Josie Dye is the morning host at Indie 88 in Toronto. The longtime 102.1 The Edge personality who also did hosting duties for Cosmo TV, and W Network took a chance on jumping to Indie 88. It has paid off as well. You can hear it in Josie's voice. She is having more fun than ever at a station that has all the sounds and feels of any successful alternative radio station.
In this episode, we spoke about her early days studying at Ryerson while working at Mix 99.9 which was at its peak with an 8 share. Rather than head out to a smaller market, Josie found her way to the Edge where she eventually found her way to middays; working for great programmers like Ross Winters and Dave Farough. We reminisce about those old knock 'em down and drag 'em out music meetings over adding a song to the playlist.
We also spoke at great length about life at home which is certainly interesting with the amount of audio being listened to and created in their lives. There's also her eldest child Cole who was born with Sotos Syndrome. I had never heard of it until Josie told me about it and I can't even provide an appropriate link because the Google pages are endless; Josie discovered that she could spend hours asking Dr. Google questions.
Here are some other amazing things you will learn on this podcast:
Josie's favourite interview was with Gord Downie whom she became friends with. So much so that Gord wrote a song about her; which Gord admitted in a later interview with Alan Cross.
Josie and I talked about her ill-fated attempt at the national anthem before a Toronto Rock game and she forgot the words. How she handled it in the days after it is worth some note taking. (You can Google the anthem on your own... )
Because there was so much we didn't know:
Josie's co-host Matt Hart started the Russian Futurists and has been at it for close to two decades now. The band's work has been reviewed by some of my favourite music writers including Sandra Sperounes of the Edmonton Journal and T'Cha Levy of the Montreal Gazette.