Have you ever been on the radio?

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Everyone should do it at least once in their life.

Speak on the radio, I mean.

While promoting my new book (search for my name on Amazon if you’re curious), I had the honor of being interviewed live (via telephone) on Nashville’s Super Talk 99.7.

(Not that I haven’t broadcast live from a studio before. Forty-something years ago, my career as a DJ came to a screeching halt after a single comedy-of-errors weekend. In the weeks following that catastrophe, when the word “frequency” came up locally, it had less to do with signal modulation than “Just how often will the sheriff let us tar and feather someone?”)

I’m glad I built up the nerve to do the interview.

Like many people, I am self-conscious about my voice. Sure, when my utterances go straight from my mouth to my ears, I imagine myself subbing for Patrick Stewart onstage in “Macbeth” or exchanging urbane witticisms with the fabled Algonquin Round Table. But when I hear my voice on a tape recorder or other such device, I remind myself of Huckleberry Hound with his bow tie on too tight.

Some people have a face made for radio. I have a voice made for hieroglyphs.

I’ll admit that I overprepared for the interview. Sure, the cough drops IV unit was marginally defensible, and I may yet find a venue for the six-act hand puppet biography of Guglielmo Marconi; but I could still face litigation for disabling every toilet within the range of hearing and simultaneously gagging the Ty-D-Bol Man.

The genial host invited me to relax and treat it like a normal one-on-one conversation, but my brain has a built-in translator. A benign query such as “What inspired you to write this book?” becomes as stressful as “When you sign this 40-year mortgage, you do realize we’ll know where you live, right?” or “Just what are your intentions with my virgin daughter, you young punk?”

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