The Josh Innes Show - Random Radio Discussion

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

We are trying to pack up a lot of our stuff in hopes that we may be moving at some point. Fun fact: The day after I got fired, I packed up a ton of stuff hoping it would bring good fortune. I don't know why I thought it might. Spoiler alert: 11 months later, those boxes still sit in the living room... Here is a random talk about radio... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I appreciate that. You're wonderful folks. I've been extremely busy. I mean relatively busy, sort of busy relative to what I've been for the last you know 10 months which is absolutely not busy at all. But I've been busy because we're trying to get packed up and everything and get the hell out of here because your boy can't afford $2,500 a month to live in this house anymore, which look, it's a fine house. But when you think of paying $2,500 a month,

like sometimes I get jealous. And by jealous and sometimes I mean I oftentimes get jealous because there was a time that I thought I was going to have a job back in Baton Rouge and I was kind of iffy about it. Not that I have anything against Baton Rouge or people who work in Baton Rouge, but it would have felt almost like I was going back to Baton Rouge with my tail between my legs and guy from the small town couldn't hack it in the big city. Now,

we know that's bullshit because I had some very good successes in some places, some failures and some others, but like I've had a pretty good run for someone who, you know, grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now I had advantages that some people didn't and that I was around radio stations my whole life, but I think there's this perception like like some people who have an in in an industry almost feel the need to let people know that they feel guilty about having an in like Joe Buck does that a lot like

Joe Buck will talk about how like basically didn't deserve all this because his dad was Jack Buck and he was given opportunities that other people weren't given because his dad was Jack Buck. I'm like maybe that's true, but you've been like the number one NFL and baseball play-by-play guy seemingly for like 30 something years. So you're obviously doing something right. So cut the bullshit. I hate when people do that. I hate when people demean themselves like it's fine to be self-deprecating to make a

couple of cracks about it, you know, like well, you know, my dad got me my job blah blah blah, but like then eventually it becomes real and it diminishes what you've accomplished like if you're horrible at something and you continue to get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this stuff. I was given opportunities because of that. I say I was given opportunities. I was given opportunities to walk around a radio station and learn and sit around in production rooms and dick around with stuff. That was the biggest advantage I had growing up is I'd go to a radio station and my dad would bring me to work with him and he'd say, Josh, just go sit in the production room. For those who don't know, the production room is a room where you can go in and record

bits. So you can, a lot of times it's productions, those commercials, people are recording spots, commercials, ads, you know, imaging promos, whatever, you know. And I'd sit in there and really just fuck around with stuff. There'd be cart, which are basically eight tracks, but they'd have carts, record players, CD players, cassette decks, and I would just fuck around with stuff. And like people who had real work to do would walk in, they'd be like, What the fuck are you doing in here? And I'm like, my dad told me I could sit in here. And that's kind of just how I learned how to do shit. You know, my first paying job, the first time I got paid to do anything in radio, like I did

the baseball play by play when I was 16. That wasn't a paying gig. Okay? I did the hockey play-by-play. That was not a paying gig. So like those were opportunities that I created. Well, the baseball one I created, the hockey one was one where my dad was like, hey, could you let my kid maybe give this a shot and I'll talk about it on the radio and then boom. Like I'm fairly certain that's how that went down. And that's fine. I worked hard when I got the opportunity to do it and it wasn't bad for a 14 or 15 year old kid. So it was fine. But the first time I ever got paid to do a job, I got paid so little that a lot of times I didn't even write down my hours. It was like $6.50 an hour and I worked X number of hours a week. I worked on weekends and part time shit. It

was so little after taxes that I wouldn't even write down a card. It was part time so I had to fill out a time card and I'd be like, whatever. It is what it is. I'm not even going to write this shit down. Then eventually when I got a full-time job there, the first full-time job I had, okay, I was making $19,000. It was either 19.5 or 18.5. I forgot exactly how much it was. And that first full-time job at the radio station was to sit at the radio station from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m. And just make sure nothing went wrong

That was the job and the job was also to call in and check the tower lights every night You know like when you see a blinking light on top of a tower You got to get like the coordinates or whatever just to make sure the tower light is on so an airplane doesn't hit it And real talk I sucked at that job, and I never called so like I get a call from my boss like You know whenever he goes when's the last time you check the tower lights? I'm like shit I don't know I forgot and he's like fuck go in there and just fill it out. We need like fill out all the shit from like weeks before. So like that was my gig. Let me play a couple commercials. I don't even know why I've gone down this path. I had a reason for this and now I can't remember what

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reason that job existed is we were the emergency preparedness radio station cluster, which means if there was World War Three, we would be the ones that had to disseminate the information. Therefore, somebody had to be in the building legally. That meant mostly from three to eleven, you didn't do much and really after like five o'clock when everybody was gone, it would just be you and maybe one or two other dudes because the local talk show on

the news talk station was on until I think seven at that time. So someone would be there until seven, eight o'clock, but you'd have to be there until 11 o'clock. I'd also have to board up for a local sports talk show. And if I had to fill in on the other station, I'd have to run Sean fucking Hannity. So like I did some shit like, but like, so when people look at you and they go, well, you didn't really earn anything in what you do. I'm like, well, yeah, I feel

like I kind of did. If you want to say that the doors were open because of who my dad is, sure, like that's there's no doubt about that. But like the idea that that I would be sitting here and just I would have had these jobs in Philadelphia and Houston and Nashville knows because my dad, most of these people don't know who the fuck my dad is. And nobody seems to understand that. But why do I bring that up? Ah, that was a long winded way of talking about

my jealousy, right? So, you know, we're trying to get out of here because this house is 2500 bucks and it's a fine house. It's you know, it's a spacious house. It's not the greatest house ever. You know, like our townhouse in Houston was great. We paid like $1,900 a month for this townhouse in Houston. It was awesome. It was right in midtown, and it was great. We've lived in some really cool places. We lived in this house in Philadelphia that was a tiny little house in Manny Yonk that

was old. The guy kept it up well, but it was old and small, and it made noises. If you walked too hard, like I had the original floor, so if you walked too hard, if I would jump up and down because somebody scored a touchdown, like rocks would fall into the basement. So it was like it was that kind of place. But I'd say the Houston house is probably the nicest one we had. That was our favorite one we've had so far. But you know, we need to find a place to live. And there was a time that it looked like I was going to get

back in Baton Rouge. And that's where this all started. Okay, now I've connected the dots. So getting back to Baton Rouge would have kind of looked like a failure in a way and that's not to demean anyone who still works there because there's some talented people that work there like my best buddy Matt included like there's a lot of talented people. T Bob a bear who I think is great just got a job at Barstool Sports out of Baton Rouge. So like there are talented people there. But it

would be and by the way, the company is great there. So there's a lot of things, but there was just nothing for me. But I thought there was a chance I was going to get a job there at one point. And you start looking at houses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, like in the suburbs of Louisiana, you know, you start looking at you know, my dad lives in Prairieville, Louisiana, which is a nice little suburb of Baton Rouge or Denham Springs or wherever.

And they've got these newer builds that all look the same. There's a typical Louisiana house, and if you've seen it, you know it, but they're nice new builds. Like my dad's house is great, and there's these nice new builds. And you can find these beautiful 15, 1600 square foot houses with high ceilings and fenced in backyards and all this and you can go to Prairieville, Louisiana and score one for $1,700, $1,800 to find a nice place to live in a safe area in St. Louis. You're paying $2,500, $2,600. So like I was kind of excited about the idea of maybe working in Baton Rouge doing something again just because the rent would be cheaper and the houses would be

nicer and more comfortable and great in that way. Obviously, that didn't work out. Then there was a chance when I saw that opening in Houston, which I've by the way, fun fact, I've never once even heard from those people never got a call back you coward, you coward program director in Houston. Again, you don't have to hire me you can think I suck and that's all well and good. Maybe they're never going to hire anybody because I don't know that they've actually hired somebody to work on the morning show there. Maybe they never will. But you are a gutless, nutless pud for not even calling me and saying, hey, we don't

want to hire you, whatever. Because for whatever you might think of me, I do have some equity in Houston. I was on three radio stations in Houston and worked there for a combination of a decade or so. So I think I have a little bit of equity and I worked in the format and had success in that format. You could have picked up the phone and called me. I probably could have gotten Mattress Mac involved and all these people you could have made some money, but you don't give a shit because you don't give a shit about the radio station because it's a radio

station that's on autopilot and it does well ratings-wise. So you're not going to look to shake anything up. I know this because I can see it. I would have appreciated had you called me back or sent me an email when I emailed you two or three times or I called you two or three times. Same to be said for the shitheads up in Philadelphia. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. So then you start looking at the houses like out in Katy, right? Like if we were going to move back, like I had reached out to Mattress Mac to see if maybe there was any kind of work with mattress Mac, it's like, Sure, call me, we'll figure it out. And when I reached out to him, I started looking at places, you know,

just to see what the rent and stuff like that would be like in, you know, in Katy or whatever, like we always lived in the city, like we always lived in the loop. And we lived in, in Houston, because I lived in that you talk about that we lived in in Houston because I lived in that you'd talk about that I lived in this apartment in the West U area. And and it was called the Bristol was no no the Bristol place was the one I I had to bounce from the lease on and Baton Rouge when I was a kid. That one fucked my credit for a while. But I was called the it was on bette Belmont? Does Belmont sound right? I forgot

what the name of that apartment complex was, but it was right next to the HEB and where the old Buffalo Grill used to be. Basically, there was a brick wall that separated HEB and that apartment complex. Anywho, so I lived there for a while. So I lived in the loop there, had no money. My dad was like, yeah, rent, rent that was $1,300 a month, I was making $35,000 a year, I would call my dad for money constantly. I'm like 21 22 years old, I have no fucking money. Like I had to eventually start paying my rent and like a certified verified cashiers check. Like, that's how bad shit got when I was making 35,000 a year. But we live there then went to Carl Landry's house over in East downtown before it blew up.

Then we lived in the Houston house. I forgot about that. We lived in that high-rise downtown for a year before I moved and then then we came back and spent five years in that nice little townhouse in in Midtown, but I was looking at the houses in the in like Katy and you can find these giant 1415 hundred square foot houses with giant yards that are fenced in and nice little like

concrete porches in the back with an overhang and like it's absurd and then you look in some of these other towns like St. Louis and you cannot find anything like that anywhere like it's crazy like there is a benefit to places like Texas, Louisiana, Louisiana, places in the south like that. There just are but so it's kind of a pain in the ass because we're packing up and trying to get out of here in the next couple of weeks. And there's just I mean, it's it's a

pain in the ass. Admittedly, the whole process is a pain in the ass. So like I am busier process is a pain in the ass. I am busier than I have been in 11 months or so only because I'm in the process of trying to get the fuck out of Dodge. There's a part of me that when we do move will be kind of sad. Like yesterday, I was digging through some shit, looking to fill up garbage bags of clothes to take to the to you know, the the you know, the donation box or whatever. And I've probably donated thousands of dollars worth of clothes that in my life and the

times I move because when we move like like the Okay, so the best off I ever was is when I was in, we came back to Houston. And I was getting paid like, I mean, a couple $100,000 a year like it was stupid. And there's no state taxes, I had no responsibilities at the time I had no debts. So I was just fucking loaded. And I would go to the mall, and I would get my feet rubbed every day. Me and Jim would go walk around the mall, we'd go to the Galleria, sometimes we go to the Memorial City Mall, just take a

lapse around the mall, then eat lunch at Chick-fil-A. We had black cards for Chick-fil-A eventually. So we get one free meal a day. Like fucking living. Like you look back on that and you're like, Josh, did you really have to talk so much shit about James Harden? Because life wasn't bad financially then. But anywho, so we would go and like there was, and I probably have told this story before, but like I walked into a Dillard's, into the big and tall and a Dillard's and went into the Tommy Bahama section. And I was just like, you know what Jim? I'm

gonna buy a shitload of Tommy Bahama shit cuz I think it looks comfortable and I want it. I wanna say I spent four or $500 on Tommy Bahama shit at a Dillard's at the Dillard's in the Memorial City Mall in Houston. Like it was like pretty woman. It's like big mistake. Huge. Like I'm walking out with all these fucking clothes. Like how much money are we going to spend here? Like is it going to be whatever really offensive and I'm like really offensive So I'm in there and I'm like just buying like shit when I tell you when we moved

I had all that shit still for five years Never wore it and never took the tags off of it It's the kind of shit that you probably could have sold it like, you know, on Poshmark or whatever. But I was like, No, I'm not going to do that. And I would take these shirts that you looked at the tag like $90 $85 these shirts and these all this different shit, like, you know, you know, Hawaiian type shirts, you know, Tommy Bahamas shit like, you know, rich middle aged white guy

seen Steely Dan tribute band at an outdoor amphitheater clothing, right. And I and I just threw them all in a garbage bag and took them to a donation center. Like I've like when I look back on all the dumb money I've spent on clothing when I really just wear like four shirts, like the shirt I'm wearing right now is a shirt that a t-shirt that I bought in Houston in 2016. Yesterday I was wearing a Jaws t-shirt. By the way, it was kind of fitting

because it's the anniversary, 50 years. But I'm wearing this Jaws t-shirt. I have had that Jaws t-shirt for over a decade. There's pictures of me in that Jaws t-shirt with Meltzer in Vegas in 2016. So I've had that. I have like five shirts that I wear because I have a fat guy build. It's hard for me to find shit that fits. So I'll wear like two

or three shirts, but I'll just go out and buy a bunch of shit that I never fucking wear. And then I'll just fill up garbage bags. I estimate thousands of dollars of clothes I've donated over the years, many of which still had tags on them. Like I donated some shit a couple weeks ago going through my closet. There was two shirts that I purchased, I believe at the Macy's in the gallery when Jim and I would just walk around, still had the tags on them. What are you doing, Josh?

You're a fucking putz. But that's back when you had that kind of lavish lifestyle. It was never a lavish lifestyle, but I was able to go in and you know, like there was no concern about money. If I wanted to throw down 500, like my paychecks like it one, like I'm not doing this to brag, I'm just letting you know what this was like a decade ago. Without bonuses or endorsements without it with endorsements, you'd be talking about like eight grand a check or something like I was

stupid. I had 50 grand saved like I was killing my mom wanted to go on a trip to on a my mom wanted to trip on a cruise with her and Don I'd go like got your mom two grand bada bang you know like it was nothing. It ain't nothing put a couple stacks on you you know like but you know obviously things change in your life changes and you fuck shit up and and then here you are trying to get the fuck out of St. Louis. I wish that St. Louis would have worked out better because that was kind of the

goal. That's why I took the job. I thought it was going to be a good situation. It wasn't you know, when a good spot for me. I made a lot of money decent money, not what I was making at 790. But you know, pretty good money. And it was just it just wasn't a good spot for me. I'm not meant to be at radio stations where the old people care only about the music like it does not require a talent to work on the radio at KC 95. I don't like that I want to go to

a place where like they need you to be good and funny and talented for it to work. Like that's the only place that I think I can thrive. I can't thrive in a world where the star of the show is Led Zeppelin or the star of the show is whatever. Like 60 year old songs. Like I need to be in a place where they're like, listen, we need your personality to shine through to get us this audience like it was in Nashville. So, but anyway, I don't know how I got down that wormhole.

I don't know that that was my intention or not, but 20 minutes later, here we are.