Bruce Harvie started the Internet website RadioFree Olga in the spring of 2005 to present the original music recorded by musicians on the San Juan Islands.

“There really is no place in the San Juan islands for musicians to play their music,” Harvie said. “Essentially the podcasts on RadioFree Olga are the opportunity for musicians to be heard. There is an incredibly diverse and talented pool of musical talent in the San Juans, and RadioFree Olga is my attempt to bring all these musicians under one roof, so we can all see and hear what everybody is up to.”

Available at www.radiofreeolga.com, the podcasts are a mixture of everything that Harvie has been able to locate. There is not just a musical range but also a large variety in performances and types of music. He has recordings of Dave Parish’s recitals with the Orcas Children’s Choir and recordings of the music of Willie Thomas who is in his 80s.

“I have an instrumental of some of Willie Thomas’ recordings from the 1950s,” Harvie said. “He used to play with Peggy Lee and is a wonderful jazz trumpet player.”

RadioFree Olga offers not just podcasts of local music, it focuses on all things musical in the San Juan Islands. There is a calendar of upcoming events, interviews with local musicians and those visiting the islands, a blog about the local music scene, links to websites and a classified page for musical gear for sale.

“Bruce Harvie is the most perfect person to have a broadcast that relates to Island music because he has played with everyone who plays or sings on Orcas Island,” said Terry Anderson (also known as Dr. Dirty). “Bruce has supported every musician in what they do by lending his expertise to whatever they are doing. He is such a good musician you don’t have to tell him the key, the name of the song or when you are going to start. You just begin the song and he is in it and on it. He is the ultimate musician.”

Harvie has lived on Orcas for 30 years, has recorded more than 30 CDs, three of them his own. Professionally he cuts wood for violins, he says to support his music habit. He plays on the island in one venue or another every few weeks.

“I’ve played in numerous bands in the islands over the years, playing bluegrass, blues, surf, and rock ‘n roll,” Harvie said. I’ve always hoped that Orcas Island could someday put together a local radio station, but the red tape has always been a daunting obstacle. Lopez now has a radio station and I am jealous. With the Internet and the advent of podcasting, it’s possible – and rather easy – to produce a weekly hour-long radio show that exclusively features the music of locals, which has been a dream of mine for a long time.”

His inspiration for RadioFree Olga came from the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid 1970s. He says his favorite radio station was one broadcasting from Gilroy, Calif. that played music, with no attempt at pigeonholing it by genre.

“They would play Beethoven followed by Blue Cheer, then segue into some Miles Davis,” Harvie said. “This is the way I have always heard music as well, and have tried to follow this muse when constructing the RadioFree Olga podcasts. I’ll play some African-inspired acapella vocals, then maybe some jazz, then delve into some hard rock n’ roll followed by some solo piano music. There are no filters. I play everything.”

The only common thread is it has to be “local produce,” Harvie said. All the podcasts are available for download on iTunes. He says maybe four or five songs have been featured more than once but people can listen to original music from the San Juans for eight hours a day for a week and not hear much repetition. There is a lot more to come.

“I’ve been collecting recordings made by locals for some time now, and have something like 250 to 300 CDs worth of material. And with the proliferation of recording studios on the islands, it seems that everyone is making more recordings these days. Nowadays, anyone can record. A person can sit down with a guitar in front of a laptop and make a pretty decent recording.”

He wants to encourage local businesses that play music in their stores to consider playing RadioFree Olga podcasts.

“I’d also like to encourage musicians who are not yet featured yet to send in their material,” Harvie said. “They can send me a CD or a song or two. I know there are many musicians out there with recordings who I haven’t heard from yet, so I’d love to hook up with them. We’ll play anything from punk to choral to experimental to classical, so bring it on.”

He is also searching for some recordings from the past he has not been able to find including two LPs by “The Island City Jazz Band” from the 1980s. He can take old cassettes or reel-to-reel recordings of islander’s music from the past, and restore the tapes and digitize the music.

For the future, he says it will be interesting to see what RadioFree Olga morphs into. He says it has always been difficult to find out what is going on musically here because many things happen under the radar. He hopes RadioFree Olga will continue to make the musical happenings known.

“We are talking about doing live concerts over the air and live jam sessions,” Harvie said. “As more people get involved, I will see what happens with it. I have people on each island who go and see performances and write reviews. I would like to get more people symbiotically involved with reviewing music and performances on the other islands.”

“From a historical perspective, it’s important to get this all under one roof and preserved,” Harvie said.