A Talk With Erin O about her 2025 Rock Marathon Design & More
By WTJU
WTJU Rock DJ Erin O’Hare is the writer and researcher behind Under the Table and Screaming, musician (in at least three bands!), and artist behind the 2025 Rock Marathon design. We asked her a few questions about her design, about music, and about community radio.
You can land a t-shirt, a tote, Erin’s zine, and many other thank you gifts when you donate to the WTJU Rock Marathon, running April 7 – 13. Erin, who has been a DJ at WTJU for eight years, will also be hosting a Rock Marathon program, Louie Louie in Perpetuity, on Wednesday, April 9, 6 – 8 p.m.
What was the inspiration behind this design?
Lia asked me to do the shirt design based off some of the flyers I’ve made for Visible Records shows, particularly the ones I’d made on the risograph machine at Infinite Repeats. If I’m remembering correctly, we talked a bit about the values we share that it could reflect, namely community and diversity — two things that are important to me personally, as a musician, and as a DJ. After reading her note, I looked up to start to do a little thinking, and saw all the things I ended up using: A tin of “emergency googly eyes” I’d bought in a book store on Outer World tour last spring — I just had to use those — and then saw my walkman, some tapes, records, a bluetooth speaker, and immediately imagined the googly eyes on those things. I had the idea in my head for a while before putting it down on paper. I considered a few other ideas (like rocks running a marathon…ha), but this one was the best one.
What was the process and media for making it?
It’s a collage! I put each element down on our coffee table, arranged the googly eyes on them, and took a high res photo. I took a shot of everything together at once so it would be to scale. Then I printed out each one, arranged them on a piece of paper, found a font I liked in Microsoft Word, and then glued it all down. Jeremy Taylor was an enormous help getting it all digitized and into the proper format for the screenprinting.
Why is WTJU Rock important to you?
My editions of Black Circle Revolution focus primarily on female/femme/non-binary/PoC/LGBTQIA+ punk and punk-adjacent artists because their voices are important and deserve to be heard. And listeners deserve to hear themselves in the music, too. On top of that, the music is good. Really good. WTJU Rock gives me the freedom to do that, to put those voices on the air and share them with an audience.
What media do you use to listen to music?
The media in the t-shirt design! Mostly vinyl and tapes. I also use Bandcamp, where I can stream a lot of the records and tapes that I’ve bought from contemporary artists.
Tell us a little bit on how you were saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll
I owe so much to rock ‘n’ roll. In my teens, it was my most constant friend. I met my sweetie via music, so many of my friends via music. My life would be a lot different, and most definitely BORING, without it!
We’re grateful for Erin and all that she has contributed to WTJU. You can catch her on Black Circle Revolution every other Thursday, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on 91.1 FM or streaming at wtju.net.
