No, this isn’t a Halloween trick. Today is long-time WUOT jazz host and music director Todd Steed’s final day on the job. He broke the news to me about two months ago. A few weeks later, I had the chance to sit down with him and talk about his career.
I asked Todd: what’s next?
“I really wanna take care of the hound,” he replied.
Todd was brought on to WUOT as a part-time jazz coordinator nearly twenty years ago. Since then, he’s unquestionably become a trusted voice in East Tennessee broadcasting. But radio wasn’t always his goal. For decades, it was making music.
Growing up in Knoxville, the youngest of five siblings, Todd found himself collecting lots of hand-me-down records from a young age. He was inspired by the sensational showmanship of the world’s biggest band: The Beatles.
“A lot of little kids were singing, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ and ‘The Wheels on the Bus,’ and all those great chestnuts,” Steed said. “But I was singing, ‘Twist and Shout,’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ ‘She Loves You,’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ Those were my childhood nursery rhymes.”
From there, his passion grew. He got his first guitar when he was 15, and played his first gig not long after that. Todd eventually went on to the University of Tennessee, where he studied journalism.
“I just wanted to play music,” he said. “And I wanted to get a college degree … I actually bought into the ‘you need something to fall back on,’ because subconsciously, somewhere, I knew failure was quite possible … But I really, really wanted to try to make a living playing music.”
Todd was in and out of bands, playing gigs in between classes at UT. It was there he had his first brush with WUOT. He had grown up listening to the public radio station, and asked for a job there as a student.
“[It] did not happen,” he said. “They're like, ‘what can you do?’ And I was trying to explain that I didn't have any skills. ‘I need more skills.’ I told him I really didn't know anything about jazz or classical and they're like, ‘well, there's really nothing here for you.’”
So Todd tried the next best thing: the brand new student station, WUTK. In his two years there, he helped steer the station away from programming mostly smooth jazz and on its path to becoming the indie music station it’s known as today.
After college, he spent several years working at Raven Records and Rarities on Central Avenue. As he and his band played more gigs across the country, he gained local renown for being a “renaissance man.”
“I would do any gig,” Steed said. “Anything that sounded interesting was going to happen … I didn't really think about [my] career, other than I knew one thing: I don't want to be bored.”
After his band parted ways in the ‘90s, Todd spent time in Lithuania and Indonesia working various jobs teaching English. He returned to UT to get his master’s degree in foreign language education before taking a job at the university’s International House, where he helped people with student visas get acquainted with life in Knoxville.
Through it all, his mind kept wandering back to music and WUOT. Until one day, he got an email from a friend: the station needed a part-time jazz coordinator.
“And I said, ‘I've been waiting for this moment all my life,’” Steed recalled.
He was hired in 2006 by former WUOT General Manager Regina Dean, who was immediately struck by his creativity and passion.
“It was clear and obvious to everybody that he had so many talents, and was so creative,” Dean said.
Within a year, Todd pitched a new monthly program centered on local musicians to WUOT and UTTV: “Studio 865.” It was a hit. The show still runs today, though it stopped appearing on UTTV after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The energy Todd brought was immediately noticed by his new coworkers, such as former News Director Matt Shafer Powell.
“As soon as he turned on the mic it was like, ‘wow, we’ve moved into a new era of jazz on WUOT and Todd’s right there at the head of it,’” Powell recalled. “And it seemed like it was instantaneous.”
The success of “Studio865” earned Todd additional hours. After the departure of longtime WUOT Music Director Dan Berry, he was made full time in 2010.
“I can't believe I'm getting to talk to these amazing people and be representing this incredible art form,” Steed said. “Or doing studio 865, you know, where could be [interviewing] Sarah Watkins, or it could be EmiSunshine, or it could be Kelle Jolly …. I just can't believe this great, great luck that I have.”
Dean says he never let the success go to his head, even as he continued to innovate and come up with new programs for the station.
“Todd has never had an ego,” she said. “And yet he is so talented … he took an idea and ran with it.”
In 2019, Todd produced a seven-part special program titled, “Raised in Knoxville,” a weekly series examining the city’s history with country music.
“And it was so much fun,” Dean recalled. “He was working full time, and he’s done just all kinds of things. You know, “Improvisations To Go.” He said, ‘hey what do you think about me traveling places?’ And I said, ‘well, what do you have in mind?’ And he put it all together and I said, ‘yeah let’s try it.’”
For “Improvisations To Go,” Steed traveled to multiple cities across the United States with lively jazz scenes, including Memphis, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Denver and San Francisco.
“He always had the listener in mind,” Dean said. “When you’re in public radio that’s kind of the bottom line. That’s what we’re here for … to serve the community. And he found so many fun ways to do that.”
Todd brought his music-making skills to the station, too. He collaborated with Matt Shafer Powell to write original music for the station that suited certain news stories.
“I went to his house – his really cool house – and we went into his studio and he’d play me something,” Powell said. “And I’d say, ‘what about this,’ and he’d say, ‘hey, what about this?’ And it was just a really fun thing to do, and I thought it turned out really cool.”
To say that Todd Steed has left an enduring mark on the station would be an understatement. Many listeners – old and new alike – think of Todd as the soul of WUOT.
Chrissy Keuper, former “Afternoon Concert” host at WUOT, concurs.
“He brought the community in and brought a realistic, holistic, humanistic feel to everything that the station did,” she said.
Now, after nearly 20 years of fun, Todd says it’s time to hang up the hat. His last day at the station is today, October 31, 2025. He aired his final “Studio865” on Saturday, and signed off of “Improvisations” for the last time on Tuesday.
So I asked Todd: did you get bored?
“I've never been bored here for a second,” he replied. “I've never been bored listening. I've never been bored working. And I wish I could go back and tell 20-year-old Todd, ‘don't worry. You're not going to get bored. You don't believe me, but it's not going to happen. Not only you're not going to get bored, you're actually going to love your work.’”
He says he’ll still be around, working on this or that. If you see him out and about, say hello – he wants to hear from you.
“I care very deeply about the listeners,” Steed said. “I care very, very deeply about them as people. They're not just some stat to me, and they never will be from here on out.”
Todd Steed is many things to many different people in East Tennessee. He’s a jazz host, a guitarist, a singer, a songwriter, a journalist, and a broadcaster.
To me he’s a dear coworker, and friend.
From all of us at WUOT: Thanks for all the memories.
Happy trails, Todd.
