Renee Russo is a national celebrity. Lynae Russo is working her way up the local celebrity food chain via the FM airwaves. But there’s one thing that continually makes it difficult for Lynae to focus on her radio career: her college career.The local Russo celebrity is a senior communications major at Loyola, where she goes by her real name — Lynae Kallenbach. Kallenbach/Russo’s DJ stylings on WKZN (affectionately known as 105.3, “The Zone”) have already won her fame from Kenner to the Ninth Ward — pretty good for someone who didn’t know where either of those places (or anything else in or around New Orleans) were when she moved here four years ago.Kallenbach calls Colorado her home, but that’s mainly out of convenience.”My dad was in the military, so I grew up all over the place, but Colorado is where I spent the most time,” Kallenbach said. Right out of high school, she moved to Jamaica to teach kindergarten for a year. It was a service project she was part of at the time. Loyola heard about what she was doing in the land of “no problem, man” and offered Kallenbach a scholarship. She accepted.Kallenbach started at Loyola as a vocal performance major focusing on opera. How does an opera singer become a disc jockey? Kallenbach explained.”After not doing very well in a music theory class, I realized how hard music actually was,” she said. Kallenbach decided to get out of the music program and become a communications major. “I am a performer, not really a musician,” she said.Knowing that she had a penchant for performing, Kallenbach sought out roles in local theater. She eventually landed a role at Carlone’s dinner theater on Airline Highway. Through her role in the show, she became friends with Terrell Robinson, a traffic reporter for MetroScan Traffic, and told him of her music dilemma. He offered her a job doing traffic for his company. There was only one problem: Kallenbach knew nothing about the New Orleans highway system. “You can go west on the I-10 East and east on the I-10 West. I didn’t know where anything was here, but I was doing the traffic,” she said.After a couple of years of doing traffic, she sat in for a disc jockey who went missing in action on The Zone. Her performance received such a good response that the station gave her a show of her own. To make it a little easier for everyone involved, Kallenbach chose the simpler on-air moniker Lynae Russo. “I tried to be an opera singer, but it did not come naturally; radio did come naturally,” Kallenbach said.As for her growing celebrity, Kallenbach reflects on it as a DJ would be expected to — with laid-back uncertainty.”I am just going to go where the road takes me. I could go the morning show route or toward the music director route, but right now I just want to ride the wave I am on,” she said.
A Day in the LifeIt is Wednesday morning, and the sun is just beginning to rise when the clock starts to chime. “I have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to my 8:30 a.m. class with Father Holloway,” Kallenbach said. Class ends at 9:20 a.m., and Kallenbach is out the door not a second later. She runs to her car and bolts down to the station for her 10-2 p.m. mid-day show. “Here is where I catch up on some of my work for school,” she said. After the show, Kallenbach stays behind to record radio promotions and commercials. By about 3:00, she is out the door and back in the car, hurrying to her next class, Mass Communications Theory and Research. From there she continues her day with Buddhism and rounds the day out with Music Marketing and Promotion. “My day starts at 8:30 and does not end till 9:20. It’s kind of psycho, but it is better than digging ditches for a living.”
On the air, she goes by Lynae Russo and is the mid-day DJ on 105.3 (WKZN). Off the air, Lynae Kallenbach is just a regular Loyola student. (Lane Cotton Winn)
