QMIX Radio’s Brittany Gray is shown behind the mic in the studio.
Republic file photos
QMIX 107. 3 Radio’s Brittany Gray already knows she’ll have to be on her tuneful toes until Valentine’s Day. No telling what listeners will request to hear that day — a day that she always says station staff “throw out the normal playlist.”
All for a heartfelt cause called the QMIX Annual Love Songs For Love Chapel fundraiser from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the special day, assuring that that Monday hardly will be mundane.
Suffice it to say that it’s a time when hearts beat true and when love, whether platonic or romantic, familial or friend-oriented, blossoms unabashedly.
Last year’s event raised $3,850. This year’s goal is $5,000, according to Kelly Daugherty, Love Chapel’s executive director. So he’s hoping that listeners already are musing over music they want their significant others to hear.
One of the more different and obscure songs that a listener has requested in recent years? Actor/guitarist/singer John Stamos and Jesse and the Rippers’ release “Forever” is one. There also is a version or two of Stamos crooning the tune in concert with the Beach Boys.
“As long as I can find a clean, family-friendly version of a requested song, we will play it,” Gray said. “That was a pretty obscure one.”
But some people skip the mushy and merely donate — $10 for one song, or three for $25 — by requesting a tune that they themselves want to hear. And then there are the tender dedications from parents to their children.
Gray herself always dedicates a song such as “Build Me Up, Buttercup” or “Let It Be” for 7-year-old son, Link, every year.
“Those are two of the songs we always would sing together at bedtime — since forever,” she said with a chuckle.
She also mentioned that female friends are a big part of the event, sending dedications back and forth to one another of songs remembered from bittersweet high school or college days.
“So it really can be any kind of dedication people want to make that day,” Gray said.
Some people dedicate more than just a song or two. In the past, Columbus resident Rich Gold has donated as much as $300 to the cause — about an hour of music — and allowing the station staff to determine the lineup as long as they work in he and his wife’s favorite tune “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers into the mix.
Daugherty and his staff were hoping to expand the event slightly this year by adding an evening banquet with an auction.
“But we decided that, with COVID and everything else going on this year, we just couldn’t put it off, and the danger of getting everyone together would be running the risk of having a (coronavirus) spreader event,” Daugherty said. “Because we realize that it’s rough out there right now.”
