Joey’s Song announces partnership with Epilepsy Foundation of WI

Hey, Jimmy, we've we've talked with Michael Kamal before Joey song.

We talked about freezing man.

We talked about the new way that the festival is going to be over multiple days in

January coming up in 2025.

And we talked about spam and we talked about spam.

We did, but, but there's some new news.

And right now, Michael Kamal of Joey song, he is right here in the studio with us.

Joey, welcome back to maxing radio.

I'm Mike Joey was my son.

Oh boy, I take two live radio rockers.

Michael, welcome back to maxing radio.

Thanks man.

Too many names here.

Yeah, it is.

And there's another name you brought.

You brought your son.

My son, Sam, brought the talented one with me, the one that can actually do stuff.

Hey, Sam.

Hi, Sam.

I'm good.

How are you?

It's great to see you.

It's good to see you.

Welcome to civic media.

Well, Michael, you found a Joey song and for our listeners who may not know briefly,

what is Joey's song and why did you start it?

So we started it.

I'll go with that part first.

We lost my son, Sam's brother to epilepsy back in 2010.

He had suffered from a rare form called travais syndrome.

So we as a family decided there was something we needed to do.

There was nothing we could do for Joe, but we could do something for the next family.

Somewhere somebody today was sitting in a neurologist's office and got a really bad diagnosis.

And we want people to know that there's somebody out there fighting for them.

So we use some of my connections from my narrowed-to-well past in the music business

to put on a show here in Madison.

And we raise money and try to try to give people hope.

That is awesome.

I mean, now it's growing into a weekend music festival and you're using hashtag freezing, man.

Yeah.

We, we, so we've expanded it.

The good news is for anybody that's come, we have lots of great artists that join us.

And every year people keep wanting to come back.

The problem is the show was going longer and longer and longer.

Yeah.

We got a cease and desist letter from Bruce Springsteen that we were going so long that we were on his territory.

So we expanded it and we're doing full band shows the week leading up to it.

And then the kind of the big all-star jam that everybody's in.

So we had to come up with a name for it other than the Joey's song benefit.

So we took Burning Man and since we're in Madison in January,

we turned that into freezing man.

That is Apple.

Well, you know, you were going to bring in a guest tonight, which was Sarah Carlson.

She's the director of epilepsy foundation of Wisconsin.

And you guys have a special announcement regarding the epilepsy foundation of Wisconsin

and freezing man's thoughts about this.

So everybody knows about CPR in first aid.

A lot of people know what to do if somebody steps breathing in front of you and all of those steps.

We know what to do if somebody breaks their arm.

A lot of people don't know what to do if somebody has a seizure in front of you,

whether from epilepsy or any other cause.

And so the epilepsy foundation has a seizure first aid training course.

It's about 75 minutes.

It's either online in person or you can do it with a live instructor so that you know how to recognize a seizure.

You know what to do.

It helps dismiss some of those old wives tales like stick a wallet in somebody's mouth,

which is the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

You can't swallow your tongue.

You know, it shows you what to do and what to recognize.

So we're working with Sarah and her team over there.

And for everybody that gets their certification between now and December 21st or 2nd,

I should have that memorized and sends their certificate in.

It's all on the epilepsy foundation website.

Send their certificate in.

It'll get a free ticket to the Saturday show.

So we're our goal is to have 500 new people in Southeast

and Wisconsin certified to know what to do if somebody has a seizure in front of them.

And we figure if we can dangle a cool rock and roll show in front of them.

Yeah.

And it makes people do it.

Then why not?

What a great cause.

And what a great idea to add that to your preparedness in this world.

You know, right.

Did you take the course?

I did.

What are some, do some quick little signs and what you should, what you should do.

Well, so, so a lot of people think epilepsy.

They think of how you kind of see a portrait in the movies, right?

All the shaking and people drive, which is absolutely one of the ways.

But they're epilepsy is a is a spectrum disorder in both what causes it and how it manifests itself.

There's something called an absent seizure, which is just somebody staring off,

but they can't come back.

And a lot of people say, oh, Jimmy's spacing out again.

Typical.

Yeah, I thought that might have some reference for you.

So, or there's lots of other ways where it can be just little shaking.

So there's lots of different ways.

So the course teaches you what to recognize and stuff that we may have as a society said,

oh, it's just Jimmy spacing out or, you know, rockers hung over again or whatever it happened

in my day again.

I don't know if that's a thing.

I just thought I'd throw that out there.

Yeah.

Where did all the rocker rocker whiskey go?

Yeah.

You're a minute ago.

And so it teaches you what to recognize what to do and then how to be a calm presence

for both the person having the seizure and everyone around in case people are panicking

and all of those other things.

So it walks you through all of those things.

Obviously, call 911, get help, absolutely whatever you could do.

But in the meantime, it sounds like, you know, really just, just observing and keeping

call me yourself and that's going to go a long way.

And recognizing what's really happening and keeping that person safe, right, so that

they don't hurt themselves, especially if it is one of those that a lot of people refer

to as grand mall or tonic chronic seizures where somebody is shaking and really has lost

control, they could hurt themselves.

So getting them in a place where they can be safe and everybody will then calm down

and you can wait until help arrives.

So what's the action?

Where do you go to spin up for this class?

What's that carrot you're hanging in front of people's face for doing so?

So where they want to go is epilepsywisconsin.org.

And if you just put epilepsy Wisconsin in your search engine, it'll get you there.

There's a big button on there that says Joey's song and I think it says seizure first-aid

training.

If you click on that, it'll give you all of the details on what you need to do.

But it's really simple.

It's a self-guided course.

You just click on that at the end of it.

You get your certificate.

They have live courses online where there's actually an instructor that you can do it

or the epilepsy foundation will come out to your office or your business or anything

like that and do it.

Our goal is to get as many people certified as we can.

Once you get that certificate, send it to tickets at joysong.org and again, all that's

on the website.

And within a day, we'll send you a link and you'll have your free ticket to the Saturday

show, which includes the googoo dolls and the bangles and the gogos and Portugal, the

man and garbage and cheap trick and all those amazing.

How long does it actually take to get your certification?

75 minutes to 90 minutes, depending on, you know, if I go have lunch, celebrate.

That's about it and get a ticket and go see some rock and roll.

Now how did you guys hook up with the epilepsy foundation in Wisconsin and Sarah Carson?

Well, I had been actually part of the epilepsy foundation a few years ago.

And so this has always kind of been in the back of my head as something to do.

And I knew they had this training.

And to me, having, as we kind of look out over Madison and kind of count all the people,

if we knew that all those people outside of this window knew what to do, if that seemed

to me to be a pretty worthwhile thing.

But the other thing real quick is what we do tends to be very ethereal.

Oh, we're doing epilepsy research in maybe 10 years.

This is something that makes a difference tomorrow, right?

The day after the show is over, you know, we'll be able to say there's 500 people now

that know what to do.

That didn't, if we hadn't been doing this.

So that's a very, and a lot of sponsors and donors want something a little bit more

concrete.

So we hope to do more with the epilepsy foundation.

There's other things they do with kids camp and adult retreats and art therapy.

And there's lots of other ways we can do that.

And this is kind of our first, first dance together.

Michael is great to see you again.

Sam, what's new with you?

What do you do in these days?

Well, right now I'm at Boloid College.

I study music right now, and I'm taking a fifth year right now, which means I could

focus even more time on music, and that's so much like the required studies to actually

graduate.

What instrument do you play?

So I play guitar, I sing, I'm learning piano, and then also I'm learning drums right

now.

He's one of those annoying people that can pick up an instrument and give him time and

he figures it out.

What's your focus in music, like are you thinking more about teaching or performing or

playing?

What's your, what's your mode?

Yeah, well, right now I really don't know.

Right now I'm kind of just having my foot in the door, trying to see if I like performing

more, if I even like teaching, because I've taught little kids how to play guitar before.

But right now it's just trying to figure everything out.

And after this year is when I'm going to try to answer some of those questions.

What kind of music you like?

What's your jam?

I'm really into like jam music, so like grateful dead, or now they're known as dead and

company.

Yeah.

And then I also really like like groovy kind of music, like like there's this band called

The Parsols, that's a really fun band that's from Berlin.

So just kind of stuff stuff stuff like that.

You know, you're obviously Boloid College.

How did you stumble across the Grateful Dead?

Yeah, so it was actually John Mayer.

John Mayer is my absolute favorite artist and I just went for him, because my dad was

like, yeah, we have, we have a couple of tickets.

You should, you know, we should at least check it out and I ended up going and it ended

up just being an absolutely fantastic time and I just discovered them and it's also the

crowd too, that really speaks to you too, that they just don't care how crazy they look

or how they look or how they dance, all that stuff, so it's all that, it's that atmosphere

as well.

The cool thing about the Grateful Dead and Jam Bans in general, it really gives you

a lot of room to improvise and do your own thing and be your own thing on stage there.

That's great.

Congratulations to you.

You know, Jimmy, the real answer to the question, how do you get into the Grateful Dead

is good parenting.

Right.

That's how it goes.

Mike, you get a thumbs up, man.

I know nothing about that topic.

So I'm going to take your word for you, you know?

You know, that's funny because I first saw the Grateful Dead at Alpine Valley in 1982.

Oh, yeah.

And you know how I got my tickets?

My mom knew somebody at the radio station, she got me tickets, you just made me remember

that.

Yeah.

And it led to this life that you're on now.

Oh, yeah.

There was more than that, but it's okay.

Yeah.

That'll work.

I'm trying to keep it family oriented here, Rocker.

We're trying.

We're trying, didn't we?

Yeah, we got to go.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for helping us spread the word.

I'm leftywasconcent.org.

Joey songs.

Search for that too.

Get the information.

Freeze a man coming in this winter.

Let's get some blankets.

Jammed into the Jimmy's on Max and Grinio.