On July 21, 2003, a brand-new radio station hit the airwaves of Waterloo Region, providing the soundtrack for many people’s lives.
While much has changed about the station over two decades — including the location and the format (a couple of times) — there has been one constant in morning show co-host Darryl Law.
“My family was in Winnipeg,” Law said as he made the move to Cambridge. “I was working in Power 97 there, put the house up for sale and journeyed out here and walked in through the building at 1315 Bishop St. in Cambridge.”
The veteran radio host said he was working behind the scenes in the beginning, helping to load music while waiting for future unknown co-workers to arrive.
“There was nobody around. And then, well, one by one, the announcers started coming in,” Law said. “First it was Carlos Benevides. That was the first person that I met, and then Lia Miller after that. And then as everyone started floating in, you met the people who are going to be your co-workers.”
He said there was a loop of music on the radio playing for a month which raised eyebrows in the community.
“Everyone was, like, wondering what’s going on here? What’s this going to be?” Law explained.
At that point, the radio station launched with a mixed bag of music format.
“You played anything from Madonna to the Stones, you know, and everything in between. It was … a bit of a mish-mash to first start,” he explained.
While Law has been a fixture on the morning show for a decade, he served as the program director when it launched, only joining Gayle O’Brien on the Morning Buzz about a decade ago.
O’Brien herself made the move home to Cambridge around two years after the radio station launched.
“I actually got my job in a contest on air,” O’Brien said.
“They were looking for a fill-in to replace ‘What’s Her Name’. That was the actual contest name.”
She said she was working for a radio station in Toronto while going through the tryouts for the job at Dave FM — the station’s name at the time.
“So I would have to be off to come in and audition on the show and then go back to work and then come back. It ended up going on for five or six weeks,” she offered.
“It was pretty shocking and I didn’t know they were going to let people vote online, like this job was hanging in the balance online.
“Luckily, I did very well. I’m here still doing my job 18 years later, that was pretty wild.”
While O’Brien and Law have been together as radio partners for around a decade, the third spoke in the wheel only came aboard five years ago.
Jessie David initially began at the station as a receptionist about nine years ago, after having graduated from college where she studied radio.
“I was a very slow typer, terrible at reception, but I just wanted to get my foot in the door,” she explained. “And a few months later I started doing the late, late-night show where I would come in at midnight and record from midnight to two in the morning, go to bed, wake up to do my reception shift and then rinse and repeat.”
In typical old-school radio fashion, David slowly worked her way around the station from nights to afternoons before joining the morning team at Dave Rocks.
While each of the trio have been at the station for varying amounts of time, they all had some zany stories to share of their time at Dave.
Law was the program director back in the early days, before the studio had moved from Cambridge to its current home in Kitchener.
“This is when we’re still on Bishop (Street in Cambridge), and there were fire trucks outside and I walked into the building and there were these big fans and it stunk, like it was something burnt and I’m like, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’” Law recalled.
“And I was informed that one of the co-hosts decided to do a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Well, he put it in for 10 minutes and there’s a popcorn button right there.”
Law said the smell was so bad that you had to exit from inside the building.
David, who is the relative newcomer of the bunch, said she got her indoctrination into radio life early on.
“I was still just covering reception when I got this message from Gayle O’Brien asking if I want to go on a helicopter ride because Daryl couldn’t make it,” she recounted.
“And she gave me this napkin saying that Corus is not responsible for any injuries. And she got me to sign this napkin.
“So I signed it and then the next morning I’m going up in the air in this helicopter for a half hour while calling into the Morning Buzz reporting exactly what is happening, what I’m seeing. And he’s doing giant dips. But it was pretty wild.”
O’Brien also learned a lesson early on about what she should and should not say.
“I mentioned that my cousin is a local dental hygienist and she gets me into trouble. My mouth was full of cotton and she insisted that I agreed to get a tattoo,” she explained.
“And when I mentioned this on the air, I saw my co-host’s eyes light up and I realized I was in trouble because just mentioning the tattoo, our phone line started to light up.”
While she ended up getting a tattoo as a result while reading the news on the air, there was definitely a solid payoff for the community.
“I did it for the Breast Cancer Foundation. We raised $20,000. I got a pink ribbon tattoo and I think 28 other people in Waterloo Region, including a 70-something-year-old mother and her daughter got these pink ribbon tattoos.”
While O’Brien learned this lesson the hard way, it was also a boon to charity, which is one of the better parts of her job as it enables her to be involved in the community.
“That’s one of the things that’s blown me away about being in radio that I didn’t realize, was how involved in the community we would become, how many events we would be a part of, whether we emceed, whether we supported by promoting them, how those stories were integrated into our lives,” she said.
“Part of our job has blown me away in the 18 years, because we do this job, that we think we’re on the radio. But in fact we get to be a part of really beautiful moments of people’s lives, whether that’s on the air or off the air.”
Law also provided a moment that showed the connection between those at the radio station and those in the community that they entertain.
“I remember Christmas Eve day, and it was … really warm, 18 degrees or something ridiculous,” he began.
“So we brought a barbecue, started barbecuing up. The next thing you know, the mayor stopped by, the chief of police. We had a chef come by, people bringing food. We had a cookout Christmas Eve day in the parking lot there, you know, and it was just a blast. And listeners would pop by and we made hot dogs.”
Global News and Dave Rocks are properties of Corus Entertainment Inc
Comments