January 11, 2007
Laughing out loud: UW’s man in the Legislature believes in comic relief
Randy Hodgins will always wonder what might have been.
It was 1981, and he was a student in what was then the Graduate School of Public Affairs. He and his best friend and fellow student Steve McLellan were at a party trading one-liners and keeping everyone laughing, when they were approached by someone who worked in the Department of Psychology’s bar lab, a simulated nightclub environment used to conduct studies about alcohol use.
“He wanted to know if we would come down and entertain at the bar lab,” says Hodgins, now the UW’s director of state relations and the man who lobbies the Legislature on the UW’s behalf. “We laughed and thought about it, and we laughed some more, and then being the sort of responsible guys we are, we declined.”
Time passed, the two graduated and moved on, and they remained friends through a series of jobs that sometimes had them living in different states. But any time they got together they slipped into their buddy routine — playing off each other using what Hodgins describes as irreverent, satiric humor. So even as they built successful careers, they both had a lingering question.
“In the back of our minds we wondered — that could have been nothing, it could have been a one-time thing or it could have been the start of a different path — the old road not taken,” Hodgins says.
By the late 80s, Hodgins and McLellan had both landed in Olympia (McLellan is a producer for TVW), and by the mid-90s they were looking for an outlet for their creative energy. They turned first to writing about popular culture, and in 1995 they came out with a book, Seattle on Film: From the Jet City to the Emerald City through the Movies, that was reasonably successful in the region. But it did little more than whet their appetites.
“The book thing was fun,” Hodgins says, “but it wasn’t the same as standup and it wasn’t the same as performance. We had this itch we wanted to scratch.”
The book opened the door when, as part of publicity for it, the duo were interviewed on radio and found themselves fascinated with the medium. So it was that in 1998 they went through the training offered by KAOS FM, a community radio station in Olympia, and started their very own radio program. Called Laugh Tracks, it’s a program devoted to comedy — their own and other people’s.
Laugh Tracks, which airs at 9 a.m. every Saturday on 89.3 FM, is built around recorded comedy, most of it from the personal libraries of Hodgins and McLellan, who between them own nearly 1,000 comedy recordings, mostly on vinyl. Each broadcast includes 30 minutes of comedy by their featured artist or artists of the day, and the other 30 minutes is all Hodgins and McLellan.
The structure of the show was inspired by SCTV, an NBC program in the ’80s which was set in the fictional town of Melonville. Laugh Tracks is said to be coming to the listener from the Dexter Lake Club, where “Randy and Steve” and their various feature artists are performing. In addition to the feature sets, McLellan plays and gives the history of one novelty song each week, while Hodgins becomes Professor Hodgins, who teaches comedy studies at Dexter Lake Junior College, and in that role he either imparts information about the featured performers or tells bad jokes about the theme of the day. The two also do a segment called the Dexter Lake Community Calendar in which they poke fun at typical small town announcements.
The Dexter Lake Club is, or was, a real place, Hodgins says. It was a roadhouse about 25 miles east of Eugene, Ore. that was frequented by University of Oregon students. It was also featured in the movie Animal House.
The two didn’t start out with the Dexter Lake idea. The show was originally about three-quarters recorded comedy, but listeners asked for more of Randy and Steve, so the two gradually built their current format, which Hodgins says is tightly scripted. The two chat regularly during the week to build each show, and they have recorded a number of shows so that they can take a week off if they want to.
“We tried doing shows solo when one or the other of us couldn’t make it, but it didn’t work,” Hodgins says. “It was just dead without the back and forth.”
There are a few limitations on what they can do. Because KAOS is a community radio station, they can’t play any comedy that contains profanity, which eliminates a number of current comedians. That’s too bad, Hodgins says, but there’s too great a risk that the nonprofit station would be fined, and that could bankrupt it. And sometimes, they have to provide context for historical comedy that can be offensive to today’s audience — comedy that uses slang names for a minority group, for example. The two won’t use anything they deem excessively mean, no matter whose work it is.
It’s also true that a subject many would consider ripe for comedy — the Legislature — is off limits on Laugh Tracks. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Hodgins says with a smile.
He and McLellan are always on the lookout for new material to keep their show fresh. About twice a year they go on what they call “harvesting trips” to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, BC, where they look for British and Canadian comedy recordings as well as American. Used record stores are a boon, Hodgins says, but often, the best buys are from individuals who don’t realize the value of what they have.
How do two men with demanding careers manage to create a radio show every week, and why would they want to? Says Hodgins, “It’s a way for me to connect with my best friend once a week in the midst of our busy lives. And in an odd way it’s a stress release, even though you have to go in there and be on.”
But they aren’t looking to make a career change. Getting a show like theirs syndicated takes a lot of time, energy and effort, Hodgins says, and they’re just not that interested. “We do this show because it makes us happy,” he says. “I think the chances of getting picked up nationally are pretty slim. But sometimes I think, Tom and Ray Magliozzi did Car Talk on a community radio station in Boston for 10 years before anybody paid attention, and look where they are now. If somebody wants to discover us, I’ll go along for the ride.”
KAOS isn’t very accessible in Seattle, but the station can also be heard on the Web. Tune in to www.kaosradio.org.
