TRUE FILM FAN interviews documentary filmmaker on RUNAWAY RADIO about legendary radio station KLOL

in this lengthy, in depth interview host John Wesley Downey interviews documentary filmmaker
Mike McGuff about his movie RUNAWAY RADIO which focuses on Houston's rock station KLOL which for decades was Houston's feisty, unvonventional radio rogue complee with a cast of distinctive personalities who brokes the rules and gained a loyal audience.  Stevens and Pruett, Colonel St. James, Dayna Steele, Outlaw Dave, Crash and more along with the station's colorful logo and bizarre antics were a huge part of what Houston was from 1970 to the early 2000s.  Downey also discusses McGuff's 14 year journey and battle to get the film made and completed.  Houston radio fans and media buffs will find a lot to consider here, a trip down memory lane that is full of surprises.  

IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING NOTE for next week's holiday Halloween weekend.  John will explore the horror classic THE EXORCIST from all angles, it's origins, behind the scenes trivia, John's unique experience with the film, lots of "how they did it" info and a full leplanation of the film for those who didn't get it the first time around.  It's called THE EXORCIST PHENOMENON - THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS next week on John Wesley Downey's TRUE FILM  FAN podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, I'm John Wesley Downey and this is the
True Film Fan Podcast, and we're going to do something
a little unusual today because we generally deal with fiction films,
of course, the normal diet of movies that we see
at the theaters, but of course a genre that has
become very popular in the last few years is documentaries,

(00:21):
perhaps maybe bigger than ever, and this kind of meets
us at the intersection of several different mediums. We've got
movies and radio combined, the two things that I've spent
most of my life in. And we're going to talk
about a documentary about a wild and weally radio station
called Rock one oh one Kalawell. The name of the

(00:42):
documentary is Runaway Radio, and the guy who created it
is Mike McGuff. If you don't know Mike McGuff, he
has been around the Houston market for a very long time.
He's done a little bit of everything. Mike, Welcome to
our microphones.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
And why don't we give people little thumbnail sketch of
who you are and what you've done. You're kind of
mister media. And then after that we'll get to talking
about this amazing documentary that you've made.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well, I am actually a native Houstonian, and I think
my love for the media stems from the fact that
I did a report on Channel two anchor Bob Nicholas
one time when I was in fifth grade, and I
went and interviewed him at Channel two and got to
see the KPRC studios, and at that moment, I think

(01:31):
I was dazzled.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
And of course, you have a very popular blog that
everybody in town knows about, at least in the media.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
I would say most people do know me from my
blog at Mike McGuff dot com, where I cover the
comings and goings of Houston radio and television that I
also do website and social media marketing and videos.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, well, for people that don't know, because it has
now expired for a long time. In Houston, Texas, there
was a very it's hard to describe it in one word,
a rebellious radio station called Rock one oh one k LOEL,
and it was the brainchild of some people that you

(02:14):
might not expect to have come up with it. But
the interesting thing is here, I kind of want to
tell two stories. The story of this radio station, which
is what the documentary is about, but also the saga
that Mike has gone through to get this thing made,
because a lot of independent filmmakers, for various reasons, usually

(02:35):
lack of money, take a very long time to make
their project. But I think that Mike holds the record
for an independent documentary, which I believe it took you
fourteen years to get this thing done, And my head
is off to you, sir.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, because I always joked, you know, Guns n' Roses
had this famous album, Chinese Democracy, and it took I
think fourteen years in ID always joke this is like
my own version of Chinese Democracy, but it will never
take me that long to release it. And then it
actually did, and I would say it was supposed to.
You know, it was going to come out in twenty twenty,
because that would have been the fiftieth anniversary of the station.

(03:09):
But then, you know, the world had other things happened
in March which severely slowed down production. At that point,
I couldn't even get to my editor's place to work
on it anymore, because you know, we were locked down,
and I had just filmed the interview with Dusty Hill
in the Woodlands like maybe a week before the world

(03:31):
shut down, and you know, we had that weekend we
had inserted some of Dusty into the dock, and we're like, okay,
let's stop for the day and next week, you know,
we'll come back and finish it up. And I mean
that week turned into quite a few months before I
could return over there with a mask on and sure
deal with it that way. So that definitely slowed us down.
But in some ways, you know, you have to make

(03:52):
lemonade right out of lemon so I think the extra
time helped.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
It did help.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
We worked on it even more, and I know you're like,
I already had that much time, but we did add
in a few things. Believe it or not, Lyle Love
it was shot over zoom during lockdown, and people don't
seem to notice that because he has a very high
end camera system at his house that he was using
to do streaming performances during lockdown. So he had the

(04:17):
great sound, great video, and we were able to take
that and with AI kind of uprised a bit.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So it didn't look as zoomy I see in the
final piece.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Okay, let me, let's before we get too far ahead
of ourselves. I want to backtrack and ask the obvious question,
why did you want to Why did you fall in
love with the idea of making a documentary about this
singular and memorable radio station and what kept you going? Well?

Speaker 3 (04:47):
I because having a television background, I understood at least
how to assemble a news story or a thirty minute special,
and a lot of news people, we all believe TV
news people believe we can do a documentary, and yes
there are similarities. It does give you a leg up,
but it's a whole other world once you really get

(05:08):
into it. Even the terminology when I'm talking to film people,
they don't understand. I mean, some of the terms between
TV news and film do work, but not always and
you kind of have to translate yourself to understand what
you're talking about. But the reason I always wanted to
make a documentary, and in fact, I mean we get
to play river Oaks Theater. That is a place that

(05:29):
I used to go to as a teenager, and you know,
all the way through my early adulthood watching the independent films,
watching documentaries there, fell in love with the format. So
I always wanted to make one. I thought I could
quickly make this one, and that obviously turned out to
be untrue. But the reason I picked Kyle Lowell was

(05:51):
because he that was the station. You know, I was
a freshman in high school Lamar, and I tuned in
looking for something new. Was right when nine three Q
went off. I actually listened to the top forty John
Lander version of ninety three Q back in the day,
and I started scanning the dial when that station went
away and found kl LOEL and I was like, Wow,

(06:12):
that is mind blowing what they have on here. It
was a crazy station. I was listening to it in
ninety one at like the peak of its bowers when
it was winning Billboard Rock Station of the Year, and
it was firing on all cylinders.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
And back then you got to remember no internet.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Radio was the way you found out about music, and
I learned a ton about music that was older at
the time. But they also played new stuff at the time.
So you're seeing, you know, grunge come in and they
were playing that Stone, Timple Pilots, Nirvana and plus the
led Zeppelins and Genesis and Who and all the older bands.
So it really gave me a great education. The DJs

(06:54):
talked about the music, but then you know, k Loel
was a wild station had a ton of medic bits
to it, and it was something that was like a
rite of passage with young people in the city. You know,
they would sit there in high school and actually talk
about what they heard.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
On kl LOEL.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
And being that I wrote the blog that Kalewell had
been off the air, and people just kept writing in
about kl loel, kal LOL, where are the DJs? Will
it come back? And at the time, people really, for
some reason thought it would come back. So I thought, Okay,
here's the station. I started investigating it. It was extremely visual
compared to most other radio stations. They had two TV

(07:31):
shows in different decades. Pat Fanft, the founder, was very
visually based and had made films and marketing videos, so
he shot commercials. They shout marketing campaigns and magazines and
also got a ton of media. So when you start
realizing that you have all these media assets to work with,
it just became a logical thing.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Now. KALOL went on the air on August seventh, nineteen
seventy and the origin of it, we were talking about
just before we started recording here was actually a little
surprising because k LOL was an FM station that I
guess the owners weren't doing much with and yet they
owned the highly iconic KTRH news outlet in town, and

(08:18):
they also owned, I believe, the Houston Chronicle. And of
course I'm talking about the Jones family. So here's a
family seemingly pillars of the community with these conservative media outlets,
and yet they decide to take this FM station and
make it about as pioneering as you could get. At

(08:41):
the time, I guess they viewed it as a wasted
asset right off.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Originally one oh one was one oh one point one
k t r HFM as a simulcast is seven forty
k TRH. And you know, in nineteen seventy they had
this new transmitter and really no one was listening to FM.
It wasn't widely availed, but wasn't in cars yet.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
So I think.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
People felt like they could be more experimental on the
FM dial in those days, and they knew the youth
liked this kind of rock music. So they hired Pat
Fant over from k news AM where he did a
show called the Flower Power Hour, So he kind of
understood what they were doing and wanted to do, so they.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Brought him over.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
He was very young, very young like a twenty two
year old like U of H student or recent grad,
I guess, and he brought it over there and started it,
and you know, it was extremely It was a progressive station,
meaning they played whatever they wanted, and of course it
was kind of you'd say it was run by hippies

(09:40):
at this point, which of course caused a lot of
problem with on one floor the conservative group of KTRH
news journalists that were very proud and very award winning,
and then on the other floor these kind of burnouts
as they would look at him hanging out there doing
who knows what in the studio, and it's talked about
in the movie how they even had some kind of

(10:02):
early warning detection system so when someone from k t
H your management entered the floor, they would put their
stuff away, as they say in the film.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
So, yeah, it's kind of funny because we're talking about
something that's over fifty years ago, and it almost.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
It was kind of reminding me of what yes like,
what life would have been like, except fictional.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
And it was called FM the movie Yes, And who
starred in that do you remember?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
I do not remember at the moment.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
I think it does have some big names in it though,
and I had really never heard of this movie, but
it was a fun watch. If you're into radio, especially
rock radio, you'll enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Okay, So back to our movie, which again we're talking
about a movie called Runaway Radio as a documentary. We'll
go ahead and we'll do this several times. But when
I run this in the future, after the date at
the river Oaks Theater, I'll pull this. But for those
of you listening to it now, it's going to be

(11:03):
your movie. Runaway Radio about Kaleell is going to be
showing at river Oaks Theater at seven pm on October
the twenty eight, So you want to get tickets. They
got a few. Laugh.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, just so excited that here's a chance to go
to the place that really inspired me to make the
film and had closed down. So you kind of thought, well,
that was it.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
But it is back. I have been in there. It
has been fully restored.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
It looks like the classical river Oaks that you would think,
but spruced up.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Now. What was the toughest thing about keeping with it
all those years?

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Oh yeah, get this thing made.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, there were definitely times that I thought it would
never be finished. Largely the seventies, did not have enough
archive footage pictures, and luckily I got just serendipity came
my way and people would email the website and say
I took a bunch of pictures there in the seventies.

(11:59):
A guy actually hung out there as a high school student.
Now he's living in California and he emails me and said, Hey,
would you like some of my photos I took back
in high school from inside the station when rock stars
are there, and I was also at some of the
shows they sponsored, like Bruce Springsteen, and I thought, this
is like the greatest gift, and it really proved to be,
and it improved that section so much that then I

(12:22):
felt like it could actually be released. I mean, it
was just hard getting interviews when you're dealing with rock
stars like we had. They have tough schedules. We interviewed
as we mentioned, Dusty Hill, Sammy Hagar, Lyle Lovett, Melissa Ethridge,
Doug Pennick from Kings Ex and Carmina Piece, the famous
drummer who had been with Rod Stewart and Vanilla Fudge

(12:45):
and Ozzy Osbourne. So just trying to get in touch
with those people, get their attention and Luckily like Dana
Steele and Pat Fan had connections to these people still
and that would definitely gave me a leg up. If
I hadn't have had that, I would have never gotten them.
But it's then you have to pin them down and
they're always on tours. They have to find a time

(13:06):
to interview them. So but that's you know, that's well,
what worth the wait? It really adds to the film
to have these names talking about the station and all
these people have stories with the station. We did not
put them in just because they have a name there
are they have connections to kal Loel, which makes it
all the better.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
I want to spend some time talking about the cast
of characters that went through the revolving doors of k
LOL over the years, because it's it's quite a group
of people. Now, some of these people I actually knew
and worked with, though when I worked with them they
were at other stations. And I'm talking about people like
Stevenson Pruitt, Crash, Colonel Saint James, and I have to

(13:48):
tell you, for me personally, one of the funniest moments
in the documentary was when it was decided I can't
remember what the change was if somebody bought the station,
or it was a new program director or whatever. But
they decided if they would call it the Rock and
Roll Army, and that this was totally counter to the

(14:10):
counterculture previously. Why don't you explain that for listeners.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Right in the eighties, you know, they were struggling a
bit actually in the ratings because ninety seven Rock had
come on the air, which is a big part of
the film. I know people asked that they wanted ninety
seven Rock documentary, and quite honestly, you sort of have
one in the middle of this one. But that was
a great radio war, so ky Lowell was looking for
ways to fight back. And you also had Kilt, which

(14:35):
is your country now and has been for decades. But
it was a rock station doing well as well on
one hundred point three, so they had to figure out
a way to stand out. So they came up with
the idea of the Rock and Roll Army, where you know,
you know, people would get cards memberships to the station,
and they would give out special coded instructions over the air,
and that would lead you to prizes around town or

(14:58):
discounts and stuff like that. But yes, when as I mentioned,
the nineteen seventies had a very counter culture hippie vibe
to the station and you come in there and they're like, hey,
you're going to be the general and the lieutenant of
the Rock and Roll Army. A lot of the DJs
wanted nothing to do with that because they weren't supportive
of Vietnam and really wanted to stay away from that

(15:21):
and that you.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Were just talking about names for DJs.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Right, yeah, and that's how it all it was.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
But they were so sensitive about.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Oh absolutely yeah, And Colonel Saint James was willing to
do it, and that's how he said he got the name.
Colonel Saint James was from that moment because he was
willing to play along with that. And the Rock and
Roll Army is still talked about. There's actually a Facebook
on our Facebook group right now that is called the
Rock and Roll Army and is a one oh one

(15:49):
k lol group where people still share photos of their
merchandise and pictures from the station every day.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
So it's sort of morphed into an Internet thing. Yeah,
some things just never say die. Let's talk about Oh,
by the way, before I'm just going to kind of
bounce around here to different things. One of the things
that stood out to me was the little passage in

(16:16):
Runaway Radio about George Harrison and the story that one
of the DJs told George Harrison of the Beatles is
a great, great little vignette.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, that story I kept hearing about when I was
interviewing people, and they would just say, Oh, there's a
DJ named Levi that had interviewed George Harrison and in
some way insulted him. And I kept searching. You know
here another reason it's taking fourteen years while eventually run
into him essentially online. He had put out something about it,

(16:47):
so we got to interview him and he was great.
Levi Booker's his name, and he was a DJ in
the early seventies on KL Lowell. They had moved to
Montrose out of the Rice Hotel at this point, and
he gets a call and it's from someone in George
Harrison's entourage who happened to be playing Hawfind's Pavilion for

(17:07):
the I guess it was the dark Is.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
It the Dark Horse?

Speaker 1 (17:12):
That sounds right where?

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, I might be because the production combo ins the
film's Dark Star. I'm getting them confused. But uh, he
was in town. They were looking for action in Houston.
Where was the fun? And you know he they kept
calling it was a woman with the British accent and
representing George, and the Levi's like, whatever, you know, stop
messing with me and he hangs up on him. Well,
he gets a phone call and this guy said, this

(17:33):
is George George Harrison. He goes, this is the worst
George Harrison impersonation I've ever heard. And George is like,
it is George Harrison and I can prove it. And
he actually showed up to the station at like midnight.
He gets a knock on the door. He goes down
there there's George Harrison. Yeah, former beatle. He is there

(17:55):
and he's doing a whole interview and they talked for
hours and George talks about the Needles break up. He
talks about all kinds of things, and Levi even asks
him like how much money do you have? And could
you maybe give me a million dollars? And George at
the end said, Levi goes, hey, have you ever had
an interview like that? And George says, you know, no,

(18:17):
I have it and I probably never will again.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
And Levi I.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Said that there really were very few interviews done during
that period. One was in Rolling Stone magazine, which I
have that copy now. But yeah, George was always kind
of the quiet one and probably didn't really enjoy the
limelight too much. I don't even know why he showed
up to k lol, will never know that answer.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
What made him do it?

Speaker 1 (18:38):
That's true. Maybe it was maybe as people go to
him into it, maybe they told him about the station
or whatever. Maybe he was you know, I've become a
bit of a Harrison freak in the last few years.
I think he would have been attracted to somebody who
wasn't interested in interviewing him because he was. He was

(18:59):
the the one that was the most contrary about a
lot of things, and it's like, oh, here's the one
person in the world that doesn't want to interview me.
That's the person I want to do the interview with.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
I guess that gonna make sense. And it became a
very bootlegged Beatle interview. It's still out there. You can
easily find it on eBay, or at least you used to,
because I think it's just so rare.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Stevens and Prewitt, they were probably some of the most
high profile. How did that come about that they were
on the station.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Basically, Jim Prewitt had worked as Tony Raven at kal
Lowell very early on, and he was one of the
not quite the first hire, but one of the first hires,
and he was actually became the program director even and
I've heard that he was a very tough program director.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
He did not let things fly.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
And Jim Prewett was a program director. I didn't ever
know that he.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Was at Kaloel as Tony Raven. Well, he told me,
and this is not in the movie, but in the
interview for the movie, he said that he got the
opportunity to fill in for Hudson Harrigan. You know, that's
a rotating cast of DJs that played the roles of
Hudson and Harrigan for decades, and there are multiple teams.
He killed on KILT and it was on six '
ten at that point six ten am, and he went

(20:13):
in and got paired with Mark Stevens from Fort Worth Radio,
who had already at this point in the seventies already
kind of had this extensive career up there, and they
got together and the magic was there and they became
Hudson and Harrigan.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
And he left k lowel Well.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Eventually they wanted to break out on their own and
do their own thing, and they became Stevenson Pruitt on
another AM station, KULF here in Town in the late seventies.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
They then got the job at ninety seven.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Won the Eagle k EGL, which is still on the
air in Dallas. They wanted to come back here and
Pat Fant returned to k Loel and wanted to hire
his friend Jim Prewitt and knew how good this radio
team was. And that's how it happened because he didn't
feel like they had a dominant morning team and he
wanted one, and he went out and pulled out the

(21:06):
big bucks for Stevens and Pruitt to return and the rest,
as they say, is history.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
They certainly had a colorful show.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Even if you listen, you can find talking.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
About pushing the limits. Didn't they attract some national attention?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, we talked about.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Actually Pat Fan talks about in the Kalele budget, he
has a line item for fines that he built in
there because they were getting fined. I found evidence in
broadcasting trades out of DC that they were fined multiple
times for different levels. But I got up until like
I swear, one of the finds is up to like
maybe thirty thousand or something.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
At one point I think was.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
It for swearing?

Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, it was actually what Raymond Zeric of the Doors
actually said stuff on there that was pushing the envelope
a bit and the way, and of course I'm sure
that they were contributing as well, and that got them fined.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
And there was something else.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
I can't remember exactly what that was, but I think
for them, and this got cut from the film. It
was originally in the four hour version. Yes, there was
a four hour version. At one point that they felt
that the fines, you know, they made so much money
on commercials, it did not bother them that much, and
I think they kind of liked the notoriety they received

(22:24):
from getting fined.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
In what years were those that would have.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Been in that, Probably the eighties, late eighties, I think,
you know, because you know, it's funny that they got
away with probably way more than that in the nineties,
but I don't think they were fined as far as
I know in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
I see we're talking with filmmaker Mike McGuff He has
made a movie about a legendary radio station in Houston
called Rock one oh one k Lowell. The name of
the movie is Runaway Radio. Why is it called runaway Radio?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, the Runaway Radio was the logo of the station
starting in the seventies by a local artist neum who
actually worked with Easy Top and did some of the
artwork for their albums and posters. He designed the original
concept of the runaway radio, which is actually brown. It
was later reintroduced in the eighties and a more colorful

(23:14):
cartoonish version that's red, yellow, white, and blue that you
still see on shirts. I'm actually wearing one right now.
You can't see that, but these shirts are hilarious. How
many companies sell Kalel merchandise to this day, Companies that
aren't even in Houston are selling the Runaway Radio. I
guess just because it's such an inviting logo that and

(23:37):
people do have love for the station all over the
US who used to listen to it.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Here describe the reason why it's a runaway radio and
the original visual for it.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
The original visual was actually the radio and old style
radio from you know, kind of what you'd see in
the forties. That brown It had on arms and legs
and it was running and it had actually then a
ball and chain on its leg to signify that you're
never quite free. But the whole goal of Kalwell was

(24:08):
to explore this music to become free, to really escape
from what youth people, the youth were scared about was
Vietnam when that station came on the air, a lot
of social strife going on at that time. So the
idea of these progressive rock stations was to free your mind.
I'm sure the drugs at the time also helped with that,

(24:29):
but even the original Runaway Radio did have a marijuana
leaf on the logo and that was originally it was
removed a few years later, but you can still find
that logo out there on the internet. But yeah, that
was the whole point was we are you know, we
don't know. We can't control our lives, there are too
many external forces, but we want to be free. We're
going to use this radio station to hear new music,

(24:52):
to explore new ideas and free ourselves of all the
kind of stuff we have to deal with at that
time period in the early set and late sixties.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
And there was a lot that there was some sexual
content on their show too, right.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Oh on, Steve yes, that was definitely what they were
known for. I mean, you know, think about Howard Stern
probably went farther than they ever did. But even going
back to when they were Hudson and Harrigan, you can
find air checks online from them in the seventies and
already you would say they're going kind of the blue humors,
you might say, back then, so that the early seeds

(25:28):
were planted. And then just as the eighties came in,
and of course if you lived in the eighties, things were.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Way more wild as far as what was on movies.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
You know, they had those teen rated, raunchy comedies at
the time, Porkys, yeah, all that stuff, So that was
in the and comedians on television. They think of what
Eddie Murphy was doing that time on his comedy albums.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
It was wild stuff.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
So I mean they moved with the times and tried
to keep up with the latest comedy. In fact, we
mentioned that Sam Kinnison, the comedian who on unfortunately died
in a car accident I guess in the early nineties,
was a comic that actually not from here, but really
kind of started here, and he was friends with Mark
Stevens and would hang out in the station, and he

(26:14):
did promos for them, and he would fly Mark out
to see his act and even ask Mark what he
thought of his act in some of his new jokes.
They were very into comedians and always I've heard comedians
to this day beyond podcasts and other shows, and they
will mention something about a story that happened to them
when they were with Stevens. I pruit in Houston, so
you know, they were very open and comedy was huge

(26:37):
in the eighties. There were all these comedy clubs in Houston.
I mean there's still some, but not like there used
to be.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Wasn't there a character in the Dunesbury comic strip that
was based on Mark Stevens that I do not know?
It seems to be like I read somewhere that the
guy who drew Doonesbury, which was a very very popular
comic strip, grew up listening to fort Worth Radio and

(27:05):
new Mark Stevens.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
That's that is something in fourteen years I did not learn.
That is very interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
I would like to look more up it.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
I may I think I have the details of that right,
but that's to me. That was one of the things
that I remember that I found out about him. That
I thought, Wow, there aren't many disc jockeys who have
been immortalized in a national, nationally syndicated cartoon. All of
these people we're talking about, we haven't talked about Crash.

(27:36):
Crash was one of the high profile dejails.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Oh wow, yeah, that is one name. When I said
I was doing this, you have to get Crash, And
I will admit I was too young to have ever
heard Crash on the air.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I had only heard of him.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Fortunately when I started, you know, being that it is
fourteen years it is fortunate I started when I did,
because I was able to get people who passed away
quite quickly after I did the interview in twenty ten.
I was too late to interview Mark Stevens because when
I started it he died maybe like honestly, I think
a few weeks after the first thing I ever shot.

(28:11):
And luckily his wife Melissa, who is a big PR
person in town here, did the interview in his place.
But I was able to get Crash and Jim Pruett
before they died. And in fact, I think there are
six or seven people who in the course of production
who are in the film passed away. So I am
glad I started to get Crash was very important. Crash

(28:34):
was such a big part of the seventies. You know
he in the film You'll see him, Dusty Hill talks
about hanging out with him and that he and Crash,
you know, and Billy Gibbers, they were really friends. And
Lyle Lovett grew up in Kline, Texas, listening to k
Loel in high school, much like I did, and he
said Crash was one of his favorite DJs, along with

(28:54):
Danis Steel later on. But the Crash had great music
tastes and really could program as he programmed his own music.
Did an excellent job of teaching a young Lyle Lovett
all the different facets of music that they played, because
back then it was far from just rock music. It
was all kinds of things, jazz, blues, so and right.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
In the middle of this murderer's row of male DJs,
and we haven't mentioned out Law Dave yet, there's Dana
Steele Boy talk about being the I'm trying to think
of exactly how you would describe not exactly a feminist,
but not afraid to get in and mix it up.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Yeah, Dana said that she knew that as a female DJ,
that she probably wouldn't be around as long as the guy.
So she worked very hard and she was one of
those who told me her show was meticulous. Everything was
planned out. She knew exactly what she was going to do,
and she's she really made so many connections with rock

(29:56):
stars that to this day, that's how we got them
in the film, because she still friends with them. And
that was something she was very good at, is getting
in with the rock stars. She became their friends, and
they became her sources, and she knew all kinds of
information that many other DJs across the country did not

(30:17):
know because she's actually friends with them.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
She was almost like the radio version of a gossip
columnist that for younger people that don't know newspapers used
to always have gossip columnists and she kind of provided
that was one of the things she sort of provided
as her function there.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Right now, now you could find all that on the internet,
right because the stars, the rock stars would be on Instagram,
you know, sure, our Twitter or whatever putting out the
information and there's all the rock online websites. Back then
you didn't have it. You had the magazines, but the
magazines were going to be outdated really by the time
they were delivered to you, sure things had already changed.
She was going to be at the concert the night

(30:57):
before talking to the rock star, giving you the latest
information on what's going on. One of the funniest moments
in the film is when Carminea Peace is playing with
Ozzie at the Summit in eighty three on the Bark
at the Moon tour. He is fired by Sharon Osbourne
and he has to stay in his drum tip tech
with all of the drums, have to stay and Dana's

(31:19):
small apartment because they had no idea this was going
to happen and had no way of arranging plans like
at the end of the show to ship the drums
and the people, and had to stay there a few
days till they could get everything lined up to go
back to Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Well, see, that's just the kind of thing that, you know,
the behind the scenes tidbit that everybody loves knowing stuff
like that.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Oh yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
She has pictures that are in the documentary of her
hanging out with Cheap Trick that they're at her apartment.
And she said a lot of the time they partied,
of course, but then sometimes she said they just wanted
to hang at someone's apartment and not go out to
a club and just kind of be away from peace people.
And they enjoyed just the low key of having a
small party at like Dana's apartment, and she became friends

(32:07):
with Joan Jet came over and was partying there. I mean,
can you imagine like her Dana's neighbors would be like
She even told me that one of her neighbors was like,
was Billy Idol over there last night? She's like, no,
Billy Idol wasn't over there. Yeah, he actually had been
her house. She just didn't want to like advertise that
all these people were like, you know, over there partying

(32:28):
all the time.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Wow. A lot of that just seems surreal to think
about it.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Well, she told me she actually dated Brian Johnson, the
lead singer of A C d C for a little bit.
I mean, can you imagine that ac DC one of
still a very big rock band, especially back then after
Back in Black. Sure, And yeah, I mean so that's
definitely how she got the uh uh information. I mean,
she was very close with Van Halen. I mean, that's

(32:57):
why Sammy Hagar's in the film. He actually said because
of people like Dana Steele playing his music. And this
is even before he joined Van Halen that he said
his standing Hampton album was number one in Texas because
Kayalewell supported it. Others started supporting it, and he was like,
at a number one record in Texas and nowhere else.
You know, that was the level of control even in

(33:19):
the eighties they still had on maybe picking what they
wanted to play and pushing things.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Wow, that's amazing. You're listening to true film fan. I'm
John Wesley Downey, the host. Generally we talk about movies
other than documentaries, but I couldn't resist this interview because
it's as a lifelong Houston broadcaster and knowing so many
of the people involved, this was near and dear to
my heart, so we had to have this on. Also,

(33:46):
there will be a screening at seven o'clock on October
the twenty eighth at the newly refurbished River Oaks Theater
Curtus of courtesy of a recent guest on this program,
Rob Soceto, And if you can make it there, I
think they do have some tickets left. And I'm going
to take the parts of this interview out that refer

(34:08):
to the concert and make this well, leave this in
our archives of the of the podcast so people can
listen to this years from now. And I'm sure it'll
be available online for people to purchase.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
And so oh it is right now. Yeah, it's been
on two B. It's also available on DVD. You can
go to Cactus Records or Walmarts, Barnes and Noble, Amazon,
they're selling it online and it's on two B. Or
you can rent it from YouTube, Apple, Amazon, wherever you
go rent or buy movies.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
It's there and.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's been out since I guess it came out in
late February. But it's amazing that we can still play
in theaters. We've played three theater chains around town and
out of town too, out of state even. But I
think just having the DJs out makes a big difference
when you get to hear Q and A with your
your favorite DJs are standing before you after the film.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Anything in there about Outlaw Days.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Oh, out Law Dave's in there.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, Outlaw Dave is also I would say he was
like one of the ones that one of the last
great kal Oil DJs because he had been there right
at the you know, when it was still such a
great force and carried it all the way to the end,
and Outlaw Dave is still popular, stay still on the radio.
People still love him. He's still doing rock events, He's

(35:22):
still doing a tons of charity stuff and supporting of
local music. So you know, Outlaw Dave is definitely one
that's never gone away, even with kal Oil being gone.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Right, and he's been a part of nine to fifty
KPRC here for quite a while. Mike. When you got
the thing finished and started showing it to people, particularly
the insiders that were part of what did they say?

Speaker 3 (35:43):
And I mean I think I wanted to show them
to make sure I was getting it right, and they
said I was. And you know, they've seen versions now
that were longer than the eighty three minutes it became,
had different things in it, but at least I knew
I was on the right track and people were excited.
I think that really moved the credibility of the project

(36:05):
once they at least finally saw something that they could watch,
and from there it really gain steam. So I was
happy to have them involved in it and you know,
get their input.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
How'd you get Sammy Hagar?

Speaker 3 (36:18):
That was all because of Dana Dana is still connected
and she was able to reach out, and it just
was a matter of I think it took years because
we just had to wait till things were right with him,
and he was on tour and he came around here
and we were able to get him in twenty twenty January,
I think of twenty twenty. So God, I'd interviewed David
Lee Roth when I worked at Channel thirteen, so now

(36:40):
I have at least say I have interviewed both of
the You know, I know there are three lead singers,
but really the two lead singers of Van Halen that
were there for.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Years, okay, Mike fourteen years? Was it worth it?

Speaker 3 (36:56):
There were times I did not think it was. But
it has exceeded the expectations because I never thought it
would be as it's gone much farther than I ever anticipated.
I actually went in not having too much thought in
what would happen or expectations. I think that was very healthy,
because you know, sometimes you can dream things that will

(37:19):
never happen and kind of defeat yourself. So I went
in trying to enjoy the process and just the fact
that I finished it was going to be great enough.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
No matter what happened.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
I had actually started something and fourteen years later finished it.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
I almost felt like reputationally I.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Needed to finish it after people had heard about it
just because of my blog. I had made it public
and I needed pictures and video I had. I went
on you know, radio, television and newspaper talking about the
project for years, specifically to get me more assets, which
did work. But then that kind of is a pain
when people cap wondering where is it? You're never going

(37:57):
to finish it? Of course, there's a lot of naysayers
out there, and I totally understand why they would think
it's never come out, because when I started, there were
other Houston documentaries I would hear about that have still
never come out, and it had already been being worked
on way before I had started. So it is more
common I think that things are not finished than probably
are finished.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Where can people find your blog? By the way, we're
going to talk some more about the movie, but talk
a little bit about your blog.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Oh, Mike McGuff dot com or just search my name
pretty much, just search McGuff and Google you.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Will find it.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
That is something I started years ago because when I
was working at Channel thirteen, I knew that the digital
was the future, and they would I was already kind
of the web savvy one there, and I knew they
would come to me about how to start blogs. So
I went ahead and started one, and eventually they did
come to me, and we set up a series of
blogs for anchors and reporters. But the blogging format is

(38:50):
something that appealed to me as someone working in news,
because you get tired of the gatekeepers, your boss is
stopping you from doing stories. No one's interested in that.
I was interested in it, and I started that blog. Originally,
it was not necessarily media. It was whatever I was
interested in at the moment, just writing about things I
wanted to share with my friends.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
It became the blog.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
When I would write about media, I would notice those
numbers jumping up on those posts. And at that time,
the Houston Chronicle stopped writing about media pretty much, and
I became kind of the only one in town doing it.
In fact, really I started expanding more to Texas recently

(39:31):
because I think it really outside of San Antonio, there
are no more media writers.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
At any newspaper. Really, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
So I cover everything, and I also have a big
readership in Dallas because I'm the only one blogging about it.
It is hilarious how many readers I have in Dallas.
I am sure Houston obviously surpasses that, but it is
close if you count the whole metroplex, and they will.
Those readers will let me know about what's going on

(40:00):
there because obviously I am not there to watch or hear,
so when I do miss something, I'll get emails, hey,
you need to know about this, And it's that way
with Austin as well. I get a lot of emails about, hey,
you need to know this person's leaving, and viewers who
care about the newscast will let me know. So I
appreciate all of the support. You really couldn't do this

(40:21):
job without an audience to help you out. There's trying
to cover the whole state by yourself when you're doing
documentaries and doing websites and raising kids. It's a chore.
So it definitely helps to have the crowdsourcing going on.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
What surprised you the most about Runaway Radio when you
were finished with the movie.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
It surprised me. I knew there would be interest, but
there was even more interest than I anticipated. Obviously, people
have talked about Kalo as a blogger. As I said,
I knew that people were interested, but it has gotten
a great response and even you know, more nationally maybe
than I realized. I mean world premiere to Minneapolis, believe
it or not, which is wow to think that I

(41:08):
was there at the Sound Unseen Festival. Then we went
to Austin at the Sound Unseen also does an Austin festival,
and in December of twenty three that was the first
time we'd ever shown in a movie. Theater in Texas
wasn't Austin, and it was packed, and I was like, wow,
how many of you are from Houston, you know, because
so many Houston people moved to central Texas in the

(41:28):
Hill Country obviously, so I expected to see hands. Well,
it turns out people were driving in from Houston to
see that screening. I met people afterward who were my
blog readers, were like, oh, I saw that you posted
about this, and I wanted to see the film. So
we just drove up here and I was like stunned
at the amount of people that, like me, who had

(41:48):
literally driven in that day to see my own movie
to be there, they had done the same. So that
definitely excited me that people were that interested and supportive
of the movie.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Cool separating out the radio from Runaway Radio. In the
course of watching the movie, as a native Ustonian who's
lived here all my life, there were moments when I
saw old TV clips or old places that are long

(42:20):
gone that I got very nostalgic. It is almost like
a record of the city during that thirty years. It's
an aspect of it that I didn't really think of.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
That was very difficult to pull off. And luckily KAYL
Lowel staffers had kept archives over the years. You know,
people had tapes and pictures and closets, and that's another
reason it took a long time is people would say, Oh,
I have this that you might want, and they might
find it four years later the back of the closet
storage you and say, hey, do you still want it?

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yes? I do.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
That was very important to me because you can't have
talking heads. You gotta have stuff to support the store,
and in this case, I knew that it's going. You know,
as much as we say it's a national story because
it kind of talks about radio and general rock radio, yes,
but it is truly a Houston story and it needed
the Houston imaging. And the reason one reason I did

(43:15):
this movie that I have started talking about is my
mom got younger on set Alzheimer's at age fifty three
and died at age fifty eight. So when I started
this that was, you know, had only been five years.
I was still going through a lot of grief and anger,
and I needed something to focus, just to stay sane.
And part of what I enjoyed in the process was

(43:37):
going through the old news clips, the old footage. It
took me back in time as I was reviewing all
the stuff that's not even in the film necessarily, it
would take I would enjoy these moments having a VCR, yes,
a VCR setup to watch some of this stuff, and
it would take me back in time to win my
mom and dad were both alive when I, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
As a kid. In some ways, I think that was
very healing.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
And I know that people are saying the same thing
that I've gotten word that they really enjoy traveling back
in time with the movie. Even if you hated k
LOL and thought it was a terrible station, you will
probably enjoy seeing Houston from the seventies to the two
thousands and how it changes because we tried to get
a lot of footage. There's actual real footage of downtown

(44:25):
from seventy we got some video of Galveston from the sixties.
We have Astra World and the Astrodome through the years
and shots of downtown and it really helps tell the story.
It really shows you how much you know it's about
k LOL, but it's also about how Houston changed in
that timeframe, and also it's the other plots. Really how

(44:46):
zz top and k LOL start at the same time
and changed through years as you saw k LOL change
in the eighties and zz Top changes sound with Eliminator
and which is a much more eighties kind of synth
oriented album. And you'll hear Dusty Hill actually talk about
that decision and what happened from it. But in caleble
had to change too as the decades came along. So

(45:07):
you really are getting a glimpse of the past and
hopefully it will take you back to a fun place.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Wow, this has been fun.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Mixt me.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Think about a lot of people I've known, a lot
of places I've been, and as I mentioned at the beginning,
I have an indirect connection to k LOL pat fan
when he was in his late teens and early twenties
would let me, as a fourteen year old, come up
to kN u Z Radio when he was a rock

(45:41):
and roll DJ, well long before k LOL and let
me hang out, answer the phones, get him coffee, fetch
him records, do things. And I did visit the Rice
Hotel studios before Kalol went on the air until they
told me to scram but I was hanging out looking
at the albums and looking at the incredible new facilities

(46:04):
they had at that time, because they when the Jones
family put k Loel on the air in August of seventy.
That was the thing I remember from those couple of
visits where I got to come up and say hi
to Pat. Was they spared like the guy in Jurassic
Park says, they spared no expense. Those facilities were awesome looking,

(46:26):
state of the art at the time. So, and I've
known a lot of these people and cross paths with
a lot of the things that we've been talking about.
So this has been it's been kind of interesting to
revisit a lot of my past, and I think a
lot of people probably feel that way well.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
And I'm also hoping young people there's a lot of
curiosity with you know, the Gen Z millennials that they
want to learn. And I did do some test screenings
in Austin with a group of younger people, and they
were actually very interested in it, which kind of surprised me.
But they love seeing that historic footage. They've heard so

(47:03):
much about the eighties and the seventies, and I think
they enjoy a chance to kind of see what it's
like and understand why older people like us, you know,
liked radio and how we grew up on it, how
different it is today with streaming and podcasts, So they
kind of get an idea of what it was like
back then when there was only television and radio and
newspapers pre enternet.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Right. As a side note to what you just said
about younger people being interested in radio, Before George Lucas
made Star Wars, he made a movie called American Graffiti,
and the central conceit of that movie is that the
DJ wolfman Jack is a pervasive force in all of

(47:46):
their lives. And I had recommended the movie to some
younger people who weren't familiar with the film, and I said,
it's a very good film, you know, But they were
fascinated by how important radio was to the teen in
that movie. And in a way, what Wolfman Jack was
doing was a different version, but an early version of

(48:09):
k LOL because he was outrageous.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Absolutely, yes, and I would say that, you know the
DJs are correct.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
George Lucas grew up listening to Wolfman Jacks.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Actually yeah, my father in law grew up listening to
XCRFLT of Mexico and heard Wolfman Jack and that's what
heard it on the x y zz top. It is
about because Dusty Hill grew up listening to that too,
and that was influential. And yes, Kale Lowell definitely. I mean,
like I said, in high school, we talked about Kal Lowell.

(48:39):
Even when I went to college away, I would meet
people from Houston and they would talk about Kal Lowell
and they talk about Outlaw.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Dave and his gravelly voice.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
And you know, it's amazing how important it was because
that's how you found out about your entertainment and what
was coming to town, the new hot club and bar
at the new music you know it was.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
They will say. The DJ say, Kal Loel was more
than a station, it was actually a lifestyle, which makes
a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah, I mean if you saw somebody wearing one of
their T shirts, you didn't go, I wonder what radio
station that's from.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
No, In fact, I wore the shirt. I had the
Runaway Radio shirt to the Jeff Lynn Elo show the
other day at Toyota. And I mean as soon as
it was like doing promotion for the film. I cannot
tell you how many people still to this day go.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Ko loel Runaway Radio Man.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Sure this has been great.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well, if you can't make it out to a screening,
you can still see the film on t B or
on DVD or anywhere on a streaming service that you
can rent or buy a movie like Google, Apple, Amazon,
And even if you want to support local, head over
to Cactus Music because Cactus Music is mentioned several times

(49:54):
in the movie and how it was connected to Kalol.
And now they sell this very DVD with extra that
are not in the movie, extras from Dusty Hill, Sammy
hagar Way, more crash stories, doctor Betty Helper, and Greg O. Yeah,
we put in some interesting stuff that just you know,
wouldn't have fit in the movie.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Mike, for somebody who is a media person, you didn't
mention the name of your movie often enough. Everything you
just said is for Runaway Movie. That's the Runaway Radio. Yeah,
Runaway Radio. Excuse me, that's what we're talking about. That's
the name of the movie. The documentary on k Loel
called Runaway Radio, produced by the intrepid producer Mike McGuff.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Well, and I will say this, Yes, I'm a media person.
That means I'm bad at sales. See if I were
in sales, i'd be much better at promoting it.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
That's my problem.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
There you go. You're right on the money on that.
All right, Well, this has been fun and I hope
everybody enjoyed it, and thank you for listening. This is
this is true film fan, both the podcast and the
interview show, and I hope you'll be back for more
in the future. I'm John Wesley.