Staff photo / Andy Gray Anthony LaMarca, left, and Dean Anshutz hold up albums they’ve released with Peppermint Recording Studio owner Gary Rhamy on Peppermint Records. The duo will host a weekly radio show devoted to the Mahoning Valley’s musical history that premieres Friday on WYSU-FM.

Dean Anshutz and Anthony LaMarca are adding radio hosts to their many music-

related job titles.

The pair will host a new hourlong weekly radio show called “Rat Race: A Journey Through Youngstown’s Music History” that will debut at 2 p.m. Friday on WYSU-FM.

Anshutz plays drums with the bands Red Wanting Blue and Kid Mammoth and co-owns Cycle Breakers Records and Tapes in Youngstown. LaMarca is a member of the Grammy-winning band The War on Drugs and releases his own music as The Building.

Together they’ve been pouring through the archives at Youngstown’s Peppermint Recording Studio and have worked with Peppermint owner Gary Rhamy to release compilations of music recorded there as well as albums by such popular local acts from the ’60s and ’70s as Glass Harp, Left End, Blue Ash, Morly Grey and Bull Run. The “Rat Race” radio show name comes from the title song of the first compilation album they released from the Peppermint archives.

After recording an interview with Youngstown polka legend Del Sinchak for a future episode, Anshutz and LaMarca talked about how the show came about.

“As we were doing all this, Anthony would say, ‘We need to do a radio show, we need to do a radio show,'” Anshutz said.

“Or just some way of documenting all of this stuff,” LaMarca added.

“We talked about a podcast, but do we need another one of those in the world? I don’t know,” Anshutz continued. “It just seemed like, ‘Oh, we’re the ones doing all this stuff. We might as well talk about it on the radio.'”

Anshutz appeared on WYSU during its pledge drive last fall before the retirement of WYSU’s longtime station director Gary Sexton. Their interest in doing a radio show complemented the station’s desire to do more local programming and broaden its audience.

Most of WYSU’s music programming is classical and jazz, and station coordinator Anne Vallas said they had been having conversations internally about ways to introduce other musical genres that could bring in new listeners without alienating its current audience.

“Dean brought to our holiday party Gary Rhamy and Anthony, and they’d been thinking for a while about what they wanted to do with everything they’ve found in the Peppermint archive,” Vallas said. “So the idea is that WYSU can provide a platform for that. They’re both well-established musicians that live in the community, so it really fit perfectly with the kind of programming we’re looking to do in the future, being able to connect more with the community directly and (reach) younger demographics.”

Some episodes will feature interviews with musicians like Sinchak or Blue Ash’s Frank Secich and Jim Kendzor and weave in music from their careers. Other episodes will be predominantly spinning records from their personal collections of local music. The playlist won’t be limited to music recorded at Peppermint or released by their label.

The way Anshutz and LaMarca described it, they have a very “Odd Couple” approach to “Rat Race” with Anshutz wanting to plot out every interview question and every transition in advance and LaMarca preferring a more free-form approach.

They also joke about turning into a musical version of a one-time public radio staple “Car Talk,” with the Peppermint pals as stand-ins for that show’s Click and Clack. In that vein, they are encouraging listeners to submit questions and share their own Youngstown music stories by emailing ratrace@wysu.org.

There was a first attempt at a debut episode that no one will hear, but they’re finding a format they believe works.

“I don’t want this to sound self congratulatory, but I was surprised that, after editing our first show, I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty compelling,'” LaMarca said. “When we were first recording it. I was just like, ‘We made a huge mistake. We need to tell Anne we can’t do the show. We don’t have time. We’re overextending ourselves.’ That night I was just panicking. Then when we edited it and listened to it, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is great. There’s something here.’ I’m sure it will grow into something as we keep doing it.”

In addition to broadcast at 2 p.m. every Friday, “Rat Race” also will be available to listen to on demand on WYSU’s app and website (wysu.org).

Anshutz and LaMarca are taping episodes in advance, in part because of their own schedules. Anshutz will be in Europe in May on tour with Colin Blunstone, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee as lead singer of The Zombies. LaMarca will be playing European music festivals later this summer with The War on Drugs.

“The first two episodes are a deep dive into our first compilation, ‘Rat Race,’ talking about how it came to be,” Anshutz said. “It’s a real blueprint for that, how we found things and putting the pieces together.

“And it’s also (an introduction) for people that don’t know what this whole world is,” LaMarca said. “Here’s some of the characters. Here’s some of the names you’re going to be hearing ongoing. We introduce Gary (Rhamy), we introduce ourselves, we talk about Del, and then episodes three and four are going to be interviews with Gary and Del.”

The day before “Rat Race” premieres, a kickoff party is planned 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Westside Bowl, 2617 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown. In addition to the hosts, Secich and Kendzor from Blue Ash and brothers Mark and Tim Roller from Morly Grey will be in attendance and signing copies of their records.

“It’s nothing super formal, just a little event to get some people together and get excited about the show,” Anshutz said.