. And I just feel like radio is a dying art, and being a DJ is a dying art. So I still love radio myself and I listen to the radio and am like, “what is that? What are you gonna play next?” And so I kind of feel like I’m bringing a little bit of that back. With your own playlist, you know the genre that you’re listening to or what’s on your playlist, and so, I like introducing listeners to new stuff, or, like, really deep cuts from an artist they know, but they may have never heard. Okay, that’s probably my favorite thing.

Thanks Nicole!