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In the dead of a winter night, DJ Baub Alred takes to the airwaves at WEFT 90.1 FM to spin high-octane punk, confront personal ghosts, and give volume to the marginalized.

On the 100 block of North Market Street, tucked just beyond the bright lights and bustle of downtown Champaign, sits WEFT 90.1 FM. The community radio station has been broadcasting continuously since 1981, anchored in a city that relies on its low-power signal for high-voltage variety.

It’s 11:45 p.m. on a desolate, bone-chilling January night. Outside, the streets are empty. Inside, WEFT is vibrantly alive. Like every night, music is released into the ether, warming the cold air of the station.

Waiting in the Great Hall—a cavernous space where local bands play live on Mondays and thousands of CDs line shelves stretching to the ceiling—is 41-year-old DJ and Champaign resident Baub Alred. Standing nearly six feet tall with a sturdy frame, Alred sports a gentle beard, pinkish round-rimmed glasses, and a full head of orange-blonde hair reminiscent of Scott Weiland during Stone Temple Pilots’ Core era.

When we step into the booth, the searing guitar of Michael Kiwanuka’s “The Final Frame” is winding down the last seconds of Bleecker Street, a folk and singer-songwriter show preceding Alred’s late-night slot.

As the track fades out, the tinny, analog ring of an old Ma Bell landline cuts through the room.

“Hell-o!” an overly excitable, vintage valley-girl voice chirps over a sound bite.

“What’s up, girl?” a man’s voice replies. “What happened after Tony dumped you?”

“Girl, I’m over it. I went from heartbreak to hate!”

Cue a swell of surf guitar, followed by Alred’s first words to whichever night owls in Champaign-Urbana happen to be tuned in:

“Welcome to From Heartbreak to Hate. This is our reform-school girls show, so it’s all bad girls doing bad things. Uncensored, so beware.”

He immediately kicks the broadcast into gear with “The Professionals,” a punchy 1982 new-wave track by the fictional band from the cult film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.

Shortly after the first set begins, fellow volunteer Todd Hunter pokes his head through the studio door.

“You may want to know,” Hunter says, “Todd Durnil figured out that nothing has been recording on the main system since 11 this morning.”

“Okay.”

“So if you’re planning an awesome show, you might want to record it locally.”

“Okay, yeah. I’ll do that.”

Hunter briefly recounts the day’s internal station politics via email—the kind of back-of-house static that led to no one noticing the digital stream was down on Radio Free America. Alred takes the bad news in stride. He’s relatively new to the WEFT roster, and he knows he can upload his set list to Mixcloud later. Still, he winces slightly.

“I get a lot of listens on Radio Free America,” he admits. “So it’s a bit of a bummer.”

Amplifying the Outcasts

As WEFT’s rock director, Alred has a massive physical and digital catalog at his fingertips. His true passion, however, lies in female-fronted punk, alternative, and goth spanning from the 1970s to the present.

The show’s title, From Heartbreak to Hate, pays homage to the very first song he played on his debut broadcast: a track by Angelfish, the 1990s Scottish alt-rock outfit fronted by Shirley Manson before she joined Garbage.

The acts Alred champions are furious, raw, and unapologetically anti-authority. To him, these singers are more than just entertainers; they are sonic ambassadors screaming against domestic abuse, misogyny, and systemic inequality.

“I just have always kind of felt like female music was a little bit more outside than male-dominated music. The basis of a lot of these songs are the same things we have going on now where they don’t have equal rights, still. So that affects me. That’s kind of why I relate to it.”

That aesthetic spills over into his visual art. After years of comic-book sketching, Alred transitioned to digital art, creating pieces he labels “pop surrealism.” His online gallery is razor-sharp, vibrant, and evocative, featuring central female figures set against dreamlike fairy tales or visceral, infernal landscapes.

From the Trailer Park to the Airwaves

Daylight life for Alred is comparatively grounded. Raised in Springfield, Missouri, he works as an office support associate in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. He is a horror movie buff, a tech enthusiast, and a self-described survivor of a complicated childhood.

His parents divorced when he was a toddler, though they continued living together for several volatile years afterward. From an early age, Alred witnessed his father’s abusive behavior toward his mother. The cycle finally broke when his mother’s sisters arrived from Kentucky in the middle of the night, packing up Alred, his sister, and their mother to escape—leaving the patriarch behind.

They relocated to a trailer park in Henderson, Kentucky, near the Indiana border, where Alred lived until age 15. The neighborhood was a colorful melting pot, and Alred thrived. Surrounded by a supportive extended family, he spent his youth carousing with female cousins, hanging out with the older crowd by the town laundromat, and looking for harmless trouble.

“It was actually a great environment,” says Alred, who even as a kid spoke his mind and never backed down from a fight.

When his family later moved to Roodhouse, Illinois, the transition to a rigid, rural locale felt stifling. As an adult, Alred describes his temperament as “pissed-off happy”—at peace with who he is, yet constantly evolving. But as a teenager, he struggled with bouts of anger, depression, and a sharp distaste for arbitrary authority.

Coming to terms with his sexuality in a small town added another layer of friction, though he refused to let it break him.

“People would try to make fun of me, but I genuinely didn’t care,” he says with a shrug. “When they realized it didn’t work, they just stopped.”

Alred has been with his partner, Barry, for over a decade, and remains grateful that his family accepted him without hesitation.

Finding Resonance in the Static

Despite his affinity for rebellious music and anti-establishment culture, Alred in person is disarmingly easygoing. On the air, his delivery is intentionally low-key—no hyperactive radio-DJ shtick, no filler banter. He lets the music carry the weight.

Though he isn’t religious, he has taught Sunday school in the past and values the comfort faith brings to those around him. His inner circle is a testament to his open-mindedness.

“I have very religious friends, and I have very anti-religious friends,” he says with a laugh. “If I throw a party, they all just have to get along.”

That bridge-building impulse kicked into high gear following the polarizing 2016 presidential election. While many around him were distraught, Alred woke up the next morning with a focused determination to offer comfort to grieving colleagues in his office.

His Midwestern roots and blue-collar Kentucky upbringing gave him insight into why large pockets of the country felt overlooked by mainstream politics.

“Until someone can bring every single disenfranchised group together, you’re going to have polarizing politics,” he says.

He knows that ideal social harmony might not happen in his lifetime. But inside a dimly lit radio booth on North Market Street, as the needle drops on another fierce punk anthem, Baub Alred does his part to heal the noise—one track at a time.

This piece is included in the book Far From Mars: Nine Creative Nonfiction Stories Featuring People and Places in Champaign-Urbana.

Photo and video by Sal Nudo