For the past four years, Anna Fellman and Caroline Barnhart have hosted the WRCU FM 90.1 radio show “Your Dad’s on Aux” every Sunday morning. Serendipitously assigned to the same suite their first year, the current seniors quickly bonded over their shared taste in music and were inspired to start a radio show.

“[Barnhart] and I were random suitemates, and we realized we both had a similar enough music taste that it worked out and we were like, ‘Let’s just do a radio show,’” Fellman explained.

The two particularly share a love of old-school music, primarily from the 1960s and 70s, but they enjoy a wide variety of genres and find that their musical preferences complement each other’s well.

“[Barnhart’s] very much more hippy, like Stevie Nicks, I would say like the ’60s and ’70s, but then I’m like the ’60s and ’70s hard rock alternative side, so we’re kind of like two sides of the same coin,” Fellman said.

Their show is a combination of classic rock songs and other musical genres, interspersed with the pair chatting about everything from how their weeks went to the associations each had with the last-played song. However, the heart of the show is the emotional connection Barnhart and Fellman have with their music choices, especially Fleetwood Mac.

“We both really love Fleetwood Mac. We both really love classic rock, and there are other differences in our music taste, but we both have kind of this shared sense that we like classic rock and the nostalgia that it carries for us,” Fellman said. “Every single episode, we end with a Fleetwood Mac song, so every single time, that’s like one of my favorite traditions, because Fleetwood Mac is pretty foundational to our friendship,” Fellman said.

The show’s name — “Your Dad’s on Aux” — came from Barnhart who realized the music she and Fellman play bears a closer resemblance to that of their parents’ college years than their own. 

“For the very first semester it was ‘Classics to Know at Colgate’ or something like that, and then we both realized essentially that it was ‘Dad music,’ and that’s sort of the crux of the show,” Barnhart said. “It’s about what’s been our foundational music background.”

The pair have recently expanded their content, bringing friends and parents on the show as guests. They’ve also started having listeners call in and introduced new formats focused on other kinds of music.

“We have other episodes that we do, like ‘Your Kid’s on Aux’ and we kind of started doing that more recently, where we’ll play our more modern music, or ‘Your Mom’s on Aux’ when both of our mom’s were visiting last fall,” Fellman explained. “We’ve gotten really into having people interact with the show. […] We just try to keep it interactive, keep conversation going.”

The show has been a constant in Fellman’s and Barnhart’s lives for almost four years now, and a defining part of their college experiences.

“[Having the show] is such a highlight — genuinely, if I didn’t have radio, I feel like that’d be a big chunk of our college experience missing,” Fellman explained. “It really was such a bonding point in our own friendship but our friends love it, our friends listen in, our friends will come on the show. It really is such an awesome space.”

Senior Jessie Zehner is a regular WRCU listener and tuned into the latest “Your Dad’s On Aux” show.

“I love to keep WRCU on in the car because it’s so nice to listen to other students’ music taste and it was such a fun surprise to hear [Fellman] and [Barnhart] talking about their show. I definitely thought they had great chemistry and are clearly long-time hosts and friends,” Zehner said.

Joy is the prevailing theme of “Your Dad’s on Aux.” Fellman and Barnhart use their show to honor the happiness and warm nostalgia that “Dad music” brings them, and to spend time together. They value having a set time to see each other, no matter how busy their weeks are. Above all, their show is a love letter to Colgate and the music that brought them together.

“I feel like every show is sort of like an ode to our friendship, and I feel like that’s what it is at its core,” Barnhart said.