Staff

Rusty Roberts is currently on his second tour of duty with the Planetary Group in their radio department. After his first run ended in 2009, he left the industry altogether and ended up in retail management for several years while still having the itch to be in the game. He started his own tiny little side gig called Locale Music, offering up tour and band management services, publicity and other industry-related consulting. He also missed being involved in radio from his college days where he was General Manager and Music Director of WSYC at Shippensburg University in Central Pennsylvania. He returned to the airwaves in January 2016 with This Is Not A Show, a weekly program on WERA featuring the best new music and sessions with some of the best up and coming acts in the independent music scene while also assisting with the overall music programming of the Arlington based low power FM station. Rusty returned to Planetary in 2018 who he now works for from outside of Washington, DC where he resides with his partner and their four-legged child, Gracie J. Puppy Dog.

Max Datner grew up in Philadelphia, where the culture of music and broadcasting has as rich a history as throwing objects at professional athletes. Max chose to be passionate about two of these things, starting his first radio show at his high-school station, WHHS, and interning as a production assistant on NPR’s World Cafe radio show.

At WPTS Radio in Pittsburgh, he hosted programs that featured music from Spanish and Portuguese speaking parts of the world, new music releases, and commentary on current events. Max spent a year as the Music Director at WPTS, the highlight of which was talking on the phone with the promoters at Planetary.

Now that he is on the other side of those calls, Max is working to make musicians’ dreams come true. Among his other LA endeavors are recording his own music as a singer-songwriter and growing his Top 200 Burger Chart.

Jacqueline Codiga is a writer, DJ, and podcaster from Pasadena, California. After leaving home to attend the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications, she returned to LA to try to make a career full time out of her passion for music. Getting to spend four years near the still vibrant Detroit techno scene intensified her existing obsession with electronic music, eventually becoming a board member on the campus DJ club MEMCO (Michigian Electronic Music Collective) that threw their own DIY techno parties around the Ann Arbor area and held DJing workshops for students.

These days, her time away from work is spent as a co-host of the Indieheads Podcast, writing for Merry-Go-Round Magazine, and generally looking for good music anywhere she can find it. As DJ Horse Jeans (don’t ask her to explain the name), she loves playing house and techno of all subgenres and varieties, but her listening tastes outside the DJ booth are all over the place, always looking for something new and exciting.

Nick comes to us from Grandstand Media where he cut his teeth in Publicity with a diverse roster of artists ranging from Modest Mouse, Lindsey Buckingham and Jeff Rosenstock, to Public Enemy, Genesis Owusu and A$AP Ferg. Prior to that, he worked on the record label & management side of the business at Sargent House working with artists such as Chelsea Wolfe, Deafheaven, Russian Circles and more.

Nick fell in love with music at an early age. Growing up in the suburbs of Southern California, he was introduced to many different genres of music at once from his family, neighbors and school friends. His first favorite artists that he can recall were Michael Jackson, Slipknot, Blink-182 and Dr. Dre.

On most days, Nick can be found walking with his best friend Levi (a 6 year old standard sized labradoodle) to pick up an iced oat milk latte while listening to an audio book, podcast or stand-up special.

Born and raised in southern Illinois just outside of St. Louis, MO, Matty’s love of music formed when he was young listening to classic rock and pop radio, eventually translating over to hip hop and indie music in his teenage years. While in high school, he founded the Indieheads Podcast in 2014 and a year later, joined the radio broadcasting program at Lewis and Clark Community College, where he eventually 89.9 WLCA’s Assistant Program/Promotions Director from 2016 until his graduation in 2017.

In late 2016, he joined the moderation team at Reddit’s r/indieheads subreddit, eventually heading up their AMA (ask me anything) and social media teams, along with editorial duties as the founder and editor of the r/indieheads Album of the Year Write-Up series. In his spare time, he’s a writer with bylines in Paste, Merry-Go-Round, and Opinion Police, along with heading up Soft Sounds, the weekly newsletter of the Indieheads Podcast.

Chris Burleson is a recent transplant turning the California to Texas pipeline on its head. After reading John Doe’s Under the Big Black Sun, Chris decided that he needed to experience the energy of the city that produced some of his favorite punk groups himself. His music education began in the suburban sprawl of Austin, TX, where his father’s Steely Dan obsession ensured that Chris aged at twice the normal speed of his peers. He spent his time at The University of Texas at Austin booking shows for KVRX and annoying his neighbors with homemade, mediocre noise rock. You can usually find him scrolling through Rate Your Music, scouring the internet for prime Mark E. Smith quotes, or trying to figure out why J Mascis’s signature Jazzmaster has a gaudy gold pickguard.

A veteran of the Washington, D.C. all ages D.I.Y. scene, Ted Davis moved to the greater Los Angeles sprawl in 2016 to attend Chapman University. While in college, he served as General Manager and Music Festival Director of Chapman Radio, and hosted the weekly show The Planet Moon Power Hour. Before the age of 21, he booked a two-stage biannual festival, managed a show at the legendary San Francisco venue Bottom Of The Hill, and drummed for a number of bands including Dumbo Gets Mad. After his work day at Planetary Group ends, Ted is the Music Editor for Merry-Go-Round Magazine and has written for publications like Pitchfork and The Alternative. On the weekends, he plays a one-person-band’s worth of instruments in a revolving cast of indie rock bands and makes ambient house music under the moniker DJ STEPDAD. He currently lives in Highland Park with an ever-growing collection of house plants and cassette tapes.