On Friday nights, listeners of WKNC 88.1 FM are treated to four hours of rock and metal, harkening back to the station’s ‘90s rock roots. The songs are chosen by request, with students, alumni and regular listeners all calling in to hear their favorite death-metal jam or rock ballad. However, another perhaps unexpected group of listeners also chimes in: prison inmates. People behind bars write and call in to request a song, tell a story or simply send a family member a message and Paul Williams reads for them.
Williams, under the DJ handle Uncle Paul, hosts two shows on Friday nights. The first, “Friday Night Request Rock,” features rock and metal requests, including requests from prison inmates. It airs from 8 to 10 p.m. The second segment, Chainsaw Rock, is reserved for the harsher requests that may not be appropriate to air until later in the night.
Williams, before his return to NC State in 2006, originally worked for WKNC in the early ‘90s when the radio station still focused on hard rock. During this period, the radio station first started accepting and reading letters from prisoners.
“Since the show was based on requests in general, we would do our best to play the write-in requests as well, and mentioned where they were coming from,” said Richard Palmer, former WKNC DJ who hosted under the name Poor Richard. “After a while, many of the listeners started sending in shout-outs to people, which we began to read as they came in. From there it just slowly grew until we incorporated the whole letters on-air.”
Poor Richard and Uncle Paul began to receive and read more letters on air from inmates until it became a segment of the show. According to Williams, instead of writing in, some inmates would use the collect-calls system to make their requests. However, instead of using their real name, they would say their request.
“I think they had fewer options back then, so we used to get a lot of collect calls from ‘Metallica, Master of Puppets’ or ‘Megadeth, Peace Sells,’” Williams said. “They wouldn’t say their name because they knew we wouldn’t accept the charges, so they would make their request in that short time frame.”
In the present, Williams brings in his own ever-growing personal collection of rock and metal music from home in order to try and meet as many of the requests as he can. When he has time, Williams edits some of the more explicit songs that prisoners or other listeners may request from time to time in order to make sure he can air them.
“It may all sound like Cookie Monster, but there is a lot of diversity there,” Williams said. “I try to go everywhere from ‘70s, all the way through the ‘80s, ‘90s as well as all the different genres that are out there today.”
Williams first began working for WKNC in the ‘90s as a freshman. His first job was reading news from 5:30 to 6 a.m.
“The way the news was done back then, everything came across the AP Wire, which was on a dot matrix printer,” Williams said. “The printer would be running all night long. There was this big ream of paper printed out, and my job was to rip that off, go through it and build a newscast out of that. I had to get there normally by about 4:30 a.m. in order to do that, all while taking classes.”
After running a news shift, Williams got his first job as a DJ, running a 2 to 6 a.m. rap and R&B shift. Williams was able to pick up a rock and metal DJ shift during WKNC’s relocation to Witherspoon Student Center from the old Talley Student Union.
“It was an interesting genre because I hadn’t ever heard that type of music on the radio,” Williams said. “Normally, if someone had something like that, they just had CDs. I never heard it played on the radio until I got here.”
Nowadays, Williams programs “Friday Night Request Rock,” which includes a variety of hard rock and metal. During the 9 to 10 p.m. half of the show, Williams reads the letters sent from inmates on a section known as “Penitentiary Rock.”
“Sometimes I’ll play requests from a family member for someone that they have in prison,” Williams said. “More and more prisons can hear the show now. So sometimes you’ll get letters from very far away or you’ll get letters from prisoners who have transferred and can no longer hear the show but they still want to send messages to the friends that they had when they were in the listening radius.”
The show receives letters from all across North Carolina, including state and federal prisons in Orange, Warren and Pitt Counties. Williams said that he sometimes gets letters from as far away as Texas, and the show has even received international letters, including a letter from Germany and a letter from Turkey.
“To my knowledge, it’s never really been advertised,” Williams said. “It’s just all word of mouth and it’s a captive audience, you know?”
DJ Uncle Paul’s Chainsaw Rock shift is Friday nights 8 p.m. to midnight on WKNC 88.1 FM.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 21 2016 on page 6 with the headline “Uncle Paul’s penitentiary rock giving inmates a voice and escape.”
