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Every Friday night, someone can find two Sadler Hall roommates running their own radio show out of a tiny room hidden on the third floor of the Women’s Building.

Syracuse University freshmen Sam Baylow and Payton Dunn are co-hosts of the WERW show “Six Figures Under,” where they feature underground artists. Each show is an hour, and the hosts spend 20 minutes talking about the featured artists and their backgrounds. The rest of the show is devoted to 40 minutes of pure underground music.

When Dunn met Baylow, their first conversation consisted of both underground and mainstream music. At the start of the school year, Baylow mentioned to Dunn that WERW, an independent student radio station, was looking for shows and that’s when Baylow had the idea of creating a radio show featuring music from artists with less than 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

“A lot of the assumptions from a smaller group is that it’s demo-ish, not as high quality and a little thrown together,” Baylow said. “But in reality, it’s just really talented people who might just not have the label or marketing team behind them that some other artists do.”

Dunn and Baylow theme each episode around a specific genre. Baylow starts compiling the playlist, and if Dunn has any song suggestions, he gives it to Baylow. While Baylow handles the order of the music and social media, Dunn does all the tech-related tasks.

Tonight we will be diving into the olden days to revive songs that are close to forgotten but deserve all the attention in the worldhttps://t.co/MpvBeucOAT

— Six Figures Under (@6_Figures_Under) November 2, 2020

“Payton’s a wizard at what he does, and I would be helpless without him,” Baylow said.

Episode six featured 11 songs, ranging from “Victory Shall be Mine” by Rev. James Cleveland to “Dirt and Grime” by Father’s Children, a song that was sampled on Kanye West’s 2015 track “Facts.”

Baylow wanted to host artists in the studio, but they haven’t been able to implement that aspect during the pandemic, he said.

“The great thing about radio and our show is that it’s something that, even with COVID, doesn’t change that much,” Baylow said.

In the future, when it’s safe, the DJs hope to invite artists from campus onto the show to talk about music. Young-Bin Lee | Staff Photographer

As many musicians are unable to perform during the pandemic, Baylow and Dunn want to position “Six Figures Under” as a platform for smaller artists to present their talents and songs.

Dunn is looking forward to next semester in hopes of COVID-19 restrictions being lifted, which would lead to potential advancements for the show.

Eventually when more people are allowed in the studio, Dunn hopes they can try to bring in some artists since many come straight from Syracuse University’s campus.

“To have an avenue where we can just stay at a very covid-safe, tiny closet of a room in the Women’s Building and just geek out about music is really special,” Baylow said.

Published on March 10, 2021 at 11:07 pm