Sixty years after avoiding World War II, the steamship will become a radio studio.



A crew of workers built the tugboat in 1946, all steel and slate-gray stern, for military use. Instead, it took a voyage through the Panama Canal then puttered around the Columbia River. The hulk of metal sat motionless near Longview, Wash., for a decade before scrappers picked it up and hauled it back to Oregon.



The boat is now docked just outside an old St. Johns shipbuilding yard. Its current owner is Green Anchors, whose website describes it as an "eco-industrial business park dedicated to the incubation and support of innovative enterprises."

Friday night, the boat will become Steam Radio Syndicate, broadcasting a four-hour show from its 150-foot hull.



The show will have some aspects in common with an NPR show -- you'll hear true stories, for example -- but Steam Radio Syndicate aims to give voice to those outside a typical public radio purview. There are no tote bags, no "sponsored by" messages.



"We have a bit more radical sensibility," said Galen Huckins, one of the show's founders.

Huckins and others have spent the past year retrofitting the boat on a volunteer basis. They scraped away paint, cleaned out trash and built vocal booths. Eventually, it'll be open to Portlanders wanting to record their own podcasts or oral histories, but for now, the group is sticking to programmed shows.



The first show will broadcast on KBOO, 90.7 FM, in 10 segments that trace the history of the waterfront. Each portion will analyze an archetype -- the native, the settler, the prospector -- through music, poetry or nonfiction.



The first story concept came out of "a direct relation to our place," said Hannah Kramm, the show's producer. "We are on the water. It's the world we're experiencing."



The show begins at 8 p.m. with a look at the whale and ends with music inspired by scrappers. Along the way, you'll hear interviews with commercial fishermen, historians talking gentrification and a poet reading work inspired by the computer game "Oregon Trail." A 12-piece house orchestra will score many of the pieces.



They'll be recording segments in the winch room, the galley and the dry storage hold.



After the history segments, the group will broadcast a live concert on the boat's back deck. They have a dozen musicians lined up to play alongside the St. Johns Bridge, including folkie favorite Holcombe Waller as well as St. Johns rapper Glenn Waco.



There is no model for Steam Radio Syndicate, and Kramm said this first show is a glorified test run. She's been working on a script for a month, and she has recruited 60 people to participate in some way. But other musicians or authors might show up, too.



"A lot of it is going to be about the magic that happens with the unknown of doing something like this," she said.





For a look inside, check out the studio's experimental promotional video.

-- Casey Parks