Between 2 Urns
Between 2 Urns is an interview-based podcast that weaves together the personal stories of everyday Ramsey County residents doing extraordinary things—and extraordinary residents living everyday lives. Each episode invites listeners into a conversation that explores what drives us, challenges us, and connects us as humans.
Through thoughtful, empathetic interviews, B2U uncovers and documents the humor, heartbreak, and hope within real human experiences—from artists and educators to entrepreneurs, leaders, and change-makers in our community.
This podcast isn’t about celebrity; it’s about humanity.
Between 2 Urns
Between 2 Urns - Brian Oake
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Today’s guest is Brian Oake, a true Twin Cities original and a legendary voice in the local music scene. With over 25 years behind the mic, Brian has helped shape how generations of listeners discover music—spinning records and telling stories at Radio K, Rev 105, Drive 105, Cities 97, and The Current. Known for his deep knowledge, sharp wit, and genuine love for artists, he’s been a constant thread in the region’s creative community. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of radio, the heartbeat of local music, and the moments that made a career dedicated to sound.
Between 2 Urns is hosted Youa Vang.
Technical support and editing is provided by Chris Koza.
Theme Song “Swaying Trees,” is written by Chris Koza.
Between 2 Urns is made possible by a grant from the Harlan Boss Foundation.
Some conversations are too interesting to stay buried. Between two urns is where history meets humanity. Each episode digs up the stories, legacies, and lingering questions we leave behind. This interview-driven podcast brings you candid conversations with people whose lives, work, and passions that shape the stories we carry forward in Ramsey County. From artists and educators to community leaders and unexpected voices, we explore what drives us, challenges us, and ultimately connects us. Blending humor, honesty, and curiosity about the past and present between two urns proves that history isn't just something we inherit, it's something we live. Pull up a chair, the conversation is just getting started. With over twenty-five years behind the mic, Brian has helped shape how generations of listeners discover music, spinning records and telling stories at Radio K, Rev 105, Drive 105, Cities 97, and the Current. Known for his deep knowledge, and also his deep voice, sharp wit, and a genuine love for artists, he's been a constant thread in the region's creative community. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of radio, the heartbeat of local music, and the moments that made a career dedicated to sound. Hi, Brian Oak.
SPEAKER_02Hi, you of Ang.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for being here today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's my pleasure. Genuinely, I enjoy your company, so I'm looking forward to this.
SPEAKER_04So tell us your bio. What's your elevator?
SPEAKER_02My name is Brian Oak. I grew up in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, so I'm a northern suburbs kid. Moved to Minneapolis when I was 18, and I've lived in Minneapolis ever since. I'm now 57 years old. I am a divorced father of one. My daughter is a grown woman. She's 26. She'll be 27 in just a matter of days here. I am a 30-year radio veteran of the Twin Cities on Air radio broadcasting community. Did drive time, either morning drive or afternoon drive, for 30 years. And, you know, there I like anybody's career and any industry, there are ups and downs, radio being more dynamic than most. Um so you know, you bounce around a lot, but I was really, really fortunate to be able to stay in the same market uh for 30 years. You know, normally you've got to move wherever the gigs are in radio, so very fortunate in that regard. And these days I am uh living on my own, moved back to Uptown for the first time since the 80s, and um I uh do a podcast, the Brian Oak Show podcast, and I work part-time at a record store. And so I'm not making speedboat money, but I'm you're making yacht money.
SPEAKER_04Not quite, not quite.
SPEAKER_02Um, but I am at this age kind of rediscovering who Brian is, you know, between divorce and sobriety and all these other things that have come into play. It's interesting. I'm learning about myself again, and I'm finding out what 57-year-old Brian is like instead of young man Brian. Uh and it's interesting. It's a super fun journey. I'm I'm very happy right now in the name with what I've put together for my life in terms of employment and the things I I'm not doing anything I don't want to do, and it feels really good, you uh. It feels really good.
SPEAKER_04Good. I feel like the older I get, the more I can be like, no, I'm good.
SPEAKER_02You know, you just I mean, A, the the wonderful thing about not caring as much about what the rest of the world thinks, that's very liberating. But also you finally, you know, you you have the experience. You have the you've put the hours in, you've done the reps, right? And so you know what serves you and what doesn't, and it gets easier to make those decisions and and to make sure that you're serving that important part of yourself as you get older.
SPEAKER_04So I don't think I know how you got started in radio. Can you share that story?
SPEAKER_02I can. Um, my voice dropped when I was very young, probably 10, 11 years old, well before puberty kicked in.
SPEAKER_04Was it this deep at 10?
SPEAKER_02Not quite this deep, but it was very deep for a 10-year-old. And people would call the house and think I was my dad. And then at a certain point it got this deep, and everybody, I mean everybody would say, Yeah, I had no designs of being on the radio. I love the radio, loved listening to it, but that everybody would say, My God, you got that great voice. You got a voice for radio, you got to do radio. And it got said to me so often that I genuinely do not know, did I decide to do radio or was I just sort of coerced into it? Uh, but either way, I went to college at Winona State uh for one year, and I worked at KQAL down there. I was the music director on my freshman year. My first experience on the radio, but to me it was just sort of a lark at that point. I didn't think this is what I'm doing for a living. I didn't honestly believe I could do it for a living. Um I thought, well, college radio, that's fun to do because you know, get I love I was always a music head. And so getting to play cool music on the radio and make everyone listen to my opinions and jabber about it, it was pretty great. But I I didn't assume it was anything you could do for a living. I thought you had to be like a I don't know, like an old school Hollywood entertainer type, right? Like just and I I'm like, I can't just go on there and be myself. Uh so years later, I had not done anything in radio for like the next seven, eight years. I worked in the nonprofit community for the Clean Water Action Alliance on their fundraising wing for lobbying and other work they do around the state. And at that time I started going back to school briefly, and I went to the U of M. And it was WMMR before it was Radio K. So I started working there, and that was, you know, we all have to kind of grind and put in the hours early on in anything that we do. And I had a Sunday morning at 6 a.m. shift, and I was 23 years old. And there would be times because at the time WMMR was only on FM cable.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Nobody knows what that is, Yua. Uh and it all it went to the dorms. And how many people in the dorms at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning were listening to me do my thing? Yeah. So I would routinely do giveaways like, all right, I'll take caller seven right now on whatever the studio line was, and the phone wouldn't ring once. And I'm like, all right, well, this is good practice, and I'm getting to sit here and play music, and I love it. Um, worked there, and then eventually that turned into Radio K. I auditioned for the morning show, got that. So it was Sharon and I doing a show called Morning Breath. Um we liked it too. We liked it. And then uh I'd been doing that for about nine months, and I got a call from Kevin Cole, who I knew as a very popular local DJ influencer before the internet. You know, he was the music guy in town, and he was the cool DJ in town, did the Raves depth probe, and was First Avenue's like sort of celebrity DJ at the time. He got roped in with some people, the Cargills, and there was money, and suddenly there was a cool radio station. He called me out of the blue one day. I'd never met him, and he said, Hey, do you want to do radio? And I was like, What do you mean? He's like, You want to come and do the morning show? We're launching a radio station. And it again, it didn't seem like the real world to me. Like at the time, I was I, you know, I had no responsibilities. I was in my young 20s. I was making 25 grand a year, and it was more money than I knew what to do with.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And they offered me this job, and I thought, well, okay, but I is it really like this? And I knew I didn't, I knew it wasn't going to be a long-term thing. I just figured, okay, well, we'll do this till we don't do it anymore. And when you're young, you make those kind of decisions, right?
SPEAKER_04Wait, what did you go to school for at U of M?
SPEAKER_02The U of M, nothing. I was I only I really only went back because the radio bug was always somewhere in the back of my head.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And you had to be a student at the U of M in order to work at the radio station. So I was taking extension courses and kind of half going. In my head, I told myself I was following my minor in Japanese studies. Um I did. Well, I took Japanese and I was actually very diligent about it for a little while. But it was such a deeply immersive course. Five days a week, there was one hour, a one-hour thing where they said hello on their very first day, introduced everyone in the class, and never spoke another word of English again. So you had to be there every day. And you're, you know, you're working with little kids' workbooks and stuff, but you're learning the kanji in a brand new language. And then there was also two nights a week, there were these big two and a half hour English language things to cover what you'd been learning. And so it was a very time-intensive and and uh and text-intensive course. And um I missed a couple days, and by the time I went back, I was so far behind that I gave up. But that's kind of the story of my academic life. I was smart but not studious. And um uh but anyway, so I went back there and uh yeah, I went over and um they offered me a job and I was so uh utterly gobsmacked that I could do radio for a living. Okay. They offered me money and I was not aware that the game worked, that they're gonna make an offer that they don't they expect to be far too low.
SPEAKER_04Oh, sure.
SPEAKER_02Then I come back, then we sort of meet somewhere in the middle. They said we'll give you 175. And I said yes.
SPEAKER_0417,000 a year?
SPEAKER_02Yes, 17,500. And this would have been 1993, 94. So again, it was uh it was not enough money to be doing what I was doing, but I didn't know and I didn't have any perspective, and I was literally gonna do the thing that I wanted to do for a living at that point more than anything else. And so I just I decided to ride the wave, but yeah, I took a $8,000 a year pay cut to uh to go from a nonprofit to doing um a starting in morning radio, but it was the right decision. It was 30 years of um of a job that I really, really enjoyed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I actually thought about you just the other day because it was raining and I was driving, and I'm like, oh, I should turn on my windshield wipers because I used to listen to you on Cities 97 and you were on the afternoon show, and you'd always say, Turn on your windshield wipers. It's raining.
SPEAKER_02If the rule is Oh, sorry, that's what I meant. Turn on your headlights when you're if your windshield wipers are on, your headlights should be on. It should be on. If there's inclement weather and it's startling in the winter, it's white cars. In a rainstorm, it's slate gray and silver cars that disappear into the road that never have their lights on. It makes me insane. And people are like, well, now they're automatic, and I I don't, you know, I they just turn on and off on their own. I'm like, there's literally a switch. It's it's right next to your turn signal, it's right there. Just click it forward or click it back. And so, yes, I do and still continue to get a little worked up about that. Maybe a little less feisty than I used to.
SPEAKER_04No, that's sorry, that's what I meant. Turn on your lights if your windshield wipers off.
SPEAKER_02I just because I think it's the state law that if your windshield wipers are on, you have or you have to have your lights on. You have to. It makes me crazy.
SPEAKER_04Uh I thought of you.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm uh then see, I've left a mark. You left a mark. Somehow that makes the mission all worthwhile.
SPEAKER_04So the first time I heard your voice on air, I I'm younger than you, obviously. Yes, you are.
SPEAKER_02But um I don't know about it. Obviously, you are, but yes, you are.
SPEAKER_04But uh you were on the edge because the edge was this alternative radio station that I started listening to, and then you migrated over to there before it turned to Cities 97.
SPEAKER_02The Edge never turned to Cities 97. 93x, sorry. 93x, exactly. So at the time, the whole time I worked at Rev, I was the morning guy there for three years. The we were the little sort of scrappy DIY punk rock version of alternative radio, whereas the Edge was owned by Disney, ABC. They were the mouse, they were the big evil corporate entity that couldn't be as cool, and they were way too commercial. And so for them, we were never any real threat, but they also didn't like having us around, and they were still very much in that old school mentality of you're not anybody's friend in radio, we're all competing for the same listener. And so there was a lot of weird back and forth there. So then the telecommunications bill got signed in 96, and suddenly individuals or companies could own as many radio stations or newspaper outlets or TV stations as they want.
SPEAKER_04So it's a monopoly.
SPEAKER_02So well, you saw this basically a land grab because that had all been broken up with, you know, trespusting. And now you see this massive land grab. So companies like Cumulus, like Clear Channel, like ABC Disney scoop up all these broadcasting outlets because the margins were so good, and they're like, all right, we're going deep into debt now, literally billions of dollars. And because they thought, well, we're gonna make all this back and tenfold, a hundredfold. So that got signed. So once Rev 105 never made a dime, it lost money every year, but they had a very wealthy benefactor in Jim Cargill, and he just got tired of losing money. And after a three-year run, he sold to ABC Disney. They offered him you know more money because stations were going for far higher than market value. He ended up making money on a station that never made him a dime. I mean, I there's a reason billionaires are billionaires, right? Um, but as a result, then suddenly Rev is gone. And we were all they had made it to X-105. It was this metal station, and they offered to let us stay, and I did just because I didn't know what I was gonna do next. So I wasn't talking at all, but I'm basically a glorified board op at this point. And one day I'm like, I'm gonna quit. And they said that the the boss there said, Well, come in the totally new administration, said, Come and talk to me when you're done with this shift. And they're like, Would you ever want to work at the edge? And now working at Rev, it was kind of like a radio tree fort, right? It was cool, it was indie, it was underground. It wasn't like the business, it wasn't official, even though it was in retrospect. But to be invited to go work on a hundred thousand watt station with all the bells and whistles, all the promotional dollars, huge sales staff, the whole bit was kind of daunting. And I was excited because I liked doing it. And I was called a sellout, a Judas, a traitor because I went and worked for the competition. You know, there's no social media at that time, so no, but the phone calls and the faxes. Seriously, oh no, angry faxes. Really? It sounds cartoonish to say it out loud, but there were many.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Just angry. Um, and I'm like, well, I I can't sell out of something that's gone, and I did get paid more to go to the edge, but that's because they paid people what they were their market value. But it's not like I'd abandoned Rev. I loved Rev. But it suddenly went away. The guy, if you're mad at somebody, be mad at the guy who sold it. So I did. I went over to the edge that summer. They were in the process of shedding staff because they were getting ready to switch over to 93X, which still exists to this day. And so I was suddenly the overnight fill-in guy, then the midday fill-in guy. Then the every time they moved off one of their big names, I was the fill-in. And then at the end of that summer, summer of 97, they flipped it over, and then I went on to the 105s for the next four years, uh, still working with Steve Nelson. But then that's where Mary Lucia and I, even though we both worked at Rev 105, the only time everyone always says, Man, I loved your and Mary's morning show at Rev 105. I'm like, that never happened. She worked at night, I worked in the morning. The first time we ever like worked together on the same sh slot, the same shift was at Zone. Uh it was the year 2000, and we worked for about a year and a half together before once again they decided to flip formats and we got shunted. So, yeah, the edge. That was my first introduction to a lot of people because Rev was very small and had a very, very specific selective appeal.
SPEAKER_04Right. So, what do you feel moving around to so many new spaces has taught you?
SPEAKER_02Well, I believed this in life before it just got reinforced in radio. You don't ever burn any bridges, right? Because now, with 30 years of history, if you're gonna be in one market for that time, there's no way you can't get to know everybody. And although there's constant turnover, there's a lot of mainstays, there are a lot of other people who have moved companies. The producer and on my podcast and good friend Sean Bernard, we work together at a couple different stations. You get to know everyone, and I don't think it's ever a good look, although, you know, any kind of media is gonna have characters, right? And people who are a little abrasive, a little unpredictable, and some of them really drink their own Kool-Aid and believe that they're stars, and this is amazing. Right. And even if you're a great entertainer, I just I don't think it's ever a good look to be a self-obsessed jerk. And so, you know, don't burn any bridges because you may be riding high right now, but that will change. Everything is a cycle in radio and really in life, and you will have downs and you will need to look to other places, you will need to go to work other places. And, you know, if your reputation is that you're a good soldier, you know what you're doing, you're you're good at your job, uh, and you know to work with people, I think that serves you like a you know in anything. But radio in particular, because it's such a little echo chamber of itself, well, and there's a few little people that do work in it.
SPEAKER_04The talent that does work in radio is small.
SPEAKER_02And only smaller now because that's an industry that's contracting, which is why I haven't been really busting my hump to try to get back into it. The other thing that it's taught me, uh, you know, moving around that much is because sometimes, you know, oh, I'm going to work for a country station, and that's fine, you know, but then maybe they want me to put a little twang on the voice or wear a cowboy hat, or sometimes it requires a different persona if you're gonna adequately sell the product and the brand and the name. I've always had the privilege of being myself. I never had to try to use a certain vernacular or be anything other than how I am in regular day-to-day conversation.
SPEAKER_04And I hear you're a cowboy twang.
SPEAKER_02I don't have one, thank God. And I luckily I never got offered a job. But I had friends, you know, because I got I had the privilege, but also kind of a little bit of the curse of working at the coolest radio station ever, is my very first radio job. Rev 105 is revered, even though its legend has grown a little bigger than it actually was. But it was great, but it was cool. But if you start out with the cool kids, then if you go to work for the edge, you're a sellout. Or and I just wanted to do this for a living and I saw an opportunity and I took it. I have zero regrets about going to the edge because Rev was gone. Yeah. It wasn't that there was nothing I could do about it.
SPEAKER_04You can't walk up anymore.
SPEAKER_02And so the same thing. Like if my only gig was a country station, it meant I didn't have to leave town and I could stay with all my friends and family. I'd go work at a country station.
SPEAKER_04But luckily I never had to, so I never brushed up on that twang, you uh one thing that I feel about because I've had a few different jobs and career changes in my life. I've just learned to hold things with a loose grip. Because I'm like, you know what? I appreciate it while it's here, but it's gone. You know, I have to move on. My mentality has changed. I've changed, you know, and I I'm become better at accepting it. And sometimes people will bring it up and you're just like, great, that was a different time in my life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and again, I don't have I loved I've loved my time in radio, and I don't miss it at all. But, you know, given the sort of seismic changes that have happened in my life in the last couple of years, uh, from health to relationships to employment to all of that, I wouldn't say that I've like had a spiritual awakening, but I certain principles and day-to-day uh attitudes have absolutely moved to the forefront. And one of them is very much, and again, it sounds cliche, and I'm gonna say it like a four-year-old would say it, but the the old Ramdos ideal of be here now. Like the past is always gonna inform you, but there is zero sense in carrying those rocks with you because they're only gonna make today heavier. You just you gotta set them down and let them sit there. You can look at them whenever you want, but you can't carry them around, you can't live in that, and it can't define who you are. And tomorrow, you didn't know everything that happened today when you went to bed last night. There's just there's no way sometimes it's little things, other times it's the craziest day ever. And so you can't live in tomorrow. You really have to live in it right now. And if I'm happy today and I can sleep well tonight and and I feel good today, yeah, it's the only time there is. You can only live right now. And so it's um that has been something that is both through radio but a lot of other factors, has really moved to the forefront. And I also think that being through some of the challenges I've been through in the last couple of years, I always believe in the golden rule. I'm not a deeply religious guy, but I do for some reason still, even without the threat of eternal punishment, know that it's the right thing to do to be decent to people. Yes. The golden rule. I've always tried to live my life by it, but it's become even more of an important principle. I try to treat everybody exactly the way I would like to be treated. I try to give people what I would like from them, and I think that that serves you more often than it doesn't. There's always going to be jerks, there's always gonna be people to take advantage, but that doesn't give you the right to not keep trying. You have to. If you're trying to make your life, the world, whatever, a better version of itself, then it's incumbent on you to do your part of it.
SPEAKER_04And I asked about your podcast.
SPEAKER_02Anything.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so tell me how did that get started?
SPEAKER_02So it's the Brian Oak Show podcast. It started, we're coming up on our sixth anniversary. Uh at the time, I had been fired from the current, and I was out of radio for a while, and I was cool. I've been fired from stations before, Rev, Zone. That's the nature of the movie. The very public and a little gruesome, and not even vaguely swathed in the truth. But I'm not here to I'm I've I've really again that's one of those stones I've set down. I I can't stay bitter about that. It sucks. Lost my dream job, but being bitter about it today is not going to improve anything about my current situation. So I'm not perfect at it, but I'm getting better at it. But the podcast, uh, my good buddy Sean Bernard, uh, who I'd always gotten along with very well, he has done on air and radio, but his career is similar to mine in that he's worked a ton of different places, although he moved around more than I did. But his career was predominantly sales oriented. And so I worked with him at a couple different radio stations. He reached out to me. He had dabbled in podcasting, and after I got fired, he reached out to me. It was a little ways, about the same time that you sent me that lovely needle point that you sent me.
SPEAKER_04I see it in almost every picture that you post.
SPEAKER_02So it's in my studio, it's in the Smart Start MN studio for the podcast. It's right behind my head because it matters. You sent me that needle point that said, Never give up on your stupid, stupid dreams at a pretty low ebb for me. So it was very lovely to get that. But Sean reached out to me during that same time and he said, Do you want to do a podcast? And at the time, I podcasting was already blowing up, it was already a very crowded space six years ago.
SPEAKER_04So we're already this one's already a little bit behind.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, we would, but there's no way. To go back and you know, you and so now the difference is now with the volume that's out there, you just have to make sure it's good, it has to be interesting, it has to draw people to it in order to separate itself from the background noise at all. But the Brian Oak Show podcast, he reached out, and at the time I didn't really much like when I worked in radio, I barely listened to radio. I I do it, and so I don't really, I'm not one of those guys who's always scouring what the enemy's up to. And so with podcasting, I'm like, well, if I go home, I or I'm in the car, I listen to talk radio because I like KFAN, even though I'm not a sports guy. And if I'm at home, I put music on. And so I never ever bothered listening to podcasts. So I'd heard, I think, literally two episodes of any podcast ever at that point. And Sean's like, You want to do a podcast? I'm like, sure. I just yeah, I didn't I had literally no idea what it entailed. I just knew that it was stuff that I was already given to. I'll be interviewing people, there'll be music involved, it's gonna be great. But I thought it was, you know, this was gonna be one of those sort of diversionary things, right? Like it wasn't gonna become the main way I earn a living. I just thought, we'll give it a shot. And so he's like, Well, how many do you want to do? And again, not listening to podcasts, I had no idea. Because I was coming off of doing radio five days a week. So I thought, well, it's gonna be like that. And I'm like, but I don't want to do five days a week if we're not getting paid. Right. So I just threw out two a week. Uh having no context, no goal, no understanding if that's if people consume it, the the content and that that rate, what what would be a good number to do? He just said, How many do you want to do? Because then he could go approach advertisers. Got it. Okay. And I just I literally pulled, I reached into the dark and pulled out a number. I have no idea. And then, you know, I come to find that some people do a podcast a month, or you know, or there are people who do them daily. And so then for a while, there as we were kind of getting off our off the uh the ground and you know, getting our feet under us and kind of figuring out a rhythm, two a week was tricky.
SPEAKER_04Why was it tricky?
SPEAKER_02Just because even though I've interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of bands, artists, entrepreneurs, whoever in radio, I always had a producer. I was never the one doing the the busy work and making the phone calls and answering the emails and crossing the T's and dotting the I's. And and then once you get a hold of someone who shows interest, then there's the back and forth of as I don't need to tell you, but just to tell other people, the back and forth of where's it at? Nail it down a time, that day doesn't work. Well, can we do this day? And again, it's not the end of the world, but it can be a lot.
SPEAKER_04It does take time, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It absolutely does. And um, that was hard for me to get into a rhythm of doing that, which may sound weird because I, you know, you're only trying to get two a week, but people have busy lives, and I was not used to it. And to be honest, I didn't know if anybody would care if anybody really wanted to be on my podcast. Because again, I knew nothing about podcasting. I understood that I was coming off a 30-year radio career, uh, and you know, and I actually did go work at Cities again for a couple more years after that started. Yeah, so I just I didn't know anything about it. So it started because Sean asked, and I said yes. And we had a we had our first main primary sponsor from before the time we recorded our first episode. You have a gorgeous setup here, and I love this room. And um, our very first one, though, you know, those shared office spaces where you can pay and just show up and work whenever you want. We found one of those that also had a very small, extremely modest recording studio in the back. But in addition to coordinating guests, you had to coordinate with their schedule, other people using that studio, and it just became too much of a nightmare. So we decided to, you know, it's not the most lavish production facility, but the Smart Start MN Studio suits our needs perfectly. It's completely our own. And I think that changed both Sean and I's attitude once we decided, well, we're gonna start paying rent to have a place to do this thing. It sharpened our focus, both of us. And when Sean came on early on, he's like, you know, you should just hire me and not make me a part of the organization. You I should just be uh an outside consultant or a contractor, you know. And I'm like, no, because I don't like to do taxes. I don't want to deal with sales, I don't want to deal with that's it's just I'm not good at it. And but there are things that come with doing a podcast that I am good at. And I thought, well, and I don't want to just have him sort of be involved if we're gonna do this, and I need someone with his acumen and his skill set, which I totally do. I want him to have some skin in the game. And so we got the LLC together, and we're the co-owners of the podcast, and anything else that might pop up under that umbrella. But uh yeah, so we got it off the ground, and we are rapidly. We just did episode 526 yesterday, and we are rapidly approaching six years of doing it.
SPEAKER_04Was the intention to always have Sean kind of be like a co-host?
SPEAKER_02I think so. I don't like to monologue. I the reason the reason that it's an interview-based podcast is I prefer conversation. I want to sit down and talk. That's the best way to get information. It's also the best way to occasionally generate a laugh or find an unexpectedly poignant moment. Um, and that's why I make all the guests who come on pick out the three songs we're gonna feature because that to me is another entree into someone's personality. It deepens the conversation, the understanding of each other. I'm way past thinking any songs are good or bad anymore. I know what I like, but if somebody else feels the exact opposite, they're right too. So it's just it's a good way to learn about somebody and also have fun, and then there's a little break in the talking. And um, so I think, you know, the podcast appeals to the the music fans and the people who like the the guests that we have on. But in those in-between times and the way we kick off the show, I absolutely want Sean to be a co-host. Not full blown. I don't want, you know, obviously he's not gonna talk as much as I am. It's my name on the podcast, all right? But I would, I would, I would hate it if he was an absolutely silent partner because I don't want to just sit there and monologue. It's it's more interesting, I think, for people to listen to two people talking than one, unless that person is a gifted orator, which I might have a deep voice, but I promise you, if it was just me talking, it would get old quickly.
SPEAKER_04I and I love Sean too. He always he brings different elements to the show.
SPEAKER_02And that's important. Like, I mean, my voice gets heard a lot, and my opinions get heard a lot. So we try to have varied guests, but yeah, you're exactly right. Sean is not the same person as me. We see eye to eye on a lot of things, but he looks at life from a very different angle than I do. We all learn, right? We all are better with perspective on things that we don't maybe have a full grasp on, or suddenly are looking at things in a way we hadn't considered them or looked at them before. I love having a different voice on there. And he's it also helps that he's a really, really good individual. Yeah, a great guy, and uh an impossibly loyal friend. And um, yeah, he's great. I love working with him. I never dread having to see him. That's a good thing. Well, you know, like when you go to work, sometimes you're like, I know, I know so-and-so's gonna be there. Yes, and I don't ever feel that way about Sean.
SPEAKER_04I I feel you don't realize how hard it is to find loyal friends or people who have integrity or who can show up every time.
SPEAKER_02I tested a lot of friendships of mine, most of my relationships actually, in the last couple of years, and um I gotta say, I must have done a good job picking before because almost everybody stuck with me.
SPEAKER_04So during this time that you're doing your podcasts, you ran into some health issues.
SPEAKER_02I did.
SPEAKER_04Can you share what your diagnosis was and what also triggered it to be like, hmm, something's weird today? And you're like, I should go get that checked out.
SPEAKER_02Well, I knew something had been wrong for a long time, but it didn't, it hadn't started to present itself in such a way that it was interfering with my life chronically or drastically. Uh I was a heavy drinker and I was always really good at it. Too good at it, because I could drink a lot and never got a hangover. Uh well, I found the thing that I could drink, and it was Irish whiskey. I always drank it neat, so I never had to worry if there was no ice, I don't care. If there's nothing to mix it with, I don't care. I drink it neat. And uh kind of like drinking black coffee, you know, it is there'll always be black coffee. Um anyway, uh, so I but I got good at it. I like the taste of it, and it became part of my I am in a quiet room with just you and me and a couple of microphones. I feel like I can say anything. I've never been comfortable around people. I'm a shy dude. I'm a little anxious.
SPEAKER_04That's so interesting to me.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I think a lot, but I think you'll find a lot of people who do what I've done for a living are in that boat. Okay, but you get into a small room and you don't know are there are there five people listening? Are there a hundred thousand people listening? There's no way to know. So you can just kind of do it and wing it. And um, liquor always sort of helped me, you know, because there's a lot of social things, you know, oak on the water and all these things I did over the years. And again, I wouldn't get hammered, but I, you know, two or three drinks into you kind of loosens up your shoulders and a little easier to make all that small talk. And and you know, and that I'm not blaming that. That was just one of the places where I found myself drinking. So I drank too much, I drank way too much, and my body was starting to break down, I was getting jaundiced, it was becoming evident to everyone, and I knew it was a problem. But of course, I'm a dude who doesn't go to the doctor, so and I don't admit it's a problem until I literally have no choice. I started to swell up because my body was filling with this uh liquid called ascites that if you have cancer or liver disease, you can really get bloated, you they poke you with a needle and drain you. So it started to get really bad, and I was getting dizzy. I wasn't myself, I couldn't put thoughts together. I w had this incredibly tight giant bloat on my belly and my abdomen, and I was just living with it. And um one day I was coming down the stairs and hit the floor hard, and I I tripped on the stairs, and I could barely get myself back up off the ground, and I went out and got in my car. Probably should have had someone drive me. I went out and got in my car and drove myself to the emergency room, and that that was last November, uh, so coming up on a year ago, and I then spent the next m six months not doing any work.
SPEAKER_04How did that feel?
SPEAKER_02Uh not working.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I gotta be honest, I I was so out of my mind. Like I somehow things had decayed so far that I wasn't putting two and two together. I wasn't thinking cohesively or cogently. I hadn't quite pickled my brain. It wasn't ruined, but I had something called H E, which fogs all your basic cognitive functions, twists some of them around, replaces some with other ones. I so I didn't, I you know, I didn't really know how to feel about anything. I knew I was very sick, I was in and out of the hospital a few times, I was going to medical procedures and screenings uh two to three times a week. I was in such bad physical shape that um I lost over 70 pounds after being bloated. Then it started to go the other direction because cirrhosis is a muscle wasting disease. So cirrhosis of the liver, the long, you know, the shorter version of the story is that I quit drinking. I went on an incredibly strict diet, and I laid low and I was trying to get all the sleep I could. And I came back, and not everybody gets to come back, depending on how much damage you've done to yourself or your body's how much will it have to do it. Uh, and I just always sort of kept this naive, it's gonna be okay. If I do the right thing, it's gonna be okay. But I had teams of doctors, incredibly loyal friends and family who stood there with me during my literally the darkest moments of my life, uh, and they didn't turn their back on me. Every one of them I owe poof this current attitude to. My life has changed. It's done a 180. I'm not making any money. I am broke right now, but I don't know that I've ever had anything closer to what you would call, and this is very uncharacteristic, a sunny disposition. I feel so good about life right now, but I had to go through a really dark spot. So I got diagnosed with cirrhosis, and that just it changed my life entirely. I quit all working, didn't even do the podcast for a while. Sean was great, stepped in, took care of it, got guest hosts, um, uh, and then just slowly but surely uh crawled my way back out. And while I was doing that, one of the many procedures that was being done to me, because I had really mucked up my insides pretty bad with the liquor, had a colonoscopy and they found cancer. But it was stage one, they got it out, and so far with all the marker tests and blood labs I've done, everything seems cool. So, yeah, no, the back-to-back cirrhosis and cancer diagnosis um has sort of snapped me awake, you know. Like, I mean, because I've drank all my whole life.
SPEAKER_04But you'd been sober for a while before the cirrhosis.
SPEAKER_02I quit in 2020 and I went to treatment actually. Got it, came out, and that lasted, you know, I don't remember exactly, six to eight months, and then I was drinking again. But then I went I entered the darkest phase of my drinking, which is why it got so bad, and that I wasn't advertising that I wasn't drinking, or I wasn't advertising that I was back to drinking, but I was totally back to drinking. So then you throw hiding it on top of bad alcoholism, and you're that's never going to end well for anybody ever. So, you know, and I'm not a big AA advocate. I'm not really a big fan of theirs, but I like some of their attitudes. The bottom line is you're not going to quit drinking or quit doing any substance or anything harmful to yourself until you're actually ready. Because I'm not going to meetings, I'm not doing anything like that. But I just passed 11 months of sobriety, and I haven't gotten a twinge once in that entire time to drink because I've been informed directly from specialists that if I go back to drinking, there's a 0% chance I'll be alive in three years' time, and probably much less than that. And it's a really hideous, painful way to die. That's a powerful motivator, right? And plus, the other thing too, though, is by doing the things, following the plan, listening to the doctors, going to every single appointment, for once in my life, exhibiting the discipline to stay to a strict diet, to drink the right amount of water, to do all these things that I've just never, ever, ever bothered to. I've got a better headspace right now than I've had in so long, Yua. I feel really good about being alive right now. You know, and I always did. I liked my life. I things were enjoyable, but there is a shine on things now that it took me being pretty screwed up to be able to find.
SPEAKER_04So, what should we listen to when we're w with our bodies then? And why are you open about this kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_02Well, I just I went through it all, and you know, I'm not on a crusade. I'm not trying to tell anybody how to live their life because until you come to the realization, you will not know.
SPEAKER_04And it has to come from you.
SPEAKER_02It does.
SPEAKER_04All these people telling you is not gonna matter until you say I'm gonna make this.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, I still smoke cigarettes. And every I'm smart enough to know that that will kill me. And every person I see, especially in this day and age, says, You gotta quit. And I know the day will come that I quit. But until I am happy with it, I'll go back to being the guy who's hiding smokes or sneaking them or smoking other people's cigarettes, and that's not quitting smoking. And that's the thing I found about drinking. So when it comes to listening to your body, I don't have anything deep or insightful. All I know is that, and again, shocker, it's only been in every nutrition book I've ever read my entire life, even though the guidelines change. If you're eating right, even getting modest exercise, drinking enough water, the great thing is make that the how you normally live your life. You can still go out and down an entire deep dish pizza if you want, just don't do it every day. You can go out and have a half dozen cocktails and see your favorite band in the world, just don't do it every day, you know? And it's super simple, but mine has been moderation, making sure that I eat four full servings of vegetables every day. And if you think you're acting like an idiot about something, you are. And you're you're well past the point of acting like so. Just don't. I just listen, and you know, for all those things, I put off getting a colonoscopy for way too long.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02You know, now they've moved it down to 45. Some people are saying 40.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, that's me then.
SPEAKER_02Well, I hate to break it to you. Um, all I can say is that nobody likes the idea of a colonoscopy, right? But they knock you out, yeah. You don't experience any of it. Get your colonoscopies, go to your regular physicals, have them draw blood at least once a year just to check your basic numbers. Yeah. Because the earlier you find any of this stuff, the better your prognosis will be.
SPEAKER_04A funny thing is the person who made the panels here is Luke Anderson. He's a drummer in the band Rogue Valley. And his partner is Linnea Moan, and she is the person that you watch in the videos of the colonoscopy. Like, this is what you do. Really? So a mutual friend of ours, Lissy, who is a musician, uh-huh, posted about it because like Luke drums in her band too, and she's like, Here's Linnea. So I was like, Oh.
SPEAKER_02Wow. We're talking Linnea Mona used to be folks said not to, yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_04So that's funny too to see like all these people in different like aspects of your life. You're like, hey, you showed up in a different way.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. In my colonoscopy video. Colonoscopy instructional video.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so what is it about this area, this space that draws you to the Twin Cities? Because I know you've voiced many times that you want to move to the West Coast.
SPEAKER_02So that's a great point. Oregon is where I was actually born. I was born in Portland, but my parents moved here when I was two.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Um, and so kicked you out of the element, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I really only ever known well, but then they brought me back every year because my dad's family's out there, mom's family's here. So our summer vacation every year was two weeks in Oregon, and it just got in my blood. I love it out there so much.
SPEAKER_04Is it the weather?
SPEAKER_02Is it it is, and you're like right now, my parents are out there on the coast and it's dark and it's gray and it's wet, and like the weather we're having right now in the Twin Cities, this we're past the fun part of fall, and now into the grit your teeth and bear it till winter part of fall. It's my favorite time of year.
SPEAKER_04I love this so I call dry January just the time where I'm trying to fight the dry skin.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04That's my dry January.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, and I just I don't Oregon also has everything you could ever want if you like to be outdoors, and I do. It's got mountains, it's got ocean, it's got sand dunes, proper desert, it's got the deepest, most primordial forest you've ever been in. It's got some cool cities. It's just it's it's got I love it out there, but you asked me about here, and the only reason I've never moved to Oregon is I am a homebody. I uh crave the familiar. I am not a high adventurer. And I've I grew up here and being an outdoors guy. I grew up camping, going to the boundary waters, being outdoors all the time, canoeing, and this is the dream location for that sort of thing. Also, all my dearest friends and family are here, and you know, this the whole notion of well, why do you love it here? Why do you stay here? has come up a few times over the years because I did look at jobs and other markets and radio, and that's really more the norm than the exception. You go where the gig is, and I'm glad push never came to shove because I think I love Minnesota more than I even loved radio. And I mean, if I needed to eat, I would go take the gig. But if I can stay living in Minnesota, I don't know if I'm ever gonna leave. I I like to visit Chicago, LA. I'm okay with New York, but I could never live in any of those places. I I like the size of this pond that we're in right here. I also, Minnesota probably has the most dynamic demarcation between seasons around the year. And I like all four seasons. And I think there's there's something healthy and good for your mentality to go through all those, the abulliance of summer, you know, the the thoughtful reconsideration of fall, the the dark, desolate nature of winter. There's not a time of the year that I'm afraid of or don't like except the ultra hot summer. I know dinosaur weather, like when the dew points up that high. I just I can't breathe and I get sweaty, I hate it. You know, I live in the city, I live in South Minneapolis, and the the roads are canopied with trees, like something out of an elven village or something. You know, we live in one of the most beautiful urban areas in the entire country. So that's fantastic, and I love being in the heart of that. Um, contrary to popular belief, it's more of an idyllic Eden than it is a burning hell that many people would have you believe.
SPEAKER_04Um I mean, that's just Minneapolis, not St. Paul though.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. St. Paul's free of those kinds of problems. Um but then the the culture, the richness of the culture here is often lost on people from the coasts. I still think there is an impression that Minnesota is flyover country. When in fact, whether you're into dance, whether you're into reading, whether you're into certainly into music, whatever you might be into from a cultural perspective, great art houses and art galleries, um instruction in the arts, i if that part of our culture matters to you, you'll find places with much greater diversity, your New York's and your LA's. But as far as cohesion and I think accessibility to those worlds, I don't know that there's I don't know if there's a parallel for for the Twin Cities. I love it here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna give you a little bit of a chance to brag. Oh my um, who has been your favorite interview in terms of famous people?
SPEAKER_02The vast majority, like 98.9% of them, have been incredible. You know, most people who are successful in any sphere in life are good communicators. And even if they're not in the mood to sit down and talk with you, if their job demands it for 10 minutes and it's gonna get their song played on the radio, they're gonna give you a great ten minutes. Now, not everybody, there are jerks, but most of them have been amazing, and it's always been my favorite part of my job. I like the talking part, but sitting down and finding out what makes bands tick and what went into this album or why they decided to do this thing over here, that's always been and really with the shape my podcast has taken on. Let's see. Some of the great ones. Um Brandy Carlisle in Studio C. Now, the ones I'm gonna pick pick for you here are the Studio C ones, um, where we have would have anywhere between 30 to 80 people in this small performance space at Cities 97.
SPEAKER_04Oh man, I'm trying to think there were so she was open and vulnerable, or why why was she a great interviewer?
SPEAKER_02Who's that?
SPEAKER_04Brandy.
SPEAKER_02She was. She was very sweet, very kind, she was very involved, like a good interview. They're looking at you and paying attention, they're trying to actually answer your question, right? And she was engaged, but also. So there are a handful of performers out there who are more than just a singer with a guitar, right? Brandi Carlisle is a sorceress. Her gifts as not only a songwriter, but then as a storyteller and someone who can weave that together so beautifully with simple and powerful music or complex and powerful music. There are just few people whose weave is as deep and as strong and as powerful. And I just remember sitting there, you know, because I'm interviewing her, so I'm sitting 10 feet away right in front of the crowd. And um I just I remember not having anything to say after she finished one of her songs. And it was so good. There was a two, three, four-second beat from the audience, like nobody could really believe that we just watched that and boom, and then the you know the applause erupted and everything. But she cast a spell. She's not like a regular performer. And there have been all kinds of great ones. Over the years, a lot of Mike Peers in radio, they want to be buds. So they're stopping in the green room and doing their Snapchat and whatever. And that's never been my thing. You know, we both have a job to do there. I want to be cordial, I want to get along, and if we're pals, we're pals, great. But I kind of hit it off with Matt Nathanson years ago, and he and I became pretty good friends, actually. So that was a charmer. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, he's just he's so funny and he's so smart, and for whatever reason, well, you know how it is. No matter what you do for a living, occasionally you meet those people where what they say is interesting, what you're saying is interesting to them, you make each other laugh, and it just sort of happens without effort, right? No artifice, it's just oh, we get along. And that's it doesn't happen often enough in this world, but when it does, it's wonderful. Um, so yeah, no, he's a total charmer. Uh Cheryl Crow is great. You know, it's weird because I am a professional and I've always been professional, and I don't harbor any weird illusions, but every once in a while, no matter what you do, every once in a while you crush out on someone. And in the 90s, the first time I interviewed her, I crushed out pretty hard on Sarah McLaughlin.
SPEAKER_04Uh and she's coming back to tone.
SPEAKER_02I know. And I was I was smitten. I just I I already liked your music.
SPEAKER_04Was this the days 97?
SPEAKER_02No, this would have been earlier. This would have been back when I was still working with Steve Nelson at Zone 105. Okay. We were over, she was at Northrop, and we went over there, and in one of the offices or schoolrooms, or classrooms adjacent to it, is where we did the interview. And she was just lovely and charming. And I went to the show and I love her music so much. Then didn't see her again for 20 years. And when they did the Lilith Fair reunion, she came through uh cities. She was just the coolest.
SPEAKER_04Did she remember you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_04That's okay. I just didn't sometimes they do, and sometimes.
SPEAKER_02And trust me, this was all in my head. I don't think that she I don't think that she was smitten either. Um, but no, she but she again she was still wonderful, and two decades of success and the history of Lilith Fair, her getting an OBE from the Queen, you know, but she was still down to earth. She walked into the green room, one of my favorite stories of any any time in radio. So I'm enamored of her, and we're not doing a crowd in Studio C because she's got somewhere to be, so she's just coming in, she's gonna do the uh the performance. We'll record it and play it back later. Uh she walks into the green room. I point her in. She does not look sideways, she takes her purse off and throws it on the table next to her and makes an actual beeline to the Galaga and Miss Pac-Man machine that's in the back of the green room, and she starts playing Miss Pac-Man and she's playing and playing, and I'm like, all right, well, I'll be back in a bit. We go and get everything set up in Studio C. Um, I come back and I'm like, all right, Sarah, I think we're good. She's like, all right, just about done here. I walk away. I don't want to crowd her. She's obviously having a moment playing Miss Pac-Man. And um uh then I finally came and I went and talked to our sound guy, and he's like, we kind of gotta get going here. So I went back in, and you know, by now it's been, she's been playing for more than 20 minutes. And um uh I didn't know if she'd started new games or what she's like, no, no, gotta I I can't I'll be right there. And I've been on that that end of it, right? Where you're like, I'm not finishing, I'm I'm doing really good right now. She is apparently a Miss Pac-Man super pro. Um she got the high score that stood there for five years until some other band came along and broke it years later. So she was very charming, and I love that one a lot. You know, I've interviewed the guys in REM. Uh Ryan Adams, I was terrified to interview because he had a reputation for being this wild card, and at the time he was drinking and you know, attacking fans that were saying rude things in the audience, and it just I'm like, why did he even agree to do this? I thought that but he uh unbeknownst to me had recently gotten sober. He turned out to be one of the most delightful people I've ever had the chance to get.
SPEAKER_04He was on your Brian Oak show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh no, not on the podcast, but on Cities 97.
SPEAKER_04Got it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You know, the radio, obviously, because of label involvement, um you have a lot more access to much, much bigger names. I get names that I absolutely adore for the podcast right now. Just had Greg Norton of Hoosker Do fame in to talk about the big new five or sorry, four disc box set that's coming out of the numerous group based on one show in First Avenue's main room uh back in uh 1985.
SPEAKER_04Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I reviewed the Grant Hart show that he did at the Hook and Ladder. It was his last show, and uh that was a very emotional show, but they weren't gonna announce that he had cancer at that time. I didn't know much about Hoosker Doo. You know, it was one of my favorite pieces I wrote because it was more about the people there than it was about the history of it, too. I'm like, I'm capturing a time and space more than I am like, okay, here's a history of this band that you probably already know about.
SPEAKER_02Grant was uh a very, very lovable dude. You know, he's a complex character to say the very least, but um but he was so talented, and you know, who's gonna do literally changed my life. Growing up, uh, I went into a record store, Northern Lights, when I was 16 years old, coming down from Coon Rapids, coming down once a month or so. Me and my cool alternative buddies would come down and go to Schinders and buy comic books, and we go to Northern Lights to buy records. And I walked in, I looked like something out of a John Hughes movie, like an extra character, an NPC in the background somewhere, trench coat, silly new wave haircut, clearly suburban punk rock or new wave kid. And I walk into the coolest record store in the state, and I asked the guy behind the counter, I'm like, What's good? And this would have been a classic opportunity to be classic record store guy and just make me buy something totally ridiculous and stupid. But this guy walked me over to, he's like, We just got this in, and this is the best record in this store right now, and it was Who's Curdo's Zen Arcade, which has more than stood the test of time now more than 40 years ago, and it was uh it changed everything for me. I didn't have any context. It cracked everything open that I thought I knew about music. I'd never heard anything like it and fell in love with it. And I already liked loud guitars like Cream and Hendrix, but this was a whole new world because it was all the angst of hardcore, yeah, but there was all the emo of emo. It was there was all and there's these great melodies in there. And Grant, you know, getting back to your point there, uh Grant had the more pop sensibility, but delightfully so. He was just he was he was a very nuanced individual, except when he wasn't, you know. He was great.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so you talk a little bit about your celebrity. I I thought it was interesting because I was talking to somebody today, and you had come to speak at uh event that I hosted years ago at my day job. Um it was a web agency, and we had these happy hours, but it was O UR Like we owned it happy hour.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_04And uh I asked you to come and you came, and your friend Jason Nagel, they had a fundraiser that same night at the turf, so you had to like run off. And my colleague asked me, he's like, How did you get Brian Oak to come? I'm like, I don't know. Like I just asked him and he came, but like there's this concept of you and then the real you, and how close are they? And has that gotten smaller over the years at margin?
SPEAKER_02Because I'm I only ever get this front row seat that I have for me, so I don't really know what the rest of the world thinks. Um I've always been a little self-conscious in general, a little self-deprecating, you know, both in a jokey way, but also in a genuine way. And so I was I'm always I used to be genuinely embarrassed, couldn't take a compliment, didn't like the attention any of it.
SPEAKER_04You are a true Minnesotan, even though you're from Portland.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm a Minnesotan. I everything I know is Minnesotan, and um I don't like that. That's why radio is perfect, because then you have this benefit of having some influence and having a voice, but really my job is to sit in a small five by five gray room and talk into this one microphone, and that's my job. And you know, so the going out and the socializing part of it, I've met people who could give a rip that I'm Brian Oak, and I meet people that are too nervous to come up and say hi to me. Um, that is not common. Neither of those are common. Most people just like, oh, that's the guy on the radio, cool. And if you know, if they like listening to it or they like hearing me show up on KFAN to talk about music or whatever, that's the one I get these days.
SPEAKER_04I used to hear you two on uh the Dave Brian in the morning show. Oh, yeah. It was funny.
SPEAKER_02Because we're in the same hallway. There were five radio stations right there.
SPEAKER_04Well, it was funny because like I'd read comments, they'd post on their social media, you know, Brian Oak's on the show today, and all these women would be like the sexiest voice.
SPEAKER_02And see now, so that that's I wish that my life had more of that in it, but no, that that was never a day-to-day thing. But I I remember that every time I'd go on KDWB, and then they would take calls sometimes. And you know, I've got a woman a third my age calling me Zaddy, and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm and again, I know it's all in fun and everything, but that was just that's so not who my radio persona or personal, you know, it's like that's exactly exactly. No, they they like that kind of stuff, they stir the pot. You know, I've and so it it's garnered me a lot of respect. Um, it got me out of a speeding ticket once being Brian Oak. Here's the thing about it I don't mind a bit of notoriety or celebrity. And again, we're using these terms really relatively. It's not like it's difficult for me to walk down the street or anything like that.
SPEAKER_04You're not Brad Pitt.
SPEAKER_02No, I am not. Um not even close, but I don't mind the notoriety. But I've never been the person who is do you know who I am? And I never enter a situation expecting someone to know who I am. And for a while there, when it started to really peak, and I'd been on the radio for 10 years, and my voice or my name got uh was around a bit, people at least had heard of me, you know, I'd go to a party even with dear friends, and they wouldn't just introduce me as Brian, they'd be like, Hey, this is Brian Oak, you know, from cities. And and and and again, I I saw what they were trying to do, and it was, but I really am like, I've always wanted to win or lose a situation based on my own merits, you know. So if I show up at an event like that or I'm introducing a band, that's Brian Oak, right? And but that's not what my life is like 99.9% of the time. And, you know, I even in a scenario like this, I'm just happy to be here. I've never thought I'm a bigger deal or less of a deal than anybody else. And I'd again, that's never a good look on anybody, right? Um, I can't quantify where that gap was and where it is now because I don't really know what people think about me. I think probably like most people, other people's opinion of you is a pretty scattered bag, right? I mean, there's a it there's a lot of variance in there. Yeah, and I never really drank my own Kool-Aid. I was just happy to be doing what I was doing for a living.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so last question for you.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_04What do you want people to see when they see you?
SPEAKER_02Hmm. It's a big one. I guess I'd like people to see someone who does his best, doesn't always succeed, but does his best to be honest to the things he believes in, you know. Like, I don't wear music like a badge. I don't have a huge collection of vinyl to be like, look at my cool vinyl. I genuinely care. I'm a true believer. I do love it. And there's something about the ceremony of vinyl. We don't get to pick what we love, right? It's in your head, and so all that's genuine. So I guess I'd like people to see someone who is not trying to give in to artifice or manipulation. I really, I think I really am who I am. And I'd like them to see someone who is probably no more, no less flawed than anybody else out there. But we also come to our flaws in different ways and deal with them in different ways. And as long as I'm moving in the right direction, towards being a better me, treating people around me better, treating the world better, that's who I would want people to see. At least that's what I'm trying to express. Handsome, aging, 57-year-old Irish-American white male.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02Cisgendered. I don't know what people see, you know. And I think that's that's one of our frustrations in life, right? I mean, you don't you'll never know, even though you and I are sitting here and talking and we get along well and we enjoy each other's company, you're never really gonna know 100% what I think about you, and I'll never know a hundred percent what you think about me. So I I try not to get into that trap because every again, you can tell when people are desperate for people to like them. And that's that just sounds exhausting, you know. So if people like me, wonderful. Let's get together, we'll hang out, we'll talk. And if not, then let's just move on because there's lots of other things to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's been a delight. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, you know. Anytime.
SPEAKER_04Between two urns is hosted by me, Q of A. Technical support and editing is provided by Chris Coza. Our theme song, Swaying Trees, is written by Chris Coza. Between Two Earns is made possible by a grant from the Harlan Boss Foundation. For more information about Ramsey County Historical Society, please visit www.rchus.com. Thanks for listening.