Raina Douris loves her job as afternoon host at Indie88, but lately, she’s learning to love not being at work and how that makes her better when she is there. One of the first people to join the radio station for its 2013 launch, she was hired for both her effervescent on-air personality and her in-depth knowledge of local and Canadian music. These days, however, her microphone is her focus.
“I started as the music director and the afternoon host, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.,” Douris recalls, “but as the station has grown, they gave me the choice to focus on either being music director or working on-air, which is my passion. So we extended my hours, to 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, which I’ve been doing a year and a half.”
In addition, Douris also pre-tapes a Saturday morning show, which usually winds up being a weekly best of.
Being that first hire drove Douris to put in gruelling hours during Indie88’s early days.
“It was a lot and a lot to learn,” she says. “I’d worked in a music department at the Edge, but I hadn’t been in charge. I’d come in the morning to prep my show, do the show, then schedule music — often until midnight. When you’re starting something, you want to be there all the time.”
Now, however, Douris has a much greater mastery of a little thing called a work-life balance. “I’m still excited to be here,” she says, “but I’ve learned when to go home or go out.”
Having her nights free initially meant attending more live music gigs, but Douris has transitioned to seeing concerts occasionally and taking the time she needs to recharge her batteries for her daily studio time.
“I used to go to so many shows,” she says, “but this past year, while I was still going to festivals and seeing plenty of concerts, I’ve started going out to see more comedy or just going out with friends.” Douris notes that focusing on non-musical activities helps her sidestep that “always working” headspace.
“When you do a show like mine, it can feel like everything in your life is prep or material — you’re always looking for relatable moments you can talk about,” Douris says.
Learning to turn that off can be be rather tricky.
“I’ve found that, when I’m stressed or stuck in a loop thinking about being on-air, going out and sitting in the dark and watching other people be funny and fearless onstage really helps.”
“Behind the microphone, there can be a lot of pressure with so many people listening,” she says. “If I do a bit or joke that feels like it fell flat, I can feel my face start to get hot, and I start to think, ‘Oh my God, what did I just do?’ ”
Douris says that seeing improv and comedy helps remind her that it is OK to fail, as failure is inevitable and everybody does it. “Recovering from that can be beautiful,” she says. “I find it inspires me to take risks,” she says.
“On-air, it’s just myself — no co-host, no producer, just me — so I have no idea if people are laughing in their car or sitting near a radio and rolling their eyes at me being an idiot. You have to have the guts to just do it, and maybe you’ll get some kind of feedback — like phone calls or tweets.”
As feedback goes, being voted Toronto’s favourite radio host two years running by the readers of Now Magazine certainly speaks to how much the city loves her. When we ask Douris where her career passion began, she traces part of it to a “super-liberal upbringing” in what she’s described as a “hippie commune.”
“We spent a lot of time up north near Muskoka in a cabin that was legally just a shed — no running water, an outhouse — with my aunt, a visual artist and sculptor, as well as lots of close artsy family friends.”
In what would prove to be a bit of foreshadowing, Douris recently unearthed a videotape of her with her best childhood friend making fake commercials for whatever they happened to have on hand: Beanie Babies, a landline telephone, you name it.
“There’s one where I actually say, ‘Call in now and win this contest!’ I was 10,” she says.
Douris’s extroverted behaviour led to commuting from Stouffville to Baythorne Elementary in York Region for its arts program, which was followed by Markham District High School. Douris says she felt like an honorary Richmond Hill and Thornhill resident.
“All my friends lived there. I went to a lot of bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs.” Those bar mitzvah DJs taught her how to woo a crowd. “I learned a lot,” Douris says, “like always play ‘YMCA.’”
It was when CBC came to her school, though, that she discovered her calling was in radio.
“They wanted to get some high schoolers’ perspectives on the Iraq war, and my economics teacher said, ‘Raina, you always have a lot to say.’ ” She says. “My first time [on-air] was in my high school library, and I thought: ‘This is the coolest thing ever.’ ”
That led to radio and television arts at Ryerson University.
“I was so naive, thinking, ‘TV and radio must be easy to get a job in!’ ” Graduating at the height of the recession and then interning at Corus, Douris racked up plenty of debt while waiting for her internship to morph into a job. She puts a positive spin on her circumstances. “I consider myself lucky because I eventually got opportunities — first at the Edge and then CBC — to do something, rather than just press play on a syndicated feed from the U.S.”
It was at 102.1 the Edge, working with Dave “Bookie” Bookman — now an on-air host at Indie88 as well — that Douris got her break. Bookman got her to go on-air with him to do this segment called Indie Online, in which they chatted about local bands. When Indie88 came calling, Douris was a natural fit.
Nowadays, although her focus is her own time slot, Douris still advocates for local and Canadian content at the station overall.
“I’m still on the music committee. We have two music and programming directors, and we have weekly meetings where we bring in new songs and figure out what cracks the rotation.”
“It’s supposed to be a forty-five-minute meeting, but it’s always over two hours — which I love,” says Douris, grinning. “It’s so great to have heated arguments about music. That’s a cool job I have.”
