Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, you're
Speaker 1: listening to the Vitamin D Podcast when we shine no
Speaker 1: matter the time. I'm your host, Dawn Day, and I'm
Speaker 1: here to get you excited about your life. You're ready
Speaker 1: for Adosa Vitamin Day. I got a question for you.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you feel something so deeply
Speaker 1: in your soul right and it just screams out to you?
Speaker 1: But you've never done it before, so therefore you don't
Speaker 1: have a blueprint or do you know how to do it?
Speaker 1: And I hear it again and again from people, family, friends,
Speaker 1: co workers, about this invisible hand that feels like it's
Speaker 1: holding us back. And you know, some call it fear
Speaker 1: from our spirits calling, which I like to call purpose.
Speaker 1: And then it's happened in my life too. I think
Speaker 1: about it when I had to write my first sketch.
Speaker 1: Now I'll study improv over at the Groundlings Theater that's
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and some classmates of mine we started
Speaker 1: our own improv sketch group we called s mc forest
Speaker 1: and you can follow us on all social media at
Speaker 1: Cosmic Forest Comedy. And it came up to me it
Speaker 1: was my turn to write the sketch and I had
Speaker 1: never done it before, and I can feel everything just
Speaker 1: locking up and I couldn't think. It was almost like
Speaker 1: I was giving birth. And what I came to realize
Speaker 1: is that the smartest person in the room isn't always
Speaker 1: the one that knows everything. Sometimes the smartest person in
Speaker 1: the room is the one that uses their resources. So
Speaker 1: I had to ask some friends, and I appreciate Karina,
Speaker 1: Danielle Camerie, o Lydia, everybody. And this not only goes
Speaker 1: for things that you've never done before, but it also
Speaker 1: goes for things that you're currently doing, because that's when
Speaker 1: we call it self sabotaging, like the procrastination. You know,
Speaker 1: it's that feeling like you want to quit, and you'll
Speaker 1: just say, Okay, I did enough, something to come on TV,
Speaker 1: pop up on your phone, somebody's gonna try to call you. Hey,
Speaker 1: you're gonna even have to pay your bills. Okay, you
Speaker 1: still need to pay your bills. But what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is is that stop making excuses. And you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to break. In order to break through,
Speaker 1: you ask God to help you grow and it started raining. See,
Speaker 1: we sometimes have to push through ourselves in order to
Speaker 1: get to ourselves. With all that being said, I have
Speaker 1: a special treat for y'all. I sat down with comedy
Speaker 1: legend Jay Anthony Brown, the one who taught one of
Speaker 1: the kings of comedy comedy about his life for me
Speaker 1: and the host of the time during the morning show
Speaker 1: to going over to the Steve Harvey Morning Show to
Speaker 1: kick and cancer with a son Don't Shine, and we
Speaker 1: actually talked about him and Steve Harvey on the road together.
Speaker 1: Also how to overcome the voice inside that tells you
Speaker 1: you can't when you can't take a lesson, get your
Speaker 1: righty right with me and get excited about how you
Speaker 1: doing good. I'm ready, let's do it. We're already going.
Speaker 1: We're talking. Are we talking? All right? Whatever? Everybody Brown,
Speaker 1: We should have checked out my radio show where I
Speaker 1: count down the top ten jams in the country each
Speaker 1: and every week on I Heart Radio and check me
Speaker 1: out on Mondays and Fridays on the Steve Harvey Radio Show.
Speaker 1: And this message has been brought to you by Jay
Speaker 1: Anthony Brown dot com. What's better sell yourself? Tell these
Speaker 1: people that you know this, this is the perfect time
Speaker 1: to start your own business. It's the perfect time for everything.
Speaker 1: That's the beginning. This is happening now. All that stuff
Speaker 1: you could do before, you could bake pies and cookies
Speaker 1: and stuff you did as a hobby. You can eat
Speaker 1: off of that. Don't let don't let the shutdown shut
Speaker 1: you down. Okay, write the are you gonna don't? Don't
Speaker 1: let the shutdown shut Don't let the shut down shut
Speaker 1: you down. Don't let the shut down shut you down.
Speaker 1: Turn that round upside down during that done outside down,
Speaker 1: don't look like a clowhn. Don't let the sun down
Speaker 1: shut you down. Don't let the shut down shut you down.
Speaker 1: You do right, You'll be wrong. Down, don't move down,
Speaker 1: shut you down? What you got? What's happening? First of all,
Speaker 1: First of all, let me just say that this is
Speaker 1: this is a pleasure. No seriously, I know I said
Speaker 1: it before, but like I'm talking to a legend right now,
Speaker 1: so people be like, down. You hear that word a lot, like, man,
Speaker 1: you're legend. I don't feel legendistic. I don't know what
Speaker 1: do you mean. Okay, first of all, let's just go here.
Speaker 1: We were just on the phone, just the other guy,
Speaker 1: and you're like, don you know, Steve Harvey. You know
Speaker 1: he had these shows and how amazing he is. But
Speaker 1: then I'm thinking back when I first started working as
Speaker 1: the digital content producer for the Steve Harvey Morning Show,
Speaker 1: and I was in Punta ConA in the cafeteria talking
Speaker 1: to Roderick Jr. And he proceeds to tell me that
Speaker 1: his father, Roderick Harvey Senior, got inspired from comedy from
Speaker 1: you and Richard Pryor. So when you sit here and
Speaker 1: tell me that you're not a legend, or maybe you
Speaker 1: can't fathom to imagine it, I just look at you sideways. Okay, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you know you forget when you do this, or when
Speaker 1: you start doing this, that how many people you've touched
Speaker 1: her some somewhat inspired. Everybody's inspired somebody somebody. A lot
Speaker 1: of people say, man, I used to watch you and
Speaker 1: I got X y Z. So when you're doing it,
Speaker 1: you don't think about it like that. And I guess
Speaker 1: it's because I'm still doing it. I'm still out any
Speaker 1: game at this age. I've been blessed. I came to
Speaker 1: l A a long time ago. I've never been without
Speaker 1: a job. That's a blessing from the man upstairs. And
Speaker 1: you're very talented at that too. You do more than
Speaker 1: just radio. I can sing, I can write, you know,
Speaker 1: I can dance. You clothes, what's my book? I don't
Speaker 1: have my Oh, I don't have my books. And I
Speaker 1: missed the whole way you sing, jay, have you been on?
Speaker 1: You were just so don't let let down? Get down.
Speaker 1: We're just okay in case. Okay, I hear you, I
Speaker 1: hear you, okay down, get you down. So you said
Speaker 1: you came out to l A and you kept working.
Speaker 1: But where are you from? Game? From Columbia, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: I came out of here. I don't already even do
Speaker 1: a comedy. By the time I decided to come to
Speaker 1: l A, I've been doing comedy probably about ten years.
Speaker 1: So oh, ten years before coming to l A. Ten
Speaker 1: years before coming to that, I was I was considered
Speaker 1: what they call a road comic. A road comic is
Speaker 1: a comedian who works quote unquote on the road. So
Speaker 1: from working on the road, I was able to you know, sustain,
Speaker 1: uh to eat. I didn't have to worry about, you know,
Speaker 1: getting a job when I came out here. Uh, luckily
Speaker 1: I got a job. But I was always out here.
Speaker 1: And then I go to Texas or Chicago or whatever
Speaker 1: to work. So I was blessed by that. And then
Speaker 1: luckily I got a job as a writer and was that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a job writing on the our senior Hall
Speaker 1: show What Foo Foo Is? Wait a minute, how does
Speaker 1: that happen? You just said it like, oh, it was nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean it was meant to happen. The first day,
Speaker 1: first of all, I drove to l A. I drove
Speaker 1: to l A in a powdered blue Escort. Took me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the little blue Escort, and I had this thing built
Speaker 1: on the back so you know how you're back in
Speaker 1: the because we would pull a little cloth thing down
Speaker 1: and it would you couldn't see what you have. So
Speaker 1: I had a wooden piece made show that all my
Speaker 1: belongings could be in there. When they look in the car,
Speaker 1: they couldn't see anything. So I had a pot of
Speaker 1: brand new, brand new pot of blue Escort. I drove
Speaker 1: to l A. And my joke, my my goal was
Speaker 1: to get on Johnny Carson or anything. And it's amazing
Speaker 1: how it has turned. Uh that comics back in the day,
Speaker 1: in order to be quote unquote successful, you had to
Speaker 1: get on one of those shows, either or senyor Hall,
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson or any of those late night shows, if
Speaker 1: you you know, that was that was the next step.
Speaker 1: And so I come out of here. Man. The next day,
Speaker 1: I go over to Paramount Studios and out with my
Speaker 1: friend who was a writer on the our Cenio Hall Show,
Speaker 1: and we're just hanging out. He's got two writers, both
Speaker 1: of them white. I know both of them. And we're
Speaker 1: sitting there and they're typing up the monologue and form
Speaker 1: them typing the monolog I'm yelling out of stuff. And
Speaker 1: he says, see you can do this, and said do
Speaker 1: what you can be a writer. Just nothing, man. We
Speaker 1: type these jokes and then we go home. It's just
Speaker 1: that simple. He said, why don't you send our cineos
Speaker 1: some jokes. Here's the keep part up until this day.
Speaker 1: I can't type, and I'm a horrible speller. But I
Speaker 1: don't figure it out that most people let what they
Speaker 1: can't do stop them from what they want to do.
Speaker 1: Come you, they always they always put it, well, I
Speaker 1: can't do this, so I'm not gonna be able to.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't have a big kitchen, so I
Speaker 1: can't cook pies, or I don't have this, so I
Speaker 1: didn't let that stop me. Now this was before the internet,
Speaker 1: this is before any of this stuff. So all I
Speaker 1: said to myself was, if I get somebody to type
Speaker 1: up my jokes, I'll send him into our sending at
Speaker 1: home and see what happens. So I typed up with
Speaker 1: two jokes, took them to Pall. Because this is before
Speaker 1: facts machines. Facts machine didn't exist. When you know, you
Speaker 1: went around, it was the day when there was no facts.
Speaker 1: So I meant you had to call the jokes into.
Speaker 1: The lady who was typing. It was an elderly lady,
Speaker 1: so sometimes she didn't get the joke that I was saying,
Speaker 1: and like it didn't make sense because I didn't see
Speaker 1: it until I picked it up, you know. So I
Speaker 1: had a type of these jokes, and so I sent
Speaker 1: him in the get him to Pall, I take him
Speaker 1: over to the palm allins. I'm gonna give it to
Speaker 1: her Senio. So I'm on the road and he called
Speaker 1: me on his sister night, Arsenio is gonna do your joke?
Speaker 1: Oh really? Yeah? He put it into mindlog. So I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in and I'm sitting in the hotel in Kentucky somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I see our senior will do the joke, and
Speaker 1: the joke I wrote, it might not be funny. Uh
Speaker 1: don't go that. That that the joke that got you
Speaker 1: a job. So what was the joke? The joke was
Speaker 1: LaToya Jackison did a spread eagle on a motorcycle. This
Speaker 1: was in Playboy magazine and she said she did it
Speaker 1: to enhance her career. And our senior Hall said, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I ain't here about thirty years and I
Speaker 1: like to enhance my career too. But you don't see me.
Speaker 1: But ask naked on Harley Davidson, whom that was the joke.
Speaker 1: It killed, It destroyed the room. They called me in
Speaker 1: and said, Arsenio wants to meet you the next day
Speaker 1: when you come back to l A. So I said,
Speaker 1: my god, I can't tank. I want to go. So
Speaker 1: I started, uh got We started working with this lady
Speaker 1: who would type up my jokes. Because back then the
Speaker 1: only news outlet you had was USA Today. USA Today
Speaker 1: came out at six o'clock in the morning. I could
Speaker 1: look in the paper and get my six o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning jokes. Get the lady to type up me
Speaker 1: always turned in three pages of jokes. Now maybe six
Speaker 1: or seven jokes on each page called the lady up
Speaker 1: if she messed it up. Boom, Now I turn my
Speaker 1: jokes in. Now I'm free to work with whoever. And
Speaker 1: now you gots a whole life. So right, there was
Speaker 1: the start of it. All that. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: welcome to the vitamin here what you get excited about
Speaker 1: your life? Here, I'm here to give you adults inspiration.
Speaker 1: And I am talking right now to the incomparable Mr
Speaker 1: j Anthony Brown. What brother said he started his career
Speaker 1: are sitting on hall. But I'm interested to know who
Speaker 1: is Jay? Before, before the coming before this was a tailor.
Speaker 1: I was a tailor. I made clothes and I made
Speaker 1: I went to school in Denmark, Germany, South Carolina. You
Speaker 1: know I always throw that out there that people this
Speaker 1: is a world traveler. Sprugm z Deutsch VISs loule smith. Dude. Obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: did ena didn't I still be on a hushtanding nine
Speaker 1: pushtand year and see that's German chatter. I wasn't saying anything,
Speaker 1: and so you know what, that's what I thought. But
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute that's what they called dialout.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I was a tailor, but I was always
Speaker 1: fascinated with comedy, like I just love coming. Who did
Speaker 1: you look out to when you were coming up? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, some of the names. Have you never heard of? Wildman,
Speaker 1: Steve Pigmate, Mark Um, Flip will Send one which Wilson
Speaker 1: and Bill Cosby was doing his albums at that time.
Speaker 1: Richard Pryde did not exist. So Bill Cosby was doing
Speaker 1: his albums and were in Red Fox. Red Fox was
Speaker 1: really big because you had to buy the Red Fox
Speaker 1: albums and you would or you couldn't play them. You know,
Speaker 1: you're playing real low. I mean, it wasn't like, don't
Speaker 1: play that in here. And and Rudy Raymore. Those were
Speaker 1: the people that you saw on the quote unquote chipland circuit.
Speaker 1: You could hear their records or on certain radio stations,
Speaker 1: and those were the people that I was influenced by. That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So did you get a chance to meet any of
Speaker 1: your people that inspired you? I met Bill Cosby, I
Speaker 1: met Um, Rudy Raymore, I met Richard Pryan. I met
Speaker 1: him twice, old young Richard. Richard Pryde was at the
Speaker 1: height at the hot and he's coming down the steps
Speaker 1: and I asked him to take a picture. I mean twice,
Speaker 1: two times I made Richard Pryor, and each time I
Speaker 1: took a picture it didn't come up. I don't have
Speaker 1: a picture with Richard Pride, but I saw him twice,
Speaker 1: a man him. I touched this garment, shook his hand.
Speaker 1: So out of all of them, who would you say
Speaker 1: would be your top pick? Richard Pryor because his vision
Speaker 1: of comedy was so big. But there's some white comics
Speaker 1: that I just adore with That would be George Carlin
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Winters. Because Jonathan Winters his improv skills, to me,
Speaker 1: it was just amazing. He had this one bit where
Speaker 1: he'd take a bunch of junk and pile it on
Speaker 1: the table and then he picked picked it up and
Speaker 1: then he make a routine out of it. Jonathan Winters,
Speaker 1: Richard Pryan, Bill Cosby because of his cleverness, Bill Cosby
Speaker 1: because Bill Cosby could talk about one subject it seemed
Speaker 1: like forever, you know, and then Red because of the
Speaker 1: rawness he was. You know, So all of them, all
Speaker 1: of them had in influence. Okay, and you know it's
Speaker 1: so interesting that you were saying, how your moment when
Speaker 1: you were working on our sen of your hall show
Speaker 1: that you are not a good speller, nor can you type,
Speaker 1: and how did you get the confidence to do it?
Speaker 1: Because usually here's something I always said. This is where
Speaker 1: I would when I was working on my comedy routine
Speaker 1: while I was in the tailor shop. Honestly, I would
Speaker 1: sit and I would practice my routine. I would if
Speaker 1: I thought of anything funny, this is the truth. I'd
Speaker 1: be doing sleeves or shorten the jacket or whatever and
Speaker 1: putting on buttons. When I would sit there and I
Speaker 1: would just talk to myself. They thought I was crazy,
Speaker 1: and I would talk and anything that came up funny
Speaker 1: that you know, yeah, and I was so so Negro
Speaker 1: is crazy and so I just at the end of that,
Speaker 1: I would say to myself, I'm not gonna let nothing mentally, physically, emotionally,
Speaker 1: or financially stop me from what it is. I'd say
Speaker 1: that every day now, so it was that it would
Speaker 1: It never dawned on me what I couldn't do in
Speaker 1: terms of what I could what I wanted. When I
Speaker 1: first started doing comedy, I was horrible, but I didn't
Speaker 1: let that stop me. I sucked at boot I got
Speaker 1: booted up stages and you know, and you drive home
Speaker 1: to the It's horrible. The hark the most of you
Speaker 1: that I can compare bombing on the stage to having
Speaker 1: a death in your family. It is. It is the
Speaker 1: worst feeling, and in comics with it is the worst
Speaker 1: feeling in the world because you go up here to
Speaker 1: make somebody laugh and they go, na, we we ain't
Speaker 1: feeling numb. By the same token, the most funniest thing
Speaker 1: in the world for a comedian is to watch another
Speaker 1: comedian bomb. And let me tell you why it was
Speaker 1: because we've all been there. We've all been there, so
Speaker 1: we're laughing at you. We're laughing at your pain. We're
Speaker 1: laughing at that pain. You know what it's like, You know,
Speaker 1: like Mom's when the baby sticks your things in the socket.
Speaker 1: You you ain't gonna do that, and you're laughing not
Speaker 1: that because mom has burned herself. So I've been burned.
Speaker 1: So that's why that's funny. So man, I would have
Speaker 1: I would have nights oh my god, it was like
Speaker 1: it would be but you but I just tells me
Speaker 1: the fact that you had that type of perseverance, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know you had some type of foundation. What was
Speaker 1: it like growing up? Somebody had to push you? Are
Speaker 1: you had? I had several funny people in my family.
Speaker 1: My mom was hilarious, but my mom was funny, laughing
Speaker 1: if you were laughing at her, if you my mom
Speaker 1: was funny if I was laughing at her. Not not
Speaker 1: that she said anything brillently funny. It's just that my
Speaker 1: mom was a big lady. She waved probably about three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, and she was a short lady, and she
Speaker 1: would just say things that to me were funny. Uh
Speaker 1: the funny. One of the funniest things my mom did.
Speaker 1: My mom and mom. When I started be doing comedy,
Speaker 1: I put my mom in my acting. It just came
Speaker 1: to the point where when I would come home, my
Speaker 1: mom and my dad like, all he come, don't don't
Speaker 1: nobody moved, because if you see something, he's gonna make
Speaker 1: a joke about he gonna put you on the radio.
Speaker 1: So they were they were funny. But the funniest thing
Speaker 1: I bought a hat a pi a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars for the straw hat. This is you as a child, right,
Speaker 1: I was the comedian at the time. I was doing
Speaker 1: the set up. So I go see my mom. I
Speaker 1: had my on my new hat and set my hat down.
Speaker 1: I get ready to go. I can't look. I can't
Speaker 1: find my hat. I don't know where my hat is.
Speaker 1: Where's my hat? My hat? My hat? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: my hat. And my mom says, well, I'll get up
Speaker 1: and help you look for it. I'm not okay, no problem.
Speaker 1: So she gets up. You see where this is going? Right?
Speaker 1: And the hat? So she's looking around and the hat
Speaker 1: is stuck to my mom's ass. So I started laughing.
Speaker 1: She said, you been not see that in the radio. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put that right on the radio. That's going.
Speaker 1: That's going directly. Because my family had to understand that
Speaker 1: if you could take money from these jokes, you could
Speaker 1: be the joke. The joke helps us. That's where it
Speaker 1: comes from. It's like, I'm inspired by y'all do something
Speaker 1: stupid so I can take to the radio. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: some money and everybody gonna be So what was your
Speaker 1: mom like? Oh my god, as I have two moms
Speaker 1: about writing, I thinking about writing a book or two moms.
Speaker 1: It was an appreciative mom and the mean mom when
Speaker 1: I was young, and then the save mom that she
Speaker 1: got saved, she got religion, and I love I love
Speaker 1: both of them, and I think both moms love me.
Speaker 1: And the beginning, she was just me, just you know me,
Speaker 1: like you know, you're a comic, so you you probably
Speaker 1: no no my mother when I was me or here's
Speaker 1: the thing, and I think, and I know why when
Speaker 1: I grew up, when I grew up and became an
Speaker 1: older man, my mother had two kids at the age
Speaker 1: of sixteen years old, sixteen or seventeen, maybe fifteen. When
Speaker 1: she had my sister, she was probably fifteen, and my
Speaker 1: grandmother said, well, you know what, since you're trying to
Speaker 1: finish school, I'll take the baby and raise that baby. Well,
Speaker 1: then my mother gets pregnant again with me, you know,
Speaker 1: and now my grandmother said, well, I'm not taking care
Speaker 1: of any more babies. You're on your own now. And
Speaker 1: I think my mom resented the fact that, Okay, I
Speaker 1: gotta do this by myself. Here's this kid, my mom
Speaker 1: got the other one, my mother has the other one.
Speaker 1: Now I got the younger baby. I really got to
Speaker 1: do this. And so whatever resentment that she had from
Speaker 1: being in a situation that she put herself in, she
Speaker 1: took it out on me. My mother wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: school educated, but she had eight knowledge of awareness in
Speaker 1: terms of I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna believe
Speaker 1: in myself. My mother pleaded house. She cleaned the University
Speaker 1: of South Carolina. The most inspirational thing was my mother
Speaker 1: cleaning the University of South Carolina. And my sister graduated
Speaker 1: from there. That's like, that's some amazing ship. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: My sister graduated from the same place my mom cleaned up.
Speaker 1: So when my mom became the save mom, the same
Speaker 1: mom didn't remember the stuff the bad mom did. She
Speaker 1: don't remember none of When you say bad mom, like
Speaker 1: are you talking about you got popped for doing something you?
Speaker 1: I got beat? I got her bad. What made her
Speaker 1: or not so good? Because I was the only child,
Speaker 1: you know, I was the only child. Was just me
Speaker 1: and her, and there were times when you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't doing good or just for no reason. It was
Speaker 1: that her, her and my dad weren't together. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, and your daddy is not taking care of you,
Speaker 1: and your daddy is not you know. So it's just
Speaker 1: some resentment that people have and people who who are
Speaker 1: never in that predicament where it's just one parent. You
Speaker 1: can have one loving parent, but you can have one
Speaker 1: parent who's not so loving. Right. I was just thinking
Speaker 1: for myself, like, I don't I don't have that direct experience,
Speaker 1: Like my dad died when I was three months, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's like to have that father figure.
Speaker 1: And for my mom, that was the love of her life.
Speaker 1: So I just came from having a single parent. So
Speaker 1: I don't know when you say, like, oh, just not nice,
Speaker 1: go to your room. I'm not talking to you, but
Speaker 1: you're seeing that turn out all right? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I did to know, right, because that was that
Speaker 1: was the basis of comedy, was to talk about stuff
Speaker 1: that I went through. I got beatings, I got put unpunishment,
Speaker 1: you know. When I was young, I went to bed,
Speaker 1: uh you know, I got bad grades, you know, And
Speaker 1: I kind of took some of those things that happened
Speaker 1: and maybe turned it into the routine where I could
Speaker 1: talk about it. There were several people in my life,
Speaker 1: my aunt. My aunt was one of the funniest people.
Speaker 1: She read the newspaper. And when I say read the newspaper,
Speaker 1: because like I said, there was no news outlets back then,
Speaker 1: other than you've got the paper. She read the paper
Speaker 1: from front to back every day, front the back, very
Speaker 1: smart and she only opened her out when she got drunk.
Speaker 1: She got drunk. It was she was. She was classic.
Speaker 1: My aunt Emily was the first one to give me
Speaker 1: a beer and a cigarette together. What beer and don't take?
Speaker 1: And what was so unique about her when she got
Speaker 1: drunk Her tongue like heavy and that, and she would
Speaker 1: deny being drunk. You be like animally you drunk like
Speaker 1: you're drunk like and what was so unique about it?
Speaker 1: She would go in on my grandmama and nobody nobody
Speaker 1: said anything about big Mama, but my aunt Emily would
Speaker 1: light into her ass man, she ain't the big Mama.
Speaker 1: So um, there was your aunt Emily and your mom.
Speaker 1: Good good for sisters? Like are were they good friends?
Speaker 1: With twins? Not identical twins? One like one dog, one
Speaker 1: was like one dog. They were one the same day?
Speaker 1: How you know, when you think about it, I don't
Speaker 1: think they were twins because they didn't look nothing in
Speaker 1: like that. Think about just because they were light skin
Speaker 1: of dogs. Scared Come on now, no, I'm just stand
Speaker 1: it's it's but you know, when you're young, sometimes the
Speaker 1: highlight don't go out to you get true. And that
Speaker 1: part because you know, black folks keeps some secrets. Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there was Oh they was doing it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's why he was over there every day. Oh she
Speaker 1: was cooking, fucker. Okay, all right, it was fun again,
Speaker 1: I'll right, all right, and you know, and that's just
Speaker 1: where it is. And I had an uncle who was gay,
Speaker 1: who lived with another man. I didn't The light didn't
Speaker 1: go off till I got my was like, oh that's
Speaker 1: his friend. They always hanging around. Oh oh, okay, all right.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't judge him. I loved me with
Speaker 1: my uncle. But that's what happened. Sometimes in life, the
Speaker 1: light didn't go off until later on. In life, you
Speaker 1: figured things out, that's what you do. My grandmother played
Speaker 1: the numbers. Oh yeah, mama, your mom played number? When
Speaker 1: did you figure out there were numbers? I had to
Speaker 1: be grown. Okay, and let me tell you what, nothing
Speaker 1: but the lottery. She tell me she was gonna play
Speaker 1: the numbers. Okay, Well, my grandmother didn't tell us. She
Speaker 1: would send us to this lady's house with little pieces
Speaker 1: of paper that sometimes I would have fifty cents, then
Speaker 1: in a twenty cents or thirty cents, and it had
Speaker 1: a number on it. I always thought it was her
Speaker 1: paying somebody back, and he figured out was a number
Speaker 1: to let shipping the number right. Okay, so you you
Speaker 1: got older, you start to realize some things. But I
Speaker 1: thought it was something interesting because you said your mom
Speaker 1: had you are two kids by the time she was sixteen.
Speaker 1: So that may have said that she, you know, may
Speaker 1: have gotten around and have fun or just lived a little.
Speaker 1: So at what point did she change over and get
Speaker 1: all holier than thou art? And then out of that
Speaker 1: affection thirty five forty when she moved, when she when
Speaker 1: she separated from my dad, When she separated from my
Speaker 1: dad um and to get her own place, her whole
Speaker 1: attitude changed that I gotta really do this for myself.
Speaker 1: I remember my mom being depressed at one point, and
Speaker 1: then I just remember her being just the strongest person,
Speaker 1: not only the strongest person, my biggest supporter in terms
Speaker 1: of whatever I wanted to do. You know, when I
Speaker 1: started doing the Time Joiners Show, when I started sewing,
Speaker 1: I started, you know, I went and bought a saw machine,
Speaker 1: and I could at the end, I was a master
Speaker 1: Taylor and my mom was just you know, I could
Speaker 1: make stuff for her and she put it on sheep
Speaker 1: where I mean I was, I was good? I was,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a bad boy and I was.
Speaker 1: I didn't start out good. There were times when there
Speaker 1: were things I couldn't make, but I got better at it,
Speaker 1: and at the end it was I was accomplished Taylor.
Speaker 1: When I was a tailor, I was making more money
Speaker 1: than my sister, who had a nursing degree. So you
Speaker 1: were Taylor and as well as on the radio at
Speaker 1: the same time. I didn't do the radio until later
Speaker 1: later in life, but I was doing Taylor at first.
Speaker 1: When I was doing I was doing Taylor and stand
Speaker 1: up at the same time. And then how did you
Speaker 1: get in contact with Tom Joyner? How did that work out? Oh?
Speaker 1: I did um Deaf Jam. My manager called me up
Speaker 1: and said they got this new show coming out called
Speaker 1: Deaf Jam and the Pain. I think at that time
Speaker 1: it was she's gonna be there in three days, didn't
Speaker 1: give your own hotel room, They're gonna fly you up.
Speaker 1: And the fifth it all was a day for per
Speaker 1: d M And she said, I don't think you should
Speaker 1: do it. And I said, that's a lot of money
Speaker 1: to turn down. Beverly. She Beverly muses her name. You know,
Speaker 1: we she she was really instrumental in helping me get
Speaker 1: my name out there. But at that point we just
Speaker 1: had a disagreement on that. I said, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: do it. I'm gonna do it, you know, and it changed,
Speaker 1: It changed my life. I did not know. If you
Speaker 1: think about death Jam, there are very few people whose
Speaker 1: name you can remember their routine. I'm one of them.
Speaker 1: I'm one of them, and it happened by mistake, but
Speaker 1: I'm one of them. If you talk about death Jam
Speaker 1: twenty five, twenty five years ago, they don't even know
Speaker 1: my name, but they know watch come on, they know me,
Speaker 1: shake any kids. They know that they only spraying the heirs,
Speaker 1: but they know that they know you. They know that.
Speaker 1: So I go to the rehearsal, and that the rehearsal,
Speaker 1: you had to do your first joke and your last
Speaker 1: joke so the CAMA would know when to pull out.
Speaker 1: You did a little routine. I'm gonna open with this
Speaker 1: joke and I'm gonna close with this show. One of
Speaker 1: the jokes that was gonna open witness and um about people.
Speaker 1: It's it's a common joke now, But I did it
Speaker 1: first on Death Jam, so I know people, Oh, I
Speaker 1: heard that joke before. You probably have joke about people laughing.
Speaker 1: Some of you have to see people with no teeth laugh.
Speaker 1: They laughed like this, they coming in my or they go.
Speaker 1: That was the joke I was gonna do. Now. When
Speaker 1: I did it on Death Jam, when I was gonna
Speaker 1: go to nobody had seen it. So we did it
Speaker 1: at rehearsal. Not at rehearsal. All the comedians are sitting
Speaker 1: at rehearsal, so everybody hears each other's jokes. Well, they gotta,
Speaker 1: you know, they do them all one time. First show,
Speaker 1: glass Jow, Next, first joke, glass Jow. Next, he's gonna
Speaker 1: be on the show one to three. You can go
Speaker 1: back to the room. So anyway, the night of the show,
Speaker 1: the m C did my joke. He did my he
Speaker 1: did my joke. I'm not gonna say who the MC was.
Speaker 1: What did you confront him? No, I don't know my
Speaker 1: any know what's mean as a comedian, you don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need that. I don't need that. What I
Speaker 1: needed to do was get in my head on what's
Speaker 1: coming up. So I found out they had a basement.
Speaker 1: And know what I'm saying, I gotta go down in
Speaker 1: the basement. I can't get mad. I can't go out mad.
Speaker 1: If I go, nobody knows me. They never seen me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: all right, that's all you got to that one joke,
Speaker 1: go down to the basement, and said Lord, I prayed,
Speaker 1: I remember the prayer, said Lord, please don't let me
Speaker 1: go out there. Man do I can't go out there. Man,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. Man, I gotta stay in mind.
Speaker 1: I gotta this before Woosa, I was loose so and
Speaker 1: dynam said, I put. I had this other joke that
Speaker 1: I put in, which was to watch out there, and uh,
Speaker 1: I said, I'll do that because the mouth joke got
Speaker 1: a big laugh. I said, I put the watch out
Speaker 1: there now, Joe, Now to watch out there now. Joe
Speaker 1: came from when I went to a hockey game with
Speaker 1: a white friend of man named Dave Horrorwich, who is
Speaker 1: a producer for game shows. He takes me to a
Speaker 1: hockey game. As we're going to the hockey game, a
Speaker 1: black man walks past me. I said, how you doing this? Straight?
Speaker 1: He said, watch out Dad in lone sella, how are
Speaker 1: you doing? And I said, you see that, that's how
Speaker 1: black guys tell, We talked, we speak different. I took
Speaker 1: that and made it a routine like younger guys speak
Speaker 1: like this Sun it's going on, so older guys they
Speaker 1: get physical. Watch out there, they moved, they got more
Speaker 1: move And I put that in if you watch that,
Speaker 1: if you watch my death Jim, the room exploded, I
Speaker 1: mean the room just it just killed. It blew up
Speaker 1: so much that I didn't even I wasn't aware Heavy
Speaker 1: D was there, Wesley Sniper, because this was the only
Speaker 1: outlet for comedy in the room. It just blew up.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure it was pretty a pretty big grind
Speaker 1: for black comics, right, it was huge. Every major comic
Speaker 1: that's a major comic Deny pretty much, i'd say of
Speaker 1: him on defth gent really. With that being said, so
Speaker 1: when did you meet um Mr Harvey? I mean Mr
Speaker 1: Harvey were working in cost I just said, when did
Speaker 1: you meets I mean Steve and Lafayette, Louisiana. We're working
Speaker 1: at a comedy club and they said, I'm working with
Speaker 1: this guy named Steve Harvey. You you would always something
Speaker 1: that most places wouldn't put two black comics on the show.
Speaker 1: And this is an eighties, nineties, eighties, eighty nine, early nineties,
Speaker 1: they didn't put two black comments in the shop. But
Speaker 1: this particular show, they put me and Steve on the
Speaker 1: same show. I'm the headliner, and Steve's is opening um
Speaker 1: for me. He's in the middle at. He's not opening,
Speaker 1: he's the middle at. So Steve is the middle AT.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting in my room and I hit
Speaker 1: his knock, pin it done, and it's Steve. He said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: they told me we roomed together. Like, look, dude, I
Speaker 1: do not travel on the road to room with anybody.
Speaker 1: I left an apartment. Why am I gonna go on
Speaker 1: the room and share a room with somebody that's I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that. So you go back and telling the
Speaker 1: club woman he needs to get your room. So he
Speaker 1: goes back. He said they're not getting room and said, okay,
Speaker 1: parting here. Tell what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the money for the room because we ain't staying
Speaker 1: in the same I got almost sowing stuff out them,
Speaker 1: making the chicks and stuff, you know. So he came
Speaker 1: back again and then you gotta hie, I don't like, dude,
Speaker 1: do you have anything? That night we did the show
Speaker 1: and we've been friends him since every since, just like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: but no, there was something in the middle. It would
Speaker 1: had to be something. Did you find out was he
Speaker 1: green behind the ears at that point where you what
Speaker 1: would your teaching know? You know he he you know,
Speaker 1: he his his his like Rose, you know he was
Speaker 1: hold he started hosting, uh, the Apollo. I think The
Speaker 1: Apollo was a big break fast y'all. But somehow y'all
Speaker 1: stayed together. And I'm wondering, what was that common thread
Speaker 1: that made sure all these years, what you're talking about
Speaker 1: with thirty forty plus years, it wasn't that many black people.
Speaker 1: First of all, we was we was too hoes again,
Speaker 1: and let's talk. He's not a He's not a hole anymore.
Speaker 1: He's a reformed hole. Loving the death. He settled down.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hole. I still have a hotel duen disease.
Speaker 1: And so we would cope to each other, you know.
Speaker 1: Any weird it was weird that the way we communicated,
Speaker 1: because he would call me and said, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: in such and such and okay, man, I see I'm
Speaker 1: coming that way, and we just hook up and stay friends,
Speaker 1: you know, and we would time to time get busted in.
Speaker 1: The code was may day. Whenever with somebody said may day,
Speaker 1: that means you gotta may day. I'm gonna be at
Speaker 1: x y Z Hotel. You gotta call me YadA yah. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: she found my book, she found every damn everything. When
Speaker 1: the dog hanging there, man, And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: That's we stayed in touch and stay friends. And when
Speaker 1: he got when he got me and the boys, he
Speaker 1: got the show called me and the boys, we were
Speaker 1: he got When you auditioned the first star search, I
Speaker 1: was right there when you're auditioned for when you're auditioned
Speaker 1: for the Apollo, I was. I was sitting there watching him.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're gonna get it. So I was never.
Speaker 1: I was never jealous of his star rising. It just
Speaker 1: that's my buddy, that's my friend. You know. Um we
Speaker 1: stopped talking for a minute. I don't know why you're
Speaker 1: not come on now. I do not know why don't
Speaker 1: have a conversation or not. No, we didn't have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Somebo you and me are we gonna keep it real
Speaker 1: ands like what happened. I don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: it because I'll tell you why, because I don't think
Speaker 1: he could. I don't think he had the power he
Speaker 1: has now to deal with it. So he dealt with
Speaker 1: it differently. That's respect, Yeah, and that's what you call grace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the power that he has. Not it would not go
Speaker 1: what what? Who said? Who you did? What do jay ship?
Speaker 1: You know? That would be now and then when he
Speaker 1: was young, his star wars rising, and I just looked
Speaker 1: at it. You know, he dealt with it. We all
Speaker 1: do that. You know, you got to go back to
Speaker 1: somebody going, you know, I'm sorry for the way I
Speaker 1: dealt with that. I wish I had and when I was,
Speaker 1: when I'm my, when my son was, when my baby
Speaker 1: mama's son was carrying her, I've stepped away from the girl.
Speaker 1: I don't want nothing around her because if I'm not
Speaker 1: around her, she ain't pregnant. So this is this is
Speaker 1: the knowledge I had back then, and I just felt
Speaker 1: that's that's what he did then, and I'm still I'm
Speaker 1: still love to dude. He gave me. He stepped up
Speaker 1: to the back for me when he didn't me and
Speaker 1: the boys. He didn't have to do that. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to do that. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 1: That show. It was so much fun. It was just
Speaker 1: you know, me and I was I had a writing partner,
Speaker 1: Rashan McDonald. Sean McDonald was my writing partner, so we
Speaker 1: were the only black. I remember sitting in the room
Speaker 1: where Steve is talking to the big people and he says,
Speaker 1: we got the show for you. We're ready to start production, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and Steve said, um, okay, cool. He said, but y'all
Speaker 1: got to hire these two dudes right here. I ain't
Speaker 1: going nowhere unless you hire both of these dudes as
Speaker 1: writers on the show. And you know, that was something
Speaker 1: when I talked to Steve, we had interviewed him for
Speaker 1: a station, and you know, just looking at the whole
Speaker 1: morning show crewe none of y'all are new, and you
Speaker 1: are testifying to the fact of him bringing you along
Speaker 1: echo the same sentiments that he's loyal, he's going to
Speaker 1: look out And I think that's just one of the
Speaker 1: things that when you think about coming up an industry
Speaker 1: finding mentors. You know, he ain't a huggy type. How
Speaker 1: you doing type guys like, if you get sick, you
Speaker 1: might not hear from him at all. But if something
Speaker 1: happened to here be broke up, you know, he ain't
Speaker 1: the guy to call and check on you. You know,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna that's just not him. You know, he
Speaker 1: ain't that he ain't got his tolerance from the man.
Speaker 1: You know. You might know. But I'm where I'm at
Speaker 1: because of him two things. Because I'm talented and because
Speaker 1: of him saying well, and he was trying to get
Speaker 1: me to come over to his show for the longest.
Speaker 1: But I think it's it wouldn't it be safe to
Speaker 1: say that he wouldn't be where he is unless you
Speaker 1: came along. That's what I call a rare relationship. Y'all
Speaker 1: pouring each other. And when I sit there and I
Speaker 1: talked to his son, and he says that you were
Speaker 1: part of the inspiration that built his career. Let's stop.
Speaker 1: We came play small case, play small jay. You even
Speaker 1: if you tried your history, your credit screamed so loud.
Speaker 1: And you know, you talked about a couple of things
Speaker 1: right now, And I said, you, you know, when I
Speaker 1: was talking to you that the day and we're talking
Speaker 1: about just getting people on the show and interviewing you
Speaker 1: echoes so much that it touched my soul and it
Speaker 1: kind of got me a little emotional because you spoke
Speaker 1: life into me and you said, don go after it.
Speaker 1: There's times that I didn't take the chance and I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, and sometimes in this business it can
Speaker 1: get Sometimes it's hard, especially when you're young. Are you
Speaker 1: trying to come up? It's hard. But I tell you
Speaker 1: the hardest part about it is that we talk ourselves
Speaker 1: out of stuff that's like right there, Why why is
Speaker 1: that we ask for greater? And then we don't do
Speaker 1: it because we don't see what other people sometimes seeing us.
Speaker 1: We were looking at mirror, like you can tell your
Speaker 1: best friend girl, man, damn him, you don't need him,
Speaker 1: You're gonna sign another man. But you can't do that
Speaker 1: sometimes when it comes to your career or a decision,
Speaker 1: you just sometimes we can't do that to ourselves. We
Speaker 1: can't inspire own self. We can look at somebody else
Speaker 1: situation up x y z x y z z q
Speaker 1: foom go try that. That don't work, Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: more advice for you. We look at our seven though, well,
Speaker 1: you ain't never done that for it. Do it well.
Speaker 1: It's just so dope when you do come across people,
Speaker 1: because when you said that, that was something that my
Speaker 1: mother would have said, don't just do it. And all
Speaker 1: the times that you you came and you've inspired and
Speaker 1: you're like, so what you got going on? Dar? You're
Speaker 1: doing this? I just want to say I see you
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you because of you. When I told
Speaker 1: you that I'm getting and I said, did you do it? Well, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't do it. Come on honest, talking to you
Speaker 1: on my podcast done. I got my weekend segment done.
Speaker 1: But no. Yeah. Sometimes I think it's interesting because sometimes
Speaker 1: people look at fear and it's like, oh, there's real.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong. Let me just say that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you would not believe. You would not believe how nervous
Speaker 1: I am before I go on stage. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? You? That's your whole career on being on
Speaker 1: stage and so scared before I as Steve, as anybody,
Speaker 1: as Tommy. It's unbelievable. Like what do you say? I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is? So wait are you saying that? You? Okay?
Speaker 1: So you just get over it? I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you get over the minute I walk around, it goes away.
Speaker 1: But before it's like, oh lord, have you ever had
Speaker 1: it so intense that you did not go on stage? No,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go. You've you've never not shown up. No, No,
Speaker 1: there are things that, like I said, there were things
Speaker 1: that will offered to me that I didn't take on
Speaker 1: the job to me that I said, Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to look stupid. And I always threw things in
Speaker 1: the way of stuff. I threw things in a way
Speaker 1: of something I couldn't do that would decide whether or
Speaker 1: not I could take on something somebody was offering me,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of people do sometimes the ill. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not ready for that, so I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: But it's so interesting how you were just saying in general,
Speaker 1: how even the times that you've been so scared of
Speaker 1: not doing it and just go to fight, But you
Speaker 1: said it's real. But how was s fear real? False
Speaker 1: evidence of beearing real? Come on? Ju? I felt like
Speaker 1: I always used like fear like an ammunition to to
Speaker 1: to kind of spearhead me further. But I look it
Speaker 1: now like I've been able to like one being here
Speaker 1: talking to you, to just working on the show and
Speaker 1: getting the podcast, doing the voiceovers, you know, writing sketches
Speaker 1: with my team's and filming that. And I've been so uncomfortable, Jay,
Speaker 1: It's like so uncomfortable. There are times that I just cried,
Speaker 1: and not because I didn't think I could do it.
Speaker 1: It's just that I don't know how to do or
Speaker 1: I don't know what the first step. But you know
Speaker 1: what you said to me, And I've been telling each
Speaker 1: person you just said, Dawn, you ain't gonna never have
Speaker 1: your ducks in the order if you think about it,
Speaker 1: ducks don't even walk in order to go back and
Speaker 1: get a duck, like when you go you know, so't
Speaker 1: the role, but you never It's like we spend so
Speaker 1: much time preparing to do something that time goes by
Speaker 1: and we don't do it because you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people man as soon as as soon as I man,
Speaker 1: as soon as this I'm doing it, as soon as
Speaker 1: just right here happens, as soon these kids back the wait, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and you spend a whole lot of time
Speaker 1: preparing to do something when you can start the Internet
Speaker 1: has changed the jame completely completely. And if you're not
Speaker 1: promoting yourself and talking about yourself, and don't don't think, well,
Speaker 1: they got a bigger audience, and you ain't up against that.
Speaker 1: You're not up against I listened to this talk radio show.
Speaker 1: We're not up against the person doing that. You know
Speaker 1: what we're up against? Well, up against Trump? Well up
Speaker 1: against the COVID web, against the virus web begins shootings.
Speaker 1: That's what people's focus is. The focuses on that, we're
Speaker 1: up against You gotta stay home unemployment, so you gotta
Speaker 1: break You ain't up against somebody got more listeners than you.
Speaker 1: You're not up against that because people ain't even thinking
Speaker 1: about that, or end up beating shot out another black man.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Trump said something stupid. That's where the
Speaker 1: focus is. So if you can break through that, you
Speaker 1: really don't have no competition. Because you're breaking through the
Speaker 1: b s. You don't worry about Oh man, they got
Speaker 1: six thousand listeners. I ain't got but seven. You start
Speaker 1: where you are, take noise, You promote yourself. You're going
Speaker 1: on any show you can get you promoted, and you're
Speaker 1: doing the promotion that calls to action. Don't just say
Speaker 1: I have a podcast. Registered to see my podcast. Don't
Speaker 1: just say I have a podcast. You know, give me
Speaker 1: an email when I do my podcast, I'll send you
Speaker 1: a note. Don't just put up a picture you eating chicken.
Speaker 1: Put a little thing at the end by my house.
Speaker 1: I don't post nothing online that I don't talk about myself.
Speaker 1: I know because I see you post official they'd be
Speaker 1: like ba. I'm like, what I've got to do with it?
Speaker 1: Because I gave you entertainment, but I want something from you. Hello,
Speaker 1: it's a give and receive exchange. Yeah, it's a fair exchange.
Speaker 1: I gave you you laugh, and you went to my
Speaker 1: website or you went to my police page and you
Speaker 1: look at something funny. Now you ain't got to buy
Speaker 1: my hunt some and maybe you don't buy you know,
Speaker 1: ja got what? Yeah? What? How did the mobile dot
Speaker 1: com boom? That's it? Uh? You know what else I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about two? You know, you talked about comedy and
Speaker 1: how to hit you and I'm just listening to you now,
Speaker 1: just laughing. It's just it's so invigorating. Um what you
Speaker 1: say that it was your joy because you recently just
Speaker 1: battled cancer and fought it. Yeah, wasn't the laughter? Wasn't
Speaker 1: the comedy? Did you do it? Did you put it
Speaker 1: down for the comedy in order to be a true comedian.
Speaker 1: This is just my opinion. I should do this own stage.
Speaker 1: Everything is funny, not right away, but after a while
Speaker 1: you think of the worst thing you've ever been through.
Speaker 1: You like you, like you, and you cut you crime,
Speaker 1: thinking like I can't lead with with my sister. It
Speaker 1: was with my sister, you just do it like this.
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden you get to the point
Speaker 1: with your girlfriend with you and she said, girl, you
Speaker 1: remember that tell you love sho my fun over there?
Speaker 1: Oh my? Oh no, no, I don't want to hear. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I gotta show you what you did. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear. I want till it becomes funny. That was
Speaker 1: the attitude with me with cancer. It wasn't funny right away,
Speaker 1: but later on. I mean, like, look, I'm walking around,
Speaker 1: I'm holding all this blue and stuff like this, and
Speaker 1: people died from it. A lot of people died and
Speaker 1: they don't make it, and I just didn't. With cancer.
Speaker 1: Now here comes this ship covid W what what give
Speaker 1: me a break? Lord? What I do? So that's just
Speaker 1: the way you have to do. When my mama died,
Speaker 1: where did your mom died from um She had high
Speaker 1: blood pressure and heart and heart trouble, and when she
Speaker 1: passed away, it was like inside was ripped out of me.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't get I couldn't wait to get back
Speaker 1: on the radio. Really, you know, I couldn't wait to
Speaker 1: get back to work. But I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was a distraction. I don't know, Like when my mom died, well,
Speaker 1: I was about, well, you didn't have comedy, you're in
Speaker 1: a comedian. No, I wasn't a comedian, But I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about what I felt. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: I grieved right away because I think as I look
Speaker 1: at the grieving process was probably like years down the line,
Speaker 1: and it's just subtle things that it hits you that
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh snaps. Yeah. For me, it was like
Speaker 1: every day when I would go do the Tom Jonas show,
Speaker 1: I would leave the house at two thirty. The show
Speaker 1: went on at three in the morning because we we
Speaker 1: take you know, Coaches Coast with me. I live in
Speaker 1: l A. It's six o'clock in the morning in Georgia,
Speaker 1: so we gotta start live. So I would call my mama.
Speaker 1: The three clock in the morning is is is six o'clock,
Speaker 1: three o'clock. Yeah, yes, East Coast. I called her right
Speaker 1: before I called her at two thirty before we went on.
Speaker 1: And it's so weird. And she said get him. Every
Speaker 1: time say mom, get me to do the show, and
Speaker 1: she would say, get him. And so for me, that
Speaker 1: was the one thing that was missing that when stuff
Speaker 1: started to happen good, you can't can't, you can't share it.
Speaker 1: And that's what I try to tell people. People think
Speaker 1: you just said all time, No, when something amazing, you
Speaker 1: want to call your mama. And it's like, dang, like
Speaker 1: in the in the in the instances of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: he was calling his mama. Let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I really realized it. When I remember
Speaker 1: I had what was living in New York at the time,
Speaker 1: and my mother she was in so much pain and
Speaker 1: she was her third bout with the cancer staged for
Speaker 1: a breast cancer, and you know, and that's what reminded
Speaker 1: me because when I saw your fight and how you
Speaker 1: were pushing, and I was like, that's who my mom was.
Speaker 1: But I got I think she got to a point
Speaker 1: where she had broke when you just get tired. So
Speaker 1: when you mentioned George Floyd. I remember her on the bed.
Speaker 1: They were pouring like pumping morphine into it, like every
Speaker 1: ten minutes or so because the pain was uncontrollable, and
Speaker 1: she said, I just want my mama. So when I
Speaker 1: saw that, man said it, I said, that was real,
Speaker 1: because nobody gonna love you like your mama, Like your
Speaker 1: mama brings you in this earth. And that mother could
Speaker 1: be Let's say, if they're not even biological, whoever mothered you,
Speaker 1: they love on you so much and gotta give you away.
Speaker 1: My mom. I could look at my mom and see
Speaker 1: that where she's in such pain, and anyone who's had
Speaker 1: a loved one quote unquote go from this healthy person
Speaker 1: to where they wither away, come and you know they're
Speaker 1: gonna die. You have a selfish wish, and the wish
Speaker 1: is very simple. Lord, even let him get better or
Speaker 1: take them home. I don't want her to continue to
Speaker 1: suffer like this anymore. Either heal her or take her.
Speaker 1: That was what I said that in my mind. Didn't
Speaker 1: said to my sister. And she passed away. We were
Speaker 1: standing right there, but you know she had switched to
Speaker 1: good mom. Men that time she passed. She is good
Speaker 1: and she was my biggest fan. She would I would
Speaker 1: call him but for my shows, and she said, give them.
Speaker 1: And it's so weird that the next week or two
Speaker 1: weeks after my mom passed, I go somewhere to do
Speaker 1: a show, right, I go somewhere Todd and the guy
Speaker 1: standing on the side of the stage and s you
Speaker 1: can hear people introducing me, and he said, all right,
Speaker 1: young man, get them. That was your MoMA. Was my mom.
Speaker 1: She'll speak to me like a numbers and uh, I
Speaker 1: can't think of the name, but you know that song.
Speaker 1: If you don't know me by now, you'll never ever
Speaker 1: know me. That's when she comes. It was so interesting,
Speaker 1: Like before I got this job, I was on a bike.
Speaker 1: I had total my car. Probably a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I was hustling game shows. So I just I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people when I go to what do you
Speaker 1: mean every game show I go to, they pick me.
Speaker 1: I get on there more than luckily I win some money.
Speaker 1: And yeah, how many game shows? Had you been on?
Speaker 1: Talk shows? On game show? I've been on the Rail,
Speaker 1: I've been on Let's Make a Deal. I've been on
Speaker 1: t d J Show. I've been on UM DR Phil,
Speaker 1: I been on the cooking show that you and I was.
Speaker 1: They had to cut out on me. That was the
Speaker 1: best shot I've ever had. I was on Oprah's Queen
Speaker 1: Sugar Show, so several yeah, yeah, So I just look
Speaker 1: at that as guy was. But you know, even starting
Speaker 1: this job day, I just got this job. First of all,
Speaker 1: just being a Midwest girl from Detroit, coming from New York,
Speaker 1: and I had been working in radio since probably high school, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god. And I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I couldn't call my mother. But then the thing that
Speaker 1: was so traumatic it was the first week. The first
Speaker 1: week I was there, I was walking around. I kept
Speaker 1: feeling this pinch in my leg and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. My friends like, Dawn, you need to
Speaker 1: go get that checked out. Nobody just has like a
Speaker 1: pinch or whatever in their leg. Go to the doctor
Speaker 1: on the first week, find out that I have a
Speaker 1: blood clot in my leg. What First, can't even tell
Speaker 1: my mother about the situation. Secondly, I'm at a point
Speaker 1: where I'm gonna walking target. Mind you, my father died
Speaker 1: of a blood clot that traveled to his lungs. So
Speaker 1: having that whole instance, and when you talk about strength
Speaker 1: and how you gotta pull them on there because I
Speaker 1: look at times and I'm like, it's just me. And
Speaker 1: so when you whisper those words of encouragement, when I
Speaker 1: see your battle and what you went through, like even
Speaker 1: yourself as a reminder, like if you're like how you're saying,
Speaker 1: like Dawn, don't wait, or the fact that you sit
Speaker 1: there and you take time and you talk what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, you say, let's keep it real. Didn't get
Speaker 1: it real about what I said, don't wait, you said,
Speaker 1: you said to me, okay, let's keep it. I was
Speaker 1: talking about interviewing for fog as you said, don did
Speaker 1: you ever think about asking Steve if you want to
Speaker 1: do it? I said, well, I hadn't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, let me on my whole you know,
Speaker 1: my whole spield, because you know you said going the
Speaker 1: ducks ain't gonna never be in order? And you know,
Speaker 1: how did anybody you you known him like the longest
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you would feed me to
Speaker 1: the lions. No, I wouldn't need you that. Now he
Speaker 1: does a very possibility that he might say no, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't. What would be the greatest, what would be
Speaker 1: the worst thing that would happen. I didn't even asked you.
Speaker 1: He was right there and I didn't say nothing. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask him. I will. But I was sitting here
Speaker 1: thinking it's on the target. But the reason why even
Speaker 1: like you is because we have a relationship, like we
Speaker 1: talk and I don't this whole vitamin D. It's about
Speaker 1: breaking barriers. It's about being inspired, getting a dose and
Speaker 1: motivation and understanding stories. M I hope that he sees
Speaker 1: the work that I do found and say, but not
Speaker 1: even that. But I'm saying that if he comes around,
Speaker 1: then it will come around, Okay, focusing on the doing
Speaker 1: thing you don't want to put. He may say yeah, Nate,
Speaker 1: and then you want to get You just want to
Speaker 1: ask him. That's all you want you If he says yeah,
Speaker 1: or if he says Nate, that means every person that's
Speaker 1: important that's on that show. You asked them all that
Speaker 1: you're gonna get some of them. Some you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: get some. I'm gonna give you the running around, but
Speaker 1: you can say when you get down the road and
Speaker 1: you do something. I was running, why would they I
Speaker 1: don't know. Did you ask yeah? I asked him, well,
Speaker 1: which is a better story. Did you ask him? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't say nothing to him. I was, why didn't
Speaker 1: you ask shoot your shock? As you said you had
Speaker 1: an experience? Where what'd you say Robin Harris? You said,
Speaker 1: because I never spoke to him. I was I would
Speaker 1: go to the working with him or you. Well, I
Speaker 1: was an up and coming comic. He was big, quote
Speaker 1: unquote man of l A at the Comedy Act Theater,
Speaker 1: so that was considered the black comedy club. Now, mind you,
Speaker 1: I was considered a comedic who played only white clubs
Speaker 1: because back in the day there weren't no black comedy clubs.
Speaker 1: So predominantly our audience was was white, which for me
Speaker 1: was great. Women know that too. But it taught me
Speaker 1: how to work both audiences. It was just it just
Speaker 1: blew my mind. I could work. I had to learn
Speaker 1: to work black audiences, but I could work white audience.
Speaker 1: I had them in my palm of my hands. So
Speaker 1: when I came to l A, it was an all
Speaker 1: black comedy club. I've never been in the all black
Speaker 1: comedy because I've never seen an all black audience. Never
Speaker 1: make you nervous, Nell, I'm always nervous. So and I
Speaker 1: didn't do things I do added onto that, so I
Speaker 1: how to do that. So when I became a writer
Speaker 1: on radio on TV shows, I mastered it. I knew
Speaker 1: how to make both man because white comics that never
Speaker 1: have to go on in front of all black audience,
Speaker 1: and they are black comics who never get to see
Speaker 1: an all white audience. So we have two different worlds
Speaker 1: that you might get a sprinkle, but you never get
Speaker 1: an all white audience. So what all shows have you
Speaker 1: written for? You? Said ar Ceneo. Me and the Boy,
Speaker 1: Robert Townsend, UM sin Bad, Steve Harvey's, UM Steve Harvey
Speaker 1: had two shows? I did want three shows, four shows.
Speaker 1: UM Steve Harvey is a big time Steve Harvey show,
Speaker 1: UM Me and the Boys, and the TV talk show
Speaker 1: and Our Senio Home and all. I write stuff for
Speaker 1: the radio show God and and you've also been in
Speaker 1: movies and so forth. And my biggest claimed the famous
Speaker 1: UM How to Be a Player? And drum Line. What
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know about drum Line. There's
Speaker 1: another movie called Pay the Price. Pay the Price was
Speaker 1: it a movie that was out before drum Line. It
Speaker 1: is the exact same movie version. It's a black version
Speaker 1: written by it was written or I can't look it up.
Speaker 1: I can't think, but it was written by somebody. It's
Speaker 1: the same movie as Drumline. It's the exact same the
Speaker 1: only differences. It is a low budget of Drumline drum Line.
Speaker 1: Somehow they ended up going to court suing that they
Speaker 1: stole their idea and made Drumline. I'm in both movies, snap,
Speaker 1: so you already know the truth. Got jee? You look
Speaker 1: sound like a common denominati man. I'm in both movies
Speaker 1: to pay the price. It's just just fell by the wayside.
Speaker 1: Drum Laine was a major success. Who did you tell
Speaker 1: them about the movie? You were just the actor. They
Speaker 1: know about it. There was a lawsuit after Drumlin came
Speaker 1: out about this movie. Wow are you? Are you writing
Speaker 1: any more movies? Now? I just did Tyler paris um
Speaker 1: TV show um Um called Assistant Living. I'm used to
Speaker 1: do a bit on the Steve. I've done a bit
Speaker 1: on the Steve every show called the Chapman's. Because I
Speaker 1: was telling Carli, I said, where is it at? Please
Speaker 1: bring it back now that we're on zoom, Please. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I just told her last because I took you and
Speaker 1: I asked her to be on the podcast. I wrote
Speaker 1: The Chapman's and it's a fictitious family. One is a
Speaker 1: one run sport run's and Carla to know who her
Speaker 1: daddy is and r just whenever he speaks. They said,
Speaker 1: shut up, Junior. Tommy plays different characters. Tommy has a
Speaker 1: fictitious person that he can talk to, but you never
Speaker 1: hear him talk. Um. I killed myself because I do
Speaker 1: get so nervous reading. So I killed myself. And Shirley
Speaker 1: is a narrator. She moves the story in love. So
Speaker 1: when you write, what inspires you the premise, the story
Speaker 1: or the characters. It was just something. When Steve said
Speaker 1: he wanted to have, uh something like a sitcom went
Speaker 1: on and I said, well, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: great to have a sitcom. Firstfore we make it shut
Speaker 1: and we make it that instead of bringing in people,
Speaker 1: let the people on the show play the characters. That's ingenious.
Speaker 1: That's just genius stuff. Then, and so I came up
Speaker 1: with this concept of the Chapman's and uh, my assistant
Speaker 1: Mysup would type it alone from me and to make
Speaker 1: surely the narrator. It's just it's great, it's bright. I mean,
Speaker 1: she is the voice and she moved in there times
Speaker 1: when you could write it that. One of the best
Speaker 1: shows for me written, the best writing show on television
Speaker 1: is a show called Green Acres. Which network is that on?
Speaker 1: It's on It's on the old Challengel network. What's you
Speaker 1: love about it? Because the way they write on Green Acres,
Speaker 1: they not only wrote what was happening in this predicament here,
Speaker 1: they would right, they would write jokes about the credits
Speaker 1: still going across the screen, what they were yes for
Speaker 1: instant they would he would be talking to his wife
Speaker 1: and she would say, Oliver, why of the words still
Speaker 1: on the screen, and and you know, they would play
Speaker 1: it off like he didn't say it. He would break
Speaker 1: the wall if he said anything, if he just said, man,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get some new sighting. They had a
Speaker 1: character that came in said, I heard you talking about sighting.
Speaker 1: Now he wasn't in the seen. He just showed up,
Speaker 1: just said, and he just showed up selling stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't like he acted if he heard what they
Speaker 1: were saying and he'd showed up selling it. It's to
Speaker 1: me and it was all written by one guy. To me,
Speaker 1: it's one of the best written comedy shows ever that
Speaker 1: in the Savor and Son Samfon and Son was a
Speaker 1: beast what and it was so wrong? Real? Do you
Speaker 1: is there any show out that you felt like probably
Speaker 1: got inspired for that or maybe some I know what
Speaker 1: got in fact the show came from England. Well no,
Speaker 1: I'm saying after Sanfon his Son here, do you see
Speaker 1: anybody else that came up after that? Con had a
Speaker 1: show that that I thought was Martin and Martin Martin
Speaker 1: when Martin was antagonists in terms and what was so
Speaker 1: good about Martin the same thing with Safon his Son
Speaker 1: is when you do a sitcom, you gotta have look
Speaker 1: at look at all of you gotta have a character
Speaker 1: on there that every body either dislikes or that they
Speaker 1: just talk about everybody in the room. You gotta have
Speaker 1: that character that that character has to exist. And you
Speaker 1: look at your major sitcoms. All in the family, good Time,
Speaker 1: that's my mama, Um Monique. You know who who is
Speaker 1: the antagonist who gets to insult everybody? Monique gets sit
Speaker 1: insult to everybody. Mosha who gets in insult everybody. She
Speaker 1: brought in her friends that wouldn't come. You know, So
Speaker 1: when you have that when you do that for your writing,
Speaker 1: or either you have a quote unquote come in the
Speaker 1: door character on on the Seinfelder Seinfeld it was Kramer.
Speaker 1: When Kramer came in the door, it was just the
Speaker 1: lap because they did the show line. They got so
Speaker 1: much applause that they would have to wait. And if
Speaker 1: you look at the tapings now, they took it out.
Speaker 1: They took all They took it out because they ate
Speaker 1: up time on Room to two seven, Hey signed and
Speaker 1: when she came in the door, when Rollo came in
Speaker 1: the door, they the next door jump man. You gotta
Speaker 1: have some kind of character coming in to break up.
Speaker 1: Fox called all his friends z Lwanda when she came
Speaker 1: in out food and they were a yeah. So that
Speaker 1: was That's just writing. That was just great writing. So
Speaker 1: what um, I know you talked a lot of the
Speaker 1: male comedians. What about the female comedians back then? Like
Speaker 1: it was comedy hard harder for female Um Marcia Wallfield
Speaker 1: Adele given some more, um Um Wander Pykes, oh Man,
Speaker 1: Mom's Navely just Tunda And I've always said this, these
Speaker 1: females are way smarter than these negroes, way smarter. They're
Speaker 1: way smarter enough when they hit the stage way. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you give respect that they're way smarter than
Speaker 1: we are, because you know they don't have to go
Speaker 1: I'm scrolling up. Um, look, ain't they ain't going there?
Speaker 1: They'll go that route, but it's so clever that you
Speaker 1: don't see it coming. They're smarter than me because they's
Speaker 1: running them in anyway, I would not have comedy shows
Speaker 1: when I go on the road. I don't have a
Speaker 1: guy on my show. I will not put a man
Speaker 1: on my show. Give me some women. The room is
Speaker 1: full of women. You know you actually did you didn't
Speaker 1: you go on tour with your daughter. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: whole different story. And I didn't want my daughter to curse.
Speaker 1: I wanted her to be clean. You're a sailor, and
Speaker 1: you didn't want hard to curse. Yeah, I know, but
Speaker 1: I wanted it because when you don't curse, it makes
Speaker 1: you think more. I'm not saying comments to curse, are
Speaker 1: not thinking. You just throw out curse words. That's just
Speaker 1: my opinion. When you don't curse, you're thinking what can
Speaker 1: I put that? What can I say? So I said,
Speaker 1: in order to work with me, you can't curse. You
Speaker 1: go on stage, you do three minutes. I don't need
Speaker 1: you to do one that. But you know it's it
Speaker 1: takes hard work to do this. It's hard. What you
Speaker 1: mean A couple of times you gotta go to places
Speaker 1: that you don't want to go. You gotta, hey, you
Speaker 1: gotta go to I mean, it's not saying now you
Speaker 1: gotta go to campuses. You gotta go to jobs. I
Speaker 1: went to I went to all girls schools. I went
Speaker 1: to restaurants where they didn't have comedy. I stood on
Speaker 1: the floor. I stood on the DJ floor to do comedy.
Speaker 1: I um. I went to all white places. I went
Speaker 1: to biker clubs. I went to places where the three
Speaker 1: and four people comics don't want to do that. Now
Speaker 1: they want to be on the internet. So it's a
Speaker 1: whole don't get me wrong, it's a whole different game. Now.
Speaker 1: You can be successful by being on the internet. But
Speaker 1: once you come off the internet and there's a crowd,
Speaker 1: you gotta find a way to entertain that crowd. You
Speaker 1: gotta find a way. Well, I won't say the good
Speaker 1: thing now because everything is on a lot. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are doing like a live audience, so that
Speaker 1: steel that feel. But I feel like I would imagine
Speaker 1: that there's a different kind of energy when you got
Speaker 1: somebody in the when you got people like this different
Speaker 1: and you can steal the breath and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So are there is there any advice that
Speaker 1: you even tell with somebody about if the thing about comment? Yes,
Speaker 1: when if you think about now, I would tell people
Speaker 1: to post as much as you possibly can and build
Speaker 1: up an audience. You can do that on the internet.
Speaker 1: You don't have to quote unquote do the chipping circuit
Speaker 1: if that's the type of comedian you want to be.
Speaker 1: But if you want to master both, can find a
Speaker 1: way to master both by getting on that stage and
Speaker 1: as many diverse audiences and you possibly can, and you
Speaker 1: will be a better comedian. And you gotta go all in.
Speaker 1: You got to go on in. You got to drive
Speaker 1: home from that club that night when you know you
Speaker 1: was not funny and it did not work. It was
Speaker 1: funny in the mirror, it was funny when you told
Speaker 1: your friends, man, what you think about this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that. Man, that is funny. You need to open
Speaker 1: with that. You're gonna man, You're gonna do that. And
Speaker 1: how to go loud, so other than other than a
Speaker 1: gentleman that got you onto Arsenio? Who else took a
Speaker 1: chance on you before that? But I'm wondering what did
Speaker 1: they see? Why did they take a chance on you?
Speaker 1: Tom Joner took a chance for me and put him
Speaker 1: on the radio because um what happened was, I was
Speaker 1: working at a club called Mavericks Flat right, yeah, right
Speaker 1: down now for Crnshaw. I was working there and his
Speaker 1: producer You're a lot of Starts, would come to the
Speaker 1: club with her husband and she went back and told
Speaker 1: Tom I had already done death Jam. She said, you
Speaker 1: gotta put this guy on his show. He's funny. She was.
Speaker 1: She booked the guests, so that was her job to
Speaker 1: book people. She puts me on the show as a guest. Tom,
Speaker 1: and I'll just click it, just click. And I said,
Speaker 1: give me time number because I want a job. Give
Speaker 1: me She said, Okay, I get I call him up.
Speaker 1: I say, man, I like that. I like to be
Speaker 1: on your show every week and I'll do it for free.
Speaker 1: And this is my advice. Yeah, this is my advice
Speaker 1: to people. Try to figure out how you can get
Speaker 1: in for free. Free, get you in the door. But
Speaker 1: you listen, people knowledge as are too big for their bridges.
Speaker 1: If you're not paying them, then that's trying to be
Speaker 1: about it. But when that's a different kind of hunger,
Speaker 1: when you gotta work for it. If you read the
Speaker 1: book My Two Dads. You read the book My Two Dads.
Speaker 1: It talks about how they work for the two dads
Speaker 1: and he didn't pay him any money. And even unquote
Speaker 1: unquote slaves who are working for free. When they became free,
Speaker 1: they worked at the trades that they have pull them
Speaker 1: in porters picking cotton. Or if I can pick cotton,
Speaker 1: I can grow cotton. If I can shine shoes, I
Speaker 1: can open the shoes shot. If I can make Miss
Speaker 1: Hattie address, I can make my own dresses and sell them.
Speaker 1: If I can cut masters here, I can cut negro here.
Speaker 1: You know, so you can niche out with you and
Speaker 1: free gets you in the door. Freeway gets you in
Speaker 1: the door. It will Hey, I want to be a bobber,
Speaker 1: but I'll come in here and sweep up for free
Speaker 1: because I just want to be a brown bobbers man.
Speaker 1: I want to be a cook. I'll take the flower.
Speaker 1: I want to do tattooing. Man, I don't care. If
Speaker 1: you take that attitude, it gets you in the door
Speaker 1: and blue evening. If you become good at what you're doing,
Speaker 1: somebody will pay you a lot of money to do it.
Speaker 1: Somebody will. My brain was going everywhere when you said that,
Speaker 1: because I tell people like I understand um colleges and
Speaker 1: for everybody, right, But you know who went to college?
Speaker 1: Hitting went to college? And Trump with the college. I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm not about to. But the thing with the college,
Speaker 1: they all went to college. I went to trade school.
Speaker 1: Bill Cosby went to college. Bill Cosby did a lot
Speaker 1: of us went to college. But but here's the thing,
Speaker 1: and I was getting there while college, you know, we
Speaker 1: learned all this stuff. I I did well. I graduated
Speaker 1: with honors, hosted the graduation. That's not the guessing point.
Speaker 1: But I feel what I benefited most from college was
Speaker 1: what you just talked about about working for free. Was
Speaker 1: doing my internships because I had an excuse to be
Speaker 1: in the door. I had an excuse just to hear
Speaker 1: the conversation. So whether you were talking about a name,
Speaker 1: whether you were putting me on, telling me things that
Speaker 1: I need to learn about, to read about. And then
Speaker 1: it became that thing of Oh Dawn is always there.
Speaker 1: Oh Dawn is showing up. In fact, that's even how,
Speaker 1: that's how. That's why I said before you right now,
Speaker 1: because when I was interning in Detroit, I was a
Speaker 1: promotions assistant running the streets, but the marketing director would
Speaker 1: always say like, hey, you know me, Skip dialer, go
Speaker 1: talk to him. I saw him in the studio and
Speaker 1: it was at that point that I realized one of
Speaker 1: those how moments you realized when you were later that
Speaker 1: Um Martin was based on a radio personality from Detroit,
Speaker 1: which was Mason. On that day, Skip was filling in
Speaker 1: and he took a chance. I just asked questions. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had a reason to be in the
Speaker 1: room had it not been for free and had it
Speaker 1: been an internship. And I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: stop thinking that it has to be the monetary thing.
Speaker 1: Right now, just show up because a lot of people
Speaker 1: want to say, oh I wasn be Um. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about making you dex Laz and the next thing to
Speaker 1: come out of that minch. But well, how much I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make I ain't gonna pay you nothing. Well, and
Speaker 1: I ain't doing it. I ain't coming, not even realizing
Speaker 1: that the information of what you got to say is
Speaker 1: super ses that dollar, Yes, how did it was amazing? Actually, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to break in there a little
Speaker 1: bit more about because your battle was cancer like that's huge, man, Like,
Speaker 1: that's huge. You have to face the radio every day
Speaker 1: it's the fight, and you had to laugh about it.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of pressure that I think. I think
Speaker 1: had not laughed been there and I didn't have this
Speaker 1: ability to go on the radio, who knows what I
Speaker 1: would have done, you know, who knows how I would
Speaker 1: have dealt with it. Every day. I could go on
Speaker 1: the radio and I could be ignorant or you know,
Speaker 1: to the extreme as much as the extreme as I
Speaker 1: wanted to be. And it made a difference for me.
Speaker 1: So I'm blessed. The pain was it was it the
Speaker 1: worst thing you ever felt. No, I didn't have it
Speaker 1: paid for. I was. There were times when I threw
Speaker 1: up a lot and I lost a lot of weight.
Speaker 1: But I've heard people have bounce with cancer where they're
Speaker 1: a lot of pain. I was never in pain. It's
Speaker 1: just that I lost my appetite. I felt like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to eat. Nothing stayed on my stomach. Because
Speaker 1: of the chemo. I threw up a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to get to graphic, and I lost
Speaker 1: I lost weight in which you look good man, I
Speaker 1: was up to two. I was wearing like two fifty
Speaker 1: five and like two hundred guns. So wow. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad to see your face because I haven't. I
Speaker 1: don't even know the last time I seen your face.
Speaker 1: It was before your power and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see you in person. But we talked. When we talked
Speaker 1: all the time, I can't remember, like why I haven't
Speaker 1: seen you in because Lord knowles when I run into week,
Speaker 1: we've seen each other. Yes, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being on the vitamin. The podcast this is I ain't done.
Speaker 1: I'll let your letter. Let me tell you something. I
Speaker 1: love me some j Anthony Brown true story. Jay was
Speaker 1: actually one of the very first people that I reached
Speaker 1: out to to help me with writing a sketch. And
Speaker 1: that's what I mean about using your resources, looking around
Speaker 1: and seize around you who can help you out. You know,
Speaker 1: fear is nothing but false evidence appearing real. It just
Speaker 1: causes it to cripple you to stop and remember as
Speaker 1: long as you own this earth, you're growing, so that
Speaker 1: means you have to continue to move, you continue to grow,
Speaker 1: and you're constantly building from the good and the bad.
Speaker 1: I appreciate Jay, and you know what, even how far
Speaker 1: I've gotten with this podcast right now is thanks to Jay.
Speaker 1: I sat down with him a few weeks ago and
Speaker 1: get the center of you. And he said, Dawn, did
Speaker 1: you ask the rest of the morning crew? And I
Speaker 1: was like no, and he was like why not? I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting to get everything in order and get my
Speaker 1: ducks lined up. He said, Dawn, ducks, don't even walk
Speaker 1: in or her what you see what I'm saying there,
Speaker 1: fine your mentor use your resources. And from then that's
Speaker 1: how I got Shirley Strawberry had coming up soon, just
Speaker 1: gonna meet Carla Farrell. And you know, he said, did
Speaker 1: you ask Mr Harves? I said, no, not yet, And
Speaker 1: each time I talked to him he asked me. That's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna asked Mr Steve Harvey and listen, if
Speaker 1: he does he does, if not, he doesn't, But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna shoot my shot and you'll know because you'll hear him,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, you'll know what happened. So thank you,
Speaker 1: Mr j Anthony Brown. Your ducks don't always have to
Speaker 1: be in order because ducks don't walk in order. So
Speaker 1: if you like what you heard and you want to
Speaker 1: learn more from Jay, you can follow him on Twitter
Speaker 1: at the letter j spot Comedy. He's on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Jay dot Anthony Brown. And if you're looking for more
Speaker 1: Vitamin D in your life, you can always follow me
Speaker 1: at Dawn Day Speaks on all social media. Again, that's
Speaker 1: Dawn d a A I speaks on all social media.
Speaker 1: And I'm also going to put up some clips from
Speaker 1: this episode later in the week. I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it okay, and until next time, always remember you are
Speaker 1: your greatest asset.