Passion Paves the Professional Path of the “Power Trip” Producer
KFAN’s Chris Hawkey’s love for radio has gotten him this far and will continue taking him further
Double fisting a large iced Caribou Coffee beverage and a 32-ounce Super America fountain pop at 5:30 a.m., Chris Hawkey has all he needs to produce KFAN’s “Power Trip Morning Show.” His band, which bears his name and features him on lead vocals, played a gig the night before, so he only got a few hours of sleep. Hawkey’s exhausted and nobody would question him if he decided to take the day off to get some rest. This is where he wants to be right now, though; sitting in the producing suite tuning his soundboard as he gazes through the glass window looking into the recording studio where Cory Cove and Paul “Meatsauce” Lambert are probably discussing the penis jokes they can’t wait to share on-air that day. He may be tired, but after almost 16 years of producing the show, Hawkey finds a lot joy in coming to work each day because the next three-and-a-half hours of nonstop nonsense, tomfoolery and skulduggery that typically arises from the highest-rated radio weekday morning show currently in the Twin Cities has always and will continue to be worth those sleepless nights.
What was your path from high school to now?
“When I graduated high school, I wanted to be a rock star, but I knew that was a long shot so I thought of what would be the next best thing I could do and I realized it was playing the songs I liked. I went to a broadcasting school in Dayton, Ohio, called the International College of Broadcasting. As I was driving there one morning, I was listening to my favorite morning show on 102.9 The Big Wazoo, and they were yelling at their intern. This is 1989, so I stopped at a payphone, called them and said if you guys need an intern, I’ll come and do it. They said yeah and to be there the next morning, and I got the internship. Then I went back to Indiana, close to my hometown, and got a job doing overnights at a radio station. Then The Big Wazoo hired me to produce the morning show. After that, I went to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to produce another morning show. Strangely enough, the women who hired me, whom I never met before then, has been married to me for the last 23 years. Then I went to California to try to be a rock star, went back to Virginia to find out my wife had gotten a job to be a program director at Cities 97 and moved here. I was a stay-at-home dad for a year-and-a-half. Then I got a call by a program director at Bob 100 wondering if I would like to be the board operator and local producer for “The Howard Stern Show” when they switched formats from a country station to Rock 100.3, which eventually became KFAN. That’s how I got back into radio and it saved my career.”
“Even though each show is different at this station, we’re all the same team…I want the listeners to feel like they’re part of the team, as well.”
Who was your biggest mentor throughout the journey of your radio career?
“He’s someone that I never met, but there was a guy named Gary Burbank who was the afternoon guy for WLW in Cincinnati. If you were to listen to WLW in 1986, you’d say it sounds just like the Fan, specifically like “The Power Trip,” because everyone was part of the team. Even though each show is different at this station, we’re all the same team. Burbank in particular was fantastic. He was a man of many voices, very welcoming when you turned on the show, always in a good mood and made you feel happy. I’ve taken a lot of what he did to try to build that feeling. I want the listeners to feel like they’re part of the team, as well.”
What has been one of your biggest failures in your career and how did you pick yourself back up?
“When I was producing the morning show and doing overnights at The Big Wazoo, a new program director was hired. She sat down with me one day and said she was going to take me off overnights because I didn’t have a voice for radio. She even said I should think about doing another career. Obviously, you can imagine that that was crushing. Lucky for me, by the grace of God, the phone rang and it was my future wife calling from Virginia with a job offer and I went out there. Here’s the end of the story, though. The woman who told me that ended up working for my wife here in Minneapolis. At first, I didn’t think she would remember me at all, but she came up to me one day and said, “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I was not a smart person and was trying too hard to be a hard-ass boss. I remember that moment and I can’t believe I said that to you. I’m very grateful I got to find you later in life and tell you I apologize for that.” It was very cool.”
What does a typical week in the life of Chris Hawkey look like?
“It depends on the season. In the winter, I’m also working for the Vikings. I’ll get up at 3:15 a.m. I usually get to work by 4:05 a.m., read the papers and get show prep done. We get off the air at 9:00 a.m. This time of year, I have to go to Winter Park to film my TV show. I get done at about 2:00 p.m. and then I go home to hang out with my daughter Abigail. If I have a gig, I’m usually with the band by 6:00 p.m. and don’t get home until midnight. If I just have practice, I try to be home by 9:00 p.m. If I have nothing to do that night, I try to be in bed by 9:30 p.m. During the summer, we play almost every weekend, including Thursdays. In the winter, we play only three or four shows a month because I’m with the Vikings. Every week and every day looks different. I have to update my calendar constantly to make sure I know where to be.”
Being so busy and having each day be different than the last, how to you balance the stresses your jobs?
“The job itself is not stressful. The stressful part for me is trying to be good at everything, especially while trying to be a good parent. The way I do it, to be honest with you, is that I give up sleep. The hardest part of my job is that I’m tired all the time. By the end of the week, I’m normally so tired that I’ll feel sick. If I have good weekend, I can usually catch up on sleep.”
What is something you wish you knew before entering a career in radio?
“I wish I had known it was more about being yourself and less about being just a radio guy. I pretended to be somebody I wasn’t for a very long time. When I first started doing the morning show, I pretended I cared about sports. Now, my job is to read the newspaper so I know what’s going on in the sports world, but I don’t ever pretend I care about it. I do care about the Vikings and that’s about it.”
“The secret to the success of our show was when we stopped pretending we cared about sports, we became like everyone else.”
Does is make more challenging to cover sports topics that you aren’t passionate about?
“Not at all. I think it makes it easier because I don’t care as much as a fan does, so I can think objectively. I do that with the Vikings, too. I’m able to be objective than most fans are. Also, when I hear a radio guy whose whole life is just sports, I can’t relate to that guy and I don’t think most people can. The secret to the success of our show was when we stopped pretending we cared about sports, we became like everyone else. We cared about the Vikings and we wanted to know if they won or lost, but it wasn’t everything. I’ll get emails every now and then from somebody who will say, “I tuned in at 7:20 a.m., you guys weren’t talking about the Vikings and I want to hear about the Vikings,” but were not going to talk about them the whole show because nobody wants to hear that.”
“My job is essentially to come to the radio station and try to make my friends laugh for three-and-a-half hours…I love entertaining people and making them laugh.”
What excites you most about this job?
“I still get butterflies in my stomach every Sunday night knowing I get to come to work Monday morning. I love it. My job is essentially to come to the radio station and try to make my friends laugh for three-and-a-half hours. Our mission statement when we started doing this show 16 years ago was to never have a bad day. We always try to keep ourselves upbeat and we’ve been able to do that, so I love it. I love entertaining people and making them laugh.”
While sleep evades him, rest assured Hawkey will always be ready on the airwaves to make your weekday mornings are a little less miserable as you crawl through rush hour traffic. His passion has already vaulted him into a successful career in radio and continues pushing him to be the best producer he can be.
My biggest takeaway from speaking with Hawkey was that he reaffirmed my own beliefs on how I want to approach my career. I can’t imagine basing my livelihood on something I’m not passionate about and to see someone else who’s in a career field I’m interested in successfully letting their passions lead them on what path their career takes is reassuring that I’m making the right thing. I want what Hawkey has some day. I want butterflies in my stomach because I’m so excited to go to work, too. I hope to avoid as many sleepless nights, but if the job lets me apply my passions like Chris Hawkey’s does, then I’ll sleep when I’m dead because I’ll be too busy living the dream.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
