Matthew Hermes

Matthew Hermes served as host of WDCB’s overnight jazz programming from 2003-2026. He was also known to many listeners for his 14-year run hosting a Sunday morning show called “Sounds Ethereal” from 2006-2020.

Radio was a second career for Hermes, who spent more than a decade as a fifth-grade schoolteacher in Naperville’s District 203, winning Teacher-Of-The-Year honors for his work there in 1995. A native of Adrian, Michigan and a graduate of Michigan State University, Hermes was also active in community theater long before he got behind the microphone at WDCB.

Hermes’s most notable off-mic achievement though took place on a bicycle in the summer of 1975. That was when Hermes and a high school buddy, both 1974 graduates of Adrian High School, rode more than 10,000 miles on a coast-to-coast journey across the USA and Canada. Sleeping in cemeteries, church pews, even jail cells, Matthew and his buddy crossed the Mississippi, the Continental Divide, rode up the Pacific Coast Highway/US Route 101, re-crossed the Continental Divide while travelling from Seattle to Montreal, was side-swiped by a car in front of Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, toured the nation's capital, then traveled south to Florida’s Gulf Coast, before finally bicycling northward back to Adrian, Michigan. All-in-all, 33 states and two Canadian Provinces.

Hermes then studied at Lake Superior State University and graduated from Michigan State University before pursuing an elementary education degree at Siena Heights University. In the mid ‘80s a teaching position brought him to Naperville. That’s where he taught for over a decade before finding his way to WDCB in the early 2000s, first as a volunteer host of a Friday night show called “Fusion Sides,” then eventually as WDCB’s regular daily host of overnight jazz.

For years, Hermes opened each overnight program at midnight with Donald Byrd’s majestic and spiritual 1964 classic “Christo Redentor.” Hermes has been known to WDCB audiences for his uniquely late-night style, presenting a broad range of recordings with careful pacing and attention to historical detail. Hermes remained a late-night fixture of WDCB’s airwaves until March 2026, officially retiring on June 19, 2026.