Lee Michael Demsey was born in California in 1953. He moved to suburban D.C. in 1960 and has lived his life in Maryland ever since. His college years were spent at American University in Washington, where he earned a Bachelors degree in Communications in 1975. Working at the student station as music director, he began to earn a few extra dollars as a substitute engineer at WAMU-FM, the University’s professionally run 50,000 watt public radio station shortly before graduation.

That led to a fill-in gig as host of the FM station’s popular (believe it or not) weekday afternoon drivetime heavy metal and hard rock show, the Rock and Roll Jukebox, of which Lee became the full time host in 1976. At the time, the station’s main focus was news/talk and classical music. He also hosted a progressive rock show on the station in the late 70s and early 80s, a period where the station was also adding more bluegrass programming to its mix. When the station decided to drop its mid-day Big Band/ 40s jazz program, they came to Lee, knowing of his eclectic taste in music, to see if he’d host a contemporary bluegrass show to be a companion to the popular afternoon drivetime traditional bluegrass show. The show began as Capital Bluegrass but evolved into The Lee Michael Demsey Show as singer/songwriter folk music was added to the mix. The show ran on WAMU from 1983-1993 and was cancelled to make room for a nother talk show, much to the chagrin of the large, vocal audience Lee had built. He did keep his presence at WAMU for the following eight years, filling in frequently on the drivetime bluegrass show, Bluegrass Country.

Though he’s worked at WAMU for the past twenty-eight years, Lee has also put in time at other stations at the same time, including a weekend shift at the area’s country station, WMZQ, through the eighties, as well as a Sunday morning acoustic music show on WHFS in the early 90s, and stints at WTRI and alt-rock WGTB.

Lee serves on the board of directors of the International Bluegrass Music Association and the Washington Area Music Association. His full time job is with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and he also compiles the Bleugrass Unilimited National Bluegrass Survey, a monthly chart of the most popular bluegrass songs according to disc jockeys all across the country. Lee has done a weekly show for BluegrassCountry.org since late 2001 and recently began recording his shows out of a home studion in his basement.

Lee Michael Demsey lives in Germantown, Maryland with his wife and nine year old daughter. In addition to this love of bluegrass and folk music, Lee is a 60s music collector and trivia buff, with thousands of pop and rock 45s and LPs in his library.