Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, opinion writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.

Chris Duel never planned on a career in radio as a young man to a plan to follow in the footsteps of his father and brother and be an Air Force pilot later, after graduating from USC Film school.

He envisioned a career making movies, and for years he worked Texas comedy clubs as a standup comedian.

The 26 years ago, Duel learned about an opportunity, and San Antonio radio station submitted a tape of his comedy performances and got the job that began his long career as one of the most beloved voices on San Antonio radio and one of its most trusted sports talk personalities.

On this episode, Duel talks about how he overcame personal tragedy, what he makes of this season's San Antonio Spurs.

And what do you find special about the medium of radio?

Let's get started.

Chris, thanks so much for being in Texas.

So great to be here.

Thanks so much for having me.

Well, there's so much that I want to talk to you about, but I thought I'd start by asking you about the San Antonio Spurs.

You have a long history on sports radio.

You do Spurs react the post-game radio shows for air.

And, you know, there's a lot of national interest in the Spurs this season because we're seeing the debut Victor Wembanyana 19 year old phenom, probably the most highly touted new player in the NBA in 20 years.

The Spurs started three and two, that is a little bit of a rough patch since then.

Overall, what are your impressions of how the team is coming along?

I think they're going to be fine.

Yeah, I think if we could have created the quintessential San Antonio Spurs, it would be Victor.

WembanyanaI heard a number of years ago, P.J.

Carlesimo, who was a one time assistant coach of the Spurs, he's been a head coach in the NBA.

Now he's an analyst.

I heard him once say that when he was with the Spurs, that whenever the brain trust Gregg Popovich, R.C.

Buford, the inner circle would sit down and consider a player either a trade, a signing or drafting a player.

Question number one was, is he a spur?

Now you and I know what that means.

That means, is he a character guy?

Is he team first?

It can be, as Pop says, get over himself.

So many NBA, I think 94, not 90%, maybe 80% of NBA players are not spurs.

They're about ego.

They're about bling.

You see them on social media.

You see them clubbing.

Victor, when banana, as you've seen already, he's he wants to be the best player he can possibly be.

Coachable.

Yes.

So, I mean, I'm even seeing when they went through this rough patch after the three and two start, he's taking the losses personally.

Yeah, he he wants to do everything he can.

And he said, he said on draft night, I want to win as soon as possible.

So I think he's the perfect spur.

You know, we had the big three with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan.

I think you've got a new Big Three developing.

I think it's Victor when Ben Yamma I think it's Keldon Johnson I think it's Devin Vassell.

Jeremy So Han may make it a big four if he reaches his potential.

So I compare them to the Golden State Warriors who were homegrown.

Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson They built themselves through the draft.

They later added Kevin Durant, but after they won a championship in 73 games, I think it's just a matter of time.

I think they're going to get better every month.

I think by the end of this season they're going to be in a playoff position and probably knock some people off in the playoffs and then year by year, I think we're going back to what we enjoyed with David Robinson, Tim Duncan and the Spurs, who are now have their names and numbers up in the rafters.

I think we've certainly seen even in the first few games that all the skills that we that that were advertised for when the I mean we've seen them.

He had a 38 point game on the road against Phenix and he's had a lot of good performances, especially in the fourth quarters.

I think he's come up really big.

You know, but obviously the teams still learning how to get the ball to him at the right time in the right place.

He's learning.

What has surprised you about him on the court in both a positive or negative sense?

It's all positive on the court.

You mentioned the 38 point game very, very early on the road against the Phenix Suns.

He's he's better earlier than I thought he'd be.

I didn't think he'd have a 38 point game and ten, 12 rebounds that night.

I didn't think we'd see that till December-January or maybe even later off the court.

He has so already assimilated to San Antonio.

There were the videos that you saw before the season began where he was going around town to where people were putting up mural artwork of him.

And I loved it.

And he he would surprise.

And the Spurs were in on this and they brought the cameras.

But he would surprise the artists so that the mural artists, they say, yeah, we want to get some interviews with you and your artwork.

Hero Victor Wenbin Yama.

And here comes Viktor Wenbin Yama walking out just gleeful and appreciative.

He's he's humble.

I really think, you know, you think of the people who have been the face of this city over the years and not just sports, whether it was Red McCombs or Henry Cisneros, you know, take your pick.

You know, somebody in the arts, you know, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who lives here, and a lot of people in the art world go, my goodness, she lives in San Antonio.

I think Victor Wenbin Yama is going to become the face of San Antonio, not just for the Spurs, but for the city.

And given that he's French and, you know, the international connection, I think that's just great for the city.

I think people around the world are going to want to come here and see the city where Victor went.

Benjamin plays basketball.

One thing that I think has been kind of a hot button issue with among fans has been Gregg Popovich.

His decision to put Jeremy Solon in the role where he's basically a de facto point guard.

It's a role that he hasn't played before, and I think he's admitted that he's he's learning on the job.

What do you think of this, this experiment that they're trying with?

My feeling is if Gregg Popovich does it, I mean, that pop, we trust in pop.

We trust.

And I believe it just based on his experience.

I again, I'm old.

I go way back.

I remember when they I think it was Bob Bass made George Gervin at 67a point guard for the Spurs way back.

Yeah.

And at that time, there were no 67. guards.

That was insane.

And Gervin was lanky and and could get, you know, point guards would get roughed up back in that day.

And and it was perfect for Gervin.

And Gervin became even more of the ice man than he was previously.

I think if Pop has an inkling this is a good idea, we should probably see where it goes.

You know, one of the things that's been talked about in San Antonio a lot over the last few months is concerns, discussions that I think have been having happening privately between Spurs representatives and representatives of the city of San Antonio over the possibility of a new arena, downtown arena for the Spurs.

I mean, this is something that's probably if it happens, is years away.

Yeah, but what do you think of the idea and how likely do you think it is to happen?

I love the idea.

You know, you go back to when you know what is now the Frost Bank Center.

It was the SBC Center at the time was built.

It took an agreement between the county and the city.

You know, they needed both entities to cooperate.

And so they settled on out by where the Freeman Coliseum is, where it is today, the Frost Bank Center.

And while that's nice and while that has served the Spurs and the city well, you think of what San Antonio is not only for us as a community.

Downtown is a mecca now more than ever before with the kind of, you know, reinvigoration of downtown.

But you think of who we are as a tourist destination, as a convention destination, to have a downtown arena where the Spurs play.

I just think it makes total sense.

I know it's it's going to cost a lot of money.

We got to figure out where the money is going to come from, but I think in the long run it would benefit the city and the Spurs in a big way.

When I think of people who are San Antonio's to the core, you're one of the people I always think about.

But you actually born in Kansas.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Now you were born into a military family.

Yeah.

My understanding is your father got sick and they were brought to Wilford Hall Medical Center.

Yeah, Which is where he passed away.

How?

You were very young.

I was four years old at the time.

My dad was in Vietnam in 1964, and he became ill.

He had aplastic anemia, which is a blood disease.

Today it is much more treatable than it was in 1964.

So they they flew him to Wilford Hall.

As you mentioned, my family, he was at an Air Force base previously in Knob Noster, Missouri.

So my mom had five kids.

I was the youngest of five kids.

So she moved the family to be with my dad, who passed away in February of 1965.

So my mom, I don't know what motivated her to be a widow with five kids and all of her family was back in Indiana and she decided to stay here.

And I was going to ask you.

Yeah, all my life I thanked her for that because, I mean, God bless Indiana and God bless my relatives in Indiana.

But I had just such a great childhood and then young adulthood growing up here in San Antonio.

So you're not sure why.

What made her decide on that?

There was.

I'm not you know, I've talked to her about it over the years and she felt she needed to, you know, kind of go out on her own, which was she was 41 at the time.

My dad was 42.

So she was a 41 year old widow with five kids and decided I'll stay here in the city.

That I've never lived in before.

It was a strange decision, but I thank her for it.

And we've got to mention that your mom turned 100 a couple of months ago.

She did August 25th.

She turned 100.

So she's about to be she's like 100 years in about ten months now.

And what you do realize that when you have a 100 year old mom, that means you, meaning me, that means I'm very old.

So I guess that's the way it works.

Yeah.

Yes, it's like that.

I must be getting up there if I have 100 year old mom now to lose a parent at the age of four, I mean, it's obviously it's a devastating thing.

How do you think that it affected you as a child, as you were?

You know, as you struggle to kind of deal with that?

It was tough in that, you know, you would go to school and every year the class would start.

It was the sixties.

So in a new day at school, the first day of school, they go around the class to go, What does your dad do?

Your name is Chris, and you ask each child, What does your dad do?

And I say, My dad died.

I, I didn't love that.

But I was I was very blessed.

I had a brother who an older brother.

He was 12 years older than I was.

And so my my dad was a pilot in the Air Force.

My brother would ultimately he was 16 when my dad died, but he would go to southwest Texas State and be go to go through ROTC.

So my brother, who was 12 years older than I was, kind of became a father figure to me.

So I was lucky that I kind of had that in my life.

But what I also I got to go back to my mom.

She was just a very strong mother.

She had like a very strong faith.

She was a disciplinarian.

She was 411, but I was scared to death of her.

I didn't want to get out of line.

So I've always throughout my life, when I would always hear about, well, this kid was raised by a single mom.

He didn't have a father in his life.

I go, Well, you know, I know that's a stereotype, but I also know that there are strong women out there who are amazing single moms.

Now, growing up, your your dream, your goal was to be an Air Force pilot like your dad had been, like your older brother, Greg had been.

You went to the Air Force Academy for a couple of years.

And on October 22nd, 1980, your brother Greg was flying out of Ellington Air Force Base near Houston.

Yeah, an f101 fighter jet.

Yeah.

And from what I understand, the the the jets engines flamed out and he was in a situation where I guess I guess the normal thing would be to to eject from the plane to save yourself.

But he was over a crowded subdivision and there could have been a very dangerous situation.

There could have been deaths involved in that.

And based on an eyewitness account, it sounds like he chose to he sacrificed himself, chose to stay in the plane and landed, I guess, out in the field.

Yeah.

Which is an incredible selfless act.

Yeah, on his part.

But you lost your brother that day.

I guess I'm wondering, like, where you were and how you found out about that.

Yeah, I was at the Air Force Academy, as you mentioned, and that happened at 930 in the morning, you know, that day.

So I got the phone call.

And if you can imagine, you go through all those late layers of grief that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross outlined, which is denial and, you know, bargaining, maybe maybe it was another pilot, maybe it wasn't him.

And yeah, it was very, very sad.

I was devastated.

I wound up making the decision as a result of that to leave the Air Force Academy.

How soon after that did you leave?

I that was October.

I stayed the rest of that school year and left in June of of 81.

And at the time we know more about mental health.

Now, at the time, you know, especially being at the Air Force Academy, you know, my attitude was, well, I have to get over this.

I have to suck it up and, you know, plow forward.

I think I was probably profoundly depressed.

I never I never sought treatment for it because I didn't I was never equipped with the knowledge or the language to know there are people out there who can help me with at that time.

I don't know the people who thought about it as much.

It was much more stigmatized at that time.

Like, I can't be depressed.

I'm just trying to find a way to get through this.

So as a result that you decided that you didn't want to pursue a military career, you ended up going to USC.

And I've often seen on your social media accounts that your your love for and loyalty to USC is, I think, is still very strong.

And it hurts a lot of hurts a lot of this football season.

It hurts there again.

But you ended up going to the USC film School, which is a really prestigious school that I mean, George Lucas went there.

I think Steven Spielberg famously applied and got rejected from there.

Yes.

Was your goal to become a screenwriter or a director or both?

What were you envisioning for yourself at that time?

When I first went to USC, my primary major and I got a degree in it was broadcast journalism.

I was interested in journalism, and I was always fascinated by journalism and by broadcasting.

And when I within a few weeks of being on the campus, I saw these kids running around with movie cameras making movies.

And I thought, you know, you can get a degree doing this.

You can actually this is actually a thing.

And I didn't fully realize the the legacy of the USC film school at the time.

So I applied, got in.

So I was a double major in broadcast journalism and film graduated.

And like so many people in L.A., like every waiter you meet has a screenplay.

Everybody wants to be a writer or a director or an actor.

I tried that for a number of years in L.A., wrote a lot of scripts, had them rejected, sent back to me.

I worked on many crews in the film industry over the years.

What kind of work that you do?

I was I was a grip.

I was like a third assistant director a couple of times.

I was kind of I worked for a casting company for a while.

We we worked with casting and sometimes in charge of extras on a movie set or on a TV set.

Are there any screenplays that you remember, Any story ideas that you remember from all those years ago?

My my favorite one was about it was called Return to the Moon.

It was about a young child who always wanted to grow up and be an astronaut.

Yeah, but he's diagnosed at like age seven with a terminal disease.

So his father is trying to do everything he can.

It's kind of a field of dreams fantasy to get his child to the moon.

So it's going to in a in a fanciful field of dreams where he magically, by the time the end of the story, he winds up there with his dad.

So after after, you know, pitching the screenplays for a while, you ended up pivoting into a career in standup comedy.

Yes.

And I'm I'm guessing that, you know, when you're dealing with an industry where you have to get to you have to sell the screenplay, there's so many people involved in trying to get a film made.

There's a lot more sense of control if you're on stage as you're writing your own material, you're up there, you're not depending on anyone else.

Is that was that part of the attraction for you?

You nailed it.

That's exactly it's exactly what happened.

It was instant creative gratification.

I got very lucky very early.

You mentioned a video that I was in.

I was in a contest at the Improv, and it was just kind of a lark.

I always thought I was a funny guy.

I always kind of fantasized about doing standup comedy.

So they were they were trying to just get new comics.

So they had a contest.

And I, I used to do, I think, like 5 minutes on stage.

So I got 5 minutes together and I got through round one and I got through round two.

And then there were ten of us, and then they cut it to five.

And I wound up, you know, winning the thing.

But what I found was after all those years of kind of languishing and not thinking it, nobody saying, Yeah, we like what you wrote, let's move forward with it.

With comedy, you could write something today, go on stage tonight, and your judge and jury is the audience.

If they laugh, you win.

You did it, you won.

If they don't, then you got to go back and rework it and find another way to make them laugh.

And you were encouraged, I guess, at a certain point to to leave L.A. and try to like hone your skills elsewhere, which brought you back to San Antonio?

Yeah, the guys at the Improv, Budd Friedman and Mark Leno at the time, they said, You can't be a starting comedian in Los Angeles, everybody.

This is where you come to because everybody who owns their craft want then eventually goes to L.A. as a seasoned comedian, which I was not.

So they said, You need to go.

They said, Where are you from?

I said, Texas.

They said, Go to Dallas, go to Houston.

And then at the time, that's when the River Center Comedy Club was an opening.

Bruce and Colleen Barshop were the owners.

They were opening it up and I was just in the right place at the right time.

They made me and Rick Gutierrez, who is now a very successful touring national comedian.

He was a local jury bailiff here at the Bear County courthouse at the time.

Wow.

So we would trade off weeks as the House emcee at River's Center Comedy Club.

And it was so I got to work every other week for six nights a week, two shows on the weekends to hone my craft and become better.

And it was just kind of a great creative, you know, proving ground.

I know you performed quite a bit in Austin, too, and I think Corpus Christi.

Yeah, some shows there you were mentioning before we started that that you opened for Chris Rock at one point.

So, I mean, this when you when you look back on it, I mean, what are your your favorite moments from from your it was the moments when when when it worked when you're occasionally you get into this zone, you know, that they talk about in sports and I guess you know you know this from music when everything is kind of working.

Yeah then you feel, you know, that your it's almost like riding a wave.

You're in the moment and you're not thinking about anything in when that.

So these ideas so when you put together like a 30 minute set and joke after joke bit after bit is working and the audience is with you and if you've got a set list and you constructed it correctly, it builds to a crescendo at the end.

And on those and there were somewhat rare nights, but on those rare nights where everything worked, you know, as a as a creative person, you know, you can't that's gold.

It's like a miracle.

You just feel that you've been blessed by the comedy gods in that regard.

Now, in 1997, you found out that I had some openings for possibly had some openings for for radio hosts.

And you put together a tape of some of your comedy performances, right.

And submitted it.

You got you got hired.

Yeah.

I get the feeling that up to that point, you probably had never considered radio.

This was not something that was you.

It was not at the time.

And it's funny, it Genie Jackal in the San Antonio Express-News, as you well know, longtime media columnist, there was a new boss.

His name was Andrew Ashwood, who would become my mentor in radio.

So much of what I now do in radio I owe to Andrew Ashwood.

But in her column he said, I'm looking for new talent.

I'm looking for somebody with a comedic slant on the news.

Yeah, someone akin to Dennis Miller at the time.

I really Dennis Miller at the time was somebody I really looked up to, and a lot of the comedy I was doing was news oriented politically oriented comedy.

It was the Clinton administration, it was Monica Lewinsky.

Yeah, there was a lot of comedy you could do with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

So I did not have an heir check, what they call it in radio.

I did not have any demo tape of me being on the radio.

So just on a lark, I sent a VHS tape of myself doing standup comedy at River Center Comedy Club, and thought, I'm never I'm never going to hear back from this guy.

But I got to I got to send it anyway.

And who knows?

Let's see what happens in about a week later.

It was the summer.

I'm forgetting what year it was.

My summer of 97.

Yeah, you had it and I didn't.

And he summertime.

A lot of people go on vacation and he said, you know I'll give you a week I think Jack Riccardi, who's now Katie say Jack Ricard he's going on vacation for a week.

I'll give you a week.

Fill in, fill in for Jack and I never all of a sudden I got nervous.

I had never done radio before, and now I had to do, you know, Monday through Friday from noon to two at 2 p.m. or something.

But it all he kind of liked me.

It worked out.

He made me kind of a rotational fill in guy.

Whenever somebody would go on vacation, I would fill in.

And then ultimately a guy named Woody Johnson was doing afternoons.

He left.

So he wound up creating a show with Charlie Parker, who was still there at w0i and I, Charlie and I did afternoons, I think, starting in the year 2000.

So we're now looking at 26 years on the radio and you've been at different stations, you've had different shows, you've done sports, you've done all kinds of different things.

You know, you have a history performing live in front of audiences as a, as a stand up comedian.

You're a writer, you've done TV, you know, you've worked in these these different media.

But there is something different about radio.

And I wondered if, you know, when having done all these different things, what stands out to you about that as a form of communication?

I mentioned Andrew Ashwood, who was my mentor.

He passed away a number of years ago, but he viewed radio as a he called it a town, a town hall meeting of the airwaves that ideally you're given this microphone and this is your hometown, San Antonio, Texas.

And ideally, you have you're creating a space for the people of San Antonio to share ideas with you, to talk to newsmakers, and then to open up phone lines at the time and see how people feel.

And to me, that's what radio was and that's what radio should be.

And what Andrew said.

And I still believe about radio, he said, We are going to cast a wide net.

He said, We're not right wing talk radio.

We're not left wing talk radio.

We're San Antonio's talk radio.

We're going to welcome everybody in.

And to me, I think that's a huge opportunity and a huge virtue.

And I think it's a huge blessing for a city if it's done right to have a place they can go and kind of have a town hall gathering and talk about issues that matter and maybe make the city a better place.

To me, that's that's what radio should be.

We do things as, you know, like the Elf Louie's radio thing.

I think when you when you use your powers for good, when you use your platform for good and you're helping change or help people's lives in your community, which something like The Elf Louie's project does, then I think you're doing something right, and it's great to be a part of that when you see that happen.

It's always struck me too, that you're, you know, you're simultaneously conversational, but there's also a sense of a performance happening.

It's kind of heightened in a way, which I think probably something to your comedy background that it feels like there's a performance happening, but at the same time it's it's a very intimate conversation happening.

Are you conscious of doing that or is this something that just comes natural?

I'm conscious and I'm embarrassed, but I'm often the loudest guy in the room.

I don't mean to be.

I my guess is I was the youngest of five kids, so maybe it goes back to the dinner table and I had to be very loud to get the last pork chop.

I don't know.

I remember I was once at a at a radio station.

I think it was TSA where they they made me a sales guy and they said, oh, we're going to we're going to you can be on the radio, but we want you to sell.

We want you to be a sales guy.

So I had to do cold calls.

I had to call businesses around San Antonio.

So I called some business and a woman picked up the phone.

Then I go, Hello, ma'am, I'm Chris Duell from TSA.

I'd like to talk to you about maybe getting on the record.

She goes, Excuse me?

I said, Yes.

She goes, You are so loud.

I have you on the speakerphone.

I lowered it all the way down and you were blasting out my eardrum and I felt so bad.

But it's I, I it's it's one of my weird little.

I need to modulate and lower.

I always forget.

I forget to do that.

So what you say, I realize it, and I don't know that I'm thrilled about it, but yeah, it's working.

Chris, thank you so much for being on the show.

We really appreciate it.

I want to say this.

I love what you do.

I am a subscriber to the San Antonio Express-News.

You I am a fan of KLR in public television.

I watch it all the time.

You what you write and what you talk about here.

I think you're a truth teller in a time that I think is the post truth era, and I think we need more truth tellers.

And whenever I see your byline, whenever I see you tweet, whenever I see you post on social media, I pay attention because you're you're talking about issues that matter.

And I appreciate what you do.

I really appreciate it.

That's all for this edition of Texas Talk.

Thanks for tuning in.

We want to hear from you.

And if you have any questions or thoughts about the show, just email us at Texas Talk at KLRN.org We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.