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By Andrew White | Staff Writer

Revocation Radio, formerly known as Revolution Radio, which played over The Peach airwaves since 2018, went completely digital on Jan. 26. However, Revocation Radio, and now the app myRevRadio, has been developing for over a decade. And more importantly, the Christian rock and hip-hop community that the app has created has been developing for over a decade.

Jon Walden, myRevRadio’s only full-time employee, started his radio career with a baseball injury after walking on to Jacksonville State. Walden says he had the injury coming to him given the double life he was living — only behaving Christian at church.

He started working at a radio station part time at the age of 19 for the Mark and Mac Show. He got the job through a friend at his church. His original hope was that it would help him get to work for ESPN one day.

“Ends up I just fell in love with it,” said Walden. “God really got a hold of me and convicted me.”

His original job with the Mark and Mac Show was to be their stunt man. Someone who would go out live and do stuff for them. Walden soon started working the night shift after the person working it resigned. He was 21 and had a full-time gig as a nighttime radio personality.

That is when Walden started to really get into Christian rock and hip-hop. A couple of his coworkers, Ronnie Bruce and Christian Brown, started incorporating it in their shows.

“Jesus breathed music, it should be about the struggle too, about how difficult life can be and trusting him,” said Walden. “The thing I love about hip-hop and rock is that it shows, I’ve been in the gutter, or I’ve been in the hood, I’ve been struggling. Life has been tough, but He brought me through.”

Ken Layton, who is the President of the Board of Directors for Take Back the Airwaves Ministries, was having to listen to what his two teenage daughters were bringing home. Layton started to look for an alternative to compete with his daughters’ music taste when he started to discover Christian rock and hip-hop.

“A lot of these Christian artists are good or better than secular artists, but they just don’t get the play,” said Layton. “There’s just something about mentioning Christian or Jesus. They won’t listen to it no matter how good the music is, so I knew there was a need for this.”

Layton started looking for someone to do Christian rock and hip-hop full time for a station. He would soon meet Walden through a radio engineer friend. In 2011, Revolution Radio started on a small frequency in St. Clair County with Walden as the personality. They soon got a frequency in Tuscaloosa, then in Alex City. In 2018, they got a frequency in Clanton. The Clanton frequency only lasted from 2018 to 2025.

“I’m sure the people who griped and complained about us putting all the rock and hip-hop on the oldies station are glad that it’s now Christian preaching,” said Walden through a chuckle. “I don’t know if they are or not.”

In 2025, myRevRadio, the app, became the way to listen to Walden’s show due to the high costs of radio frequencies. They also underwent a name change due to legal restrictions with Revolution Radio, but Walden knew he wanted to keep myRevRadio.

While searching for a new name with Layton, he stumbled upon revoke which means the action of taking back. Realizing the name of the ministries is Take Back the Airways ministries, Layton and Walden found their new name for the station.

Soon through the app, they gained listeners all over the country who no longer had a Christian rock or hip-hop radio station or just found they liked myRevRadio. He started gaining listeners in Louisiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, South Dakota, Georgia, Florida, and many other states. They also started gaining listeners internationally in places like China, Canada, Guatemala, Germany and many other countries.

“It’s really just amazing and, you know, the fact that they stick with us… It’s really just amazing,” said Walden.

MyRevRadio also started building an even bigger community connecting people with churches, connecting listeners with ministries, communicating with listeners about what their ministries were accomplishing and taking prayer requests.

They have filled their daytime and afternoon slots with contributing personalities — Layla and Paul Gibson. Now, with listeners all over the country who have built a community and connection with the show, Walden looks to try and create more full time clean Christian content for myRevRadio fans to enjoy. He has already started trying this through livestreams on twitch and Facebook.