Sense of Place: How Athens' 40 Watt Club helped usher in a new era of rock

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published May 10, 2024 at 1:13 PM EDT

When you look at the Wikipedia page for the 40 Watt Club, in the very first line, it's grouped in with CBGB and the Whiskey a Go Go as one of the most influential music venues in the early punk and new wave scenes. But here's the thing: CBGB was in New York City; Whisky a Go Go is in LA. The 40 Watt Club is in Athens, Ga., population about 130,000.

That should give you an idea of just how important the 40 Watt is. A launching pad for Athens bands like R.E.M. and Drive-By Truckers, the venue has long been a central hub for the local music scene, but it also welcomes artists from far and wide who come back again and again.

Barrie Buck has been owner of the 40 Watt Club since 1987.

In this session, longtime owner Barrie Buck talks about hosting bands like Nirvana and The Replacements, plus she shares what makes 40 Watt so special on this dispatch from our Sense of Place: Athens series.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Tags

NPR Top Stories

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

See stories by Raina Douris

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod