SXSW Documentary Goes Inside the Eclectic World of John Aielli
The spirit of radio lives in Faders Up: The John Aielli Experience
By Richard Whittaker, Fri., March 8, 2024
There was never another DJ like John Aielli. The host of Austin NPR station KUTX’s Eklektikos, he welcomed Austinites to their day for five decades with a show that could feature in-depth interviews with local artists or day laborers, and a playlist could include Brahms, Asleep at the Wheel, and frog mating calls. It was the lack of format, his idiosyncrasies, and his cultural polyglotism that made him a true institution.
As shown in South by Southwest documentary Faders Up: The John Aielli Experience, his cultural impact was far greater than simply just playing some songs. For generations of Austinites, Aielli was just always there, but everyone can recall the first time they heard him – even directors David Hartstein and Sam Wainwright Douglas.
For Douglas, it was when he moved to Austin in 2006 and friends told him to check out Eklektikos. “It will completely set you up for the vibe of the town.” A couple of weeks after unpacking, he turned on the radio. “They were celebrating Flag Day, and over the course of an hour he played nothing other than people’s different versions of 'You’re a Grand Old Flag.’”
Hartstein’s memory was “a little hazy” because he’s not sure if he heard the man or the show first. Aielli, a classically trained baritone, would sing in the stairwell of the station’s studios on the UT campus. As a grad student in the same building, Hartstein would find himself serenaded by this invisible singer. “As soon as I put together that the guy on the radio show I was into and the guy singing in the stairwell was the same guy, it really was this 'a-hah!’ moment for me.”
How the pair came to make the documentary is somehow like one of those beloved, diversion-filled and seemingly directionless Aielli anecdotes that peppered the show. They interviewed the radio legend in 2021 – an experience Hartstein compared to “talking with my grandfather” because it was so joyous and easy. “We thought it would probably be a short film about John and maybe some other KUT hosts,” Hartstein said.
When Aielli died in 2022, the duo filmed his estate sale, and cut together a proof-of-concept that they then showed to KUTX Program Director Matt Reilly and General Manager Debbie Hiott. They signed off on the idea of the film, and so the duo collected more interviews, and handed the footage over to editor Field Humphrey. Douglas recalled that their only direction was “just start editing, man. Just see where it takes you,” and when he followed that guidance the film grew from a 15-minute short to 20 minutes, “then we thought, oh, well, maybe it’ll be a PBS hour. Oh, we’re clocking in at an hour-fifteen? Huh. That was a really good rough cut. I think we have a feature.”
So even if they didn’t know what they were making when they started, by the end Hartstein saw it as a celebration of “that 'be yourself, do what you do, and it will all be OK’ spirit that I think Austin still has. To me, that’s the legacy of John.”
Faders Up: The John Aielli Experience
24 Beats Per Second, World Premiere
Sunday 10, 2:30pm, Paramount Theatre
Wednesday 13, 11am & 11:30am, Alamo South Lamar
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