EP22 The Fabulous Bill Barrett
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And now the show with the most handsome voice talent working today. It's Common Sense with Bill Barrett, hosted by that Dan Carlin guy. That voice that you heard just there in the introduction as he said himself was Bill Barrett. The number one choice that I would have had if somebody had said to me in 2005 when we started podcasting that you could have any sort of big voice announcer in the entire world, who would you pick?

And I would pick Bill Barrett for reasons that will become apparent, I think, as we talk about him. We lost him yesterday, August 17th, 2022, to cancer, as so many of us have lost friends and relatives to that terrible disease. And in Bill's case, I wanted to do this tribute because of all he's done for us. I hope that Bill's family and friends are okay with this tribute.

But given all that he's done for us, it would be ungrateful, I think, to not celebrate this amazing person. And first of all, point out that what you hear when you hear Bill in any of our shows is a tiny fraction of what Bill does. Bill was not a voice announcer as a main gig. That was just sort of a little side gig he did. Bill was a star, right?

In the Pacific Northwest, up here and in country music, Radio Bill is a celebrity. I mean, this is a guy who has gone into the country radio hall of fame. He spent almost half a century in radio just in the area that I live in, even longer if you include outside that area. He's a three-time winner of the country music small market on-air personality of the year. I mean, this is a guy that...

is huge and could have been in New York or Los Angeles or any of the big radio markets had he wanted to, but like so many of the media people that end up in places like Eugene, Oregon, there's a lot of small cities out there that fall into a similar category where you get these media people who should be on their way up to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or one of those places, but finds that the quality of life is such that

They'll trade the success and the perks that would have come with something like a New York radio gig, right? The number one media market in the country, which Bill could have easily worked in for the overall life satisfaction that comes with working in a place like this. The first reporting job I ever had was in Eugene, Oregon. And we used to joke at the station that we worked at that it was view in lieu of pay, but the view was fantastic. Yeah.

The view for Bill Barrett was fantastic. He was the number one guy forever here. And when he went from KUGN radio, you know, with the number one country show and moved to another station, they instantly had the number one country show, which showed you it wasn't about song programming, programmers, decisions on marketing or branding or contests or anything like that. It was Bill Barrett.

And his co-host, Tim Fox, who, by the way, I've known Bill for almost 30 years. I've known Tim longer. He's the first media person, I think, outside of the station that I worked in that I met when I came to Oregon. And the perfect piece of chemistry that made the whole Bill Barrett thing greater than the sum of its parts. And they always had a third person. Tracy Berry did it. And Tracy Berry has been doing it as of recently. And she's fabulous. My wife did it for years.

co-host to Bill Barrett and Tim Fox, the Bear and the Fox, as they were called. And that's what Bill Barrett was like, by the way. If you combine like one part

There was a little bit of Jonathan Winters in Bill in the sense that he was an improvisational genius and I could schedule a 10-minute recording session with him and 40 minutes later we're still riffing off stuff and Bill is giving me stuff that I didn't write for liners that just came to him off the top of his head and you'd end up with wonderful stuff and just this wonderful little session with him.

this fabulous personality whose idea of calling somebody a bad name, by the way, sometimes was, you know, usually was something like knucklehead mixture of like Jonathan winners and like the big bear from the jungle book cartoon blue without the hipster side of him. And bear was one of his nicknames, right? The bear and the Fox and Tim Fox. Like I said, the perfect uber talented foil for Bill's work. And then,

the third person in there i mean he was just awesome awesome and could have been a star anywhere i told ben at the time if there was or is or will be a ben the once and future producer of this program when we got bill to agree to do this for us i said we just got the best announcer in the world the number one guy i would have chosen from anywhere and god he was wonderful and early on

When we're in 2005 and podcasting is an uber amateur affair, to have somebody that sounded like one of the major broadcast networks brought in a big voice to do this set us apart from the get-go, from the very get-go. I mean, Bill, he wouldn't make, I mean, he wouldn't think twice about it because he was really an old radio guy that podcasts never really registered with him. But I mean, he must have been one of the first people

big professional voice announcers ever to appear on a podcast. I mean, I'm not saying he was the first cause I don't know any better. And then there were other people out there, but he must've been one of the very early pioneers. And on the hardcore history show, we've always been very straight with the marketing and the branding and the imaging as they call it in radio. But with common sense, which was our political and current events show, we always tried to take the edge off what was to come and,

And besides me being loud and talking very fast and having an edge that I would say was passionate, but critics might say was angry. I think the self-deprecating sort of marketing and branding and imaging that we did and the turning lemons into lemonade, you know, making something like loud, angry, fast-talking people into a plus, all that sort of stuff was meant to offset that.

The downsides of what you were going to get with me. What's funny is all the radical stuff from years ago that I used to have to warn the audience about the, uh, you know, the political like midline or median attitudes in places like the United States, but maybe the whole world has moved so far that the stuff I was trying to, you know, sort of cushion the blow for my audience back then in terms of, you know, what you're about to hear may shock you, but don't worry. It all seemed pretty darn, uh,

blase now doesn't it that's how extreme things are but that has nothing to do with bill barrett he helped put this show on the map i think and give us a sense where when listeners might give you a few seconds to see if this was worth listening to any more of this podcast back in the early days of podcasting i mean all you have to do is listen sometimes to the audio quality to know i don't want to listen anymore after 30 seconds and

bill made you realize right away whoa what is this and it was because he had a voice that just forced you to sort of prick up your ears and listen let me say at the outset here that what you're about to hear turns out to be a little self-serving and

It wasn't intentional, but what Bill did for us was all of this branding and imaging and marketing. And so the only thing of Bill's work, the only pieces of Bill's work that I have the rights to rebroadcast are the stuff he did for us. And so he's doing such a great job of branding and imaging for us. There's no way for me to expose you to some of Bill's stuff without it reflecting positively on us. And once again, I suppose that I am piggybacking on Bill's talent for my own benefit.

And he'd have some wonderful comeback line if I had said that to him. But let me expose you to a little bit of a guy who's been a part of my and my wife's life for almost 30 years and who we are all, especially in this neck of the woods, a lot poorer now that he's gone. The fabulous Bill Barrett.

Hi, this is Bill. Dan doesn't have time to solicit, so I will. I'm the panhandler of podcasting. Would you make a donation, please? If not, we're going to send somebody to your house. You better protect your kneecaps. Thank yous all very much. Welcome to Common Sense with Dan Carlin. For Russian, press 1. For German, press 2. For any Latin-based romance languages, press 3.

Welcome to the people of France who are listening to the common sense. We say vive la France and vive la... Let's see, vive la intelligence. Congratulations for thinking outside the bun. You Europeans and Pacific Rim people? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Australia. You people are just as susceptible to guilt as everyone else. So put a little shrimp on the barbie for Dan and Ben, because we know where you live. In Australia.

It's a lovely day down under, but more important, a nice day to catch up with Dan Carlin.

Finally, Igor, I have all the ingredients to create my masterpiece. Mix one part liberal, one part conservative. Yes, yes, add a dash of libertarian, a pinch of radical, and a snifter of moderation, plus a bucket of pragmatism. And behold, my new creation. Neoprudentism. Master, we need to find a better name. I know. How about...

common sense. I was the guy who wrote the copy for Bill, except when he improvised, which was all the time. And he would take what I had written and become...

the creative talent equivalent of a force multiplier and make a bunch of sort of drab words on a page sing sometimes literally with everything from accents to celebrity impersonations to characters that only bill knew where they came from here's an example

This Dan Carlin stole a whole idea for a common-sense show from Russia. In old Soviet Union was called communist sense. Of course, we sons of Ireland count Dan Carlin as one of our own. You see, dispensing clear-headed analysis in an entertaining fashion is an age-old Irish tradition. Off the front bucket, Ash!

That's right, the back wheels and sideways, we always get there first.

This, uh, common sense racket? This, uh, this, uh, this, uh, this, uh, this common sense racket, yeah, used to be independent. Yeah, used to be, uh, independent. Now that this Dan Carlin guy's gotten it off the ground...

We're moving in on his territory. Why not? Hey, why not? We're nonpartisan, right? We're practical, neoprudentus too. And if the host of a podcast needs to, like, get whacked sometimes or perhaps just tied up in a cellar, maybe that's just common sense. Maybe not. It's a judgment call. It's a judgment call.

Bill's humor was instrumental in setting the right tone for the current events political show that we did, which was going to be intense and, you know, all passionate and all that sort of stuff. And when Bill would lead off the entire affair, sort of setting the tone with some humor, it was the perfect yin and yang combination. It gave a real sense that while we might be very interested and involved in what we were talking about, we didn't take ourselves too seriously enough.

We had recurring characters that Bill kept bringing into the opens and then a segment where people would supposedly have written letters to the show and Bill would read them. And here the man of a thousand voices would read these supposed letters from all over the planet and they would sound exactly the same, like it was an American from middle America. Check out what I'm talking about here and think of how very different it was to have somebody –

put a little smile on your face before you dove into politics and current events. When was the last time you saw those two things mixed together, right? A Mrs. Kayak Khan of Karakoramongolia writes, a Mr. Vinny Boombatz of the Amazon Rainforest writes, a Mr. Boombatz

From the Kalahari Desert writes, Hey guys, I love the show. One question though. How do you all deal with Dan's intensity level on a day-to-day basis? It must be a grind. Yes, mister, I can't pronounce your name. It is. I deal with it by having as little to actually do with Dan as possible. And Ben, the engineer? Ha ha ha.

Ben is just screwed. Oh, do I remember that Dan Collin guy. He was a punk. A Mr. R. Nader writes...

Fellas, I loved the show. Until the recent news hit that you were bought by CyberTech Digisoft. I mean, with the leather jackets, with the hair. Oh my God, the hair. Am I to believe that the billions of dollars that such a giant corporation can funnel today and won't change his independent perspective? When you're smiling...

When you're smiling, the whole world's got common sense for crying out loud. I wish I could sing like, I don't know, like Dan Carlin. Now there's a scary thought. Well, thanks for asking, Mr. Nader. Just like our legislature, the host of Common Sense is completely uncorruptible. Whomever that person might turn out to be. After all, Dan Carlin is just a symbol. A symbol of CyberTech Digisoft. CyberTech Digisoft. If it's good, we'll do it.

We'll buy it and then sell it back to you. A buck a show or we'll call the cops. One thing that Bill never got on the show was why I was doing the self-deprecating stuff. And he would tease me and sometimes just laugh out loud when he would read the liners that I'd written. And he would see the self-deprecating comments I would make. And it was a way of offsetting...

And what comes off sometimes maybe as a know-it-all or an arrogance that in reality, I mean, I don't think is there, but Bill didn't think was there. He wouldn't have come back with the sort of things he did, which, well, you could listen to his reaction sometimes when he would hear the ways we would approach the branding or the imaging. Yeah.

And and he would always try when he could to slip in something of his own that had a positive thing instead of the sorts of things I used to write for myself. Well, Mr. Cowell, thanks for pointing out the elephant in the living room. If you haven't figured out, Dan's got a way too high an opinion of himself. You never worked. You've never worked with him. Take it from me. He shares more qualities with William Shatner than just his voice. Way to run yourself down, Dan.

Smothering you in mushrooms and onions since 1994. He's Dan Carlin, and this is Common Sense. What the hell did that mean? Didn't care for this episode? Well, you're probably not alone. The good news is there are lots of past shows available from dancarlin.com. A mere 99 cents will get you an instant download of one of the classic Common Sense shows of the past.

Back when it was worth paying for. Go to Dan Carlin. Boy, you're really back selling your show here. If you think something's missing, it's probably the Ritalin. That's it. Keep beating yourself up. I'm going to have to come over there and slap you.

As I said earlier, Bill had a Jonathan Winters sort of vibe to him in terms of his ability to just come out with stuff spontaneously and endlessly in turning our, you know, short little recording sessions into rather, you know, long, enjoyable affairs. And I laughed listening to some of these raw tapes. I mean, the funny thing is, is Bill could chastise me for my self-deprecating liners that I wrote, but he had no problem having some fun with me in some of the ad lib.

I mean, you know, listen to this stuff. Giving you common sense, giving you twice, giving you more bullshit than you can handle. Dan Carlin. He's a jokester. He's a prankster. He's a sometimes wannabe wankster. He's what? Dan Carlin. I just want to love him and pet him and hug him until he starts talking, George.

I'll give you some hardcore history. How about my last prostate exam? Well, thanks for asking, Mr. Swaggart. Even though Dan can be pious, self-righteous, and overdramatic, and he likes to do a little self-anointing now and then, he comes by it naturally. No experience necessary. Living proof of what happens when cousins marry. He's Dan Carlin, and this is Common Sense.

Bill had the ability to talk in a high range all the way to the low range, and he called the low range the red zone. I think that's an NFL reference, but I'm not sure. But we loved the red zone voice, and we would have Bill so often do that.

multiple versions of different things that we wrote in a bunch of different voices but we you know when he got to that red zone voice that just hit the sweet spot for us i mean listen to some of these examples of bill going way down in the in the range of something that sounds like an old nfl films production with some classic voice from the 50s or 60s you know in that announcer range that is just so rare

It seems like everybody with a political show has a deep voice to intro the material. Okay, let's play. Okay, let's play like the big boys. No, Dan Carlin. There's a reason it doesn't sound like the old media. That's because it's the new media. Taking you to non-partisan places you've never been to. And leaving you there.

I say, it's a combination of the best that public broadcasting has to offer... And NFL football. Beating the ideas into the turf until something breaks. Common Sense with Dan Carlin. I think one of the best barometers of what kind of talent Bill had is to notice that most people who could perform and do what we just listened to Bill do...

would have been content to be some of the best voice work actors and voiceover guys in the business. And yet for Bill, this was a side gig. This was a little addendum to what he really did, was hold court over...

the greatest radio success in terms of ratings that existed the whole time I was here. I mean, Bill, Bill beat my numbers easily by like double. And that's how good of a program he and Tim and, and Tracy and my wife had, you know, during their heyday. And, and Tracy and Tim, as I said, are still doing the work and going strong. But I mean, there's a giant bear sized hole in, in all of our lives right now. And Bill was a,

great help in our success and like a lot of other people including his 11 children and many grandchildren everybody's gonna miss him you want any repeats on anything just one thing buddy i'd like you to take it from the top and run through it all again would you gonna miss you