QUINCY MCCOY author of MAKING SMALL TALK WITH JESUS

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast. Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian, award winning poet, future bestselling author, and
host of one of the most listened to radio shows
in America, Helen Little.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hello, book lovers, Welcome to another episode of the Public
Library Podcast. Today we are talking to Quincy McCoy about
his book Making Small Talk with Jesus.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Great title. Hi, Quincy, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Hi, Hi, Helen Loved. I'm so happy to be here
with you, great Hall of Fame radio person. It's terrific because,
you know, because the book, you know. In the book,
as you know, radio is the main character, one of
the main characters. So it's great to talk to somebody
with a history of radio like yours.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, full disclosure, we both have a background in radio
and have known each other for decades, and I was
first introduced to this story when it was a podcast.
But before we get to that, tell us what makes
King Small Talk with Jesus is about.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
It's a soulful novella. I like to call it a
Western novella about grief, radio and the long Road to Redemption. Well,
it's a story about a marriage falling apart and the
families die downward spiral, I would say, after the loss
of a child, and we follow Jesse Mack Junior, who's

(01:25):
a country radio DJ whose grief he pours into his
radio show The Country Bus, and his longings for his
dispirited wife Lexi, who has run off with another cowboy,
and his heart felt ballad that he plays. Well, it
becomes like a local sensation, like a regional phenomenon, and

(01:46):
so the music he plays touches his listeners and they
start telling their stories on the show about their you know,
their lost love. And so it's really kind of a
connection show, and it's really about that special thing that
radio does when it connects. It's that kind of story.

(02:07):
It's about sorrow, memory and redemption.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
So I did mention that it started as a podcast,
which was basically this incredible radio soap opera sorts.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Why did you decide to make it a novella?

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Well, I always wanted to write a novella, right, and
there was some interest in the podcast in New York WNYC.
At one point was well, they actually flew me out
to New York and sat me down and we talked
for a couple of days. And at the time Megan

(02:46):
Small Talk was probably one of the only fictional stories
that was out there. Nonfiction and podcast is everywhere, but
before you know, it was all nonfiction, nonfiction, nonfiction. And
we came in with this idea of doing a fictional thing,
and the people at the top didn't want to do it.
The two days I spent in New York with these

(03:08):
people on them raving about the podcast, and you know,
we did a great job of production and all that
kind of stuff. When I was flying back, I said
to myself, you know, let's make this a book. So
that's how it birthed itself from there.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Where did the story itself come from.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's set in the dustiness of the golden age of
country radio, and I'd say country radio is not necessarily
something you specifically are known for. I know we've both
worked in country, but we aren't known for it. Why
this setting, place and time period.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
That's interesting, That's a good question. I came from Upstate
New York, and culturally in upstate New York, there's a
lot of singer songwriters. I'm a lot of singing songwriter music.
When I started in radio in my hometown, I had
a lot of friends there who were musicians. There were
also DJs and they all were singings and they wanted

(04:00):
to go to Nashville. And I hung out with these
people too because I was interested in that music as well.
I'm interested in all kinds of music, but I fell
in love with a lot of singer songwriters and growing
up and there was like Peter Palmery and stuff like that.
But when Dylan came along, I was like, WHOA, what
is this? And so over the years I've always expanded,

(04:21):
you know, and stayed with it the type of music
that I love. And then when I thought about that,
what this story is all about, I realized, like, what
says it better than blues or country music? I mean,
they get right to it right, And so my love
for short form things like songs. I love songs because

(04:43):
they get it all in there in three minutes. It's
just amazing to me how they can do that right,
to tell a story like that, and it's just amazing.
So I said, well, you know, basically, this guy's going
to be telling these stories on his show, and other
people that are calling and they're going to tell there's stories. Well,
country music really does that well. So I decided to

(05:05):
make country music the vehicle for it, you know, instead
of Top forty or anything like that. I thought that
country music and country music radio the type of songs
and stuff that I loved. From all of it, I
thought I could turn it into the best vehicle to
really personify the connection between you know, the DJ and

(05:29):
the audience.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
You know, one of the things I like most about
your book is how it fired my senses. I could
smell the old studio, I could hear the signal from
an old radio.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
I could taste the desperation that hung in the air.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
At times, I felt like you, as author Maatis and
eyewitness along with you in these characters' lives. What was
important to you as a writer that we got to
experience or learn from them?

Speaker 4 (05:57):
Oh yeah, that's the whole thing. I wanted everybody. I
wanted this story to be like a responsive chord to
to to the reader, you know, I wanted them to
experience the story of lost love as if it was
their own, you know, connecting with it emotionally and spiritually.

(06:21):
That was the goal. And because the other part of it,
for the radio flip side of it is you know,
when you're listening to the radio and you're you know,
you got the blues and you needed a boost or something,
and suddenly your favorite song came on the radio. Remember
how that made you feel and you would smile, and

(06:43):
that that warm feeling would go deep inside you. That's
the good vibe that I hope that this book could produce,
even though it's undersad situations sometimes, but still that your
spirit is lifted or the song comes down. That's just
melancholy and tear jerking, but it matches what's happening to
you and your life at the time. Those are the

(07:04):
kind of experiences I wanted people to get from the book.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
We meet Jesse and Alexi at the heart of the story.
Tell us about these two compelling and often competing characters
and how they shared their story with you. Well.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Jesse mac Jr. Is the emotional heart of Megan small talk.
Jesse's got a problem because he's the reluctant heir to
his daddy's rodeo legacy. He ain't got it. He's not
He's no rodeo guy. And you know that kind of
echoes with a lot of father son's stories. The father's

(07:40):
son chapter, by the way, in that book is one
of my favorites and he struggles to express himself in
real life except when he is on the radio. You know,
the radio is is where he becomes himself. So I mean,
so that's it. But you know, Lexi, on the other hand,
is done. Novella's wounded heart. She's older than Jesse and

(08:05):
has been marked by a lifetime of trauma and abandonment, loss,
and you know, emotional neglect. She's fragile and even though
she puts up a real strong front, but the death
of her second child becomes the breaking point, driving her

(08:25):
away from her family and back into a troubled past.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
So it's interesting that you said she was fragile because
I kind of felt like you said, she puts up
a strong fund. I felt like there was a strength
about her, but it got stripped when they went through
their difficulty, which you have to find out in the book.
I also like how you formatted this book with the
cast of characters up front, like a table of contents.
That was something that was very unique. Tell us about

(08:53):
your choice to list them in the beginning of the
book like that.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
It was actually the editor, Oh, you know, my editor,
She said, you know, we've got these great stories, you know,
and great characters, but we don't want people to get lost,
and so if they need to go back and check
it right there for them. I thought that was a
great idea, and because that was one of my worries
was because I was you know, I do bounce around

(09:17):
a little bit. It all ties together eventually, but I
was worried about losing a character here or there too,
and I didn't want that. So that's how that that's
how that came to be.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
So making Small Talk with Jesus reads like a song,
a ballad, and now I understand more why. Just like
it says on the cover, it is a country ballad,
novella exactly lyrical, haunting.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
What did you enjoy most about writing it?

Speaker 4 (09:46):
I think what I enjoyed most about writing it was
the meditations about radio, the chance when I had a
chance to it through Jesse Uh talk about what it's
like being on the air, talking about the connection with people,
because I think that's so so important. I think that
people just don't listen to the radio for their music.

(10:09):
I think they're they're they're looking for that the human connection.
I know that sound I sound like Marshall mcclulan right now,
And but still I believe in that. And I think
you know when you talk to people who would call
into the radio station, and I know you've done this
many many times like I have, and you know, it's

(10:31):
the usual trials and tribulations, the ups and downs and
what life is all about. But then they're conversations no
matter if they're young or if they're old, it always
revolves around their relationships. And back in the day, radio
was a place, I think where people brought their loneliness, heartbreak, hopes,

(10:55):
and dreams to their favorite DJ. And we were like
a therapist a lot of the time. Yeah, and yeah,
I know you can. I can just name a city
that I worked in and I'll think of somebody immediately,
you know, or somebody else here and there that I
you know, and they never met, We never met. I
don't know what they look like. They I don't know

(11:16):
what I look like. But we were tight. And every
night at seven point fifteen, I know Michael was going
to call, and I would hit the button and I'd
looked for it, and then these whole situations. I got
a great little story I could tell you real quick
about that that I wrote about when Michael Jackson died.
I was asked to write an article about Michael Jackson
and stuff like that, but I threw in this one

(11:36):
little story about me when I was a DJ in Washington,
d C. Where this kid named Michael used to call
me every night, and he was in some rich prep
school in Washington, d C. He loved Michael Jackson, but
the people at the school, his peers, made fun of him,
because you know, you're supposed to be raw rock and roll,
and he would walk from school with the glove and everything,

(11:57):
and he was catching hell for it. And so I
said to him, well, you know what we need to
do is we need to find you another a rock
and roll band that's suitable. So we landed on Aerosmith
because they were kind of funky, and he kind of
liked that a little bit. So then one day I
got tickets to Michael Jackson's show, and I had the
last tickets in DC, and I was giving away. Of course,

(12:18):
he'd be call her number one hundred and six whatever,
But of course I cheated and I gave him the tickets.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
I love that story.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
And the day he came in to pick up the
tickets with his dad, he walked into the lobby and
I made sure I was there, and I came around
and he looked at me, and I looked at him,
and we just started laughing because you know, he didn't
know I was black, and you know, he was telling
me all the trouble he was having because he liked
this black artist and so for and so on. So

(12:48):
you know, we had this bond, and his dad just
stared at us. He had no idea what was going on.
The kid comes running up to me in this big hug.
But I'll never forget that kid.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
So it's interesting that you talked about connection, because I
felt like there was an inherent loneliness and obviously grief
as a theme. How do these two themes relate in
your book or do they.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
Well, they don't really really well, that's a good question.
I haven't thought about that myself. But they show her
a nice mix. Yeah, you know, and and I you know,
I'm so I don't want to say what the ending is,
but I'm so happy about the ending of the book

(13:31):
because I'm getting more I get so many comments about
that that people just I just want to tell you,
I just love the way the book ends, you know,
and we needed at this time and stuff like that.
I was like, wow, you know, it's going a little
deep and so so. Yeah, but I don't know, that's
a good question. You guys gonna have to come back
and answer that, you know, next time we do part two.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Well, I tell you what I thought. I thought that, Yeah,
what is that?

Speaker 4 (13:56):
What did you think?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Grief is something everybody does alone because it is unique
to each of us. So it is kind of a
mirror of loneliness. Not that alone means loneliness, but grief
alone kind of equals a loneliness.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
Yeah. Yeah, that's very So you can steal that right.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Being that you have spent so much of your life
in radio and there are so many stories at a
radio station.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
What was the best part of this being a part
of your novel?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Oh, because I was able to go back. Well, you know,
I borrow from a lot of friends. I borrowed from
a lot of people's grief to put these stories together,
and you know, these composite things. You know, there's no
set place in this you know I left it that way, Okay.

(14:54):
You know it's an unnamed imaginary western town where Jesse
just happened to be on this fifty thousand watt channel
signal that crosses all these boundaries on the southwestern planes
and prairies and all that kind of stuff. And I
left it that way because I was borrowing from so
many different things to put it together. But I should

(15:16):
be truthful about it. There's a lot of my life
sprinkled in there in different places, you know, the conversation
with the dad with the Jesse and his dad, you know,
there's echoes of things that happened to me and friends
of mine, relationship, you know, back in the day too.

(15:38):
I must say that I remember there was a statistic.
I don't think it's true, but they said that disc
jockey's you know, were right behind police officers with a
divorce rate. And I don't know that was ever true,
but there was a lot of people breaking up and
divorces and things like that going on. Because I know

(16:00):
a lot of people who were in radio who that's
all they cared about was those hours out of the air,
and they might have neglected, you know, the family and
things like that. So I just took a little bit
of all that stuff and put it together in this
imaginary town. So it was fun for me to create everything.
It was my world you know, I was able to

(16:20):
control it and move people in and out of it
as I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
And one thing we haven't talked about is this amazing
title from the door. When I first heard about just
the story making small talk with Jesus, I'm like, that.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Title is brilliant. What's the story behind it?

Speaker 4 (16:37):
Okay, as you knows a part in the book where
Jesse goes and visits his Lexi and she's in a
home trying to get herself together. And my personal experience
of being in one of those places visiting someone who

(16:58):
was in there, I was young, so this is kind
of like a question. Probably I wouldn't ask if I
wasn't so young. So I was visiting this person who
was in there in the visiting room, and in the
room comes all these different patients and there's people spinning around,
there's people just banging their head against the wall, there's

(17:21):
people just talking to themselves. And the friend that I
was visiting, she had made friends with this one woman
who just kind of stood there and was just chatting away.
And I asked her, you know, I said, who's she
talking to? And she said, oh, she's just making small

(17:43):
talk with Jesus. And I never forgot.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
That brilliant, brilliant.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
I love about it.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
As a matter of fact, it explains a lot of
things in my life.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
You have authored nonfiction and fiction, and fiction is a
different animal. What were some of the surprising differences you encountered.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Uh, the freedom of fiction. Okay, you know you're free.
You're free. Go ahead, take that story and run with
it in any direction you want to. Nown fiction, you got,
you know, just facts and based and you just kind
of based on things and stuff like that. It's a
good exercise from bouncing from one to the other. I
think the advantage I had in writing a novella is
because of all the years of writing screenplays and so

(18:27):
a lot of people say to me, oh, this book
is so visual, I can just see that. And then
I said, well, that's a compliment for me, for you know,
all the years of writing screenplays where it's all about show,
you know. So I took a lot of the show
and then I put a little tel in there and
we got ourselves a little novella. So I like that part.
But it's this, this is the second book of the

(18:48):
trilogy on radio. This is it because I'm going to
do well we had no static, which is still around
after twenty six years. Now we've got making small talk.
But the next book that I'm working on is Tunes
in my Head, a Radio and Records memoir, and so
that's my memoir. I'm going to wrap up the radio thing.

(19:08):
But I'm having a lot of fun with that one
because you know, it gives me a lot of time
to write meditations about radio rushes with greatness of different
people I've met over the years, from Casey and the
Sunshine Band of Frank Sinatra. I mean, there's all these
different little stories and fun things that's happened in this

(19:29):
career from market one seventy nine to number one, and
so I just wanted to put the ball down and
tell little stories about it because I've been blessed with
being able to be at so many different formats. Yeah,
you know, Top forty is a small market. Top forty
a big market, you know, and then rock and roll.

(19:53):
I've done, you know, jazz, and then I've done the
best station of the mall with wnw AM eleven three
to zero in New York, which was the Johnny Carson
Show of radio. You know, where you have Frank Sinatra
and Ella Fitzgerald and Steve and Edie and Coop everybody
walked through that door. You know, it was it's so

(20:15):
fun to sit there. And the recept receptionist, Rosie Galvez,
rest in peace when you she would say Lena Horns
here in the lobby, you know, and Melton Mays here,
you know that kind of thing. So, yeah, I'd love
that radio station. And those people who were on the air,
Ted Brown's and the William B. Williams and and Jim

(20:35):
Lowe and Alison Steele too, was there towards the end,
and you know Les Davis, Mark Simone who's still around.
I understand. Yeah, it's it was great. It was great
to be around Steve Allen and and all those kind
of people. You know. Yeah, I'll never forget it.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
So that pretty much answered my next question, which was
what was next for you? And you're doing this memoir.
What was the title? Again?

Speaker 4 (21:03):
The title is Tunes in my Head, a Radio and records.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Memoir memoirs can be challenging too, because you have to
be real and honest with yourself.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
No, you open up a door and you go, oh
do I want to ride about that?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Right?

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Think so? But you know there's a lot of doors
opening and the windows, and it's amazing because you're going
down one path and all of a sudden there's a
whole other memory just comes in and you go, oh,
my goodness, I forgot about that, you know. So yeah,
it's it's kind of scary. I do have an advantage
because a lot of the people that I'll be writing

(21:41):
about aren't here anymore. Argue about it.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
So if people want to find you, connect with you,
and definitely find the book and purchase the book. Give
us all those details. Are you on social Where can
we find the book? What formats can we find it? In?

Speaker 3 (21:56):
All that good stuff?

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Well you can. The best place to go will be
Making small Talk with Jesus dot com and the You's
there's a list of everywhere you can find the book,
but there's treats on there as well. There's the Making
Small Talk with Jesus playlist, which I think is wonderful
because I created it. Of course, so all the songs
that are mentioned in the book are there, but a

(22:20):
lot of other ones that I'd like to say, just
you know, they're either about Jesse or what he's thinking,
or it's about LEXI. What she's thinking, or Jesse's mom
or his son JT. You know, there's every song in
there fills in some of the emotional stuff that's in
that book. So if I was making a movie, this

(22:41):
movie soundtrack is, you know, ready to go with just
songs off the radio, and that's what I would like
to hear him play too in there. So and the
other thing is there is live readings on the site
as well.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Cool.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
Yeah, so things from the when we did the podcast.
So there was a couple of chapters that you can
just click on and I'll read something, and then my
special guest Carlo Sorri read reads. She plays Lexi's very good. Yes,
so you know, some tweets those three little extra treats,
and then you just click this and buy it here,
click this by it there.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
If people want to listen to the entire podcast that
you did, is that still available?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
No, I took that down when I decided to turn
it into a book. So I think there was like
seven episodes, but there I have them, but I took
it up. Maybe one day I'll be able to put
them back up.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
For another reason, Okay, you know, was the podcast identical
to the book?

Speaker 3 (23:42):
I didn't feel like it was no that I wanted
to make sure because.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
That's one thing I felt like the book was much
I mean, I love the podcast, but the book was
much richer in terms of character depth and where it
where it took us.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Yeah, yeah, so that that's definitely different I had for
the for the for the radio. You know, we always
have to edit it down and get it ready to go.
So yeah, they were, They're definitely different, but still they
are there.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Well, Quincy, thank you so much. First of all, you know,
I love talking to you anyway, and we could do
this for hours, but to have you come on the
show and talk about this amazing book is such a
treat for me.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
Oh, thank you, Helen. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
See you soon, I hope absolutely.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
And as a treat, I'll leave you with this taste
of making small Talk with Jesus, the song that Quincy
wrote for the book.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
I went to the chapel. The Shepherd was there.

Speaker 6 (24:51):
I had some questions about the fate of the Dear Girl.
Even Lucian left me a long time ago. Making small
talk with Jesus helped me open that door.

Speaker 7 (25:11):
If darkness is approaching and you're searching for the light.
Just make small talk with Jesus and they'll make things
all right.

Speaker 5 (25:26):
She was so tiny and precious.

Speaker 6 (25:29):
When you took her from us, our world was busted.

Speaker 5 (25:35):
And ignited in flames. My poor wife loss fate. She
could only take blame and ran off with the devil
playing his game.

Speaker 7 (25:55):
I wouldn't tell the chatterbo and considered taking life my
two girls who are gone.

Speaker 8 (26:04):
My son's no life. The shepherd Fear said, the end
of my ballad was near.

Speaker 5 (26:16):
Your faithful berearded sheep praise in him song because it's
the small talk with Jesus. It opens Heaven's arms.

Speaker 7 (26:30):
If darkness is approaching and your serves for the life.

Speaker 5 (26:38):
Snakes, small talk with Jesus and they'll make things all right.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Another show in the Books. Join us for the next
episode of the Public Library Podcast, a place to check
out books.