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E-mail Joe

Since starting in radio in the mid-60's, I've been heard on thousands of commercials ranging from local market to natioal network campaigns in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa. I have also been featured as the promotional voice of dozens of TV and radio stations as well as syndicated radio programs in the US and Europe. My roots are in radio, having started as an on-air personality:

I got into radio for job security! While in graduate school I made money to live on as a troubadour, pickin' and singin' at "The Rubyiatt" coffee house in Dallas, Texas. I never knew, from one day to the next, if I'd make any money. Until a local radio program director, who hung out at the coffee house, decided that I was pretty good with an ad lib and had a good voice. He convinced me to get my FCC 3rd Class license and set me up with a part time job at KIXL-FM, the Dallas elevator-music source at the time.

After a few months of album segues and hourly "rip 'n reads" off the AP wire, my mentor (the now legendary Charlie Van Dyke) took me on as a newsman at his station, KVIL. They soon recognized that I was not serious enough for news, so I was given my own air shift. Midnight to 6am... the graveyard! I was jocking on a 119,000 watt FM station at a time when almost nobody owned an FM radio! A few QSL cards, from Panama to Chicago, helped me imagine that I had an audience

I dropped out of graduate school (a move that caused my college-professor father to gnash his molars flat!), and settled into radio. I loved it! And, in the production room, I began to discover the "theater of the mind" that kicks in when you start to play with sound. Charlie left KVIL to go back to KLIF.. The #1 station at the time.. And, under new management, KVIL went bankrupt in '67, leaving me without a job. Time to go back East.

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WWDC - Washington, DC. 1967

OK, so I was married, had a kid in diapers, was a graduate school dropout, and was out of work. Solution? Move in with the wife's parents! This meant wedging the cat under the accelerator pedal of an ancient Volvo wagon and leaving a trail of blue smoke and rusty car parts from Big D to DC.

Somebody forgot to tell me that you needed lots of experience to get a job in major-market radio, so I didn't think it was unusual that I landed the swing shift at WWDC in Silver Springs, just outside of the nation's capitol. Of course, I was way over my head! This was the era of "Tiger" Bob Raleigh, Murray The K, CJ & Company, and other WWDC radio legends.

It didn't take management long to figure out that I was too green for the big time, and sent me packing. But, before they did, I got jacked up even higher on what quality audio production could do with a little imagination. I took that with me as I sank into the minor market radio training ground.

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WHAP - Hopewell, VA. (Richmond area) 1968-70

I guess you learn the ropes by finding yourself on them, every so often. After the heady atmosphere of the major markets the suburb communities South of Richmond, Va. seemed like professional purgatory. But there were good people to help me along and small radio stations where every talent you possess... and some you never knew you had... get put to the test. I repaired equipment that I'd never seen before, repaired the toilets when they broke, made sales calls, did remotes, wrote copy, and did lots and lots of creative production on equipment that should have been in a museum, even then! And I kept getting kicked upstairs toward management.

WHAP ("Happy Radio", for God's sake!) gave me the title of Program Director and all the responsibility that went with it in lieu of a raise. But one of our sponsors liked the commercial I wrote and produced for him and decided to pay me to do all of his commercials... Even to run on the big stations in Richmond! When he went with an advertising agency he insisted that they use my voice.

This ushered me through the door of my first professional recording studio... the old Alpha Audio, the place that introduced Sonex acoustic foam to the industry. I loved the professional environment of Alpha, and they liked my voice. I started getting paying voice work for the first time outside of the radio station!

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Free lance work began to increase and I moved to another of Richmond's "bedroom" communities, Petersburg, Va., where I became the Operations Manager of WSSV/WPLZ, as well as their morning drive-time personality. Operations Management meant that I got to do most of the dirty work at license renewal time and got a sampling of more of the pungent flavors of middle management. But it was a great learning process.

I did a lot of live interviews on the morning show, and actually started to show up in the big city's ratings in spite of the fact that the signal was nearly dead by the time it reached the nearest municipal border to the capitol of the Confederacy. Free lance work was tough because I worked long hours at the station and it was a long drive to the studio in Richmond. But I became the voice of Sears' steel belted radial tire for a while, did national campaigns for Stihl chain saws, Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco, public service announcements for American Forest Industries, and started to realize that I was pretty good at this voice stuff.

Hearing a rumor that WBT radio, in Charlotte, NC, was looking for a production manager, I decided it was time to move back to the major markets if I could. Besides... Production was what I really liked best about radio. I didn't care about being a "personality". I sent a blind "to whom it may concern" letter with enclosed tapes of my work to the Jefferson Pilot powerhouse, and waited.

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The call was completely unexpected! It had been many weeks since, on a whim, I sent off my little packet to WBT radio and I had put it completely out of my mind... Chalking it up to a dead end hunch. ButI found myself on a plane to Charlotte and discovered that this PD's idea of a job interview was to spend the afternoon in a topless bar drinking beer, shooting pool, and playing pinball machines. They had already decided I had the professional talents and abilities they wanted, based on my tapes. They just wanted to know whetherI was a relatively normal person, or a lunatic. I managed to fool them and got the job.

For the first time in my professional life I started to get some really intense direction. I was forced to stop relying on my natural talents and abilities; To stretch to become even better. To be more. It was frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. But I noticed my free lance voice work was increasing.

I worked like a red-headded step child, but grew under the challenges and became very successful as a free lance talent. When I realized that I was making more money in the few hours spent in voice work than in my entire radio station salary it was time to let go of the corporate "security" and try my wings! I walked out of WBT in 1981 with no job, no regular paycheck, no company benefits, and no guarantees of any kind. It was time to fly or flop.