Comedy, Cookies, and Christmas Chaos (Hour 2)

Broadcasting live from the Civic Media Studios in Green Bay.

This is Night Light with Pete Chwaba.

Your inside source on everything entertainment from Wisconsin to Hollywood.

And now, a guy who always reads between the lines until he sees a car coming.

Pete Chwaba.

Hey hey, welcome to Night Light everybody.

I'm Pete Schwab.

This is fun, folks.

It is a Tuesday night here in the state of Wisconsin.

Christmas fast approaching.

We got a little bit of a warm-up from yesterday, which is nice.

A little heat wave on the way.

It's supposed to be in the 30s, maybe early 40s, low 40s.

I think we got to check with our studio weatherman on this.

Conrad, what do you got?

What does the Apple phone forecast say?

I didn't check it today, but you know, let me just...

I

love that you're wearing, first of all, you're wearing a hat and it's like 80 degrees on that side of the glass.

And over here, I almost wore long underwear today.

All right, so it was a high of 38 degrees today, which was pretty cool.

That didn't feel like 38.

You know, the wind maybe took it down a little bit.

Yeah.

But you know, the high on Thursday.

40s, right?

With a little bit of snow though.

What are we looking at?

What's the high?

Don't keep us in suspenders.

Listen, people are tuning in tonight right now for the sole purpose of finding what the temperature will be.

So what's the high on Thursday?

Feels like 29.

Oh, hi.

Are you ever just, are you just gonna give me the temperature?

What it's supposed to be?

You're gonna make me get my own iPhone home.

39.

Okay.

39

in December is not bad.

It felt, you know, honestly, I was thinking about wearing shorts today.

Yeah,

almost happened.

It's a little too, yeah.

But then I was like, you know

what, I probably shouldn't.

39 on

Thursday, that's pretty good.

Okay, I can live with that.

And maybe it's only cold on this side of the glass when it's like bitter outside, because this whole thing is a window right here.

So.

I mean, I have a window too.

I'm excited.

Yeah, you get a little window.

Sort of a junior window.

Yeah, junior window, I like that.

You gotta work your way up.

If you ever want to switch sides, that's totally fine with me.

You know, I don't think that would work out, because I have the board over here, so.

You can move

that.

I don't know

how to do that.

We would need Chris Casper, a double sawbuck, and he would take care of

us.

We need Chris over here.

We need Chris.

Folks, so there you go.

You got that to look forward to.

And I think I knew it was 40s.

It's probably 40s in Madison and Milwaukee, because they're a little farther south, maybe.

But a little bit warmer weather is on the way, which is a nice break before it probably gets cold again.

I've heard this winter is supposed to be cold and snowy.

It was just from a guy sitting out at the bus station.

So I'm not going to like, you know, that's not gospel.

How did that conversation start?

I asked him to move over.

He was sitting on the bench.

No, I want it when Mace Michaels is on tomorrow.

I'm going to grow.

I am going to.

Oh, man.

I'm so excited to have Mason because I want to hear.

We did this with Brittany last year.

I want to know.

I like to know ahead of time, like if the winter is going to be really sucky, I can prepare for it.

And if it's not, I want something to

look forward to.

If it's going to be unseasonably warm, you know,

And I feel bad saying that after Sean Connelly was here yesterday, one of our guests, who's an avid outdoors person in the winter, as is Brittany Merleau, maybe you got to love winter to be a meteorologist or to be a weather person.

What about the meteorologists in Florida?

They're trying to get out, man.

They're trying to come up this way.

Anybody hiring in Wausau?

Keep me in mind.

Here's my CV, baby

See, I don't know when I went to school and you know, I went for journalism So obviously some people in there who are doing you know meteorologist and you know doing the same thing they move down to Florida or warmer states So I don't know if you're totally correct.

See here's the thing if you do that if you move down to a warmer state or like

LA, there was all kinds of comics that used to do jokes about being a weather person in LA.

Five day outlook, 75 and sunny, like it's just the same.

You probably don't even have to, like you could probably mail it in all year.

Until the one rain, the really rainy day.

And then you just say, didn't see this one coming.

So that's something to look forward to this week.

But it's also Christmas, right around the corner.

I can handle cold.

It's really in January when the weather starts to blow.

Yeah, yeah.

So we've got, obviously, weather and sports and news coming up at the bottom of the hour, folks, so stay tuned for that.

I have to say, this was fun.

I woke up this morning to a text from our pal Emerson Layman, Conrad's hometown homie.

He wascom, buddy.

Yeah.

And Emerson's one of our favorite guests.

And he said, by any chance, do you know Rob Reiner?

And I said, no.

And I don't think I've ever met Rob Reiner even in passing.

So I had nothing to contribute.

I said,

half jokingly, I'm happy to make things up.

If you want to have me on the air, give me a plug on Twitter.

There you go.

Pick up an extra follower.

But no, I would never do that.

And he, obviously he's a journalist.

He said, no, thanks, Schwabba, take a hike.

I think we're as exact words.

But I realized after our exchange that I did have interaction with a Reiner.

When I was, when I first moved to LA, and this has never happened, whenever I read for something,

It was always like, you know, oh, we're not looking for the average white guy.

We're looking for Japanese girls or we're looking for whatever.

It was always looking for a different type when it came to casting.

Well, I'm in LA like two months.

I send my stuff to this place called commercials unlimited.

And I get a call from Richie Reiner, who says, you are exactly what we're looking for.

I guess it was like all that was the era of the beer commercial where they want to dumb white guys that

say stupid stuff to be drinking, Bud Light or Miller Light or whatever.

And I was like, oh my god.

I go, well, that's nice of you to call.

I've never heard that, that I'm exactly what people were looking for.

So I went in, I had this meeting with Richie Reiner, kind of looked like Rob a little bit, really nice guy.

Three days later, I sold a movie called A Guy Thing that ended up getting made.

And I saw how much I made selling a script.

as opposed to going to all these auditions and driving all over LA.

So I still would have done it.

It's not like I dropped them.

I just never really pursued it.

But I did get a call from Richie Reiner because when my partner Greg Lyanna and I, writing partner, sold the film, the script I should say, it was in the Hollywood Reporter.

It was in Variety.

You know, they list everything.

And most people in LA, at least in those positions, comb the trade papers and Richie saw that we sold the script.

And he called me up, and I was like, oh, he must have an audition.

He goes, hey, man, I just want to say, if you need an actor in this movie, keep me in mind.

My commercial agents hit me up for acting work.

And it was Rob Reiner's brother, Richie.

And you know what?

He was such a nice guy, but it shocked me how naive he was about the movie.

Like, when you sell the script to a big studio, you don't have any poll as to who goes in the movie.

Like, I had trouble getting an audition.

to be in the film I sold.

They did let me read and then they dismissed me immediately.

They said I wasn't, that's not the type they were looking for.

But that's about as close as I get to Rob Reiner, his brother Richie.

But a nice guy, I never talked to him again after that.

So, maybe he's mad I didn't cast him, even though I had no power.

I will say this, the show Pluribus, big drop off after the first episode,

loved the

first episode, I've said this before on the show, it ventured into downright

boring territory.

After watching the episode last night, I'm putting it in Suckville.

Oh, wow.

I just don't like the show.

It's so slow.

It's like they are trying to put four episodes worth of material into eight or 10 episodes, however many there are.

It's like something mildly amusing happens once an episode, and it's just her.

Rhea Seahorn, and she's great, but it's just there's nothing happening.

Love to hear from you folks.

If you feel differently, if you dig in Pluribus, let me know.

Phone lines are always open here at Nightlight.

We never close.

855-752-4842.

Let us know what you think about, or if you're watching something great and you want to recommend it, obviously, we have an open door policy here.

We have great guests tonight.

It's going to be a really fun show.

Joining me at 535 will be the founder of Joey's Song.

Mike Gamal, he will be here.

He created this great event in order to raise money and funding for epilepsy and to find a cure for epilepsy.

And there are some staggering statistics about epilepsy out there and we'll talk to Mike about those.

He lost his son, Joey, in 2010 when he was just shy of his fifth birthday.

And Mike decided to put this event together and it's become huge.

big-time A-list rock and rollers to play this event.

They don't take a penny.

And the event is in January, right after the holidays.

I want to say it starts January 12th.

We will talk to Mike about that.

I'm very excited to have him on the show.

This is one of Frank Andersen's guys, Conrad, our buddy Frank Andersen from Wisconsinology.

Yeah, and he always speaks really highly of him, too, every time he's

on the show.

Oh, yeah.

He's like, you got to have Mike Amala.

So we got Mike on finally.

So that should shut Frank up for a while.

Um, no, it's gonna be fun.

So we'll have Mike on at, uh, and Joey's song is January 8th to the 12th at the Sylvie in Madison.

So we've got lots to talk about with Mike.

And then, uh, after that in hour two at 635, Comedy City invades the studio.

We've got Eric, Eric Alarsson and Scott Rome.

Do you remember how to say Scott's last name?

It's like R-O-E-M-A-T-T.

He's been on the show before.

Great guy.

Anyway,

Rome.

Oh, that's probably not

right.

It sounds very exotic.

But it's Wisconsin, so it's probably Roa Matt.

I don't know.

I don't know what it is.

But Eric and Scott will be here.

And Scott has been here before.

We have not met Eric before, but they are two of the best according to Comedy City boss, Nick Wallander, our pal.

So they will be here in person to tell us about some really fun Christmas shows coming up at Comedy City.

And then my pal and comedian Boris Hamilton will be joining us from Los Angeles over the stream.

And he's going to talk about a new documentary he is a part of, and we're going to just kind of talk comedy.

So there you go.

That's your show.

Right now, I think without further ado, we need to get to the nightlight question of the night.

Let's talk about the question.

OK, question.

Question.

Question.

Pregunta.

Question.

Question.

OK, I have a question.

Questions.

This question.

Domanda.

Question.

Question.

Questions.

What is a gift that is hard to wrap?

And I don't know, does that play into your Christmas shopping folks?

Cause you gotta wrap it typically.

So what is a gift that is hard to wrap?

That is our question of the night.

Let us know at 855-752-484-2855-75 Civic.

You can also text us on the app if that is how you are listening.

And if you're watching the radio on the stream, don't be afraid to drop us a stream comment from YouTube, Facebook or X.

And, you know, if you're so inclined, give us a like or a follow while you're there.

So, you know, I was thinking about this earlier, and I don't really have my answer yet.

I'm ill-prepared for my own show.

So I'm gonna think about it.

I'm gonna noodle this.

Do you have one?

Okay.

Yeah, drum set.

Oh, I did see that on social media.

That was a good one.

I mean, that would be impossible to wrap.

That would just be really hard.

Well, you could just, like, put a tarp over it and a bunch of tape.

Well, that's not as fun.

Yeah.

Do you take gift wrapping seriously?

I am absolutely terrible at gift wrapping.

That's a cop out.

Come on.

What's funny last year?

My brother's extremely good at gift wrapping.

I had a box and I didn't tell him who it was for.

It was for him.

I don't have his

own

gift.

I remember I told that story in the air last year.

I made my brother go into the store.

He goes, just give me a Christmas card.

Any Christmas card, it doesn't matter.

We did basically the same thing.

Yeah.

He

didn't know what it was because it was in a box.

So I was just like...

Any dude giving something in a box to another dude takes you back to Saturday Night Live.

You have to be careful.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That's true.

And we have one of our social media smart ass responses involves just that gift.

So we'll get to those in just a bit.

But what is a gift that is hard to wrap?

Let us know.

I'm going to give my answer.

You know what?

You know, it's hard to wrap this bell.

Yeah.

That's a tough.

That's so bad

for the for the listeners.

How big is that bell?

It's very small three by three I don't be very difficult circle No, you can just wrap but if you want to make look at that little nub at the top makes it I guess I guess so it's kind of tough to wrap so all right We're gonna read some text when we come back and I'm gonna tell you about what's some really cool Hmm.

There's a number of ways we could We could do this kind of red

We can talk about Dick Van Dyke's house, Bear's Panicers, or what's happening in Wisconsin.

Let's do that.

That's coming up next.

After the break, it's Feet Schwabba and Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio

Network.

I'm Pete Schwab, and this is Night Light.

This is what I love about Night Light listeners.

One of our favorite couch potatoes.

Dave on the stream informed us that last night's question was on the stream.

So, you know what though?

Here's the thing.

Mistakes happen.

Thank you, Dave,

for pointing that out.

However,

you can answer that question too, because...

I noticed the texts were coming in today even on the social media platforms about the Rob Reiner film.

So we'll be happy to answer those as well.

So happening this week in Wisconsin, this is so great.

I love up North News.

This is Ellie Bordeaux.

Remember we had Ellie on the show

a couple weeks ago.

She was a

lot of fun.

There's a Buddy Holly Jolly Christmas.

And you know what folks, let's do this too.

Let's make this an information exchange.

If there's something fun happening in your Wisconsin community, let us know and we'll spread the word here because this is the time for me anyway.

I love Christmas related events.

So let's talk about that.

If you've got something going on in your community, we are happy to share that here on Nightlight because these all sound amazing.

Buddy Holly, Jolly Christmas.

That's in, I think they mean Delevin.

Zachary Stevenson will perform a festive rock and roll show featuring Wisconsin, or I'm sorry, featuring Christmas classics at the Belfry Music Theater.

You like Buddy Holly?

I don't.

Except.

Just give it a Google.

He's great.

Okay, okay.

He'd

be a lot of fun.

That'd be a fun show to see.

But that's coming up.

Tomorrow is, that starts tomorrow on Thursday, December 17th.

Ellen and...

Kastia at Wild Lights in Milwaukee award-winning jazz singer Ellen Winters will perform at the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Oh, how fun does that sound?

That's December 18th.

That's Thursday night.

So lots of lots of stuff during the week too, which is fine.

You don't have to wait till the weekend.

The comedy roast of Santa Claus, we're gonna talk about that with our guests tonight at 635 from Comedy City Theater.

They'll be here at 635 and they're gonna host a Santa Claus roast where Chris Kringle will be the target of jokes and offer some revenge.

I'm very excited to have those guys in here.

And then another thing we're featuring here on Nightlight as well, tomorrow night, we're going to talk about this really cool World Snowshoe Championship.

That's going to be pretty cool.

That's going to be very cool.

Do you think they run?

What do you think they champ without, I haven't done any research yet on the guests.

So what is a snowshoe competition?

You think it's a race?

I,

you know, that's...

These these questions will all be answered on Thursday.

It's it's Thursday.

Not tomorrow.

It's Thursday, by the way.

Okay Thursday five five thirty five on Thursday We're gonna have someone from the world snow snow shoe

championship,

which is really I think that's pretty cool

It's the Wisconsin Farmers Union that's hosting and it's the 95th annual state convention Don't you love when you find out about something you didn't even know existed?

And

it sounds so cool.

95 years.

It will include educational speakers, arts and crafts and games.

That'll be fun.

And then walkthrough night and fireworks show in St.

Croix Falls on December 19th.

That is Friday.

Over 25 million holiday lights and fireworks will be on display at Miracle at Big Rock along with tractor rides, Santa appearances and bonfire.

See, this is all like Norman Rockwell stuff.

This is so great.

That's what I love about Wisconsin.

So all of that stuff is going on.

News, sports, and weather coming up in just a few minutes, folks.

So stay tuned for that.

And then we'll have Mike Gamal here.

He is the founder of Joey's Song.

And it is quite the event this year.

It has expanded from one night to now it's an actual festival.

And it's called the Freezing Man Festival.

And we'll talk to Mike about that in just a few minutes.

And it's the opposite of Burning Man, I believe.

So, Mike will give us the deets.

I saw this too, Conn.

I love this.

I love this.

I think I saw this in USA today.

All the best, or are these the best holiday foods and drinks?

Oh, it's from Ranker.

Okay.

They asked 1,700 people their favorite holiday foods and drinks.

The top three are, can you guess one of them?

Ham.

No.

Oh.

Cookies?

I think sweet, yeah.

Cookies?

Christmas cookies.

Christmas cookies, some type of little Debbie cake, maybe?

A beverage?

Eggnog, no.

You know,

a lot of people think

eggnog sucks.

I mean, it's popular, it is hot chocolate,

yeah.

Okay, okay.

And the third thing is just chocolate.

Yeah, I mean, chocolate's in every single stocking, it's in bowls.

But you don't

even have to, you can

take a holiday out of there and just say, are these the best foods and drinks?

I mean, honestly, cookies and chocolate, there you go.

Yes.

Number one is Christmas cookies.

Number two is hot chocolate.

Number three is chocolate.

Number four, chocolate chip cookies.

What?

Number five is just cookies.

Number six, gingerbread.

Now that's the first thing we've gotten to here where I think that's a real holiday thing because

you don't

ever eat ginger, not like gingerbread at any other, it's not like the 4th of July, come over and we're having gingerbread cookies, right?

Gingerbread houses at 4th of July, that's... Exactly.

It's not a bad idea.

I mean, gingerbread is just as tasty in the summer.

We don't do that.

We're conditioned.

That's for the hot dogs.

Exactly.

Number seven, mashed potatoes.

Before any of the meats?

You know what?

I don't disagree with that.

Mashed

potatoes and butter and salt.

But over ham, I couldn't.

Ham's just too good.

Yeah.

I typically tend to like the sides more, but I get you.

Yeah.

Shout out to the spuds.

The first non-desert on the list.

That was mashed potatoes.

Number eight, cinnamon rolls.

Okay.

Really?

Those are

year-round, though.

Yeah.

Right?

And nine, bread rolls.

Talk about running out of fun food.

I love any rolls.

Rolls are really good.

I never have them, like, any time of the year besides.

Really?

To make them special, you know?

That's why I thought it was strange they were on this list.

Like, bread rolls are just kind of like... Well, I have regular bread, but...

You know, roles just taste so much better.

All right.

And number 10, Fudge.

See, that's,

I don't

know.

I don't

know.

Fun show tonight, folks.

Mike Gamal will be here in a few minutes.

After news, sports, and weather, which is coming up next, Mike will be here.

We're going to talk about Joey's song.

We've got in-studio entertainment, thanks to Comedy City and Depeer, and then some comedy talk in hour number three with Boris Hamilton.

Fun night.

Glad you're here.

It's Tuesday, folks.

Let's party.

It's Nightlight with Pete Schwabba on the Civic Media.

radio

network.

Welcome back.

I'm Pete Schwab, but this is Night Light.

Great to have you with me here on this beautiful Tuesday night in the state of Wisconsin, ladies and gentlemen.

Christmas is just around the corner.

There's a nip in the air, and we are broadcasting statewide from downtown Green Bay.

Lots going on here lately.

We had a skier outside the window last night.

We got a girl in a wheelchair, our friend Sarah, who is recuperating.

She'll be our Night Light window, fun slash love tonight on social media.

So check out Sarah and wish her

A speedy recovery, if you will.

Great guests tonight, too, folks.

We've got in-studio entertainment and hour number two, Comedy City will be here talking about a lot of fun events they have coming up, and they're going to do a little improv for us.

And then comedian Boris Hamilton will be here in the third hour, too.

We'll be talking Christmas movies and a really cool documentary he was part of that.

We're going to discuss and go into a little bit of detail on.

It should be fun.

Right now, I'm excited to welcome my next guest.

This is his first time on Nightlight.

He is the founder of Joey's Song, an organization that tries to raise money for epilepsy and uses great music and a great music festival to do it.

Joining me now is Mike Gamal.

Hi, Mike.

Hello, Pete.

How are you?

You know what?

It's not so bad.

I'm down here in Madison, and it's a lot warmer than it was a couple days ago, so I'm not going to complain.

Yeah, I'll take it.

I'm not a cold weather guy.

Conrad and I complained about the weather all the time, yet we choose to live in Wisconsin, so it's kind of a pointless exercise, but what are you going to

do?

So I'm a lifelong Wisconsinite, except for when I moved way down south to Chicago.

So that shows you...

That shows you what a Yankee I

am.

So yeah,

I got no right to complain either.

You know what's funny?

Like I spent the first part of my childhood in Chicago.

I moved up to Marinette, Wisconsin, went back to Chicago for college.

So I tell this story like I'm kind of a man between two, like I'm a cheesehead when I'm in Chicago and I'm a fib when I'm here.

People don't accept me in either place.

But I do laugh because in Chicago when I was in college, people would ask me where I'm from.

And I would tell them, and it's four hours north, and they'd go, oh, man, you're way up there.

And these would be people from Appleton saying, oh, you live way up.

And then I moved to LA for 15 years, and I'm like, it's all the Midwest, and it's freezing.

Well, and we'll get into that, I'm sure, as we talk.

But that's part of my dilemma as I'm recruiting all these artists from LA to come

to Madison, Wisconsin in

January.

It involves a lot of finagling, shall we say.

Yeah.

But you know what?

The cause is so great.

I'm sure you have no trouble.

And I've heard how, you know, Frank, a shout out to our pal Frank Anderson, who introduced us.

And he's a big part of Joey's song as well.

And so it's great to meet you, Mike.

It's great to have you here.

Let's jump right in and talk about this just absolutely wonderful event you have coming up January 8th through the 12th at the Sylvie Joey song.

Tell us a little bit of the background.

So, yeah, so Joey's song is in memory of my son Joe, who unfortunately passed away after battling a severe form of epilepsy his entire short life.

He died just shy of his fifth birthday.

Epilepsy is a spectrum disorder.

It's got a myriad of causes and a myriad of ways that it manifests itself.

Joe, unfortunately, was born with a chromosomal disorder.

I can never say that properly, but that's because I need to put in my polygrip.

But in his brain, stuff that was supposed to go left was going right and it caused all sorts of problems.

And so even when Joe was still with us,

I had thought about trying to do something to try to raise money for the next family, something we still say here in Joey's song.

But at that point, I had a child with severe special needs, as well as Joe's older brother and sister.

And we were just trying to make it to bedtime.

But once Joe passed away,

I started to kind of flexible muscles.

I didn't do this as a career, but back in Madison in the 80s when I was in school here, I worked at a club called Headliners, which had a lot of bands on the way up.

We always refer to it as we had the MTV bands on the way up and the 60s bands on the way down kind of thing.

A thousand seed venue.

I did not go on to do that, but I've always been kind of a music person.

And the one golden thread out of that, there was another fella kicking around Madison at the time called Butch Vig.

And Butch and I ran in the same circles, and he went off to win Grammy Awards and MTV Moonmen, and I did not.

But when it came time to try to start this effort that we now call Joey's song, it would have been a fool's errand for me to call anybody but Butch.

Wow, that is so great.

And talk about, man, so you've got this friend who helps you get this thing off the ground and he's a music, certainly he's just a music legend.

I mean, the Smart Studio story, his connection to Wisconsin is great and he's just conquered the music world.

Yeah, when you've won a Grammy for producing Paul McCartney, that's the mount, that's the mountaintop.

So,

you know, just a quick aside about which big I've had the opportunity to interview him twice at once on PBS Wisconsin and Wendy Schneider was there.

I'm sure, you know, Wendy, we were in the green room.

He's really funny.

He kept doing this voice about the frozen tundra or something like that.

Like he was going to break into the frozen tundra, you know, I wasn't

expecting that.

No.

First of all, and all your listeners locally there, there is no larger Packer fan in the world than butch.

I would I would defy it.

there's a bunch of us including our friend Frank that have this text thread that has been going on for years and it centers around the Packers and Butch was sitting in the airport on Sunday down in Melbourne they were garbage just finish up their Australia tour and was complaining because the Wi-Fi was so bad he couldn't watch the Packer game so that tells you all you need to know but yeah he's just a he's just a straight shooter a good guy and I don't know what I did to deserve a friend like him but

Thank goodness I got him.

Well, you're the driving force behind this, Mike, and it's just such a great event.

And tell us a little bit about, like, it was a one night event until recently, and now it's a whole festival, the freezing man festival.

Am I getting that right?

Yeah,

so we just talked a little bit about me trying to get these people from LA to come out in January, and all of them assume that, you know, we are all, don't move for four months up here.

And so rather than fight it,

Instead of burning man.

We're leaning right into it and calling it freezing man So that's that's the idea behind it and really it's one of these things that has evolved It was not always what it is now So I probably should go back and answer your first question, which is what is the Joey song freezing man.

So What we do I'll try to summarize it so many of the folks we just mentioned butch and Frank and our pal Corey Chisel and Alex Drossert and a lot of those guys from up there in the Green Bay Appleton area

along with Butch and Duke Erickson from Garbage and Friedy Johnston have this kind of knock-around band they call the know-it-all boyfriends.

It's

basically

a chance for them to get silly and play stuff they don't normally play and have a few beers.

And so what they do is they serve as a house band for lack of a better phrase and we bring in all these amazing people.

I will break some news that I just found out about 25 minutes ago.

I'll save it for the end of the roster here, but we've added a new guest literally just 25 minutes ago.

So we've got Jane Weedlin and Gina Shock from the Go-Go's and Vicki Peterson from the Bangles and John Resnick from Goo Goo Dolls and Hugo Burnham from Gang of Four, Chris Collingwood from Fountains and Wayne, Max Collins from Eve Six, on and on and on and on.

And we just added a few days ago Kurt Smith from Tears for Fears.

Oh, nice.

I just found out about 20 minutes ago that Matt Sorem from Guns N' Roses is joining us as well.

So we've got amazing people.

They all come to Madison and we put on these concerts.

This year we're putting on one acoustic storyteller's night and another one will be a full blown jam.

And the best part of it is they don't play their songs.

They play each other's and covers, right?

Because for a lot of these people, you know, they play their hits 207 hits a year, right?

And so the fact that they can play a Beatles song with, you know, the guitars from Fountains of Wayne and Jody Stevens from Big Star and, you know, so on.

It's just an amazing thing, and it's really full of these one-off musical moments that happen, and that's the best way I can describe it to people.

You get these, a melgum of Grammy winners in Rock and Roll Hall of Famers all getting together and playing ACDC.

It's truly, if I won't sprain my elbow, patting myself on the back, it is truly, truly spectacular.

I don't want to, I don't want to overblow it like this was some grand plan I had.

This has just evolved into it and it's a glorious thing.

Mike Amal is my guest.

He is the founder of Joey's Song, an event he founded on behalf of his late son and they try to raise money for epilepsy.

And I love that none of the bands, Mike, take money.

And you've, all those names you just mentioned, like this would be a great event even if it wasn't for a good cause.

It would be an incredible festival, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Pete, that's a great point you made about the artist.

I need everybody to know.

All those people I just named and a few that I didn't because I'm slowing down in my old age and I don't have it written down in front of me, all come to Madison for four or five days.

Most everybody will come in on Wednesday.

We'll rehearse all day Thursday.

do shows on Friday and Saturday, rehearse on the end, you know, they get a ham sandwich and two beers is, you know, their their their payment for it.

And, you know, I don't know what butch gets for a day's work, but I guarantee it's not that, you know, so

do you

play?

You know, the thing I got to throw on top of it for all

of

our Wisconsin listers is the guy that keeps the whole night moving is everybody's favorite Wisconsinite, Charlie Barron.

So Charlie plays kind of MC and ringmaster.

Does he do the Manitowoc minute?

Are you anticipating?

He's gonna...

Well, I gotta tell you, two years ago he sang.

Oh dear.

How was that?

Was he good?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

He and

his pal Adam Gruhl from Horseshoes and Handgrenades have a couple albums out.

And they're what you would expect.

They're, you know, they're songs about supper clubs and beer gardens.

But yeah, he's great.

He's really great.

Fantastic.

Wow.

So you're like literally banging on all cylinders.

You've got a great host, great bands.

Do you play, Mike?

Do you play with them?

No, but my son, my 23-year-old son, Sam, does.

He's a singer-songwriter and he gets to

I'll tell a quick aside if we've got a minute.

Sure.

A couple years ago, one of our guests was a guy called Brian Ray and Brian's day job is he plays guitar with Paul McCartney and has for the last 30 years.

And Sam, one of his first, this he was 18 at the time, one of his first live performances, he sang on the stage at the Sylvie with Brian Ray, Butch Vig, Chris Collingwood, Freedy Johnston, and they sang Don't Let Me Down.

So

He's got all the talent in the family.

I'm nothing compared to my son.

And as you can tell, I'm darn proud of him as well.

So

I don't, but Sam does.

Way too humble there.

And you look like a musician.

You look like you're doing a behind the music or something.

You got all this great paraphernalia behind you.

How cool is that?

Well, I do.

We also have a podcast.

So most of these people come on

and

talk and kind of do what you and I are doing.

And since I'm in the middle of Joey song, international headquarters, otherwise known as my basement, we've got kind of all of the stuff going on to make it a little more rock and roll.

Were you at all concerned I have to tell you Mike when I was doing stand-up in the 90s I was working Myrtle Beach and I had to introduce Huey Lewis in the news and they were kind of on the you know the backside I guess of the career there was like a 1200 C theater and I had seen them at Summerfest like that's the kind of the jump they took Yeah at the time

Hootie and the blowfish were all the rage and I almost said hootie in the news, which would have been horrible Huey would have punched me on the way out of the stage However, you have the go-go's and the Goo Goo dolls.

I don't know if you said are you worried?

There's gonna be a mix up there.

Oh, yeah The good news is that Jane Weedland is beautiful and so is Gina and

John Resnick, according to the girls, is handsome, so I probably won't get those two things mixed up.

But that's what Charlie's there for.

My job is to come out for a little bit and just thank everybody.

And I let the pros do the talking because you would not want me to do that.

It sounds like you've got an amazing event here.

We'll have a couple more minutes with our guest, Mike Gamal, the founder of Joey's Song on behalf of his son, doing great work trying to find a cure for epilepsy.

And we'll give you some stats about epilepsy that you might not believe when we talk about them.

That's coming up next with Mike Gamal on Nightlight with Pete Schwab.

Great to have you here, folks.

Hey, this is John Legend and you're listening to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba.

Welcome

back!

News weather and sports just around the corner folks at the top of the hour right now.

I am very excited We've got a few more minutes with our guest Mike Gamal who is the founder of Joey's song a great event that he founded in honor of his late son who suffered from a rare form of epilepsy Mike I thought this was fascinating when I was reading about this.

I didn't know this epilepsy claims more lives every year than breast cancer And and it affects more people than

those with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and Parkinson's disease combined.

I mean, it's not a contest, they're all terrible things, but I had no idea about any of that.

Well, and yeah, it is and one of the things that makes epilepsy so insidious relative to some of those other things is that There's usually no physical sign of it a lot of those things that you mentioned you can tell if somebody's struggling with MS or Parkinson's or CP And so it's kind of shrouded in that plus it's only been a hundred or so years since the medical community understood what

was causing that right unfortunately we're still going back to the days of demons and you know witchcraft on some of that so there's still a stigma attached to it so

It is really almost a hidden disorder.

You're absolutely right.

It's not a contest.

All of those are awful.

But some of the statistics would kind of make you sit up and take notice.

One in 26 people will develop epilepsy in their lifetime.

One in 26 people.

So if you think of your neighborhood, each house has four people in it.

You know, that seventh house, the odds are that somebody in that house is going to develop epilepsy in their lifetime.

What makes it even more insidious and why we're doing what we're doing is

one in three people with epilepsy in their 50 million worldwide can't get relief currently from medicine or surgery or any or therapies, right?

So that means one in three people don't know if 10 minutes from now they're going to have a seizure, they're going to be in the back of an ambulance or something worse.

So it's pretty stark.

Yet it's really interesting as I've been doing this even when Joe was still alive and epilepsy entered my life.

It's amazing how many people do have that connection.

You can see those statistics in real life.

You know, oh yeah, my uncle, my aunt, the guy I worked with, my nephew.

It really, as you talk more and more about it, you start to see that, yeah, there's probably some truth behind those stats.

Mike Gamal is my guest.

He's the founder of Joey Song, which has turned into a really big event called the Freezing Man Festival.

It's days long now, January 8th through the 12th in Madison at the Sylvie Theater, a great venue.

Mike, if people want to go, are there still tickets left with that lineup?

Are you already sold out?

No, there are.

joeysong.org will get you the link.

Either one.

The Friday show is an all acoustic.

So it's the same bill both nights.

So all those people that I mentioned both nights, Friday night, we're going to do it as a seated show, you know, stools and acoustic guitars and all those artists will talk about some of their big songs, either covers and why they chose them or songs that they wrote.

And then on Saturday,

It's full blown rocket.

We all plug in and everybody, everybody plays together.

There are, there's only about a hundred tickets left for the acoustic show and there's about 400 out of the 2,500 left for the plugged in show.

So I would not wait.

Okay.

Wow.

Great point.

Hey, you and I have something else in common, Mike, too.

When I was reading about you earlier, you went to DePaul University.

That was where I went to college.

Yeah.

I got my, I got my graduate degree down there and

love the city of Chicago.

If it hadn't priced me out of the market, I'd probably still be down there because I'm a, although the biggest hate in my life is the bear.

So I am a bit of a dichotomy, but

I

do like, yeah.

Well, I saw what Conrad's wearing.

So I know I got at least somebody on that side with

me.

Yeah, you got a

friendly face here,

but I, the city of Chicago.

Has a warm place in my heart and I loved to Paul the Paul was great.

It was very good to me

You know what's crazy is I've been going down to Madison once a month for like the last 12 years for this PBS gig I've been doing Madison is Crazy expensive like if you want to live down by the campus There are people Mike honest to God at the film festival there from LA that have said I cannot believe how expensive it is here Madison

well, it's crazy.

Yeah

Well, there's a house there is an affordable housing shortage here.

Yeah, fortunately and all of if you if you've been around for many many years East Wash Avenue all that campus stuff what were five bedroom houses are now

apartment buildings, but very desirable because the infrastructure is I mean great restaurants and great shops and all it is certainly revitalized downtown 20 years ago if you'd said downtown Madison was the place to be you'd have been laughed at but now it's the now it's the case.

It's so great because I hear people complain about that I'm like look anywhere you want to go if there is good schools.

culture, great restaurant.

You pay, and Madison is ranked the number one city to live in, and the weather's terrible.

So that should tell you

something

about everything else it has to offer.

Yeah,

I don't want to see the algorithm, but if anything that can offset what we go through weather-wise, it has to be pretty great.

Yeah, Madison's awesome.

Mike, it was so great talking to you.

Best of luck with the event.

It's so great, and I wish you luck, and I admire you, and I hope it crushes this year.

playing an instrumental part, hopefully in the cure for epilepsy.

So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm convinced that when they, whoever mixes that final test tube together to find a cure, I'm convinced we will have bought that test tube.

Nobody will be able to convince me otherwise.

Outstanding.

Well, it's great to meet you.

Let's do it again sometime.

Anytime, Pete, would love to chat.

Thank you, buddy.

All right.

That's Mike Gamal.

Go to joysung.org and get one of these remaining tickets.

They're going fast and there's still, I think that acoustic show.

Sounds like it sounds amazing.

That's I mean I would do both of them, but that's probably where I would start That's fantastic and it's for such a great cause too All right.

We are coming back after news sports and weather which is on the way next we've got Comedy City in the house in hour number two And all kinds of fun stuff still on tap.

I'm gonna read your text too after the news It's peach wabba and nightlight on the civic media radio

network

Broadcasting live from the Civic Media Studios in Green Bay.

This is Night Light with Pete Schwabba.

Your inside source on everything entertainment from Wisconsin to Hollywood.

And now a guy who prefers to travel by catapult, Pete Schwabba.

Hey, welcome back.

This is hour number two of Night Light just getting started here.

Lots of fun that first hour.

We spoke with Mike Gamal, the founder of Joey's Song in Madison, which has now turned into a music festival called Freezing Man.

It's at the Sylvie Theater this week, I'm sorry, this coming January from January 8th through the 12th.

Lots of big names.

John Resnick from the Goo Goo Dolls, Butch Vig from Garbage.

Our pal Frank Anderson will be there playing with the Know It All Boy friends and just some of the go-go's.

Just a really fun event.

And for such a great cause.

And if you are going or if you're planning on going or interested after hearing Mike's interview, check out.

Joey'ssong.org.

All the tickets, the proceeds, the artists don't even take any money, and that's pretty impressive.

So it's a great cause and should be an absolutely phenomenal show.

I've never been there.

I've heard such great things about it, like it's an absolute, a total gas, if you will.

We also talked about favorite holiday foods in the first hour.

Cookies chocolate was

all over

out of the top ten chocolate was listed like five times cookies were listed like three times And here's an interesting thing con.

I don't know if you knew knew this I sent this to you earlier the price if you want to leave cookies for Santa Claus The price has gone up by two dollars and two cents in five years The average cost that it used to be to leave cookies for Santa Claus was six dollars and forty two cents now It's eight dollars and forty four cents

Making your own I

have no idea what their criteria was buying or making

I want I want grocery shopping last night now, you know the thing I After done with the show, I don't eat before so I eat as soon as I get home Okay, so I you know what I did I went to the grocery store hungry.

Oh nice work

And I saw these these Christmas cookies that were made by fresh by the bakery that that morning and I was like well Let's put it in the cart

What wait what so I saw these cookies and they looked really good So I put them in the cart because I was hungry and they were six bucks and they're they came and there was nine of them in there

Nine cookies for six bucks.

Yeah, were they like gourmet?

I mean they were the kind of the bigger they were like in the shapes of like a Christmas tree and they had the special frosting on it and some you know What are the sprinkles were they made at the Walmart bakery at the festival bakery?

Oh, that's better

If it was the Walmart Baker, he would have been five bucks.

That's why I like Walmart, because you go there and it's just cheaper there, but it is farther away from me, so.

I do Walmart.

I used to have this thing about Walmart, like I wanted to give my, I wanted to give any money I had to mom and pop places.

So I avoided Walmart, but now those mom and pop places aren't really around.

Your choices are really limited, like especially in Marinette, we have Jack's Fresh Market.

And there's three of those in the two cities, and then Walmart.

And Walmart's open until 11, so half the time, I can't make it to Jack's time when I get back from here.

And I know the family that owns Jack's.

So,

there you go.

You know, here's an idea, all right?

Nightlight market, right?

Ooh, I like that.

And we open after the show.

And all we do

is sell swag.

You want food?

Can't help you.

So that was our number one folks.

We talked about some fun events going on around the state too as we get closer to Christmas.

Two or three of those fun events will be discussed here on Nightlight this week.

We've got great guests all week.

And coming up later this hour in about 20 minutes, the fine folks, Erica and Scott will be here from Comedy City in Depeer.

Erica Larsen, Scott.

Let's call him Scott.

We don't know how to say his last name so we don't want to insult him Yes, and I could say I could make up a name and trail off, but that's not like he's if he's listening right now He would know that's what I'm doing.

So what about Scott Schwabba?

It's got

a ring

to it when you go Schwabba, you've got to have a hard-ending sound for the first name So Scott Schwabba works Jack Schwabba Frank Schwabba my parents went with Pete.

I don't know was the 60s I don't know what was going on.

Well, it's Peter,

right?

It's Thomas Peter.

Oh,

okay.

So that's another headache.

I've had to deal with my whole life as a comedian.

I was peach.

Well, hold on.

This check says Pete.

I know, but you know, okay.

So I've tried to make my parents feel guilty about that.

They didn't really care.

So we've got Comedy City coming up at 6.35.

And then in the third hour at three, Boris Hamilton, a comedian, a friend of mine who I met years ago in Los Angeles, very funny guy.

He is part of a really cool documentary.

called, what is it called?

I had it right here in front of me.

It's about, this is so embarrassing.

Okay, here it is.

This is not the documentary.

Boris is in a documentary, I'm gonna tell you all about it.

That's what I should have said, because I can't find

the... Yeah, you leave it up, suspense is the best one, and just 720 you'll find out.

No, but sometimes I

prefer not to make mistakes like this.

So, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna reopen the window.

Here's the call.

The Don of Tiki is the... This is so cool.

That has a cool ring to it.

The Don of Tiki, it's about Don Beach, also known as Don the Beach Comer, whose iconic bar sparked the global Tiki movement.

Oh, that's awesome.

And Boris is in this film.

So, we're gonna talk about that.

Boris and I were also on the same Comedy Central show years ago.

We'll talk a little comedy, some Christmas movies, gonna be a lot of fun.

Our question of the night, Conn, I think we need to reintroduce the nightlight question of the night.

Let's talk about the question.

Okay, question.

Question.

Question.

Pregunta.

Question.

Question.

Okay, I have a question.

Questions.

This

question.

Domanda.

Question.

Question.

Questions.

What is a gift that's hard to wrap?

They're out there.

In earlier Conrad, you said you weren't a good gift wrapper.

I don't consider myself a good gift wrapper either, but it is not brain science.

I mean, if you take your time.

You can wrap a damn gift and I'm not I am amazed though and Like sometimes you get a gift and it looks like someone spent on two hours Wrapping your gift and I feel bad about that because I never do that.

I feel like I want to make it easier to take the paper off because people just want the gift But in my wife's and I was like, oh, this is so pretty and they study the gift and the wrapping for five minutes before they open the gift I'm like get to the damn gift.

I appreciate the wrapping.

It's great, but it's like a custom

It's like this sort of social norm where you have to say, you have to compliment the gift wrapping before you open it.

And I never, you know, I feel like if I'd said that, it'd be weird.

Oh, like if I was talking to my brother, Tim, this is a beautiful gift wrapping job, Tim.

He would say, he probably would probably just grunt and go, huh.

But you said your brother's a very good gift wrap.

Does he

pride himself on that though?

I

think so.

He

does all the gift wrapping.

I don't think my sister-in-law does any of it.

He's just phenomenal.

He's

a 21st century dude right

there.

He doesn't really use gift bags either.

He likes to use gift wrap and make it special.

See, I'm the type of guy who's like, what kind of funny gift bag can I find?

And then I use that.

Festival foods.

And then it's just do whatever you want with it.

You can keep it or you can throw it away.

I don't care after that.

Yeah, same.

My wife will say that too.

Now, hold on a second.

Save that wrapping paper.

It's like, OK.

The wrapping paper?

So now that becomes a process, too.

If you keep the wrapping paper, I don't do that.

But the gift bag my parents like to keep that.

I mean, because when they moved to Florida, they gave all my brother all their gift wrapping stuff.

That is so, so crazy that your brother

takes it that seriously.

And he is, he's a lot.

I mean, he has gift bags handed down for many years to gift bags that I use.

I'm like, all right, I'm here.

Where are the gift bags?

It's coming to

town.

Go to

the basement and get the gift.

Yeah, I just, I don't, and it's not like we probably should do that.

It would save paper.

That's great.

But I just don't have the.

the four to two are the patients.

I guess I revert back to when I was a kid and I just want to tear the wrapping paper off.

You know what I mean?

Even though you don't get gifts as cool as you did when you were like, now it's like, okay, give me my socks.

You know, it's like, I know I'm going to get that kind of stuff, which I'm fine with that too, because frankly, I never go out and buy socks.

I never go out and buy T-shirts, but like my daughter gave me a, you know, awesome, like my daughter T-shirt.

Well, that's my gym shirt.

I'm never going to go out and buy a shirt to wear to the gym.

No,

actually, I did that this year.