We did our first live national radio broadcast this week. In New York it was on 770AM – WOR but apparently it gets syndicated all over the united states. It was the Joey Reynolds Show. Before meeting him we did not really know anything about him or the show but he was an engaging and fascinating guy with an enormous history in show biz. His booking person saw us performing in the subways and she got us on the show. (Hi Myra!)
That’s how we found ourselves down at the WOR studios at 1:30am, sitting in the lobby, warming up our instruments and shooting the breeze. George, the producer, took us down a long hallway to show us around a bit. On the walls were enormous, very well printed photos of WOR history. In each pic, an enormous WOR radio mic was prominantly featured: FDR addressing the nation, announcers calling a game at Yankee Stadium – was that Mickey Mantle on the field? etc… The live feed from Joey’s show is filling up the hallway with sound and the first words we hear are “Hitler” and “The Nazis.” Clifton and I just started to giggle and smirk. Ok, this is the world we’re in right now. Late night AM talk radio. Before we could follow the thread the conversation had moved on to the KKK. Eventually we saw a very small, amiable rabbi walking out of the booth: Joey’s guest right before we were to come on.
We were invited into the booth and met Joey. He seemed like a very nice person but you could also see his mind working very fast behind his sun-glasses as he tried to size us up to see how he was going to make for interesting conversational air time. Joey is such a pro. He’s been in the business for over 50 years. This bio is from wikipedia.
He rose to fame as a Top 40 radio personality during the 1960s and 1970s, amassing huge audiences in places such as Hartford, Connecticut, Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and his hometown of Buffalo, New York. Reynolds is often regarded as the originator of “shock talk radio”, whose sometimes outlandish on and off-air stunts garnered widespread publicity. (The Four Seasons even produced a special radio jingle for the introduction of his daily radio show). He was the focus of a two-part series on The Oprah Winfrey Show concerning talk radio personalities, on which more than a dozen of Reynolds’ media peers paid tribute to him. Moreover, he has been invited to speak about entertainment media at several radio industry conferences.
We come out of the gate with some music. We had Elizabeth! with us in the studio to as she was playing trombone with us when the booking person saw us. She slayed it! The recording quality came out great and we will definitely be releasing this as a special treat to our fans. If you are not on our mailing list, Sign up now!
The talking part of the show went ok too I guess but I never got too comfortable. Joey’s thing is to keep you off base a bit and try to suck you into saying something controversial. So he digs a bit. For example, Elizabeth! is listed on his notes as having no last name. He asks her her age, she wont tell. He says, “Come on – somewhere between 20’s and 30’s right.” She’s like, “Yeah, something like that.” He presses further, “So, you don’t have a last name – what are you embarassed to be associated with these guys?” But it’s all in good fun and you really want to please him because he is very charismatic – so sometimes you get sucked in.
Clifton did great though! He’s got a real bad-ass attitude and says some outrageous things. Very entertaining and it made for great radio. During the first commercial break Joey had us all sized up and knew who he could count on for what kind of response. Jesse – the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Clifton – an engaging asshole (he even said during the break, “So, you’re the asshole.”) , Elizabeth! – sweet and lovely tones, Stephan – like Harpo Marx, wacky but only answers with his horn, Rob – sincere and honest and would sincerely, honestly rather be playing bass than talking! Anyway, it was our first time all together doing that so it was a learning experience and there is a lot to learn there.
I don’t think it will be our last experience though. Joey asked us to be on the show again at some future time and even asked to write a theme song for the show!! He went out of his way to tell us how much he enjoyed the band and asked us to write a jingle for him! He really was smiling the entire time were playing music.