Bull's Radio Day

I got an email from the producer, Andrea, for the KCUR show "Central Standard" on Tuesday, asking if I would like to be on a show about KC bloggers. I decided to do it after a couple of emails and finding out that Celeste from Average Jane was going to be there too. I didn't want to do the show without knowing someone. I talked to Andrea on the phone Wednesday afternoon which kind of set up the interview. The discussion of Chocolate Ale was because of our conversation on Wednesday.

I got to the station about 30 minutes before and met Jabulani Lefall, the show's host. He was quite intrigued by my Cleveland Indians jersey and kept asking questions to get me to say why I was wearing an Indians jersey. I'm an Indians fan because I gave up on the Royals and at the time the Indians had Wichita State alums Casey Blake and Eric Wedge. Upon learning that I went to Wichita State, Lefall mentioned that he hit a home run off Darren Dreifort, a Wichita State superstar pitcher. Not many college baseball players can say they hit a home run off Dreifort and I'm pretty sure Lefall was lying. Celeste, May, Brent, Lefall and I sat around for a while longer discussing beer and other topics. Then Tony rolled in looking a little like he had just woken up under a bridge. Like Joe Tone wrote in the Pitch, Tony is kind of soft spoken, rather engaging and a pretty nice guy. After meeting Tony and kind of liking him, I can only conclude one thing about his blog, impotence.

We went through a run-through of the format, where we were to sit in the studio, how to work the cough button and adjust our volume. After that, the show started and the 4 of us slated to be on at 10:30 were sent back to the conference room where we listened to the first half of the show with Tony and worked on the Twitters.

Then it was show time, we were hurried into the studio to sit down, get settled and get the mic in the right place. About this time, my brain turned off and I started answering questions. I didn't really mean to throw Weston Brewing under the bus and had no intention of drinking Sam Adams Noble Pils in the late afternoon, I hate crowds, not people and I got a little too focused on Lagunitas. I was much happier with my answer the second time around saying that we want the KC Beer Blog to be an introduction to some great craft beers in a light and fun way which is kind of the mission statement of the blog. My 2 word answer to the last part meant virtually nothing because the first thing that popped into my head was "boner party" and I'm kicking myself for not saying "lemon party".

Overall, it was a good time. I could have done better, stammered less, plugged a little more. But, I was pretty happy with how it actually sounded and you could barely tell that my brain had switched off before I started talking. My biggest problem was with the format of the thing, I felt hurried the entire time I was talking and I was a bit uncomfortable with the question-answer format rather than a more conversational approach. Mostly, that uncomfortability is my fault, but I'm going to place it firmly on Lefall's shoulders. I thought the others did a fine job as well but I was only half paying attention because of the format of the show, I knew I wasn't supposed to talk while they were. If we would have been the full hour, I think it may have felt less stiff.

I felt pretty awful about my performance until I actually listened to it later in the afternoon. My voice sounded fine, my content was a little light, but I got a couple of points across. Definitely room for improvement, but this was my first radio appearance and it wasn't a complete disaster. I'll chalk it up to a win. If you missed it you can hear the whole thing here.

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