I played today with a ton of gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to do
this. I'm really glad I get to do it again tomorrow. And I'm
going to remind myself on a dog and I'm ready for this moment. A
great maccoma binding himself. He's a dog eating every morning like Danny, Me,
Kevin and JJ do in the morning. Two blinks, one bark,
Grab the car keys. It's a dirty down beat. On Wednesday, April
seventeenth, twenty and twenty four, we're doing it. We're doing at six
to ten am. We're doing it without Kevin Turner this morning, and we'll
get to the adventures in keV oh here. Momentarily, I kind of feel
like an empty nester. I know, right the parents that are just kind
of staying together for their kids and then they go to college and they look
at each other and go, you know what, I really don't like you
plant at the watch, look at them. I know some people who I
think are in that category. Man like done. How often does that happen?
I think it happens a ton like within a year of nothing either not
eighteenth birthday or departure from home. Some dude. I know people that have
gone through this, and some of them will wait until their kids get through
college because the stress of a divorce. They don't want that kind of influencing
their emotions while they're trying to get a degree. Right. But if you're
already like at each other and you're like, you know, this is a
ticking time bomb anyway, and they leave the house, I guess you maybe
kind of loosely start the proceedings. Yeah, like if the kid's gone,
then you just don't even talk. Maybe, uh, and look, you've
leap in the kids rooms. Yeah, you created your own space, and
you've got your own distractions, and you know, find ways to just kind
of avoid each other, and then you have to have the hard discussion I
guess. I mean, hell, none of my relationships ever made it eighteen
years, yeah, to ever get to that point. But it's a bizarre
dynamic, man, the empty nester theory. But I just imagine waiting looking
at the calendar, waiting to go I'm like, all right, we're free.
You know what's funny though, when you like say that, I'm sure
you've seen these things too, and you've heard this described by the kids that
go through this, they get mad at their parents for waiting. Really yeah,
yeah, like, why would you sacrifice your happiness? I could have
handled this because the parents, in their minds, it's like, well,
we need to stay together for the kids and provide the stability and supportability and
all of that. But the kids are like, no, I knew you
guys hated each other since I was five. It didn't help me for you
to stay together. Yeah, but when you're kids fourteen or fifteen, remember,
you know, don't you always see that they get a divorce and then
the kids crying? Is it my fault? Wait, you don't love each
other anymore. But then when you're saying when they're eighteen or nineteen, then
they're suddenly I suppose little geniuses And I knew I could have handled this.
That's true, you know, like it flipped pretty quickly somewhere around seventeen or
sixteen. Yeah, maybe we all just belong alone. Maybe maybe you're we're
lone wolves. Mikey, Like, once you start something, the clock just
starts ticking on its inevitable demise. What time is it? Six o four
in the morning, Good morning, everybody, This is the downbeat you have.
JJ Jackson here. Hi, JJ, Good morning boys. How are
we doing good? How are y'all silly? Good man? Pretty good?
Pretty good? No, it's all good man. Kevin is. It's funny
how this thing works, Like you never know how personalities work. And Kevin
is, uh, he does kind of hold this thing together. You know,
he's more than the glues. Yeah, Kevin for a dude named Kevin.
But I mean he comes up with all the stuff. He thinks about
it. Twenty four to seven, we think about it, you know,
twenty seven, twenty two seven maybe, But yeah, Kevin holds this thing
together. He's always got stuff, got stuff on the side burner and back
burner and all this, and he's just good at it. Man born for
this. Dan and I probably weren't born for this. We're Charlatan's. But
Kevin is, Kevin is solid. It's kind of incredible that Kevin grew up
and knew from an early age that this is what he wanted to do.
Yeah. I never ever, even when I was offered the job at the
Ticket, I still was like, why would you do this? Really?
I have no experience, nor do I have any real interest in doing this
for a living, Like, don't worry about it. We'll train you.
All right. I know we've talked about this, but you just did songs
and then they thought they were so funny or good or call it you called
in as the pizza delivery man, would it pizza Danny? Okay, So
this is a long time ago. So I got hired over there in March
of ninety nine just to do like a weekend show with our program director,
just to kind of test the waters and see how it would go. Why
but because yeah, so leading up to that for the years prior, because
the station only been on the air about four and a half years at that
but maybe five years at that point. And after about a year of it
being on the air, I finally succumbed and started listening full time, kind
of fell in love with, you know, Mike and Greg in the afternoons,
and found I felt a connection to that show. They loved baseball.
I loved baseball like I was a hardcore baseball nerd at the time. And
once they kind of flipped their switch and started talking more about their personal lives
and being more loose with their content, not just being so hard hitting sports,
it connected with an audience and I loved it, so, you know,
me being a musician, I thought I was kind of funny until I
met you. For years and I would send them different like okay, send
to the segment called facts Fodder, which was basically email us funny content,
and I would send them factxes every day, so we had a fax machine
at the restaurant that I worked at, and it would be like a top
ten list or just jokes, anything, yeah, just some kind of bit.
And then I would I would record on my little track recorder at home
wacky songs and theme songs for their guests and send them cassettes of this stuff
and they would use it and they liked it. And I would call in
on occasion and do you know, voices and whatnot, kind of like a
total very on a small scale of want to be Gordo got it was theme
songs for guests. That really kind of because that's something that especially back then,
shows didn't have or maybe didn't even think about. Well, that's the
thing about those is like anything else, maybe like a joke or a top
ten list or a specialty song, it's kind of a one off you never
hear it again. But the theme songs when you have a recurring guest every
week, Rusty Greer Can Hitchcock. That's all. It's something that becomes kind
of like ingrained. Yeah, it's part of the show. Part of the
show. And then they Kat and Bruce because it was the PD, no,
it was the producer of the Hardline and the PD of the station at
the time. It's like, hey, why don't we go have lunch?
We like you, And I've develop a rapport with Mike and Greg and Madam
Kat and Korby. Yeah, yeah, remotes, But I was social with
Krby outside of the station briefly, you know, for you know, we
go to shows together and smoke weed and stuff, and we met for lunch
and hit it off, and they're like, dudehy don't you when did you
come work? Like doing what? Why? Why? Why would you do
this to yourselves? And you know, they put me on the air with
Jeff and we did a weekend show for about I don't know four six months.
Position came open on the a nighttime show with the I guess it was
with Mark Followell and Doug Anderson, the voice of the Mavericks now was their
producer. And I was like, I don't know how to do this.
We'll show you and I still haven't learned. That's just so great about Kevin
and bring it back to keV Oh ye, dude, he's a he's great
on the air, he's a wonderful host. But he would be the best
producer like anybody he if he wanted to be a producer in radio, he
could produce the highest level radio program. Yeah, forever, forever. He's
just wired that way. But Yeah, and then you know, the hardline
position came open. Interviewed for that with Mike and Greg, which was bizarre.
He was sitting across a table from Cat. Yeah. Cat went to
Kansas City to PD up there and then that position became open. Was he
an aspiring host? I guess at that time because he was a cat never
had designs on that, but he was a producer. And then he would
do a weekend show with you. I think the only reasonally, at least
for me, that's you know, that was my trajectory. I think,
honestly, the only reason that he did that show with me was to kind
of h for lack of a better Yeah, test or train, but give
me some experience. You know, he was young too, and the trip
is in this thing. You don't know what your trajectory is, and a
lot of people don't. I don't think I ever was like, oh,
I should be a radio host with my life right, Just something you do
and you enjoy and you're like, I'm okay at this And if that's if
you're a producer, that's why it's perfect there because the producer like you get
on air, you get that experience, but there's not the pressure or whatever
of being a host and the content you don't need to know at all.
But that's how you do it. You just keep going. And then then
a weekend show, like you said, so he was a producer weekend show
and then for some the next step would be trying to become a host.
Yeah, but then yeah, he went to Kansas City and I took the
job with the Hardline. And that interview was funny, sitting across the table
from Mike and Greg and Greg kind of running the interview welcome in. No,
it was a show, what are you going to do for us?
I don't know, man, I don't know. I really don't know.
Show opens. I guess we need everything. Really a lot of that,
and Korbia just started working for him as well, So we kind of started
with that show together and I'll be damned, twenty some odd years and then
run they said, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, and you were
you were delivering pizza still er. No, No, I was working.
I mean I'd taken the night. I was producing nights from seven to ten,
so you would follow well and Doug okay, okay, and the Followell
went on to greater, greater things. He took the MAVs job. He
was doing radio at first, then moved to TV so that that show dissolved.
He probably always had aspirations that dude, that guy's been dialed in since
he was a little kid. Yeah, yeah, and now he's been the
MAVs play by play guy for how forever and he's so good. He's the
best in the business. Olympics and he does FC Dallas and everything he does
is he does perfectly. I kind of love the way he looks at this
because I really do believe that Mark loves the MAVs so much, loves Dallas
so much. And I don't know what kind of offers he's entertained or gotten
from maybe a larger scope like national, But why wouldn't people be recruiting him
from big networks because he's he's excellent. He's an elite broadcast. I wonder.
I bet they have and we probably just don't know about it. And
I bet he's just happy when he does the other stuff. He does soccer,
he does Olympics, you know. But as far as like, we
want you to be the voice of the NBA, we want you to be
on the second or third string on T and T or NBC or whoever's running
these national games. I bet he's had some phone calls and just says,
you know what, I love the grind, I love working with the guys
I work with. I love my crew, and I love this team,
and I'm happy in Dallas. I don't want to do this. How much
harder it is too, I mean, because he is just he doesn't I'm
sure he still does tons of preps, certainly on the opposition, but he
knows the Mavericks back and forth. But if you do national right, yeah,
that's why I do. Like. Oh, even those NBNTNT guys who
kind of admittedly I haven't watched too much of this team, you know,
like because of how Chuck and Shack are, they can get away with the
honesty, and it works for them, and it works better than any it's
worked for anyone else in basketball because they're the best at it. But most
people can't admit I don't really watch these guys, you know. That's like,
oh my god, how dare you? Yeah, So for follow up
to do that, and at the level that he does it for the MAVs,
I imagine it's probably daunting for him to think, Wait, I can't
know every team any we're close to how I know this team? No,
not to the level that he knows the MAVs. But I promise you he
knows as much as anybody else about every other player, every other team,
every other organization in the league. Yeah, and probably beyond that. His
knowledge, his ability to retain knowledge is insane. Yeah, that's a gift
right there too. You know that works for a lot of people. In
radio. I don't have it that good. I've got some random crap in
there. But Mark knows so much about so many things like that. Dude
will talk wrestling with you. Yeah, he loved it back in the day.
He keeps up on it. Now he never brings it up, you
know, because it doesn't apply. But yeah, he is good at everything
he does. I told you, mom, buddy with Dave Ben's who was
the Timberwolves guy for ten years, the play by play guy, and how
it works. Like he got to do the Olympics and they're like, we
need someone to do the Olympics. I don't know a couple of Olympics ago
and he wasn't going. It was where they were doing it remotely, you
know, from some home base here in the States, and he's like,
of course you want to add the Olympics to your resume. And he's like,
what am I gonna be doing? And they gave him fencing and synchronized
swimming, and he's like, I'm sorry. They're like, no, yeah,
you're a professional. You're gonna you know, you gonna be good at
this. Think about you or even follow up with that matter, Oh my
god, but follow up could do it, and he could probably do it
tomorrow because they gave he had a color guy, you know, like he
has some legend of synchronized swimming. So essentrally, all you have to do
is kind of handle the ins and outs and maybe ask some questions, but
not enough to sound like a dumb ass. Because even though the play you
know, the play by flay guy And he said, know what he's doing,
but imagine calling fencing or synchronized but like, what the I know what
they all think about having to learn the vernacular right, all the terms.
Yeah, I wouldn't even know where to begin. So because he's my buddy,
I streamed some of the events and he sounded amazing. It's an apronunciation
of the names. Just little things like that. But so play by play
is a skill that I guess can be applied to varying degrees of success,
to anything. I bet there's an element, yeah, I guess. I
bet there's an element of uh, the same skill set or muscle that actors
have that can, like really really good actors can take on different roles that
are dissimilar, yeah, and be believable and learn scripts. And I guess
there's something kind of akin to that where you I don't want to say they're
faking it, but in a way, yeah, if you don't grow up
watching fencing or having a love of synchronized swimming, and you've got a week
or two to crash course and retain as much information as you can and make
it sound like you've been doing this your whole life. Yeah, that is
a skill that I, number one, I do not possess. It's a
skill that I do not want. It sounds torturous play by play, Yes,
but but there are some people many people think they could do this job,
and they could. I'm not claiming anything other but there are some thinking
I could never do that talk for four hours every day. The truth is
a lot of it's just the formatics of it, you know, handling the
formatics, and I think if you put that play by play, put it
in the same shell where it's like you just have to kind of get in
set the stage, say what's happening, and then once the event starts,
you lean on your color man and you just sort of I mean, you
have to learn the basics and the terms, yes, and then you handle
sponsoring and the outs. I mean, it's it's less daunting when you put
it into kind of a visible shell. And I think follow l for instance,
or Dave Ben's is just so good at that and they just got it
down. So Yes, essentially you can plug whatever you want into the actual
event. I think. Yeah, but don't you sound like kind of a
fraud if you you know, fumble on some term or misuse something, and
the people that are actually watching this stuff. You know what, maybe that's
the thing for the Olympics. You've got a lot of day trippers that know
nothing about fencing. Anyway, you're gonna have this tiny minute percentage of hardcores
that are tuning in that might detect this guy didn't know what he's talking about.
Among people watching Olympic fencing. Right, let's say there's one hundred probably
what eighty five are just watching the Olympics and like, oh yeah, I
like fencing. I have a collection of swords. Honey, you like Game
of Thrones. There's swords on TV, honey, get in here. They're
sword fighting in the Olympic. You know. So maybe at fifteen that are
like in deo fencing, and then you have one that's family or friends of
the people competing. As long as that not too many of that fifteen are
on Twitter, Yeah, yelling exposing you for not knowing what you're doing.
You're fine. And then the rest of them don't care. No one cares.
They're like, these guys know what they're talking about. Yeah, that's
true. That's one way to look at it. Nice Perry, I don't
even know what that is. Did you just look that up? Now?
I play Sea Thieves. It's a sword fighting based okay, pirate game.
Are you still playing that? Yeah? It's fun, yes really still Yeah,
it never ends, I know, but for me, for video games,
I'd get to a point where, okay, I can have nothing really
new happening. It's changed, it's changed since your days. It's an open,
beautiful world and you could have a pirate ship full of treasure and booty,
and some other ship out of nowhere just comes and start firing cannons at
you and you got to fight them off or run. Really fun. Yeah,
my days ended with PS one's Medal of Honor pretty much began. I
love it. Someone said Danny was the brody of the ticket, And I'll
tell you this brody absolutely could be a radio show host. And you're right.
Start in with just lobbing grenades or contributing a little bit here and there,
and then yes, it does take one of us saying Jesus, this
guy's good. He's funny. You know he could do this, and he
probably doesn't think he could at all, and he still gets nervous when he
comes in here. But the listener wouldn't really know it because you carry yourself
with you know, a little bit of BS confidence. I that's the thing
about Brody. Brody could come in here and do this. The thing about
Brody is he is so quick on his feet and his mind it calculates at
a faster speed than mine does. Like I have to kind of pause and
be mindful and think about the things that I'm going to say, because otherwise
I'll it's like trying to run the hurdles. But yeah, he would be
phenomenal in this, and he probably doesn't know it. He's a natural or
believe us. And that's why I did. I was trying, been trying.
You can get him a weekend show, and you know how that goes.
Because I feel like, if that's what he wants to try, why
not give him the opportunity to do it. But that's clearly out of my
hands. We got a blot to do today. In spite of our sweet
Cavio being abroad. He is making his first trip to Europe. It's good
for him. I was talking to Malcolm's mom about this and it's like,
look, I got I got some actual work to do. Eight So I'm
gonna I'll be up a little later than normal. And and she's like,
what's going on. I'm like, well, Kevio had to go to Well,
he's gone vacation for nine days I believe, is it seven days,
eight days, something like that. But it's his first soiree to across the
Atlantic, and I don't know if he made it. It's gotten off to
a questionable start. Oh I would even say, poor start. Are you
going through our text messages? No, I have his flight information in front
of me. So it's KEVEO and Roxy were going. They're going to Italy
and they're supposed to leave it seven twenty five last night, pre standard how
they do it, you know, get in a plane, settle in cocktail,
maybe something to eat out cold, wake up. In his case,
Barcelona seven twenty five departure. And they didn't end up leaving till eleven o'clock,
so three and a half hour delay. They had him on the plane,
they took him off the plane. He was texting us. He's like,
I think, so he's getting canceled. I think I'm screwed. So
they were supposed to land about an hour ago, maybe something like that,
maybe land right now, and they are in air and they still have three
hours to go. So we'd love to be able to report that Kevin is
safely on Terra Firma, but we cannot. We cannot do that. So
they were supposed to board in the middle of the first NBA game last night
yeap, which we watched. I started the second one, went to sleep
YEP, got up prep for the show, and we're almost done with our
first segment and he's still got three more hours to go. Yeah, go,
oh my god. They will arrive four hours and thirteen minutes late.
The poor best, but the other the worst part is that it's Barcelona.
He's got a connecting flight to Milan. Well, that's obviously of the middle.
So what are they going to do. I don't know how many flights
a day from Barcelona to Milan are there. It's probably not a rare flight,
so they're gonna get on whatever one they got. It works American,
He's not on American airlines. I mean, the worst case is you spend
the night in Barcelona and waiting for the next day. I guess, but
I don't know how that's going to affect is Dave Matthews's playing. I did
look that up. The Dave Show is on the nineteenth, so today's the
seventeenth. Yeah, that's just a little puddle jumper from there to Yeah,
it's hour and forty minutes or so. Okay, so a real plane.
But I think he might be getting his Lake Como portion of the trip chopped
out, which I was very excited for. I think Roxy surprising with around
a golf on some cool Italian course that I think they may not be able
to pull off now. And the truth is they still have two hours and
forty nine minutes, So fingers crossed on them even, you know, making
it over all that ice cold water. As he was keeping us in the
loop last night on our text thread, all I could think about was poor
Roxy trying to manage this. This sweet boy just freaking out over his vacation.
Is this this is a picture of him. Look his little plane over
the coldest part. He might be over the deepest portion of the Atlantic right
now, this instant and the coldest and the most shark oldest. Yes,
so last night is touching his laminated sheet of her shark identification that I gave
him. That's so brilliant. So at eight forty we get the text boarded
for an hour. Pilot said, in forty years of doing this, he's
never seen this problem. Very vague. Another pilot sitting af he roes back,
he's telling everyone that it could be a lie. I don't know what.
That's a bad dead heading pilot who's sitting behind the pastors saying a lie.
Wait what huh? And he goes, this may be the death plane.
Let's see now. He says, okay, And this is at nine
oh four, twenty five minutes later. Kicked us off the plane a minute
later, gonna miss the connecting flight to Barcelona. Whole trip ruined. And
I'm even trying to be nice at this point, right, like, no
ruined. Oh you know what. The first thing off the menu now is
golf, he said, golf is out. Yeah, it's over a fiery
crash into the Atlantic. Feels like a good thing for that dude who's already
anxious about all this. And then we got a light out. Oh we
have a delay. Get off the plane. That does not calm the nerves.
But then one minute later he goes, okay, I'm back, So
I guess they no he was messing with us, that he was that scared.
I think, oh, okay, well off he went at about eleven
pm last night, Our sweet Kevin, he is uh somewhere approaching northern Portugal
and northwest Spain right now. He's got a couple hours left, Sweet Kevin,
let just try calling him on the plane. Yeah, all right,
we gotta fund show. Got all sorts of goodies for you this morning.
We're gonna talk MAVs with our boy, Kevin Gray. He's your pre and
postgame show host right here on ninety seven, won the Freak. He's gonna
join us in studio because my pants are getting a little wild. And I
did watch these play ins last night, got me fired up for playoff basketball.
And I also don't know that any team I saw yesterday SAMs maybe the
Kings belongs on the same hardwood as our fighting MAVs. And then also maybe
are we losing it in the other direction. I need Kevin Gray to yeah,
to offer a measured, measured response to this, because between that and
the MVP discussion, I mean, yes, is this real or are we
just the most myopic homers in the world. That's a great question. Yeah,
because I think they should run to Luca and hand him the MVP and
then we'll see you the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals. We're doing that
at nine o'clock. We got all the other staples of the show. Sports
at seven coming up in just at an half an hour, and uh,
we got some movies. We saw Lights, Camera a Holes returns at eight
o'clock. I know, JJ saw a League of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Is definitely
not the title, but what is it. It's the Ministry Ministry. He
wasn't even close. No, I got the Ungentlemanly w oh. I thought
it was just called the Ministry. It's a long title, long time.
Yeah, it's a difficult title. She saw that, And Danny, you
saw Civil War, Civil War, And uh, I know it's a little
late, but Oscar nom Zone of Interest. Okay, there's a couple of
uplifting films. It's going to be a feel good edition in Lights. I've
been rocking three Body Problem on Netflix. Okay, and I have thoughts as
well. We'll do that at eight o'clock. But coming up next, it
is the most important thing in the world. Is there an elephant on the
loose in your neighborhood? That's next in ninety seven on the Free