I spent 12 years in Southeastern Indiana on the listening fringe of the last great terrestrial rock station, WOXY. For years, I listened when I could, though that was usually only in the car and only in short bursts. It wasn’t until years later, when woxy.com had emerged as an Internet-only station and I had a place to listen to it full time, that I was truly able to appreciate the beauty of this great station.

A year ago I was a fast fan of the new album from Rainer Maria, an established band but one few terrestrial stations were likely to even sample, let alone playlist. The day I got the group’s CD, its last, as it would happen, my 10-year-old son and I listened to it together. Like I had been, he was immediately hooked. Two months later, he and I saw Rainer Maria and three other bands at an all-ages show in Chicago, where he stood out by standing lower than anyone else in the audience.

I’d been to many shows during my teens and 20s, but no concert experience will ever mean as much to me as the first one I attended with my oldest boy. And it wasn’t some mindless teen act force fed to him by the Disney Channel or other popular sources of entertainment, but a quartet of hard-working musicians trying to carve out a place in the musical world. Bands that neither he nor I would have ever encountered if it hadn’t been for woxy.com and Internet radio.

Dan Markham

Portage, Indiana