For 14 months, listeners to Fairfax Radio’s Channel 37 have wondered just who is the DJ behind the kitschy, retro on-air moniker Reddy J. Kilowatt, who broadcasts a very cool, hour-long eponymously named music show on Wednesday nights? Who could it be?
In a Northern Virginia magazine exclusive, Reddy J. has agreed to reveal his true identity. Music fans, meet Glenn Havinoviski, otherwise known as the “washed-up college DJ that is demonically possessed by a discredited cartoon spokesman for the electric industry,” according to his on-air introduction.
If “The Reddy J. Kilowatt Hour” strikes a familiar chord with local music fans, it’s because Havinoviski spent significant time in the region during WHFS-FM’s remarkable, pioneering free-form radio heyday. Like those shows from the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Reddy J. blends the new and the old together, genre-jumping from alt-rock to soul to deep tracks and other formats, but never coming off like a classic rock station or a progressive channel on satellite radio. The movement from one song to the other, despite the difference in decades the songs may have, is never jarring.
“You might hear some punk rock you haven’t heard in a long time, but then you might hear some Eva Cassidy, which is the opposite of that,” he says. “The intro or the ending will flow into the other song. It’s developing the feel.”
In real life, Havinoviski is a foremost global transportation consultant—locally, he’s done work on the I-495 and I-66 express lanes—who spent significant time traveling, until he was grounded by the pandemic. “I realized I had time again to do what I loved doing in college,” he says. Which is, turning people on to music.
He spends about six hours a week doing the planning and processing of his 58 minutes—“I have no idea what I’m going to play until I put the show together”—taping the show in his bedroom in Reston, fingers crossed the dog doesn’t bark.
“It’s rewarding,” he says of the bottom line. “I hear from bands from the U.S. and Europe who send me their songs. You never know what you’re going to find.”
Reddy J. Kilowatt’s annual local music show is March 9; he’ll feature music and musicians who are either still local or have strong ties to the region. The show is available on major platforms that publish podcasts.
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