Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Gary Jolicoeur gently handles a 1917 Vega banjolyn in the front office of WNRV. His new radio station will feature bluegrass music.

NARROWS -- It's not much to look at, a gray block of a building at the edge of a hay field flanked by a barn and a shade tree. The railroad runs so close that passing coal trains rattle the camping trailer parked out back. A pair of planters -- empty, recently painted blue -- stands between the building and its dirt and gravel parking lot.

But up on the side of that building are four letters painted the same blue as the planters. Those letters -- W, N, R and V -- are what drew three men from Tampa, Fla., to this river bottom halfway between Narrows and Pearisburg. They want to bring local radio back to Giles County. And not just any radio. These guys plan to put bluegrass on the air from Princeton, W.Va., to Christiansburg.

"On a good day, you can hear it in Roanoke," said Gary Jolicoeur, the most talkative member of the trio.

Jolicoeur, 57, and his partner Dennis Welch, 59, have a three-year lease -- with an option to buy -- on WNRV, a station that for years has been little more than a storage building and signal repeater for Roanoke station WWWR.

"In essence, it means they work for us," said Ben Peyton, owner of Roanoke-based Perception Media.

Peyton's company still holds the license and is still responsible to the Federal Communications Commission for what goes on at WNRV. But he and Jolicoeur and Welch -- former Florida businessmen -- all think that's a temporary arrangement. They all expect Welch and Jolicoeur will own the station before three years pass.

"We think these guys are going to do really well," Peyton said.

They both have enthusiasm and Welch has experience in radio, Peyton said. And they have those four letters.

"WNRV is a legend over there in that valley," Peyton said.

"This is a passion," Welch said. "He loves bluegrass. I love radio."

It's also a retirement place for Welch and Jolicoeur.

"What a way to retire," Welch said, "doing something you love."

The third member of the group is Jason Smoot, 23.

Smoot is into computers and sales. Welch is the radio guy. Jolicoeur is the business guy. And the bluegrass fan.

He can whip off a list bluegrass artists who went country, usually at a record company's insistence, and then came back to their roots. He can list bluegrass influences on television and movies back to "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Bonnie and Clyde." He knows bands that don't have the name recognition of Ricky Scaggs and Rhonda Vincent. He's a fan of Nothing Fancy, out of Buena Vista. He likes the Bluegrass Brothers, who became the house band for Mark Warner's 2001 campaign for governor.

But Jolicoeur didn't plan to start a bluegrass station. He just wanted a radio station.

"This one kind of fit our needs," Jolicoeur said. "Probably you could say this is the one we could afford."

But as Jolicoeur and the others traveled around the area, they discovered two things. A lot of people around here like bluegrass music. And, there's hardly any bluegrass on the radio around here.

The legendary WPAQ out of Mount Airy, N.C., plays bluegrass and old time. But its signal barely wavers into the New River Valley. Its FM sister station, WBRF, plays bluegrass in the evenings, when it's not covering NASCAR or Wake Forest University sports.

So Jolicoeur and Welch decided they had a niche to fill.

They set up housekeeping last week in a 24-foot camping trailer behind the station. The trailer was out front the first night, but that was too close to the train tracks to allow for much sleep, so they moved it out back. The building buffers the noise, but it doesn't keep the ground from shaking and bouncing the camper.

A few days later, Smoot joined them. Now he and Jolicoeur share the trailer, and Welch camps out in what was once the station manager's office.

The accommodations are a little rugged, but the neighborhood's nice. Jolicoeur said he and Welch spent their first evenings sitting in camp chairs outside the trailer, staring across the hayfield at the rolls of ridges across the New River.

"I think I've come to God's country," Jolicoeur said. "I've never seen anything like it."

Jolicoeur is still getting the hang of the area. He says "Giles" with a hard "g" and he pronounces Buena Vista as a Spanish speaker would.

"I'm a damn Yankee," he said. "But don't hold that against me."

Jolicoeur and Welch say they want to make their station part of the community.

"This is going to be a local radio station," Welch said. "I think the very best radio is local radio."

In its heyday, Welch said, WNRV was a community hub. The men from Florida want it to be that way again. They want to record local ministers and local bands. They want musicians to drop in and jam.

But that's a long way off.

Inside WNRV, the floors are stripped to concrete. The acoustic-tile ceiling is missing a few tiles. Boxes with cords and power strips poking out of them sit among computers, near the gray filing cabinet and the pink office chair. A Martin guitar clock keeps time on the wall.

The first 3 inches of dirt have already been cleaned out, Welch said, but the place clearly isn't ready for company. Once it is, the new owners plan to invite the neighbors in for a party.

But there won't be any special ceremony when WNRV kicks off its bluegrass format Sunday. Jolicoeur and company have asked Peyton to record a special convocational prayer. They plan to play that, then a bluegrass version of the Star Spangled Banner. After that, it's all bluegrass all the time, except for the local preachers on Sundays. They call it "The Ridge, AM 990." The station will broadcast from dawn to dusk and its signal should reach much of the New River Valley.