You're listening to the downbeat on ninety seven more with the free I spent the whole break looking at Google images of early flight attempts. You guys are right on bicycle with a shoddy wing on both sides of it. How about you
remember the like six wings? Yes, internal collapse yes. Well, speaking of the movie Air for the Middle, there was a dream sequence or a flashback sequence where Striker is remembering his time over Macho Grande and it's like, you know, World War whatever, two planes fighting, and it's kind of like what he is thinking back on, and then it just evolves into the birth of flight on times. That's where I know most of these I think we all do. And then man with kind of wings on jumping off a
cliff and just straight down. Dudes had balls though, you know what they must have really thought they were gonna work. Yep. But imagine like the big gather around, gather around, you know, today's the day, and some people of the village came to look and watched his idiot shatter his collar bone. Is it a guy like hot Rod or are these engineers and like well respected scientists, Because it would be so much funnier if They're a well
respected scientists and you get to see him just bust their ass. Oh the collective amount of hubrists from their team. You figured it out this time, mates, nine o'clock a demonstration in flight. Gather all, gather one other, all Christal Columbus Park. Be that did the blimp come before this? Wouldn't the blimp and balloon make far more sense than this? Yeah? I
think the blimp did, right, Okay, no idea. I love that we talked about that for the uh all the like old guesses that the future would be blimps everywhere and the blimp dock like at the Empire State Building? Was that real too? I think would they almost build that? I might be completely wrong. I might be thinking of a sky captain in the World of Tomorrow. It's a great movie, by the way, one of the first all CGI movies. I think you were able to dock there for sure.
Yeah, Like I think they you could dock a blimp at the Empire State Building. So that was the plan at least. Isn't that funny that we look back that's insane at the advancement and technology of one hundred years ago and it's just flat out laughable, and we think, you know, you see what we can do now with AI and how just incredibly different it is.
Well, we look back one hundred years from now, yeah, and look at the technology of today and just realize what primates we were, Like, do you think they will figure out how to just zap you to a different place on Earth? And I know that seems like, well, there's surely there's the cutoff, you know, like time travel and then that. But transportation, right, transportation where you go to a port of some kind and you get zapped to Europe or zapped anywhere in the world. Right,
that's how they How does that even work? Well I don't know, but how does any well, how did it work in Star Trek Steve? Then they believe it was molecular repopulation, where they're like, all right, we're going to break down your molecules and then we're going to move them over to this other poor and then your molecules have to be put back together. But man, I would sign up instantly. I don't want to get up in
an airplane just scramble my molecules. And all it takes is one error in molecule reassembly, and one is out of order, and then you've got like a foot coming out of your forehead. You look like sloth from the Goonies. The back kill it fire, where's the fire? Yeah, those are the first guys flying. They're going to be rough. They're going to be rough. Yeah, reassembly is our big issue. Yep. There's old Mikey foothead, no foothead, but he's famous. He had balls and now his
balls are on his ear for all to see. But for real, like in a thousand years, you might be like, wait, you guys used to go to an airport and wait in line and board a big engine metal thing like that's I don't know, it will yes, seem primitive for sure. It'd be like, that's such an inefficient waste of time? How could you do that? You just wonder where the ceiling is or if it even
exists. You just stop. It's like it can't get any better. Because I thought that about HDTVs twenty years ago or however long ago it was when you know, we had that big giant ass HDTV in the breakroom at Cumulus that was like eight thousand pounds that Mark Cuban sent up there. And then somebody tried to steal one night, right, I think it just disappeared and nobody knew where it went. Yeah, but anyway, I thought, oh my god, TV can never be better. And then there's four K,
and then there's eight K, and it just keeps. I mean, how much more perfect can resolution be that your human eye can even detect, you know, the clarity of something and not adjust within like a week. Because that is what's frustrating, Like every time you buy a new good one like this is the most incredible thing I've ever seen, and then after a week it's commonplace. I'm like, eh, it's all right, Yeah, I've seen better porn. I think I'm maxed out. I I don't even know
what I have. My TV's five or six, seven years old and it's amazing. Yeah, and I don't even know what eight K is. I'm still rocking ten eighty dpi. Man, about seven twenty was awesome? Seven twenty isn't that? Though? How they shoot it, like they don't shoot NFL games in eight K, I don't know. I don't know how any of that works. I'm just like, exactly what you said. I'm like,
it's perfect. I don't need anything better. I certainly don't need to spend a bunch of money to get ahead of anything unless we come up with transporting us. Yes, molecularly, I want that. I would sign up for that. Yeah, I'd do one of the first guys. I'd take the earballs. You take earballs, earball. Steve pioneer it, so we learned. Steve loves Star Trek. I watched the original way more than in any next generation. So let's see, I had to go back to the
original series, so I've seen all those. Yeah, have you done that recently? It was probably a decade back. I think about the same for me, maybe a little less than a decade, because I think it they all got acquired by it was either Hulu or Netflix. Yeah, I think it was on Hulu or something and you could watch them on I remember starting it from the beginning, and every night before i'd go to bed back in the day, would knock out an effing Star Trek of the original. Yes,
incredible, and isn't there not many didn't it two years? Yeah, it was not a bunch to get through, maybe fifty episodes in two seasons. I believe it's weird. Yeah, it's interesting to go back and just pick up reference points. You're like, oh, well, that's what everything I've watched for the last thirty five years has been referencing, whether it's the muck time, fight scenes, or just the types of music beds that are used, Like oh well, okay, yeah, that's why fight sequences are
scored that way. And you talk about, you know, technology advancing, and that was one of the first big shows that was filmed in technicolor, you know, around that time where that was becoming kind of the norm, or before it became the norm. So their usage of their outfits and the and the backgrounds and colors that they use, like it was it was like
a production assistant threw up a box of crayons on every every scene. Everything was so colorful because you wanted to show off, well we've got color, so everything is going to be so many different colors. Awesome. Speaking of different colors, wasn't that the first interracial kiss in television history? Believe you're correct. I believe celebrate racial harmony every morning here on the downbeat when Kirk frenched ohah, yeah, she was a babe. Yeah she still is.
Is that Zoe? What's her name? In the new ones, the Ohura and The New Ones with Chris Pine. You never watched any those Star Treks The New Ones? Donald? Yeah? Is that her? Is that her talking about her character from the show I'm talking about from New Stars New Star Trek? Whoever Heura is? Is that her name? You know? Let's just play the open for most important thing in the world. It is Zoie sel Dondie. Here you go. See I don't remember her name. Steve
like Star Trek. What else is Steve like? Let's find out about this dude next? Lay it once in loop at Steve Man. The most most important thing in the whole dang world today is our friend Steve. We were blessed on this station with a new friend a few months ago, and it's a Steve Shackleford. He's been with a Benskin show for how long now? About four months? Now? Four months? It's going great. I need to figure out how to take vacation days. That's one thing I need to
figure out how to do. If you've earned any technically, I don't know. That's the thing. There was no paperwork given. We don't even know if you officially work here. I don't think I do paycheck yet. Eventually that did show up, as one of them has showed up for the bad months. But no, it's it's going great. It was delightful driving in this morning with zero traffic. And I hate to be traffic guy, but man, I've been a work from home cat for years now, since before
the pandemic. Traffic's are real beating at eight am to nine am in the morning. And where are you driving from? Alan, Texas? Allen Texas? You Skin's an Allen kid, right, He's a West Sider. He's on the the better off side where the east side of the tracks. Kind of cats old school, Allen? Did you grow up there? I did not. I grew up in Lake Hhlands. Okay, yes, excuse me, died sorry ordered many of picassos years ago. Danny Burner. I was
a Lake Islands high school. I live Said Islands. I don't know why I thought Richardson, so Lake You're part of Richardson, Yes, church, and uh that's where you went to school. You know what I'm maybe thinking? It is because I believe Lake Islands and Bergner's Shriff Stadium still we do. And I have a hard time not rubbing that in Ben and Skin's face every day because it is called Wildcat Ram Stadium. Yeah, so Lake Island's
high school. Completely different district. Yeah, still Richardson Independent School District. It was very frustrated. It makes no sense. It makes none because it is in the heart of Dallas. It is we are not in Richardson city limits at all. Nowhere near each other. No, maybe what five seven, ten miles from each other. Yeah, it's it seemed like forever. Yeah, to get to Berkner back then, like, like I said,
fifteen miles twenty minute drive. They share a high school football stadium. That is strange, but it seems smart, right, Yeah, you're gonna build these monstrosities, why not share one. It is just weird in Texas for sure. Like I even looked it up the other day as like, certainly they've built their own stadium at Berner High School. It has been going on for years too, like this. It goes way back, right, Oh yeah, as long as I've been there, and it's a it's been in
a place where fights have occurred. I would imagine never in my time. I was not much of a fighter. But they ever play each other occasionally. I think they do in playoff games. The record books out for those monkey. Yeah, I want to go Lake Island's kid. Did you and you grew up in Lake Islands? I did? Yeah? What what neighborhood were you in over there? I was right by the high school for most really the street you grew up on, fair Crest Drive, Fair Crest Drive.
See that's my old pizza delivering stomping grounds. There's a chance, a chance back in the day you were born in what eighty eight, eighty eighty five, there's a real good chance that I delivered a pizza and little snutnose Steve was the kid that the parents, Oh, this was a great move. Go pay the pizza man and you get the money, and you give the kid the change, and the kid supposed to let you keep the change, and he just turns around and walks back to the living room. I'm
like you, little pecker. Yeah, that was probably stiff tip Steve over there. Now. The fatal flaw and Picasso system was that they at one point would say do you want us to keep that card on file? And my voice dropped at a pretty young age, so at about twelve, I was able to just order whatever I wanted, and hey, card on file would be and They'll just send it over there, chicken tenders, pizza, whatever you want. Me and my friends would go nuts and parents at the
end of the month to get their discover bill Boy. Early voice drop is a treat. I had a late one, and I nothing more soul crushing than being about twelve or thirteen and the person on the phone is like, hang on, ma'am and you're like, ma'am ah, that's tough. Yeah. Malcolm's mom has the opposite. She sounds like a little kid. She said that even when like you'd get a whatever solicitor call, oh talking here to my phone, She's like, uh, hello, Yes, is your
mommy there. She's like, I'm thirty three, I am, and I'm mommy, I am thirty three years old. Yeah. But you guys both got the growth spurts. I had like a best friend who was I was always taller than my entire life, and I swear in tenth grade, I went out of town for a week and that kid is now six foot three. His voice never really dropped. He is now a six foot three individual. And you're like, man, come on, come on, this is not fair. So I got the voice Lake Island Steve, Yeah, and
did you go to college? No, No, I mean I attended some courses. I am any colleges. Yeah, I have Richland. You I need to know that I ever enrolled at Richland, said, I was more Austin Community College. And then by the time I came back to Dallas, I think I was just done with formal education. What were you? Did you not have a real plan of life and mind when you left high school?
Or no? Actually quite the opposite. Yeah, we were at six fifty here, So no, you'll hear me talk about how I didn't actually graduate from like Islands. I stopped going to school at a certain point. And you also hear talk up here occasionally that randomly came up that I had some songs and movies at like fifteen. So no, my plan was dictated by my folks, and they wanted me to go into the music business.
That's really that. Yes over education, yes, absolutely and abnormal for parents that my father was an investor in publishing companies and that was a very lucrative business in the nineties. So the Nashville country music scene where it's just hey, no, we've got songwriters in rooms and they crank out like what you guys are talking about, Hey, I got a guy who does lyrics,
and I got another guy who can put songs together. They could do five songs a day in here and we'll we'll shop them to everyone and we'll make cash. So that was legitimately the plan until you get kind of deep into it and you get around nineteen ninety nine where I was, and the publishing rates just start dropping and diminishing as CD sales start going away. So the industry started to thin right as I was trying to get into it, and then I was just never very good at the same time. So but you
said you had songs in movies at fifteen, Yeah, explain that. Yeah, that was negotiated by the publishing company. Yeah. Yeah, like you about scoring a film or like original like a half minute pop songs that was just a pop song. Yeah. So again, if you've got decent managers and you've got good publishers and sink agreement people, you're like, hey, yeah, we can get your songs and movies and stuff, and there was just original composition that you did. Yeah. I was always very good at
putting tunes together. I was not a great lyricist early on, so people just hand me sheets of lyrics and say, hey, kid, put a put a music to this and it was good at and you recorded everything on your own or did you have to go up to Nashville? So I rarely worked in Dallas. I worked out of Nashville and Los Angeles and was taken there by my parents as a little as a teenager. Yeah, about fifteen
to eighteen is when I went in heavy on it. Then there was kind of a fracturing where it's like, I don't really want to do country music in Nashville anymore, and the business is hurting, so you bail and go down to Austin and have some fun. Then you come back and try to do it and the business is really crumbling. You then actually making like legitimate
income from the sync deals that you were rarely and up there. A lot of the deals were like, hey, we kick people three grand a month for quotas, and hey, you just turn in your songs and if one of them pops, because they would pretty much sell album tracks to like country artists, so hey they've got two singles, they come here for the remaining ten tracks on their CD. Yeah, and hey, if one of them
pops, you guys make some extra cash and royalties. But no, we pay you three grand a month and you turn in about twenty songs a month, okay, And so that was kind of the income that those cats made. I never took a quota deal and so yeah, I never really made it in that business. But that's how my original plans shifted into just let's go see what's going on in the music audio world and give it another go when when it comes back around. Yeah, so your dad was an investor
in this, yes, but did he actually make music himself. No. He would tinker and lyrics occasionally, but no, he was not a musician. So he figured early that you were adept at this and good. Yeah. He had contacts who had made a lot of money doing this and said, hey, you know what, kid, you're not really good at sports, like I was, yeah, exactly, Like yeah, sure, dads
are always like what is this he's going to be good at? And you're like, you're not really good at this and your grades are bad, so why don't you try to do this music thing that I've seen people make money at And you're like, I give that a go. So no, that's why I Moore got pushed into that. I think it was a this seems like could be a good fit, and I've seen people do okay in this industry, so you sort of casually sitting it. Did you not graduate high
school? I graduated from a charter school. By the time I had hit seventeen, every member of my band had quit that school and they were like, hey, we're gonna go to Nashville. We would rather you guys just be available when we need you and just work on this stuff. So no,
technically you still graduated. I just did not hang through at Lake Highlands because it was five days a week, eight hours a day, you know, and charter schools three hours a day, and it's Taste Austin Community College, and I assume that's an awesome Yeah, move down there instead of Nashville, And I imagine that was still chasing the music dream. That was more
to have fun. I did not enjoy being worked a ton from fourteen to about eighteen there where it was just right, right right, churn, churn, churn, So then I just kind of eh, I'm done with this, and you go play in dumb little bands and just have fun, and then after a couple of years you're like, well, probably not much of a play down here, was that, Austin. Was that the time that you fell in love with smash Mouth? Yes? Absolutely, I love them
to pieces. My Steve Harwell, I remember his name, poor Harwell. No, he was great and then came back to Dallas, made another run at it. But you know, just one very good. When did you decide, you know what, I need to start subsidizing my life with something outside of the industry. Uh well, it always worked a joke jobs so
that you could keep it going. But then the moment Mikey and I are doing right now, yeah, welcome the minute someone says, hey, there's a pregnancy too here, You're like, oh, all right, well then we're probably gonna need to get serious about earning more money. So yeah, the hey, family planning is what led me into music. Probably not gonna work anymore for me. Yeah, And so I just put to support you know, kids and a wife and all that. Correct for sure, for
sure. So hung it up for a decade and then you know, got back into it and little pieces here and there. Yeah, and a lot of it was but you know, I guess probably participating with the ben and Skin doing stuff for them. That was that just kind of just for goofing off for fun. Yeah, that was just a weird muse kind of thing. We're just like, ah, this would be fun to send one of these things in and just kind of make it a joke. And then next thing you know, Ben's calling you at home, Hey, can you get
this thing for me in like thirty minutes? Yeah? Sure, man, Oh it's been for the radio. Yes, of course I can't. And then a year goes by, another year, Yes, they've been great. That's a throwing my call. Yeah, so how did that? What? You just were a listener and stumbled on a bend and Skin ten years ago?
Is that how? Yeah? I stumbled onto him Honestly. When Kat joined the show, they came over to a station and I kind of grew to love the format of what they were doing there at that station, and I hung with them when they left there and came over to the former station here Eagle whatever. And then yeah, I had reached out to Skin about Eastwood music stuff because I was trying to get back into music in any capacity and I'd been working in corporate jobs. I was like, all right,
this guy's got great taste and he's doing this label thing. Hey, if I can help him get organized, I'm chained to my computer all day anyway, Hey man, you need some help, send an emails. I'd like to learn more about the publishing biz. Let me know, maybe we can work together. And he and I kind of formed a little partnership there when it's like, yeah, just throw me your junk work that you don't want
to do, and I'll help you out with it. And then that kind of coincided with yeah, i'll send in a tune here and not tell you it's me. And then it took them a few months to figure out that it was me sending them tuned, So it was me kind of screwing with them the same time that I was working with them. So it's a fun gag. Look at us now and look at us now hosting, and then I got to do KT's pod and TV show and a bunch of that stuff, and then the weekend thing with KT here, and then it's like screw
it, yeah exact. So he's just a ton of fun to work with. I love his sensibility. So that's nut and we love it. Yeah, so when did you become a huge fan of mine? Actually, thank you so much. We like to go to break before things get boring. Anyway, that's uh, strip mall Steve and here with us for three. I know, fascinating dude. He's a funny dude, and I've heard a lot of whispers and talk about your past and all that. I want to learn a lot more. And we're happy to have you at the station here
and certainly happy to have you with us this morning. But that's probably still tip of the iceberg, right. Plenty more to get to know about Steve over the next few years. I'd imagine all right, Sports at seven coming up next? How about this a new statue out in front of the American Airlines Center. Who's that going to be? That's next? On ninety seven, won the Free