‘Power trio’ bringing local flavors to online radio

In a little over six months, John Anthony Vega, Greg Ramirez and Don Page have taken internet radio station KLZZ from 50 to 2,000 listeners. The station has a variety of programs that feature Tejano, Country and Rock music.

Posted Friday, August 4, 2017 4:00 am

By Rob Ford rob@gonzalesinquirer.com

Back in the day — when Greg Ramirez and John Anthony Vega jammed together in the Tejano group Klazz — they had no idea they’d one day be starting their own internet radio station.

Fast forward to 2017, where they — along with business partner Don Page — are broadcasting live daily from Greg’s house.

Since the station’s start six months ago, the KLZZ (named after the band) fanbase has exploded in numbers, and the guys say it’s still just the beginning.

“We have been in music for a long time with KLAZZ, and we started thinking of other ways we could be involved in music,” Greg said. “So I thought of starting up a radio station. I thought my cousin John Anthony would be a good partner because he knows a lot of technology stuff.

We couldn’t come up with a name for station, and John Anthony just said we could name it after KLAZZ, so we got KLZZ.”

“My wife came up with that, actually,” John Anthony said.

“We’re also in the middle of building a new recording studio at my house, so everything can be run from there,” Greg added. “KLZZ Radio and Ramirez Recording Studio will be coming out of the same place.”

John Anthony said the project started with a laptop, and from there they’ve worked out into a bigger system where they utilize a lot of technology in order to make it happen correctly.

“When it comes to the actual shows and what we broadcast, Don helps with the time slots, and Greg keeps us on a set schedule,” John Anthony said.

A lot of the DJ work is handled by Sean “Hot Wheels” Zambrano and Angie Cantu. Angie has a show called “Caliente,” and Sean hosts one called “The Rock Connection.”

“Sean is an integral part of the show,” John Anthony said. “He’s a jack-of-all-trades.”

As for the station itself, the guys say it has a growing fanbase that has reached the thousands in a relatively short period of time.

“Our first month in, there was an average of about 50 listeners a day,” Don said. “With internet radio you’re not limited in bandwidth of what the frequency can drive. Today we’re averaging 2,000 listeners a day. And we’ve only been doing this for six months, The kind of growth we’ve achieved since the start is pretty amazing.”

Don said he just joined the station three months ago, and that he got involved because he knew Greg from working with him at the Gonzales school district.

“We’ve known each other for almost 10 years now,” he said. “Good gosh, a long time! He was talking about the station and I decided to listen to it. I liked it, and told him I’d like to get involved. So I’m trying to help out from a marketing and sales standpoint, since that’s my background.

“When KCTI closed down, we no longer had DJs to listen to. We no longer had a community calendar. We no longer had a lot of things that our community counted on. But now, as KLZZ, we’re looking to bring that back. We want to be Gonzales’ radio station.”

Check out the variety of shows that KLZZ has to offer: