I want to tell the story about the first time I met you, Frank.

We're all around this table, Keitzman, Liebo, Nick, myself, and you just pick us off.

You go blank you, blank, you, and blank you.. You and you get to me, and you go.

I don't even blankin know you.

And I thought, this is great.

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Welcome once again to another episode of There's Just Something About Kansas City, where we talk about the people, places and things that make this such a great place to live.

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You get your podcasts, Spotify Center and we are on YouTube so you can see our beautiful faces right, Brian Truta?

No.. What is this?

I'm on the radio.

Well, I these cameras everywhere.

I hate this.

You usually you use your doing all the questioning.

Okay.

You're.

Not today you're not.

And you know what I gotta say?

I don't like this because I'm looking over here and he's got a whole mail pad full of stuff, and I'm go.

Wait, is this all about me?

Hold it.

Is it none?

No.

We.

How many pages we got there?

Two and a half pages.

My life is not that interesting.

I don't know what the heck you're finding.

Guess what?

You're going to find out.

Bring it on.

Of course.

on the bridge, basically.

Yeah.

90 point, 90.9.

The bridge.

yeah.

Yeah.

So, and you have worked virtually for every media conglomerate and radio station in Kansas City.

For all practical purposes, there's there's one that I haven't I have not worked for Entercom, now known as Odyssey.

Yes, that's the one.

And I've flirted with them a couple of times.

they actually tried to steal this away back in the eight, ten days.

Right.

To go work on key.

And I think every one of us tried to they tried to poach us, and they just never made it over there.

Yeah, right.

That was when we'll talk about the poaching.

Of course, with Jason Whitlock and Bill Voss and Tim Reinhardt.

But two boys abandoned me, left me dead all by myself and went over to to then it was, Entercom at that point.

But that's a that's a story that will be coming up.

But, yes.

You know, welcome number one.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You know, when I talk about you've worked for virtually every media outlet for radio in Kansas City.

It's true.

But the amazing part about you is that you were born, raised, you went to Kent, you went to be A's, then you went to Ku.

You have never left Kansas City for all practical purposes, for your job and in this business.

Yeah, that's that is very, very rare.

I mean, I worked in Grand Coulee, Washington, Chelan, Washington, Eureka, California, green Bay, Wisconsin.

Before I got here.

I had no intention of staying here.

I was gonna do another move, but here I am.

But how did.

I mean, there was never.

There was never a time when you left town.

Were you ever tried?

Did anybody ever try to lure you out of town?

Absolutely, absolutely.

I, I don't think I meant to stay here my entire life.

It just kind of worked out that way.

when I was 21, 22, I was I was at 810, I was working on Jason Show, and we would go do the Super Bowl broadcast.

Right.

And we do the radio row thing, and, there would be other stations.

Hey, we're in Portland and, hey, we're in Connecticut.

And, you know, you'd get little feelers out there, and I just never felt like I had to do it.

The closest I got, was about 2018.

We had just come back from spring break.

The family.

We went out to California, and, my daughter loves California.

She's a West Coast girl.

And my wife said, you know, would you ever move for your job?

And I kid you not, when I got back, I had a phone call from a guy in Seattle.

They wanted me to come up to Seattle and run their big station up there.

And, my wife said, you got to talk to them.

I'm not.

I'm not high on Seattle.

It rains all the time.

I'm warm weather.

That's not a west coast.

That's like London.

And, so I did the dance with them, and I got down to the finals, and then finally I'm going.

You know, I don't think it's for me.

And the crazy part was a week after I did that, the bridge called.

And you talk about being in the right place at the right time and the bridge called.

And this is how clueless I am.

Frank, because, Karla from Kansas City, PBS calls and she says she's Irish is.

I want to talk to you about the bridge.

And, I come home and I'm like, this is, this woman Carly called wants to talk about the bridge.

I love that station.

What do you think she wants to talk about?

Like, music and my wife.

Because you dummy, she wants to talk about a job.

And, like, I'm so clueless.

It doesn't matter what you want.

Starts a job.

Okay?

It's, We did that dance, and I took the gig in summer of 2018.

So you get out of school okay.

In 97 I think you got out of key.

Yeah.

Well so sorry 99.

Well.

So.

Well what actually ended up happening was, like I said, I was concurrently going to school and doing the job in the spring of 99, Chad Boger comes to me and he goes, we're going to hire Jason Whitlock from the star to do the morning show.

Do you want to be on it?

And I said, I was like, of course I do.

You know, this is amazing.

And then I said something and something happened that would never in a million years happen in any sort of major market radio station.

I said, but but this is April.

My finals are over May 12th.

Can we, like, wait till then to do the morning show?

And he's like, yeah, sure.

Yeah, whatever.

You and I'm going to the boss.

What can you hold on for a few months?

I'm not ready yet.

So what we would do is we that was it was great though because we had to teach Jason how to do radio.

And so Chad, we would come in Saturday mornings at 6 a.m., we practice the whole thing, and we would do a fake morning show on the air from 6 to 9 on Saturday mornings for those couple weeks before I started, and I swear I was in the control room and I had a I had a button I could talk into their ear.

I was sitting there one day and I heard this tremendous wind noise on the on the air.

I'm like, in my headphones.

I'm like, what is that noise?

It was like a it was like a gale.

And I realized that Jason was asleep.

And so I hit the button in his ear and I go, Jason, wake up and run, run, run.

I mean, Frank, it was we were rough.

We were rough at the beginning.

But that was the start of it.

And then.

Yeah, you did.

You, produced actually ran the board for a him mayhem.

Yeah.

That's what had.

That was Chad, right.

It was Chad and Jason.

Jason.

Yes.

Exactly what you're.

And then.

Yeah, then eventually just morphed.

Chad of course got had to do more and more.

Yeah.

No president work because he owned the station, you know, he and, green and, oh, that whole crew.

But so, yeah, he came to us.

well, first off, I said, look, I'm never I'm not going back to school.

This is too much fun, right?

I've got a job now.

Yeah, I'm doing what I want to do.

So I cut out school after that.

And, in poly sizes.

Oh, it was gone.

I'm like, no, this this may be the political deal still in the back of your head.

Like, well, I'm learning this, so maybe someday.

Yeah, but this was too much fun, right?

This was too much fun.

And, So, yeah, Chad decides eventually, like, I get to step back.

We did this.

We did this big talent search.

We had a bunch of people come in to try to be the co-host, and then we realized that, look, the the perfect guy is right under our nose.

Steven Saint John, he's right here.

He's doing the night show.

He's so far, he's the funniest guy we know.

Let's bring him up and and the rest was history after that.

Yeah.

And the funny thing about Stephen, Saint John's, you might not know at over at, you know, is the fact that he was a caller.

Yeah.

He basically called in and would call and ask questions and do all this stuff.

And he was right.

He was em you the room.

You rock him, you walk into them, you rock and say he's car.

And this is the way we do things.

The radio is this is just so you're on with it with Jason and and say, John, it this time we're like.

And Saint John it was I mean it had to be absolutely bizarro world.

It was it was Bizarro world because we were we were coming in second to Johnny there.

Right.

So pretty good.

It was amazing.

We we had nabbed up all these listeners and 810, I mean, it was just, Stephen used to tell me something funny.

Stephen used to say, because 810 we would advertise anything and 100 and hundreds of people would show up.

Right?

You know how this goes, right?

For Stephen used to say, we could advertise a flaming bag of poo on the corner of 12th and main, and 100 people would show up to see it.

I mean, it was just whatever we said people did.

I was on the air one morning.

Frank and I said, man, I sure could use some White Castle right now.

Three guys showed up with bags of White Castle to the front door of the station.

Like we had this power.

That was I've never seen anything like it since.

Right now, you you really.

You really can't eat White Castle in here because you're not going to be at the board very long, okay?

You're you're gonna be.

You're talking about wind.

Yeah, yeah.

30 minute little wind in this studio.

There's no doubt before we get in some stories about Jason, the station itself, the building itself was we have a transmitter there, and we had a building there.

I mean, one day I think it was Jason.

I remember the the picture of him still to this day, sprawled out on the couch as soon as you walk, they just sound asleep.

Yeah.

I mean, just snoring.

Yeah.

And just even some people just walk in and go.

Just walk by him.

Go with it.

Never.

Don't don't don't ask.

But to serve the building.

There are cockroaches.

Ever remember somebody poked a hole in a wall one time out.

Oh, sure.

Help or something all of a sudden just.

It was like one of those, horror pictures right there.

Cockroaches can have all wall.

Hundreds of.

I'm going out.

They were all over the kitchen.

I'm going.

How are we supposed to work in this building?

Are you kidding me?

It was awful.

we had bees.

Two in the in the summer.

In and through that hole, the bees would come.

And so you're doing a commercial sitting there and you're like, yeah, Oklahoma Joe's barbecue, great barbecue, burnt ends.

And you're like, swatting away all the bees coming in, trying to sting at you.

It was crazy.

That place was nuts.

It was absolutely.

Oh, it was a frat house.

It was right house.

It really was.

And then eventually moved over to, over there to corporate lakes.

Yeah.

for Union Broadcasting, there was like, going from hell to heaven and one step.

I mean, it was just just incredible.

I want to tell the story about the first time I met you, Frank, because the building, the building factors into this, you know, that building was so small, you could hear everything.

Oh, yeah.

And there's this in the back of the building.

There's this little tiny kitchen, break room.

It's where the cockroaches were, by the way.

And yes, it was, I was it was like my first week at the station.

I was like, 19 years old.

I had just started.

I'm back there with my buddy Nick McCabe, who's we're still best friends with this days production director.

So he'd been hired a couple months before Todd Lieb goes back there.

Kevin Kinsman, all of a sudden, the doors to the building blow open.

And it should have been a hurricane Frank warning, because we heard you coming a mile away.

And, as you walk through the building, you're like, verbally picking people off.

Hey, Jessica Blanc, you and Blake, you.

So you get back to the kitchen and.

Right.

And we're all around this table.

Kaesmann.

LeBeau, Nick, myself and you just pick us off you go blank you blank you blank you, and you get to me, and you go.

I don't even blink.

And.

No, you and I thought, this is great.

This is fantasy tastic.

This guy I've seen on my TV every night.

Yeah.

Not cursing at all.

Everybody wondered how that ever hap part of the club.

This is how I went through a TV without ever dropping the F-bomb on television.

To any of us I know compartmentalizing.

You can all come back.

Yeah.

You know, when you got the microphone.

There you go.

That's right.

You know, and even when they pinned it on you for TV, the deal was just pretend it's always on.

Sure.

Oh, you got to remember.

Yeah, So talk about being Jason Wilcox producer.

And, you have to have a billion stories.

There might be 1 or 2 you can tell.

Okay, but that was.

And Jason, of course.

Oh, nationally known, internationally known.

Probably now with you, sir, with his show.

Now, Jason, you know, people ask me what what Jason was like.

Yeah.

And I actually tell him I said he was a big softy.

And, here's here's an example.

when we brought Stephen aboard to do the show, like I said, we were starting to build our stature, right?

The ratings were coming.

The audience was there.

We were starting to get asked to go do different things.

Hey, can you make this event?

Can you show up to this?

And and Stephen and I, I mean, we're young bucks making no money at all, and I, we didn't have really great dress clothes.

And so I kid you not Jason said we get to his car one day and he goes, come on, guys, we're going to the mall.

And he took us to the mall and he bought Stephen a nice suits.

And he's like, if you're going to go out and represent the show, I want you to look the part.

And, you know, never asked for any money back.

Never ask for repayment.

Can I pay you 20 bucks a check now?

No, no, I got it.

And that was just.

He was loyal to you.

If you were loyal to him.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that was the thing about it.

That was Jason.

But I mean, for all the antics, this guy, I mean, was ridiculously crazy.

Anything that entered his mouth.

And that's what people realize he's so good at.

He knows exactly what it is.

It's going to get somebody fired up on the other end of their radio or the other, you know, reading that newspaper.

What is this person going to read that's going to just get them hopping mad?

And he was so perfect at crafting that out of his shows or out of his column.

I mean, he was the master.

Yeah, he was he was really good that he knew exactly what button to push.

Yeah.

And you usually push the one where you you got the Missouri, the majority of, you know, be a coffee, as in, oh, yeah, basketball team stinks, you know, or something crazy like that.

It what?

Where did you just say?

Did you hear what Jason Whitlock said in the radio?

And that's exactly what you need in order to to garner an audience.

If you're there being Mister Goody two shoes all the time, it's just not going to work.

Well, I'll tell you the two buttons he managed to push that that led to a great story were, Carl Peterson, general manager of the Chiefs, and Dawn fortune.

Our competition over KMBC.

Carl was the usual foil.

Yeah, right.

So Carl was.

And it got to the point where we would go to training camp, and Jason had written something, you know, and Carl saw it all the way up in River falls, Wisconsin.

Oh, yeah.

And we would be in the little media huddle to, to get sound.

And I would ask a question and Carl looked down.

He goes, what station you with?

810.

We're done here.

And he would turn around and walk away from everybody.

Everybody?

Yeah.

He was like, I killed it all.

You guys were like, true to.

Come on.

Yeah, I killed everything.

There was a story that came out about Don fortune sold his house and his cats and peed on the carpet, and there was this whole thing, right.

So naturally, Jason picks up on this.

I think it was, in Christopher's column or something.

Yeah.

And and so Jason picks up on this and we're doing a whole series of Cat man parodies on the air and, you know, cat meows or, you know, on the morning show is drops, you know, everything.

Meow, meow.

And, so we go, we go to that Monday chief's presser.

Right.

Every Monday, they'd have the press conference in the Arrowhead.

And at the time, you remember the old arrowhead, you take that rickety elevator down like 25 floors to the bunker basement.

And that's where they had the press conference.

Slow as heck.

And so we're we're waiting out of the press conference, and it's Carl Peterson, Don fortune, Jason and me.

The elevator opens and now Jason knows he's got a captive audience, and he goes, Brian hit record.

And he goes, Don fortune, what do you say about these cat pee stains on your carpet?

And Don just get Jason.

I'm not going to talk to you.

I don't want to talk to you.

He rips over and pulls the mic cord out of the recorder and Jason goes, Brian, plug it back in.

Okay?

Now Don.

And he keeps going and Karl is in the corner going for once.

It's not me.

Hey.

All right.

It he's just he's enjoying the heck out of this because for once Jason's not on his tail, you know.

And that that elevator ride to the top had to have lasted three hours for Doug Ford.

Oh, that was crazy.

this is funny because I've heard the story and you can explain this to me.

You were the game day public address broadcaster for the, That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

any Mike Tirico did a halftime show?

Yes.

With you?

Yeah.

Okay.

Anybody else in the media okay.

Would like that?

I want that that you on the other hand, you had some issues doing this, which I find sort of outside your personality.

Explain what happened with that deal with you, with.

I mean, look, I worked at Arrowhead for 13 seasons, right?

And, that was a long time.

It was a long time.

I saw, I mean, 100 and some games.

The only one I ever missed was I got food poisoning one time preseason game.

I'm like, dude, I am not going to make it, but on the bathroom floor for 24 hours, I'm good.

So this was when they were just starting to do the Monday Night Football.

You know, we're going to we're going to throw it to the public address.

Announcer.

We're going to put the national anthem on, television.

They never done this before.

Right.

And so, they're like, Mike Tirico is going to throw to you.

And I'm like, he's Mike Tirico, right?

Like this guy.

I mean, this is the guy.

And, yeah, I mean, it was, you know, and then I had to introduce the National anthem people, and it was the Kansas City Symphony or something like that.

and so, you know, shaking in my boots and they, they give the nod in your live to the nation.

I mean, that was your voice there.

And, and then we did that again.

Kevin Harlan, good old buddy.

Kevin.

Love that.

Guys.

Hey, here's true to, you know, so we we had some fun with that, but, but 13 seasons, Covid comes.

Okay.

The last thing that I, the last game I did was the AFC championship win for 2020.

Yeah.

They go off to win the Super Bowl do that very first one Covid hits.

They're like we don't have a halftime show.

We're not going to need you the next year.

Yeah we're still you know still kind of coming back from this two years out.

I'd become so used to being a fan and sitting at home watching it on an 80 inch TV bathroom in case you get food.

Yeah, exactly.

It's right there.

And I said, you know, I love it, but to get up at 5 a.m. for a noon game and to be at Arrowhead and to, you know, have to get busted to do all these cold, cold winter mornings.

And people don't understand.

I dressed like I was going to the game because we were in the press box and it was out and but the window opens when when Len did, he always had the window open anyway.

Always had the window.

Because you want that crowd noise.

You want that noise.

And so people didn't realize when it's ten degrees, I'm ten degrees, right?

Like we're not in the warm press box.

Right.

And I just thought, you know, it's I've seen everything.

I saw two and 14.

I saw a carousel of coaches Romeo Cornell, Herm Edwards all the way to Andy Reid.

And I saw an AFC Championship win.

I can't I can't top that.

I got a Super Bowl ring.

Yeah.

I'm good.

I'm done.

Yeah I'm done.

But did you ever get were you ever, at that time with Tirico?

I'm sure right.

Was maybe the only time you really just.

Here's the time I was most nervous.

I kid you not.

My daughter then went to dance with the junior Chiefs cheerleaders.

And, you know, they always round out their year with the performance on the field.

And, she was going to be right in front tonight this is the bonus of working there.

You tell your director, hey, my daughter, she's on the West 25 yard line game.

Kind of get her on the big board.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, they shoot it.

Everything.

Introducing her team was the most nervous I've ever been at.

And then you go over to the bridge.

you had the apt 622 production apartment six one.

Yeah, yeah.

Living in apartment six.

It was it was my first apartment.

I named the production company after my first apartment when I became an adult, I guess.

Yeah, right.

And so you do you also still do the wedding DJ.

You all still do a lot of that, but you're also at the bridge.

What is that experience been like?

Because that is a public broadcasting station okay.

It's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

So what is that like compared to what you were doing before?

It's you know, it's incredible because we actually really get to pay attention to the listener as opposed to the advertiser 90% of what you do is given by the person.

Yeah, five, ten, $15 a month, you're beholden to your average Joe listener rather than your advertiser platform, Yeah.

And fun for you.

Right?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

The artist interviews like we're doing this.

Yeah.

Right.

Get to bring people in.

Gets, put them on the radio for their music.

Right.

Yeah.

Have them play live.

I mean, you know, those are all things that we started at the planet 20 years ago now, done in kind of a super fashion because, you know, all that content, like, you know, you got to do the video, you got to do the, the performance.

You have to put that out on YouTube, all that stuff.

It's just so big.

I would try to, nail you down and say, best job, but, you know, you're you might be in it right now.

You might be in your best job.

I'm probably.

I'm even though you don't have guys lying on the floor in the middle there, Brian.

There's like, another guy sprawled out on the thing or another guy on the headset who's sound asleep.

Okay, I think you have a whole lot of those, but, you don't have to cross stitch or Irish dance.

That's true.

So, you know, you're you're you're in pretty good shape.

You spent your entire career here?

Yes.

Was born here, raised here, school here.

Never left.

Had opportunity to leave.

What is it about Kansas City that just, you know, it's it's the people.

It's the place.

It's it's everything about it.

You know, Kansas City for a long time, my dad, my dad worked in that building opposite channel four.

That the the BMA white Tower.

Yes.

When I was growing up, he was he was a draftsman for Butler Manufacturing.

And he would take me up there in the 19th floor conference room.

You could see miles driving up there.

Miles around.

It is gorgeous.

And I always thought, I want to be like the people that, that I listen to on the radio.

You know, Randy Miller, you of course, had, you know, Leonard and Kevin Harlan, Bill grigsby and I when I was, when I was younger, I said, I want to be the emcee of this town.

Right.

And maybe, you know, maybe that was naive or whatever, but I want to really make it here.

I love this place, and I was just so fortunate that I didn't have to go anywhere else to do that.

29 years later, still on the radio in my hometown.

That is ridiculous.

Yeah.

That's, that's something that is very rarely done, as you know, let alone.

Yeah.

Moving to another job or getting a job after just getting fired and having to leave town because you have to go find works.

I knew plenty of people who couldn't do that.

Yeah, right.

They would leave one company and then they'd never get a job here again.

Yeah.

And that's where, you know, it was just instilled into me, you know, look, treat everybody with respect and be nice and be good and don't blame the place on your way out and all that stuff.

And then a grenade behind you.

You know, like I said, there, there may have been times where they said, look, we need to change up what we're doing here.

You guys are done.

But it wasn't, you know, get the hell out and never come back again.

It was, well, you know, we could work together down the road into these days.

Some of those people are still, you know, best of friends.

Yeah, but you made most of the choices on your own.

I did, yeah.

You could have left, and I just.

I knew what I wanted to do, and maybe it was a chess game to like.

Okay, I got to jump the pieces here.

Jason's great, but I want to get my own morning show.

I get it, I'm going to have to go out on my own and do that.

And you know, Frank, it was a it was a gamble, right?

It could have we could have fallen on our nose and could have come crawling back.

Is it?

Jason always said, look, if you you know, that doesn't work out, call me.

Come back.

I didn't want to do that, though.

I wanted to succeed on my own merit.

And, I felt pretty proud that whatever it was of a career we put together, it somehow lasted.

Just imagine what the last 9 or 10 years would have been like if you'd had your own, you know, left leaning radio.

You.

Yeah.

It like, I'm so glad that didn't happen.

Can we say that right now?

Does anybody want to be in this?

No no no.

Absolutely no.

Geez.

Well, God bless you.

Brian, thanks for coming in your bank.

It's been a pleasure, man.

I apologize, but not really for the first thing you ever heard me say to you.

But that tells you how much I love you.

I don't I don't remember, I mean, other than snoring on the radio, I don't really remember the first time meeting Jason or.

But.

But again, I think I've always remembered Frank bull.

I love your brother.

That's so great.

You're the best, pal.

You to me.

Yeah.

God bless you.

Continued.

Good luck and good luck with Eddie and, Daniel and.

Oh, God.

She's.

We got, we got a freshman driver now.

Damn.

Are you kidding me, a freshman driver?

You've been through this before.

How do you put up with that?

Yeah, Don't ask.

You've been to parties in my house, bringing in lots of booze.

Okay.

That's it.

And he's Brian Trudeau.

Another one of the great reasons why there's just something about Kansas City.

Don't talk to me about those part.

There's just something about.

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