On social media, you won't find a more enthusiastic supporter of WJPZ than Jordan Hayes, from the Class of 2014. He tells us how he first found the station in fifth grade as we played "Summer Girls" by LFO. Once he found out the station was run by Syracuse University students, he knew that's where he wanted to be. At Baldwinsville High School, he worked at WBXL. From there he went to OCC and eventually transferred in to SU.
At the station, Jordan had 3 goals. He wanted to do something nobody had done before at Z89, he wanted to be on the exec staff, and he wanted his own show. He learned some tough lessons along the way, but eventually Jordan accomplished all three of those goals.
We spend some time talking about the mentors who worked with Jordan, and from a larger perspective, the folks who have helped keep WJPZ alive for 50 years. And Jordan tells us about one of his favorite episodes of his throwback show, done with the alumni of The Pulse one Banquet weekend.
More: Jordan's Friday night online radio show: https://jordanhits202.web.app/
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. Today I'm joined by one of the more enthusiastic supporters of the radio station. You've probably seen him posting all over social media. You know, he lives and breathes and bleeds WJPZ. From the class of 2014, Jordan Hayes. Welcome to the podcast
Jordan: Jag. Thank you for having me. Thank you for tuning into my own show last Friday.
JAG: Yeah, that was me. I was checking it out for a little bit. You got your own online radio show, so we'll get to that in a little bit as well. But let's start out by telling me how you got to find JPZ and working at the radio station.
Jordan: Okay, so actually goes back as far as 1999 riding in the car. My two sisters and I had a friend who told us to listen to 89.1 FM. We had no idea what it was at the time. The first song that I remember listening to “Summer Girls,” by LFO. Does that take you back?
JAG: It does. Cuz I was working at Z89 at that time. I was there from '98 to '02. So that's right in my time. Absolutely.
Jordan: Yes. And so I remember the next thing I heard was the famous Holy Shirt ad, and the rest was history. But that was 1999. I was only finishing fifth grade at the time. During my high school years. I lived in Baldwinsville. We're very fortunate to be the only high school in the area that had their own radio station, WBXL.
That's where I got my foundational knowledge, and I did what's called community service broadcasting. So I went to OCC and I knew around the time I wanted to transfer to SU, I learned that Z89 was at SU and I never knew that before, actually. When I first listened to Z89 back in 99, I, for the life of me, thought this was a professional station run by professional full-time DJs who did this thing for a living.
I had absolutely no knowledge that this was a student run radio station on the campus of Syracuse University, which was my dream school. And then it wasn't until 2009, so 10 years after I first discovered the station, I went to the general interest meeting. The first thing I wanted to do was to be on Orange State and I wanted to do something with that show.
JAG: Were you at Syracuse University at this point, or were you still at OCC?
Jordan: Yes. Transferred Fall 2009. Graduated from OCC with an Associates in Computer Information Systems. I had transferred to Syracuse at that point. I was technically a junior in the I-school, and I knew that the first thing I wanted to do as soon as the general interest meeting was announced I'd go and get my foot in the door.
By the time I joined the station, there were no traffic reports and so that's what I wanted to do and they let me do it. And I feel that was an accomplishment for some reason, because I came into the station with three main goals in mind.
One was to be on the exec staff, two was to have my own show, and three was to do something unique and that no other Zer had done before and brought something brand new to the station's programming. So every day, Monday through Friday, 5:30 PM, do a one minute traffic report, do my job and I'm done for the day.
But I knew at that time I was thirsty for something more.
JAG: Sure. Yeah.
Jordan: Yeah. I know it was hard, but I know that because I was the little fish in the big pond, there was something in the back of my mind. No, I had to go through all the hoops. But at the same time, I was thirsty because my time at WBXL.
One month in, two weeks in, the advisor, the faculty advisor at WBXL said, oh, here we go. You've done the training, here's your show, and you can do whatever you want with it. And so I learned very fast, very quickly, and it was a good life question to learn too. This also followed me through everything else that I've been doing.
But to get in the next level, no, that's not how it works. I have to establish myself. I have to prove myself to the GM and the program director what I'm capable of doing. Not just an idea, but can I execute on that? I wanted to do my own news talk show called CNY State of Mind, and I talked to the news director and had a meeting with, uh, his name is Grant, by the way. Grant Lipshcultz. Class of 2011. I was gonna discuss the local news and happenings around Syracuse and kind of similar to what I did with WBXL. Being a voice for the Syracuse community.
But the one thing that he said was very important, it wasn't fitting for the programming, the format of Z 89. Because my show was gonna be more serious.
JAG: That makes sense.
Jordan: And to me, I thought that was a barrier. But I didn't really understand the value of keeping with the brand of the format. I thought you're free to put any program on it that you like, even if it didn't fit with the format at all. But it was later during my years, I finally learned how important that actually is.
JAG: Okay. So what happened from there, Jordan?
Jordan: I just had to move on. I kept doing the traffic reports for as long as I could, while trying to get something else going. If I just had to pursue a new idea, come up with an idea that would work with the format of the station. This was about three years later, 2012 actually.
Now, keep in mind, 2012, we were getting ready to renovate the station. And then I remember we went through a whole snag. The construction got delayed and delayed and delayed.
JAG: We've had other episodes of the podcast talking about that. Many have talked about the delays of the new station until about Christmas of 2012.
Jordan: Yes, exactly. But then in the meantime, I was getting ready to plot a new idea, something new that we hadn't done before. A mixshow with the top 10 throwbacks from 1990 to 2003. The first thing the program director, now, Rashaud Thomas had me do was find all the music. Find all the music that I wanted to use, look and see if it was in the system. And I actually had a whole Excel, or Access database. That's for all of the throwback music from Z 89 going all the way back from, I think 1989 to 2000. Or somewhere or something. And so once I had all the music, then it was time for me to do a pilot.
So I recorded the pilot I did in the summer of 2013. Summer 2013. I was in there almost every day recording the pilot of what would eventually become my first mix show, the top 10 throwbacks, countdown.
JAG: I love it.
Jordan: So they gave me some feedback. New program director Joey Cosco, Class of 2014, Liverpool Native, along with Corey. Corey Crockett.
He listened to the pilot, gave me some feedback, which I was able to take and I was able to learn from. And then by the fall I got to go on the air doing my own show. And goal number two, goal number three. By that time, I was the web director for Z89.
JAG: Sounds like you were using the i school stuff pretty well between an Excel or Access database for those songs, and then also managing the web stuff for Z 89.
So you had your hands in a lot of different things at that point. When was the throwback show on Jordan? When was that on the air?
Jordan: That was Saturday nights 9 to 10 during the fall 2013 semester, and then we bumped it to eight to nine Saturday nights the spring 2014 semester. . That show also gave me the opportunity to do a show with three members of the Pulse during the Banquet.
So Banquet 2014. It fit in with the show, and I asked Maureen Cooper, J Sweet, Jason Paulino, and Harry Wareing. . So I got to do a show all about the Pulse days with those three. And I had a blast cuz I got to learn something else that I didn't know about the station. I had no idea that there was The Pulse.
JAG: That makes sense because we've done a couple episodes of the podcast about that. we've got with Dan Austin and Jeff Wade talking about the pulse and then we've got Harry Wareing and Dena Giacobbe talking about flipping back to Z89. So if you had found the station in 1999, that would've been very soon after they switched back to Z89 from the Pulse.
Jordan: Yes. And I also heard, I was listening to your 9-11 episode. And the one thing that I took away from that was Harry and Dena made sure that after they graduated the new class coming in, which I guess would've included you. They wanted to make sure that you and whoever was left at the station, was left in good hands, that you had a direction.
You had a direction for keeping Z89 going after that transition, maybe. I know this is you asking the questions.
JAG: Go ahead.
Jordan: What was that like for you then?
JAG: We talked about that in many episodes of the podcast, including the one with my class of 2002 classmate Matt Del Signore, who's coming into the Hall of Fame this year.
Harry really said exactly what you said, Jordan, if we don't bring in these freshmen and put them in positions of power, there's gonna be no radio station. And because when we went in there, we were welcomed like family and we were given things to do. And we were given responsibilities. We felt like we had ownership of a part of the radio station.
And I think that's, to answer your question, that's the feeling that we had. And we knew that we had this responsibility to not fail because there were generations before us that had kept it going, and now it was our turn to keep it
Jordan: going. That's interesting because I'll say this: Had you and the, uh, the new class, not taken that responsibility seriously. there would've been no me. My sister's friend wouldn't have been able to tune to 89.1 FM and hear the beat of Syracuse, the all new Z89, here's LFO, Summer Girls. And then I wouldn't have, 10 years later had my own legacy that I contributed to the station. So I guess that all comes full circle.
JAG: I wanna come back to something you said a minute ago, Jordan, and that is when you talked about accomplishing those goals, you got on the air to do traffic, and then you came up with an idea for a show and they said it didn't fit the format you had go back to the drawing board, come up with something else, and you found something that worked and you got that throwback show on the air.
Jordan: Yes.
JAG: I think that says a lot about you as far as your perseverance, and it seems like that's probably one of the lessons you learned at Z 89.
Jordan: Exactly. It wasn't overnight and it took time.. So remember I started in fall of 09 and I didn't get my throwback show until the fall of 2013. That was 4 whole years of trying something, throwing it against the wall, to see if it sticks.
Yep. The first one didn't, obviously the second one did, and then that allowed me to do another show. We're doing this on the eighth anniversary of my last show, which was essentially the lost or forgotten hits.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Jordan: That shifted to music that Z actually played, but unfortunately they didn't chart very well, and they got taken off of regular rotation very quickly.
JAG: Do you remember what one or two of those songs were?
Jordan: Bottoms up. Do you know Bottoms Up by,
JAG: Yeah. Trey Songz and Nicki Minaj. Right. .
Jordan: Yep. Another one was Fireflies.
JAG: Owl City.
Jordan: Owl City. And we could play this all day long.
JAG: Yes. You're right. So any other lessons besides perseverance you felt you learned at Z 89 Jordan?
Jordan: Oh, yes. Don't burn bridges. Definitely don't burn bridges. Don't burn bridges with anybody at the station because I didn't know that then. But I know it now.
JAG: Are there folks from either when you were a student or other alumni that you've met, Jordan, that you think fondly OF that you've made friends with that you think about at this point?
Jordan: Oh yes. I have a whole list of names that I could name here, but we would be all day. So as I mentioned, Grant Lipschultz. He was a friend, he was a mentor as a news director. And I really looked up to him and he looked up to me. Nikki Schloss. Does that name ring a bell?
JAG: Yep.
Jordan: Michelle, uh, buck ..
JAG: Michelle. Buchwalter. Now Michelle Badrian, she's a good friend of mine. She's like a little sister to me. Yep.
Jordan: Uh, David pr, do you know who David Propper is? He was a sports guy.
JAG: I don't know the name. No.
Jordan: Eric Silverman.
JAG: Yep. I know Eric. Yep, of course.
Jordan: Yep. Veronica V Ripson. And then Liz. Liz Doyon. Also. Stephen, Tex, uh, Kurtz.
JAG: Mm-hmm.
Jordan: And of course. J. Sweet. Jason Palladino. I met him during the banquet when I did the Pulse show. Uh, Harry Wareing, uh, and then Mo.
JAG: Yeah. Mo Cooper, whose voice you hear on this podcast. There you go. Jordan, are there any funny stories you can think of that you still laugh about? Funny moments that happened when you were at the station before we wrap up?
Jordan: There aren't a lot, I'm trying to think of one that's really gonna hit it out of the park because we can't be all serious . No, we cannot be all serious. Let me set the scene. Banquet 2014 going on the air. We are about to play a challenge. I'm a big Weird Al Yankovic fan you see, and we were gonna play one of his polkas. I was gonna have Harry Jay, and Mo guess all the songs that made up the Polka, because the polka is, are medley of different,
JAG: For those who don't know, Weird Al puts out these polkas where he takes popular songs and rearranges them into polkas. Keeps the lyrics, it makes it a polka for those who don't know. But yep, so go ahead.
Jordan: We were about to play that, but then suddenly I turned the monitor away from me thinking they'd be able to keep an eye on what was playing.
So I remember we were getting ready to play that. I hit the next button on the board, but we didn't hear Weird Al. We heard Gwen Stefani, "Just a Girl '' instead. Because I wasn't looking at the monitor and I wasn't keeping track of what was running on the log. And that's a lesson. Always look at the monitor before you press something on the board, because if you don't, then something else that you don't expect is going to happen.
JAG: Well, Jordan Hayes, I know, as I said at the beginning, you are one of the most enthusiastic members of the radio station, and I had no idea that your history with the station went back over 20 years back to when my class was there with students in 1999. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and can't wait to see you in March.
Jordan: Yes, please put the link if you can. My station. It's the JordanHits202.web.app. I do my own show. Friday nights at eight. I usually do a show every Friday night, from 8:00 to 9:00 PM.
JAG: I will put it in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.
Jordan: Can I do a sign off or?
JAG: Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan: So you're listening to the WJ PZ at 50. This is the beat of Syracuse Z 89.
JAG: Love it.