You may know today's guest by many names - JD, Governor, or even his given name, Damian Redman. He talks about coming to Syracuse the summer before his freshman year, meeting Dion Summers, and finding WJPZ together.
You'll hear Damian's true character come out in this interview, when he talks about his passion for working with on-air talent. This started in his days as Chief Announcer, and continues to this day as an alum, always offering feedback to younger alumni and students. He credits the folks who came before him, and he aims to always keep paying it forward.
The governor has constituents all across this great nation. He takes us through his career from WJPZ to California, Texas, Albany, and all points in between.
Eventually, he changed careers, but was able to take the lessons of WJPZ and a radio career, and apply them to where he is now. You'll hear about that too.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. Now, we don't get political in this podcast, but today I am joined by the Governor! From the class of 95, Damian Redman. Welcome to the show.
Damian: This is a trip. I'm so nervous and excited, I've just. Why me? Why am I on this?
JAG: You're a total pro because we were talking before I hit record and you're prepped.
You've got a Selector playlist, you've got Z89 swag behind you. I know it's a podcast, folks can't see it, but let's dive right in and start. How did you end up at Syracuse and at the station?
Damian: See, guys like Matt Friedman and Dave Gorab, they had high school radio stations, right? I didn't have that. The closest that we had in my school, Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers in Lower Manhattan, was the morning announcements. One day I decided to sneak down ‘cause our class was just way too loud. So one day I decided to just up and leave and I went down to the principal's office where the microphone was to do the morning announcements ‘cause I hated the way they used to do it.
And this was around the time that the Robin Williams movie, Good Morning, Vietnam was out. And you remember how he used to say it? He'd go, good morning, Vietnam! And I said, what if I were to do that, do Good Morning Bergtraum students? So I went down to the office, I told the poor student on the air.
They said, I'm supposed to do the announcements. And they don't know. They're like, okay, here's the microphone. Take it. I go on and I'm like, this is my chance. I go, Good Morning Bergtraum students! And I could hear like the whole building, just get quiet. ‘Cause they're like, what is that? And then I go through the announcements and I'm doing this like I'm on air, like at a New York City radio station.
And I remember I get done and teachers were like, wow, that was really good. My students were quiet for the first time ever. And I just kept going down there and it didn't occur to anybody that I was not asked to do it. I just went, I just went. And so I went to Syracuse. I applied for three schools like Buffalo, Oswego, and Syracuse. I applied early decision because it had Newhouse and I said, if I get into the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications, then this is where I'm going to go. And I really thought I wasn't gonna get in, but I did get in and I was excited and I really went to the school because I wanted to be like a TV star.
I wanted to be either in front of the camera, behind the camera. I was a big TV head. I knew all the eighties TV shows, the seventies TV shows. That's all I did was watch TV. You think I know all the music? I really know all the TV as well. So I got in and in between graduating high school and the start of the fall semester, there's this thing that they did for like maybe the inner-city students.
A lot of black kids, a lot of Hispanic kids. A lot of people of color was this thing called Summer Institute. And I don't remember how or why, but somehow we were, a bunch of us were outside probably listening to an orientation speech. And we would talk about our majors with some people and I mentioned that I was in TRF Production.
And I listened to the college radio station somewhere. I was like, wow, I wanna be part of that. This sounds like Z100 New York City. So this tall lanky black guy must have heard that. And he comes up and he says, "I know, right? Z89." I said, yeah. He goes, I wanna be part of that too. And I said, that's great.
Let's go make sure we do that. All right, where are you from? He says, Baltimore. I said I'm from Brooklyn. Blah, blah, blah. And so neither of us had really traveled very far outside of our respective neighborhoods. Like he's from like inner city Baltimore. I'm from inner city Brooklyn, and that person happens to be Dion Summers.
And we drove down to the station. The first jock we ever saw was DJ W. Big, tall, handsome, white dude. John Wilson. Looked like a college senior. I don't know if he was or not. So Dion and I, we rang the bell outside of Watson Hall. We didn't know if it rang or what it does. We realized it triggers a light.
I said, can we come in? Can we watch you? He's yeah, come on in. And that was the first time we had set foot in Z89.
JAG: Wow. So you knew right away, you and Dion both, who were gonna have Dion on a future episode of the podcast. You knew right away that you wanted to be at the radio station?
Damian: Just because I heard it, like I had never heard of it.
Like I didn't come to Syracuse because of Z89. I came because of Newhouse and TV. It was like, I don't know who gave the advice. They said you should do radio if you're gonna do TV. Then when I got there and I started going to the orientation of Z89, and I did the orientation, I think of UUTV as well, and I got on both, but the TV people and the radio people were completely different.
First of all, the TV people all wanted to be the next Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings or whomever. There was a lot of egos. A lot of egos.
JAG: At Newhouse? You don't say.
Damian: Yeah, just obnoxious egos. But that wasn't me. I just wanted to have fun. I'm a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, as you could tell.
But the radio people were as goofy as I was. It was like, wow, I actually have a lot more fun with these people. These were people who listened to Casey Kasem, American Top 40. They wrote down the songs. I'm like, I didn't think anybody else did that. And I just was marveling at how professional it sounded.
I've probably heard, all the people that you've had. I heard Diamond Dave Allen, Dave Gorab, and I heard Jay Diamond, Jay Nachlis and I just heard all these people. I'm like, man, everyone sounds so good. How could I ever be a part of that? I'm not that good. I thought you had to be good to get on, but I was cleared to do overnights.
I remember like Larry Ross trained me and other people on how to work the board and then one day someone said, Hey I can't do my show. It was a four to six, late Friday, early Saturday morning. Can you do it? And I said, yeah. And I remember just being so excited. I got there like three. I got there an hour early just because I was so amped up and I was so excited and nervous, wanted to do a good job.
I pulled my carts, I pulled my drops, I put 'em all in a stack of carts. You have people know what I'm talking about, and the jock before me was like, do you need any help? You need me to, no, I got it. I got it. He's okay. And so I go on, hit the two buttons to start the top of the hour and the first song, by the way, would you like to know the first song I ever played on Z89?
JAG: Please!
Damian: Shiny Happy People by REM. That was the first song, and I tell people, always remember two things. Remember the first song you ever play and remember the first song you ever talk over. I tell everybody that because you'll come back and you'll laugh just like you did. So that was the first song.
JAG: I'm trying to think. For me, in 98 as a freshman, it would've been some combination of Aaliyah, Are You That Somebody? Barenaked Ladies, One Week. Aerosmith, I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing. Or the Rugrats theme song that Blackstreet did.
Damian: Oh. Take me there. Featuring Mya and Blinky Blink.
JAG: That's right. Blinky Blink.
Damian: So I did that. Second song I played was a yellow dot drop. It was like Nights Like This by After Seven. And then the first thing I ever talked over was in power rotation, A red dot song, it was Emotions by Mariah Carey. That was the hot song in October. October 14th, 1991 was my first ever show.
You would think doing overnights, people go, how do you do overnights? That's gotta be hard. Not for me at that time, and not for any of the students. We staffed the station 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There was always somebody behind that console and we took pride in that. Even the people at two o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock at night. Five in the morning. We wanted to be there and keep this legacy going, keep this history going.
In 91 through 95, you heard Matt Friedman, Brian Lapis talk about the flamethrower era. We were the beneficiaries of the flamethrower era. The early nineties was like, to me, the peak of how Z89 sounded, operated. We were on all cylinders and so I did not want to be the one who, who destroys it. It's like you ever had just like a really good basketball team and you got like the five starters and they're all like future hall of famers and you're on that bench and you just go, man, if I just listen to them, if I just do what they do, if I just soak it all in, I too can be one of them. Like they were inspirational. Ross and James Sillinger and all these characters. Tia Lino. Tina Musolino, my goodness. Everybody was just so good.
JAG: So what did you do besides on air at the station?
Damian: In my junior year, I became chief announcer. One of the things I really wanted to do. So chief announcer, you get to do the airchecks and you get to really make the on-air jocks better. And I knew I could do that because I knew that some of the other jocks that trained me, people like, like Larry and Dave and all these, gave me such great advice as to like how to improve my on-air delivery.
One of the things that was wrong with me, not wrong with me, but just things I could work on was I talked really fast. I had this kind of Brooklyn-ey accent and he gave me some advice. It's like smile when you talk, because then you'll sound clearer when you talk on the air. And you're having a conversation with one person that's listening. It's not a whole bunch of people out there in Radioland. You are talking to one person.
JAG: I wanna jump in for a second here, because over the past decade or so, I've become very good friends with Michelle Buchwalter, now Michelle Badrian. She's like a little sister to me and I know she is to you too. And I think what you're saying about taking that pride in being chief announcer and airchecking jocks and helping them get better.
She has gone on and on about conversations she's had with you and how you made her a better jock and how you airchecked her, and how you always gave her some great career advice. So I do wanna mention that you've certainly paid it forward with many people, I'm sure. But Michelle in particular is somebody who cites your influence very much as a very strong influence.
Damian: Oh, I love Michelle. I remember, the day I met her, me and my now wife, we went to banquet '09, and that was the one where Elvis Duran was the keynote speaker and she was so nervous to talk to Elvis Duran. And my wife was the one who said, hey look, just pound your drink and go talk to Elvis Duran. And don't even worry about it.
‘Cause she's from New York City too. So she knows Z100 is like the Mecca. So she went and said, hi, my name is Michelle Buchwalter, and I’m a big fan and here's my tape and I hope you call me. And eventually it happened. He called, she got on Z100 to be an intern. And then she was able to parlay that and the advice that I gave her was real world advice at that time, ‘cause I didn't want to give people like, oh, you're doing a great job. Keep it up.
It's like I wanted to give people not only advice as to how to execute on the air, but I wanted to give people advice as to how do you navigate this business. You think Rick Wright gives the call letters? I'll probably rival Rick Wright of the number of call letters I could give.
It's the stations I worked at. Because I've been fired so many times. I've moved on from so many stations. There's some people talking about they've only been fired once. I've been fired seven times. I've been all over this country and picked up so much little ticky-tack advice from different program directors, different jocks.
I have multiple families out there besides Z89, but I always treat them like it’s Z89. I can never replicate Z89. Maybe it's cause we're college students. I don't know. But Michelle, yourself, Jeff Wade, Ralphie Aversa, just people who wanted to get a piece of advice from little old me. I'm not, Scott MacFarlane, although even he would say that I gave him advice.
You know what I mean? Like everyone learned from me, but I'm like, I learned from the guys before me who learned from the guys before them. So it's like I thought that could be a valuable contribution to the future of the station. It's let me be an encouraging, energetic mentor.
JAG: And that you have been. You mentioned working all over the country. Tell me quickly where you were after Syracuse and all the places, not to sound like Dr. Seuss here, but all the places you've gone.
Damian: You say quickly, I'm gonna try. So Z89 from October 91 to December 94, reason being is because months before that, I had gotten a job at WNTQ, 93Q, the Evil Empire, the station that we made fun of so many times that I was so torn whether to take that job.
Because it was like, that's not the place you want to go as a jock. I worked at 95X. For some reason I never worked in Y94 FM. All the good jocks got to work at Y but that's probably because they sounded very clear and AC and I had too much energy. So I did AER, I did AQX and I did 93Q.
I did that part-time while doing my senior year, first semester at Z. Then they wanted to move me full-time overnight at Q. So then I just pulled back from on air and I was still at the station, but off air. I was just the production director at that point. My senior year I was production director, so chief announcer, then production director.
JAG: Okay.
Damian: So then I worked at KISS 102 in Rome, and then I worked at Hot 1079. I was the first ever overnight jock of that station, February 99. Ed LaComb was the PD. We had a nice little tight staff. People have heard of Kane, Pete Deibler. Rest in peace. He was on right before me.
He went onto many big things in the radio business, and I remember when he chose that name, he was like, should I be Kane or should I be Rico? Kane or Rico? I'm like, Rico, go with Rico. There's already a Kane in New York City. And he's like, I'm gonna go with Kane. I go, okay.
JAG: So not everybody always listened to your advice. Got it, okay.
Damian: Exactly. He didn't. And that was a good idea. Then I went from there to WKSS, Kiss, 95.7 Hartford. I was the night jock there. This was the height of the boy band era. That might've been my peak or one of my two peaks in terms of my personal performance on air. You know what it was? I was motivated to somehow, I don't know, you always hear about people having a chip on their shoulder. I'm friendly and I'm cool, but I had a chip on my shoulder the whole time.
JAG: Why is that?
Damian: It was like I was angry in a way that other jocks were getting great jobs and getting great success, and I'm still toiling in these small markets. So by the time I got to my first major market, Hartford, I said, I'm gonna do the best I possibly can because this might be it.
I might never get back here. So when I got fired from that job, that put me in a deep depression. I was like, oh my God, this is so bad. It was my second firing, but it was probably the worst one for me because I thought it's over. But it wasn't over. A month later I got to work at Indianapolis, so a bigger market, WNOU, Radio Now 93.1.
I was the first ever midday host, but I was brought there to be nights. That lasted a year ‘cause then they changed the whole staff over. Went from there to Amarillo, Texas, a jock named Justin Pascullo. He did part-time on Z89 as a, not a student, but he was somebody that we just brought in on in summers just to fill in and help us out when we were short staffed.
We had a lot of people like that, like Java Joel Murphy worked at Z89. A lot of people know who he is. He's one of my best friends and he was just a summer staffer brought in to help us out. He called me up and he said, dude, we have an opening in Amarillo, Texas. You wanna come there? I took it sight unseen, went to Amarillo, Texas, drove from Indianapolis, did that for two and a half years, also did the oldies station there. That was a trip, 29 years old. I'm doing the oldies station.
But in a way that versatility and energy and knowledge and love of all genres of music has actually served me well because they go, okay, he's not just Top 40. He's not just urban, he's not just hip hop. He can do Oldies, he can do AC, he can do some jazz, he can do whatever because he knows and loves music so much. And then I went from that to my first morning show, Hot 105 in Merced, California, and I did that for a year. Was fired, was outta work for six months.
That was the longest I've been outta work. I thought it was over again. But then I was calling one of my good JPZ friends here to the rescue. And I wasn't calling him for a job. I just said, hey, Dan Austin, I don't know what to do. He was the sales manager at Pamal Broadcasting in Albany, New York.
And I said, dude, I don't know. And he said I heard that they're coming out of the Tom Joyner morning show, syndication, and they're looking for a local approach. I'll put a good word in and I don't know what will happen. I said, yeah, would you please put a good word in. It's been five months. I got nothing.
He put a good word in and a week later the program director, Sugar Bear, he called me up and he said yeah, I think we wanna bring you in. And I'm like, oh, wow. Yes, I'm back! And I drove cross country from Merced, California to Albany, New York. That took five days, I drove to do mornings, and I did that for three and a half years.
JAG: I think you were in Albany when I met you. And when did you meet your wife, Jen? Was she bouncing around the country with you or at that point did you meet her?
Damian: No, I met her while I was doing mornings at that station. At Jamz 96.3 Albany. She was a listener. I was doing a Thanksgiving food drive and me and my morning show partner, Big Ray, who's down in Atlanta, Georgia now, we're collecting canned food or whatever for the food bank and this short girl, because she's only 4’10”. She hears me and she's oh, you're my morning guy, huh? And I go, yes, I'm your morning guy. That's right. Thought she was cute. And so she went and got a whole big thing of food, donated it, so on and so forth. And I thought I'd never see her again. And then months later, we're doing a remote at a, like a restaurant nightclub, happy hour, grown and sexy thing.
And here comes this cute girl again. I talked to her and I didn't put two and two together. That was the same girl. I just thought I had the same taste. We start talking. I get her phone number and let just say the rest is history. But that's where we met.
JAG: You're the exception to the rule and that you married a listener as opposed to the horror stories you sometimes hear about jocks meeting listeners.
Damian: Oh, don't get me wrong. I got horror stories about listeners, but that's for another time. Then I went from that to my first program director job at WZRT, Z97.1, Rutland, Vermont. You know about Vermont.
JAG: Yeah. The transmitter on top of Killington where all the great skiing is. WZRT, I voice tracked for that station when I was in Burlington.
Damian: Ah, okay. You did it before I got there ‘cause I didn't remember you. I would’ve loved to have you on.
JAG: What years were you in Rutland?
Damian: 08 to 09.
JAG: Okay. So I was voice tracking it when I was in at KISS in Burlington for ClearChannel from 04 to 06. So we would've just missed crossing paths.
Damian: Exactly, when it was just Z97, then we were Z97.1. I started the station's Twitter page ‘cause the Twitter was brand new. I started their texting thing, implement whatever. But yeah, that was interesting. I will say that at Z97.1 was finally for me, the culmination of everything that I had learned up to that point because it was a Z, I said, this is fate.
Yeah, this is fate. As a matter of fact, some of the imaging that you would've heard on Z97.1 and that time was straight lifted from imaging that we had used at Z89 in the nineties.
JAG: Love it.
Damian: Things like:
Z89, THE ONLY STATION WITH A ONE MILLION MUSIC GUARANTEE. GIVE US A MILLION DOLLARS AND WE’LL PLAY ANY SONG YOU WANT…GUARANTEED…Z89!
Damian: Things like that. So that ended. Of the two devastating firings, that was the other one, because that was PD. But me and the general manager clashed constantly because I'm doing big market ideas. In market 191.
JAG: Sometimes you have that, where you have, I don't know whether they call you JD or Governor D or Damian. I feel like you have too many nicknames. I'm not sure how to address you in this.
Damian: When people wish me happy birthday on Facebook, depending on when you met me, is what you'll say. You'll say, happy birthday, Governor D! Happy birthday gov. Happy birthday D. Happy birthday, Damian. Happy birthday, JD. And you know what? It's all correct. I'm like the P. Diddy. I'm like Prince. My name. It's all the same.
JAG: I tend to gravitate toward JD ‘cause I think that's when I met you. So for these purposes, JD, what happened after Rutland?
Damian: I thought, ugh. I guess that's it. Because now Jen and I were becoming an item. We were becoming serious.
And I thought, I don't wanna move again to Utah or some other place. I don't wanna move anymore. I'm back on the east coast, I'm back near my mom ‘cause you know, she's in New York City where I grew up. I realized living in Texas and Indianapolis, California, that I am an East Coast guy. I need to stay on this coast, around my people.
And Albany was perfect for me. It was halfway between the two places I consider my homes, New York City and Syracuse. I can get to the Banquet nice and easy. I can get to New York City easily. When I was music director at Jamz in Albany, I would go down to New York City, meet with my record company peeps and meet artists.
You know, I met so many different artists, it was crazy. But after the Rutland thing, I made a career change and I worked for KeyBank at the help desk. I still work for KeyBank, KeyCorp, Key Corporation. And I'm an engineer for them in their Key Technology, Operations, and Services department.
I think part of the reason I even got to work at Key, at the help desk, despite having no technical computer, like formal computer experience, was that I was able to communicate on the phone. Helping people unlock their password, fix their printer without making 'em feel stupid. There's some people who are just condescending when you ask for help from them.
They're like, yeah, the printer's jammed and I don't know what to do. It’s like well did you try unplugging it? And it’s just snide. I would turn all these interactions into like I'm still on the radio.
JAG: That traces back to both what you learned at JPZ, but also knowing you, knowing your personality, and knowing that's the kind of person you are. So I think both are probably at play there.
Damian: Right. You have to combine--I told this to everybody that asks advice, or even people that didn't ask advice--was that everyone has a unique personality that's their own. Nobody can steal that. So you take your personality and you merge it with radio science.
And you merge science and the art and that's your personality for the air. I gotta tell you, there's been some people that have come through each and every year at Z89 that I said, I am not dropping these people. There's these people are so interesting. They're just interesting people. I said, if I can convince 'em to stay at Z89 and not just come in for a month and then quit, I'm gonna hold on to these people.
I think of people like Kafele Khalfani. I said, this is an interesting dude. I said, you gotta stay. We're keeping you. AC Corrales. Alex Corrales. A funny story about him. He was like, what name should I use? I go, your own name sounds really good, Alex Corrales. What do they call you? Like back at home? He goes, AC. I go, how about AC Corrales?
He's like Alex Corrales Corrales? Yes! No one has to know that the C really means Corrales. I go, don't just be AC. Be AC Corrales, a Latin name on the air. We need more diversity on this radio station. And it worked. He's one of the most popular people that was on the station, off and on air. Good dude.
And when we talk about funny stories, I got one for you about, but one of the other things too, Big Daddy, Marvin Nugent. And Curtis Green. Danny Cagney, I don't know why he used that name, but anyway. These guys did the Saturday Night Dance Jam. And let me tell you, they, they brought New York City like mixing and vibe to Saturday nights.
It was great, whenever we were not preempted for sports. Oh, we hated being preempted by sports. People talk about the clashes between programming and news and sports. Yeah, it was there. We loved being on so much. We're like, this is a music station. Why are we doing all this sports? But we understood that they have a role too.
Z89 really is a music and sports station, ultimately, when you get right down to it, it's not just music, it's music and sports.
JAG: You're saying that as the class of 95, but that's been a recurring theme. You could also say that as a member of the class of 2005, 2015 or 85, that's a certainly a good point.
Damian: Yeah, Z89 is a format on top 40 and sports. That's pretty much what we are, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's actually a really good role to have. It makes us unique. Who else is like that? But they were so good. We had the Sunday Night Love flight, this kind of urban slow jam show. We had an alternative show, Freshly Squeezed, all the pop alternative stuff that was really coming up. That's where music kinda really was in the early nineties. You think of Nirvana and Alice in Chains and all that.
JAG: That was like a precursor to the Pulse years.
Damian: Oh, The Pulse years. Yeah.
JAG: Again, before we started recording, because you're so well prepped, because you're such a pro, you had a copy of your Selector log from your last show. So this would've been what, December 94?
Damian: This is actually December 95. Cause I had heard that Z89 was gonna be no more. The ratings were in the tank. Top 40 was changing, and the senior staff at the time said, we're gonna make a major change. We're gonna change from Z89 to 89.1 The Pulse. Now, I was at 93Q at the time.
I heard that Z89 was gonna be changing. Sometimes my heart led before my head and I said I need to do one more show. I need to do one more show at Z89 before it's poof gone forever because I thought it was gonna be gone forever.
JAG: At that time, yeah.
Damian: I called the station and it was Scott MacFarlane and I said, can I do your show? And he was like, sure. Because he know he respected me. He's like yeah, come on, do one more show. And so I saved the log from that time period, and I did my last show.
JAG: Read off the log.
Damian: December 12th, apparently 1995. So top of the hour, 3:00PM, Too Hot by Coolio, into I guess this is a recurrent, Hey Lover, LL Cool J. Creep, TLC. Nobody Knows, Tony Rich Project. You Remind Me of Something, by an artist who we don't talk about anymore.
JAG: Ah, yep.
Damian: He’s Mine, Mokenstef remix, Before You Walk Outta My Life, Monica. So we were definitely in the churban era at this time. Yeah. Every Little Thing I Do, you're on my mind, Soul for Real, Whitney Houston, Prince, Jomanda.
Oh our oldie: Let It Whip by the Dazz Band, and Runaway. So the last song that I played was, fittingly, Sometimes I Miss You So Much by PM Dawn.
JAG: Wow. Okay.
Damian: That was the last song that I talked over and I said, that's a good place to stop. So Scotty went back on for the six o'clock hour and that was it. Footnote though. Someone at 93Q heard that I was on and was very upset.
JAG: Oh. In management?
Damian: Yeah. And said, oh, you work for them now. And I said, no, it, that the station is gonna be going, and I didn't... So that's what I mean by sometimes like I made mistakes and so I apologized to the whole staff. I wrote a letter, which I have, I'm not gonna read it, too long.
And I put it in everybody's mailbox, basically just profusely apologizing for going on the competition. But that really goes to show you in, you've heard in other podcasts. We competed. They considered us a real radio station. Someone who took away their ratings. That's probably why they poached me from Z. They're probably like, he's too good. Let's take him.
JAG: 27 years later. That was the right call to go and do one last show on Z.
Damian: That's what I was thinking. I'm like, you're gonna see, it's gonna be a whole ‘nother station there. You guys have all the Top 40 audience you want because this station is gonna play Alanis Morrisette and REM.
But yeah, 27 years later, it was hard at the time because I got, like, roasted. I got lit up by, he wasn't even the program director. He was like the promotions director. We haven't talked since, but I had to do it. Because that's how much JPZ meant to me. Like, none of this would've happened without Syracuse and WJPZ, none of it.
JAG: As we start to wrap up, JD Governor, Governor D, Damian any other just funny stories from back in the day that that, that come to mind.
Damian: Sure. I've made so many great friends at the station. I really have two factions of friends. I got my black friends and my white friends. But a funny story about my we'll call my white friends Ed Brundage and Mark Verone, they were also my roommates in my junior year.
So one day, Marvin Nugent and Curtis Green, my black friends, couldn't do the dance jam like they were both sick or gone or whatever. So you need somebody to fill in. Now, sometimes I filled in, but I'm not as urban as they are, just voice wise. I did it, but I said, I want, I need some help. So I asked Ed Brundage and Mark Verone, two of the whitest sounding guys you'll ever meet to do the Dance Jam with me.
And so we're playing all the boom bap from the era, Smif-N-Wessun and KRS-One. And I'm trying to do my best impression of Marvin and Curtis and I can't do it. And I got Ed, from Reston, Virginia behind me from a lilywhite suburb, and he got Mark Verone from East Syracuse, and we're trying to do it.
So that's just funny that it was just the blandest unvibingest Dance Jam you would've ever heard at the time. It was funny.
JAG: You've been weaving them throughout the episode, but any professional lessons that come to mind that have served you well in your career to this point?
Damian: Oh yeah. Z89 gave me such thick skin. I don't even think it was thick enough by the time I got to the industry, because we were ruthless, we were so competitive. It really is like working, like for a professional sports team. We really were hard on each other, but it was because we wanted to be the best. You want those good shifts, you want to do the top eight at nine, you've gotta be good.
So it gave me thick skin. At the same time, the people that I respected were those who were not jerks. I don't really talk to the people who were jerks. I said, I'm not gonna be a jerk. If I ever get to be a program director, I'm gonna give them the sandwich. You got the nice stuff at the top. You got the criticism what you need to work on in the middle, and then you wrap it up with something encouraging.
Help somebody. Leave the station better than you found it is a big thing for me. I don't know how long we're ever gonna work at X station. You can be like Ted and Amy, 93Q, 30 plus years and counting. Or you can be like me work at 15 different stations. You never know how long it's gonna be. You never know if this is gonna be it.
Help the other jocks if you are in a position to do so. If they'll listen to you, give 'em some good advice that you learned from Z89. If people are coming to you, like you did and everybody else, you've gotta continue this. The station is the brand, not necessarily you. I'm not Howard Stern. I'm just Governor D Redman. I'm just one jock on Hot 97 New York City. I could wish. But, the station is the brand. So when you are on, you are representing the station. You are the station when you're on. So what are the impressions people are gonna have when they tune into that station? That could be the only time they ever listen to the station.
That could be the one break. You gotta make every break like it counts. Leave the station better than you found it. When all is said and done, when the smoke clears, you look back on your career and you go, you know what? I did leave it out on the floor. I did the best I could and I did the best I could.
Shout out to all of the ladies of my generation that don't get their shine. Shout out to Kelly Wortmann, Kelly Stone. Shout out to Be-Bop Alexander, Laura Wortham. She used to lend me her car to drive to 95X, which was my first commercial station because I didn't have a car on campus. So I used to go to her house and she would just leave the keys out for me and I would drive her Mitsubishi Galant to 1064 James Street, so I could do 95X.
Becky Austin, Becky Levy, Joanna Nicholson. She went by JoJo Taylor and definitely Gina Jones, Regina Scro, because speaking of cars, she actually lent me money for me to buy my first car back in 1994, and I wanna apologize to her because it took me way, way too long to pay her back. I eventually did. I don't like borrowing money, but she lent me the money, so she was a lifesaver.
So she definitely is a part of my radio career. All those ladies, by the way, all went on to great success. Mostly not in radio. But all of them really held down the station like they all could be doing AC radio today.
JAG: One big happy family as we've seen in so many episodes. Thanks for that story. Governor, you told me off air, in classic JPZ fashion, you want to end today's podcast with a dedication, so let's hear it.
Damian: To all of the unsung heroes of the station. I'm talking about the people who did the late nights. The people who, you look at the sublist, you're like, who are they? Or people who maybe they're not gonna make the Hall of Fame.
I feel like I'm gonna represent all the people who don't make the Hall of Fame. If I ever do get the opportunity, it's for you guys. It's for the Leland Rechises and the Jill Randazzos and the Ali Leitmans, and the people who just kept the station on the air, Dave Waters. The people who I come back to the Banquet for, they're people who say they're coming to the Banquet, I’ll come just to support them, just to get them into the fold.
Get them back lovin’ the station again. So I would want to do this for those unsung people who are not gonna get a podcast episode. So that's why I'm like shocked that I'm getting one.
JAG: Hey, anybody who wants one can come get one. That's how I'm looking at this thing. So we typically record these podcasts in the afternoon, but full disclosure, this one we've recorded at 9:00 AM and now that I've had 40 minutes of your energy, I am ready to go tackle my day.
Damian: That's right. Run through the brick wall!