Donna Reed: Talk, Play Music, Have Fun

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now. This

Matt Cundill  0:13  
week, I'm speaking with Donna Reed, who is, well, a lot of things. She's the host of the podcast spotlight conversations, also former radio host on Legendary stations like wqdr and w r, u d in Raleigh and in Houston, on kll and Koda, which today is affectionately known as sunny 99.1 Donna is also the creator of the leopard print lounge chair, which is curated music she put together for Accu radio. That channel, by the way, was the subject of a column by Sean Ross in his weekly Ross on radio. Donna's also a very talented voice artist who elevated her game in audiobooks when she started working with Pat Fraley. If audiobooks is something you aspire to, you need to reach out to Pat information and connection points from the show notes and on our episode page at sound offpodcast.com if you want to catch up with that later. And now, Donna ree joins me from Houston, Texas, where I ask her out of the gate. Didn't you go to FSU?

Donna Reed  1:16  
Yes, it starts at FSU. How did you know that I do my research for these things. You're studying liberal arts at Florida State University. I was, I originally went into criminology, if you can believe that I wanted to understand crime and why people committed crime. And yeah, I did. That was my first and then I slowly thought communications was good. And then I said, you know, I'll get a liberal arts degree and I can transfer it anywhere. So that's what I did. Where did you transfer it to NC State, Wolfpack. And that explains, I guess, your connection to Raleigh. Oh, yeah, that's where I started in radio, pretty much in Raleigh. What was the first job? W, E, T, C, A, M, Wendell Zebulon, very proud. Was in the middle of a cow pasture. I think part of the day was Christian music, and the other part of the day was country music, and they had NASCAR and when I went in, and they told me, Sunday afternoon, you're going to be playing, you know, bringing in the NASCAR races. And I went, what? Because I was coming from Florida, I don't what NASCAR and so that's how it started, yeah, and I, I just really liked it, and I met really good people along the way. Then I went to wkbq, which was, I think it did afternoons there. And then I got a call from QDR to do nights. And I was thrilled at first, I was I think I hung up on the program director because I thought it was a joke, but the traffic reporter said, Call Donna. She'd probably be interested in a night shift. And I just couldn't believe it was actually Mike Ryan from QDR, who called at the small station, kbq, see if I wanted to work at QDR. I said, Hell

yeah, that's fun.

Matt Cundill  3:03  
I mean, you touched on your first job being where you're going to be bringing in the NASCAR, and there's going to be, I mean, it sounds like you're going to be operating the show, or you you know, there's so much of our early jobs in radio really did revolve around, you know, operations and being part of an operation to make audio happen. And today, I mean, it's just so seamless. But here's somebody calling you, though, for a job we want you to do nights. So what was the format of that station and what did you have to do? Country

Donna Reed  3:29  
music, seven to midnight. That's probably my first introduction to doing interviews, because whoever would appear at some of the local venues would come into the studio, say, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night, and do a short interview. And I really liked it, but I liked production, and I liked going back to NASCAR. I liked bringing in shows like that, or there was another public radio station, CPE in Raleigh, where we used to bring in the BBC at the top of the hour. And I kind of, I was like, back time. What I mean? You have to back time. And of course, you have to, oh sure, my God, here's, you know, you're the BBC and queue, and you have to bring them up. But I forgot the hang of it. I really liked production, too. So not production, commercial production, but on the board you mentioned,

Matt Cundill  4:16  
I think probably the most difficult thing is that back timing, and you've got somebody from the BBC talking to you, BBC News in 30 seconds. Yes, exactly, serving you all these warnings. And you're like, is my song gonna time out? Will this work? And why was I so stupid enough as to have a song with a cold ending that was gonna come into the news? Oops,

Donna Reed  4:38  
this was a classical music station. So it was all classical music. So I'm sure there were a couple of, you know, big fans of classical music that were going, Why is she, you know, cutting it off. But you know, there was no vocals on some of these songs. So it sort of spoiled me, because I could kind of bring down the instrumental and pop up, hello, BBC News, you know. And it was kind of fun. To do that. And so when I went to eventually rock radio, I used to pull every Joe Satriani song I could get my hands on, if I had to back time into Rockline, or, you know, any of the satellite shows. But I still enjoyed it. But sometimes I did it with a, you know, the music comes down and I talk up until the guys at Rockline would come in. So either way, it was good. It was fun.

Matt Cundill  5:21  
I liked it. Think at the time it was the late Steve downs who was host, yes, and then I forgot who came on afterwards, but I always thought the show was really good with Steve downs.

Donna Reed  5:32  
It was there was someone else besides Him, and it's terrible. I can't think of Bill

Matt Cundill  5:36  
Ricky Rachman came in at one point. He did, but this was

Donna Reed  5:39  
before then. I can't remember, but anyway, I enjoy it. It was fun. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  5:43  
so I mean, doing evenings too, that's something that's hard to explain about, what that lifestyle is about, because you mentioned, oh, bands are going to come in in the evening, and even at some point in the 90s, that began to disappear a little bit. We'd get all that done by about six o'clock. But today, the evening shift really doesn't exist in a lot of stations, so nobody's going to know the feeling of what it's like to live a life and walk around and wander throughout the day, to wait around all day to go to work.

Donna Reed  6:06  
I know, right? And it's it's funny, because I was talking to my husband today, I was mentioning about our podcast, and I really enjoyed radio, and I did like nights, because nights were, they're very special. You have a real bond with the audience, that the other shifts, they do have a bond with them. But nights are special. I can't put my finger on it, just it's a special time to do radio. Is

Matt Cundill  6:28  
it because other people are in the office? Is it because there's an office crowd at work that we needed to be a little bit more behaved or a little bit just different

Donna Reed  6:38  
getting myself in trouble? I really love salesmen. I do. They're a big part of radio. But I mean, I'm kind of like, I have to really focus. And that's maybe why nights was special, because I can focus. It's I think doing middays mornings is challenging because people are coming in and out, and you have to retain your focus on what's going on. I'm not saying it's impossible, but for me, I was thrown into nights, and I adapted because I had a certain freedom. Yeah, you weren't going

Matt Cundill  7:07  
to get interrupted at night, necessarily. And if you were and somebody walked in, they were coming from the bar and they'd had a couple drinks,

Donna Reed  7:13  
they were, oh, yeah, I guess possibly, possibly,

Matt Cundill  7:18  
you did some military service.

Donna Reed  7:19  
I did. Tell me how that came about. I graduated from Florida State. My brother was already in basic training. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to I felt like I needed some more practical experience. I just didn't want to be a student going into a job. So he said, join the Coast Guard. And so we did. We both came in. He's about a month or two ahead of me, and they had a photojournalism rate. They call it you rank when you become e2, e3, e4, but rate is what you do for a living. You're a mechanic, you're a journalist, you're a public affairs specialist, or whatever. And they had that, and I was very excited about it. And my dad was a Navy guy. A lot of people in my family are military, and I loved it. I mean, it was a challenge, but I went to Catholic school too, so it wasn't too much of a challenge. I always say that it's not like, well, I go to some concerts and then join the military. I mean, I I felt it was a really good transition, and looking back, I'm glad I did. It was probably one of the better things I've done, besides my two kids so

Matt Cundill  8:24  
late 80s and 90s. How much control over what you got to play? How much did you have? How

Donna Reed  8:29  
many times did the hotline ring? You know, in the story, are

Matt Cundill  8:32  
we playing this? And name me a song that you played where somebody called and said, Why are we playing this? You're

Donna Reed  8:36  
gonna get me in trouble. Winger, oh, yeah, I did, or if it was country I liked Alabama a lot, so I probably did it two for before two FERS were okay in country music. You're

Matt Cundill  8:51  
not gonna believe this. I heard a radio station today suggested they're gonna be having a double play weekend, and it's been so long since and it's probably not a real double play weekend where, like every artist gets played twice all weekend long, but they're going to feature artists and play back to back. And I sort of really miss two for Tuesdays and double play Tuesdays, or whatever it was, or double play weekends where you play two from the same artist. You think

Donna Reed  9:13  
it'll come back? Nope. Well, what do you think the future of radio is? You've got a lot more experience in it than I do. I have some but I

Matt Cundill  9:20  
don't know. I hope it doesn't wind up being sort of an extension of social in any form. And I hope, I hope it really does sort of keep it, it's it's live and local components to it. But there's so much going on these days that really tells me that live doesn't mean as much anymore, and local certainly doesn't mean as much anymore. And I think once you cash those two things out, it's just too expensive to do both. I think for some stations

Donna Reed  9:45  
it is, I don't know how they're doing it. It is, I mean, some strong personalities will come to the forefront, for sure. But it's, it's, it's tough out there, but we're all creatives. We have to do something. So we're doing podcasts and we're doing internet. Radio streams, and I think that's all good. Keeps your hand in it. It's still a way to connect with people, and people are still looking for content. And I believe as long as you make good content, whatever that happens to be, we're entertainers at the heart of it. So blogging, too. I mean, that's something I don't do as much of, but I if I could just carve out the time to do it. I would probably do more of it.

Matt Cundill  10:21  
Were you offended by, I'm trying to think of the TV show with Hank and the kid has a winger shirt. And remember, you don't remember it? Okay? No, I

Donna Reed  10:32  
don't know. Okay. I just thought, I just liked his songs. I mean, I thought he was really good. Oh,

Matt Cundill  10:37  
it was Beavis and Butthead. It was Nevis and Butthead, and then they had ACDC shirts on or something like that. And then they there was a geeky kid up the street who had a winger shirt, and they were always making fun of him, not necessarily for winger they're making fun of him, but he wore a winger shirt. So I kind of got the joke. Oh, you

Donna Reed  10:53  
did. Well, I never got the joke because I think Kip winger is boss. So there's that favorite winger song

Matt Cundill  11:00  
I can't remember, 1717. Yeah,

Donna Reed  11:04  
whatever the big hit was. Oh no, was the album cover? Come on. It was the MTV videos. Come on, Matt, yeah, you

Matt Cundill  11:12  
mentioned curation, which is kind of why I, sort I asked you about, you know, did you pick your own songs? Did you find a song that was sort of, sort of go in the moment when you weren't, when you were on the air? But you mentioned online, and I know you do some, I know you do some work with, uh, Accu radio, and so tell me a little bit about the curation you've done in the past for that channel.

Donna Reed  11:28  
That's like my heart that format, just working with them. I believe they had some kind of a contest, it was on LinkedIn, where they were looking during covid for radio people to come up with their own playlist, stuff that would something you'd like to play that you wouldn't necessarily have on your show. And I thought, Oh, that'd be fun. So I was highly encouraged by friends of mine, do it. Do it. Do it. So I did. I came up with a bunch of songs, and they weren't rock songs, they weren't country songs, there were just songs I really liked, and I felt people needed to relax a little bit because it was during covid. So the leopard print lounge chair was begun. Had begun. And we had a leopard print lounge chair when I was a kid growing up. So a lot of women in my family like to, you know, chill on it. And I thought, Oh, that's a cute name. It's retro. Let's do that. So that's what I called it.

Matt Cundill  12:21  
So I'm pretty certain that I remember every song that I add to a playlist, or at least that I played on the radio. And I'll especially note if I if the song has had a very good run. But up until today, I was listening to leopard print lounge chair. And, you know, okay, so David Bowie from hunky dory comes on. All right? I'm good with changes, right? But then, I think shortly after came a crowded house song from 1991 called weather with you, yeah, and I completely forgotten about that song.

Donna Reed  12:51  
That's it. That's exactly what I wanted to do. And they were very good at Accu radio for going, Oh, all right, right, on. You know, it's a little bit different. I didn't want anything that was same old, same old. I love country music, I love rock music, I love AC music. I never worked the AC format, but I was very familiar with the songs, and I I thought Aki radio, any of the streaming services, they probably have the regular artists playing all the time. But I wanted something that was different, that people would go, Oh, I remember that song. And I also didn't. I wanted people to listen at work too. That was even if they were working at home, right? So I was in the back of my mind. I wanted that as well. I didn't feel that. I just wanted something to compliment people who were at home during covid, working at home. And I thought they could keep the sun kind of low, and it wouldn't be offensive the kids come in now. And I mean offensively, it wasn't too loud. Not that loud music is bad. But when you're working all day and get caught on your nerves, transcription

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Matt Cundill  14:19  
much time did you spend as a music director?

Donna Reed  14:21  
I was never a music director. Ever really wanted to just timing, but, yeah, I would really have liked that. So if you're looking, or if you know, if somebody's looking for a music director gig, the homemaker is here.

Matt Cundill  14:35  
Well, I think radio did that so well for so many years. And that was curate music for people, they did, and I think music curation, I mean, people still like having music curated for them just the way you've mentioned a few minutes ago. What are some of the habits that you have when it comes to listening to music? For instance, do you use Spotify and have playlists, or do you go to particular. Channels outside of radio. Do you have apple? Maybe you like YouTube music? What do you how do you consume music?

Donna Reed  15:06  
It's pretty much everything. But I, after all the years in radio, I have a big selection of CDs and long playing records. I still have a record player occasionally. I'll, I know this sounds crazy, but I'll, I'll hear a song in my head, or something will remind me of a song, and I'll go, Oh, I think I have that tune, and I'll add it to the playlist. And I have a lot of playlists that way, where I'll watch a movie and I'll get an idea for songs. Sometimes I'll be in the grocery store and I'll hear the song, you know, it's not music, but it's the song. You know, all the stuff we played years ago is now in the grocery store. What? How did that happen? No, so I'll hear it and I'll add that to the mix too. And I'm pretty eclectic, but if it fits and it's all the right vibe to it, I'll work with it. But I like to throw in surprises too when I make a music playlist,

Matt Cundill  15:55  
how did you get into voice acting?

Donna Reed  15:57  
You know, I worked with Steve Reynolds at wrdu, and it wasn't through Steve, but I think I would Oh, Kevin Silva, his partner in crime, he was doing voiceovers, and they needed someone for a car commercial. And I happened to be there that morning, for some reason, usually I work nights, but Kevin his buddy said, why don't you come with me? We need somebody to voice a car commercial. And so I went, and that's how it started. It really literally started that way, and it just smoked. You know, the longer you do that kind of work, the more you do it.

Matt Cundill  16:27  
You do not need me to tell you, you have a fantastic voice. Thank

Donna Reed  16:31  
you very much. I do like music curating better, though, than voiceover. You know, when

Matt Cundill  16:38  
you were saying thank you very much. I was wondering, Am I paying 999 a minute to have you?

Unknown Speaker  16:43  
But you

Matt Cundill  16:47  
mentioned Steve Reynolds.

Donna Reed  16:48  
I just think the world of him. He's he's been on my podcast spot, the conversations, and He's great. He's just so smart. So

Matt Cundill  16:56  
how did you meet him, and was he ever consulting or coaching a station you were working at. Oh

Donna Reed  17:01  
no, no. He was the morning guy at RDU. I was the night person, so he was the talent. Yeah, that's how old I am. I go back away for a long time.

Matt Cundill  17:12  
I had Steve on the show, and I don't think we ever talked about his time at RDU. I don't think we talked about him as talent. We spend so much time trying to figure out, like, how talent can be great and amazing. Especially he came on twice. Came on once before the pandemic, I think once, you know, during the pandemic, where he gave some of the best advice, which is, put on your own clothes before you go to work and stop doing your you know, your show, and your jammies, that sort of thing.

Donna Reed  17:36  
No bunny slippers for Steve, no.

Matt Cundill  17:40  
You've done some narration, though. You've done some video games, you've done obviously, done some commercials, because I think that's probably the bread and butter of

Donna Reed  17:47  
your voice business. It is that. And some transit systems where you're boarding a train or a plane and thank you for not smoking, you know, or please mind your luggage. It's like being a flight attendant without being on the flight. So I do a lot of that kind of voice work too. Audiobooks is it's a challenging part of voiceovers, for sure. Yeah. And

Matt Cundill  18:10  
so this is going to be a great question for people who are thinking, I can do this. I can get into this, but I do voice work and I do 32nd spots. I did one here today for bed. MGM, the blue part is this part I needed to read fast, you know, super fast that nobody understands. You know, those gambling disclaimers sort of thing. But when you do audio books, it's such a different animal. So for anybody who's a novice and just doesn't understand audio books, how is it different from the rest of the voice work that you do. Well, you

Donna Reed  18:43  
have to have a lot of patience for one, it's just not something you do fast. And I figured that out relatively quickly. I've only done a handful of books, but you really have to switch gears. When you do an audio book, it's not the voice I'm talking to you right now, and you're going to have to switch it to. And then I decided, you know, you have to switch as you're reading the book with the different characters in the story. So that doesn't mean you have to be, you know, talk with a deep voice or a high pitched voice, but you sort of have to let the listener know that this is the voice of that character. And that's hard to do for a long, long time. I mean, I highly recommend getting a consult or taking some classes with someone who really understands how to do voiceovers or how to do audiobooks, because it's it's a different animal altogether. And if you're used to doing radio too, it's just not anything like radio. I mean, it's nothing like voiceovers, but it's definitely nothing like what we're doing now, but you have to be conversational. It's a challenge, but it can be done. And some people absolutely love it. I like it a lot, but I have to carve out time for it. You can't just finish it in a I guess you could do it in a couple weeks, but and then AI is looming its evil head. So. I don't know

Matt Cundill  20:01  
we had a conversation about that the last time you and I got together on your podcast, which we're going to talk about in just a sec, about AI. So since then, and it's been close to a year, I think, since we had the conversation, what have you noticed about AI that may not necessarily be about the voice business, but anything in general. Do you have any good parts or bad parts, or do you still have bad things to say or good things to say?

Donna Reed  20:23  
I don't know enough about it yet to say anything one way or the other. I do like to think that really good talent rises to the top. But as you can tell from our earlier just getting the tech part of this whole show together, I'm just not a techie either. I don't know. I just hope we don't lose that human part of what makes us all so special. I guess it depends on how you use it. But you know, we're creative, so we don't want anything that's gonna, you know, step in on our creations.

Matt Cundill  20:52  
How did you get the idea to start a podcast in spotlight conversations? It

Donna Reed  20:58  
was about the same time I started the leopard print lounge chair channel, it was during covid, and the first thing in my mind was, what can we do to entertain we I mean, I had a couple folks help me out here, but I knew if I could curate a channel, maybe I could curate talking sessions with people who work in media, because Those are things I like, music, media, TV, radio, audio book, narrators, talent agents, and that's really how it started. I mean, we all had to do something. I felt like most of us had to think of something we could do to keep ourselves from going crazy, right? Because we were all stuck at home. And in my heart, I just like to entertain. I mean, I'm an entertainer. I'm not really a talent. I know that's kind of a funny word, right, but, and that's really how it started, and I loved it. I really, really liked it. It was like radio unfiltered.

Matt Cundill  21:49  
Did you look at it as a form of on demand radio? Yeah,

Donna Reed  21:54  
I guess that's a good way to look at it, yeah, sure. When I say unfiltered, too, just going back to that, I it was just a way where you could do your own thing. And you know, you learn along the way, and it's helpful to get some feedback, of course, but it was, there was a certain freedom to doing podcasting that wasn't quite like radio. What has podcasting taught you? Well, I'm getting better at it, and I think I learned this from you. And reading about what you do with podcasting is you've got to be diligent every Tuesday, every Wednesday. If that's it's like a job. It's like your radio show. And I think that's the hardest part about doing podcasts, is to stay strict to that it's not like you have a radio shift. Obviously you're going to show up Monday through Friday, coming in at 6pm to do your show podcasting, you have to have that same mentality where I'm going to do this, you know, every Tuesday night, at six o'clock, upload it whenever. So that's I've learned to be better at that. But you know, it's a challenge with all the other stuff we have going on. 2025

Matt Cundill  22:55  
is around the corner. So let me be the first to ask you, what do you think 2025 has in store for you in terms of your time behind a microphone doing anything.

Donna Reed  23:06  
Man, I'm used to asking the questions. Gosh, I don't. I know it's sort

Matt Cundill  23:12  
of like saying, you know what's going to be the future of your podcast for next year? And also, what are you looking forward to in voiceover? Because that's where I think you spend the most time behind the microphone doing those things

Donna Reed  23:22  
I do. I know I do like radio, and I like talking at night. So there are some stations where occasionally I'll throw a show in and let them run in, and that's kind of fun to do. Houston radio, Platinum is one of them. It's here in town, and it's fun to do that. I you know, I don't know. Of course, we want more listeners, don't we? When we work in this business, we have a podcast, we want more listeners.

Matt Cundill  23:45  
How about this? Who's an interview from your past that you've interviewed on the radio that you would like to have on your podcast? Oh, wow, you can't say Kip winger, but we'll also ask for someone else.

Donna Reed  23:56  
She's only sorry. You know, I bet he would be a great interview, though, I have a feeling he would be a great interview. I like interviewing celebrities too, as well as just non celebrities. I think everybody, once you get to a level of conversation, everybody just wants to share stories about themselves and that I really like. That's the best part of podcasting, is you get to a point in the interview where you know they're sharing a story about themselves. It isn't necessarily something I don't want anybody to know that, but it's just something where they they have you've crossed that divide. That's the best part. If I could do more of that, the answer to your question in 2025 would be more of better interviews. Sure, concise, though. I like them short because people are busy, I don't think they need to sit for an hour or two, or depends on the topic,

Matt Cundill  24:47  
are evenings your most creative time?

Donna Reed  24:49  
Yes, I'm not going to be a terrible morning show host. I think, Oh no, I was piped in from my home, as Steve Reynolds would say. But I would have to have. Have my slippers on, and I'd have to have my PJs in, but yeah, I could see me doing mornings for sure. So you tell the Canadians up there, they need an American I'll come in with my slippers. Donna,

Matt Cundill  25:09  
thanks so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate and continued success with the podcast and your voiceover business. Thank

Donna Reed  25:16  
you very much, and the same to you. I've enjoyed this story. I'm glad we got the tech issues worked out. We got here. We made it. Yay.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  25:23  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor McClain, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you