RADIO REUNION
MORNING CREW BACK TO THEIR OLD TRICKS
No matter how often Joanne Johnson puts it out there, the Peaches & Herb classic Reunited doesn’t make it on the air during the Don, Joanne and the Coach show Monday morning.
It’s never been about the music, though. The trio’s easy banter and palpable camaraderie has always been the draw for listeners.
Four-and-a-half years ago, the three signed off from their show on Lite 96 (now Kiss 95.9) after 17 years on the air when Jamie Herbison (the Coach) moved to California to be with his wife.
Johnson and Don Stevens carried on through the end of their contract in 2010 before moving up the dial to XL 103.
When Herbison’s wife was transferred back to Calgary, “the stars aligned” and the pieces for that reunion fell into place.
“When everything started to happen, we were thrilled,” Johnson says. “We’d always said we wanted to end our careers together.”
“Just not tomorrow,” Herbison adds. It’s minutes after their first show ends and we’re sitting in their communal office in the Newcap Radio offices along Centre Street. The back-and-forth, give-and-take nature of their onair conversations continues, as it did in the studio during a quick photo shoot.
What they do is second nature, but there is an art to it. Think of it as playing a verbal game of catch: if one person drops the ball, it falls to the ground with a painful thud, killing any and all momentum. After Herbison left, it fell to the remaining two to create a new dynamic.
“It was a totally different thing,” Stevens says. “It became Don and Joanne. We had to change the way we did things.”
Herbison stayed in touch via a weekly segment on the show, but the third chair in the studio was filled by show producer Natasha Gibson. It was good, but it was different. Herbison’s return brings the group “full circle,” says Johnson. And they’ve all got something to bring to the conversation.
“We are totally different, yet we are all friends. I am the family guy. Joanne is not,” Stevens says of how they relate. “We have three different lifestyles and I think that always worked because we always had different things to talk about.” Johnson agrees. “It’s our first day back on the air today. We’ve talked a bit, seen you (she gestures to Herbison) once, we go back on the air and it’s like nothing’s changed.”
Something else that is still the same is those killer hours. Stevens and Johnson are asleep by 8 p.m. and up at 3 a.m. to start prepping for that day’s show. Herbison is the night owl, hitting the sack at a relatively late 10 p.m. and getting up at 4:30 a.m. The schedule takes its toll. Witness Herbison’s first order of business when he left the show.
“I slept for four months. I moved down in January of ’10 and I woke up in April. I am almost not kidding,” he says.
And FYI: the first song played on the show Monday morning — which none of the hosts could remember a few hours later — was Take It Easy by The Eagles. They went out on I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles, with nary a “Reunited and it feels so good/ Reunited ‘cause it’s understood/ There’s one perfect fit/And, sugar, this one is it” to be heard.