Jeff Gill was born in New Haven, Connecticut on August 16, 1954, and grew up in a nearby rural town. At the age of 11, he discovered a fascination with radio in all of its aspects - programming and music as well as the technical and performing elements. While in high school, he dj’d music programs over the intercom, played saxophone in the band, and performed in a couple of school plays. He completed his BA in Communications at Seton Hall University in 1976, where his studies were most concentrated in the areas of broadcasting, theater, speech, psychology, history, music, and literature. He was very active at the campus radio station, and performed a fair amount of textbook dictation-to-tape for blind students living at his dormitory.

After some false starts, Jeff did eventually develop a radio career that lasted for the better part of 20 years. By 1978, he had his first paying job as an on-air fill-in at WADS in Ansonia, Connecticut. But developments at a tiny community station in which he was also involved - WLNV in neighboring Derby - were what was really capturing his imagination. As this CETA-funded operation evolved from cable casting to 10-watt FM, it adopted a daytime format of folk, country, and bluegrass, thus filling a void in the local market that had occurred at that time. Jeff went on to become the station’s music director and the director of that format.

One day while on the air, he had what can best be described as an epiphany. He recalls saying to himself, “Somehow, if it were ever possible for me to have a real career in this business, I want to do this kind of programming - this music - more than anything else.” WLNV is now gone, long since absorbed into a larger public broadcasting chain. But Jeff’s desires and aims have remained largely unchanged to this day.

His first full-time professional opportunity occurred in 1979 at WNCS in Montpelier, Vermont, one of the early New England pioneers of the diverse, album adult alternative format now known simply as "triple A." While residing in that state, he went on to work at WSNO and WCVR as well. Seeking better social, professional, and cultural opportunities, Jeff moved to the Boston area in 1983 and has lived in eastern or central Massachusetts ever since. He has worked in various capacities at WCMX in Leominster (Music Director during its country era), WDLW in Waltham (air personality; co-producer of a syndicated program), WCAV in Brockton (air personality), and WUMB in Boston (various duties). Several delivery odd jobs, followed by the gig economy, have sustained him in a career that can be described as sporadic at best.

However, if there was one involvement with a radio station that Jeff would consider his crowning jewel - the one that made it all worth while  - it was his affiliation with WADN in Concord from 1993 to 1997. Although billed as the nation’s only commercial folk station at the time, he was an avid critic of its crossover musical approach and bland familiarity. Nevertheless, Jeff eventually established himself there, prevailing to become Music Director in 1994 and finally, Program Director in 1996, just months before the station changed its format to “personal finance” in December of that year.

Along with his broadcast duties, Jeff produced the acoustic music concert series at Concord’s Colonial Inn in 1995 and 1996. His previous concert producing experience had come in the summer of 1993 when he originated and produced an acoustic series at the Hatch Shell in Boston.

"The memories and people I met through WADN had a powerful effect on my life," he remarks. "It was a community with its own values and way of life - it was what homespun, independent, local commercial radio should be about. I had to carry on the legacy."

And carry on he did. In late March of 1997, Jeff teamed up with former WADN intern and IT networking wiz Jim Black, purchased the station’s music library, and founded Folk Image, one of the first web sites to stream folk music on the internet. Then, in April 2004, Jeff hitched his wagon to the emerging Part 15 AM micro broadcasting movement and established "Troubadour 1700" (now Troubadour 1710) - the 100 milliwatt Folk/Americana/World/New Age station that transmitts from his mobile home lot. With his discovery of progressive talk hosts Thom Hartmann and Mike Malloy in late 2003 - Alex Jones, Jim Fetzer and the 9/11 Truth movement in 2006 - and the subsequent demise of Progressive Talk radio in Boston later that year, there was a growing need for a full time talk station featuring voices that contradicted the prevailing din from the mainstream media's overpaid corporate mouthpieces. Since Jeff didn't wish to canabalize his folk station with increased talk programming, he did something unprecedented in the Part 15 radio world: in 2008 he built a second station - Liberty & Justice 1640 - on the same property with an antenna and transmitter only 12 feet away from Troubadour 1700's. Not surprisingly, the two stations have pretty much the same coverage footprint.

In 2010, Jeff began to refer to his multi-micro signal enterprise as Minimum Wage Media. "Every job I've held in my life, whether in radio or elsewhere, has been either at or somewhat above minimum wage," says Jeff. "As a result, I had to build these stations on a shoestring. There were only three occasions when I spent over $100 on something - the automation software, transmitters, and parts to build computers. I also like the name because it makes corporate media types and those who have sold out just to get rich in this business uncomfortable," he quips.

As the 2010's moved into the Trump years ("the best economic times for even a deplorable who names his company 'Minimum Wage Media'"), followed by the oppression and divisiveness of the Covid lock downs, along with the baffling election of 2020, Liberty & Justice 1640 evolved in a more populist/nationalist/pro-MAGA/pro-freedom direction, but still with far more cutting edge information and insight than conventional conservative talk radio. "The times we are now in are so critical and so outrageous, and knowledge of what the elites are trying to do to us is spreading so fast, I am now spending an inordinate amount of time on the programming of Liberty and Justice 1640. Sadly, Troubadour is suffering as a result," he admits. "Furthermore, so many people in the folk music world are still "woke" leftists who are impossibly brainwashed and hive minded. I simply don't want to put up with their blindness, childishness, and hypocrocy any more. What they want defies common sense, God, and nature. It's too bad, because I still utterly love the overwhelming majority of the folk music I've played over the years."

"However, recently I'm making up for it," he adds. "I've begun a project to restore the original Folk Image website, including all the archived shows and interviews I did from 1997-2004, and integrate them into the t1700.net domain. Stay tuned. It's a work in progress."