The sound of Chuy Gomez on the radio is synonymous with the Bay Area. Some Chuy fans might also know him from his hour of music on CMC, a cable TV show from 4 to 5pm on local channels. His ability to connect with his listeners and the community have made him a popular local celebrity, and when he was unceremoniously let go from his 20-year stint as a DJ with KMEL, his already faithful fans rallied around him even more. Now he’s back in his groove at HOT 105.7, doing what he does best.
Tell me about your background.
I was born in Mexico and came here before kindergarten. I was raised in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. I grew up with the radio always on at the house. I would call into KBRG every day to request songs for my mom: Los Bukis, Los Caminantes, whatever was hip at the time. The DJ began to recognize me. He invited me, this little boy who called every day, to come down and check out the station.
When did you first try radio out?
I was interested in it because of being around music. In high school, I started deejaying house parties. I never really wanted to do radio. I’d pretend to be Lee Perkins. People would tell me, “You sound like him.”
I’d MC events, and this led me to my reintroduction to radio. I had a buddy whose sister was having a quinceañera. I didn’t know he was a friend of Marcos Gutierrez from KSOL. He came to the quinceañera. He said, “Nobody does this but me here.” He was the bilingual guy on CBS. So then I became his intern. Before you know it, I’m hanging out for his show, and the show after. So then I start driving the vans, and that led to a weekend position eventually. It’s crazy because I was just a kid hanging out with Marcos Gutierrez. Then I became a DJ.
At what moment did you realize that you liked doing radio?
I knew that I loved music coming out of my radio. Just being there, it morphed into something. I didn’t know I wanted to be on the radio. Dr. Demento, Wolfman Jack—I had my local celebrities, I liked. And then being able to be in a space where I saw these people was something else. I wasn’t starstruck, but I was this young guy hanging out with these vets. I learned a lot of game from Barry Pope. He and I spent a lot of time in the station vans doing community work.
Radio is not just about performing, it’s also about connecting…
People have grown up with me in the past 20 years. I’m almost like the neighbor that you know. I’ve been to your schools, I’ve been to your dances. You’ve seen me in different situations. Now you see me walking through the fair. Some of these people don’t know I’m on the radio because people have been locked into three specific stations in the market. Unless you’re scanning through the radio, you don’t know it’s there.
Now it’s all about grassroots again. Shaking hands, kissing babies.
When did you feel like you could make a name for yourself? When did you say, “I’m going to be more public?”
I was always the radio guy that was there playing music. Then they hired Mancow to do mornings, and I think by that time we had switched over to be WILD 107. He heard me and said, “You have a lot of energy, want to be part of the morning show?” I’d do the morning show Monday through Friday. I’d be the street team guy, the morning show ambassador. I’d do call-ins to the station. It got me out in front of the people. Chuy became almost a personality himself. That allowed me to grow.
My girlfriend at the time got pregnant; my son was born in 1992. I ended up asking for benefits. I couldn’t get a raise to get my own benefits. At the same time, someone called me from KMEL. They said “We’re thinking of doing something, want to meet?” So we had a conversation. I told them my girlfriend just got pregnant and I needed to start making money. They said, “Well let me put something on paper for you…”
How’d you feel in that moment?
I’ve always taken life day by day. Then, I asked if I could get benefits. Oh, benefits come with the job. Okay, cool! So now I’m excited. But I didn’t want to leave WILD because I liked it there.
WILD couldn’t match KMEL’s offer, so I took the offer. They teamed me up with Rosary. We had the Chuy and Rosary show. It was growth. It was a godsend. I started doing nights for about 2 ½ years. Then it was a weird situation. They put us on the morning show. For whatever situation, that didn’t work out. So then I got the night show back. Then I went from nights to doing afternoons. Then Michael Martin, who was originally my music director at WILD, said he wanted to take what I was doing in the afternoons and do it in the mornings. I ended up doing mornings for over 10 years.
How did you find doing mornings in terms of the style?
For me, it was awesome because I didn’t have to do the whole bells and whistles… I’ve never been a fan of prank calls. While you’re stuck in traffic, you have music. I threw in some entertainment reports. We did great for the amount of time that we had. Up until August of 2013, when they walked in and, after 20 years, said, “We decided to go in a new direction.”
There was no warning?
I went on vacation. I came back and worked Monday through Thursday. I went into a meeting Thursday after I got off the air. “We decided to go into a different direction.” Oh, so no funky Friday tomorrow? That day was my last day.
In that moment, how was that news?
In radio, you never know when your last day is. You’re only as good as your last show. I never expected it. I thought I’d graduate to KISS FM, to an older demographics station. It didn’t sink in. I cried more when I left WILD than when I left KMEL that day. It was a little surreal. I had Disney on Ice tickets that night with my daughters. I didn’t pay attention to my Instagram that day. People were going crazy, asking “What happened to Chuy?” That was empowering and reassuring and it felt good.
When did you get the call for HOT 105.7?
They called and said they wanted to do afternoons. Awesome! I get to sleep in. They kicked off the station by playing Nelly’s “It’s Getting Hot in Here” nonstop for a few days. It felt like when you fall off your bike and you get back on, and you’re back in stride. You feel good.
Who are your big influencers?
I’ve always been an Ice Cube fan. He and Scarface are my all-time favorites. I interviewed Ice Cube in ‘94 or ‘95. That’s probably been the only time I’ve been in groupie mode. You watch him and you see his videos and you see what kind of figure he is, and then, oh my God, I’m standing next to him.
I’ve talked to everyone from him to Snoop Dog to Rappin’ Forte. It was an incredible time in hip hop. The golden era. The ’90s were the best.
IG: chuygomez
Originally appeared in issue 5.4, “Form,” 2013.
Bob Kieve has been in a love affair for almost three-quarters of a century. Even at the age of 91, Kieve nourishes that love as president of Empire Broadcasting, which owns KLIV-AM, a news radio station, and Hot Country 95.3 KRTY in San Jose.
The San Jose segment of this love affair began in 1967 when Kieve bought radio stations with business partner James M. Trayhern Jr. Although programming has transformed through the decades, today KLIV is Silicon Valley’s only all-news radio station.
Back in 1939, when Kieve was a freshman at Harvard University, he started working for the college radio station and quickly fell in love with it. “I thought, ‘Gee, that’s sexy,’ and I went for it.”
After graduating in 1943 with a degree in English literature, he found a way to continue that love affair—he wanted to travel, use his ability to speak German and work in radio. So he signed up with the US war effort, where he was promptly sent to Spain and worked in the Office of War Information. The fact that he didn’t speak Spanish was irrelevant. “I wanted to get involved with my love, radio,” Kieve says.
He spent three and a half years in Madrid with propaganda programming during the war and later helped start Madrid’s first Top 40 radio station. To this day, Kieve says, “I am known as the father of Top 40 in Madrid.”
A brief detour from the radio had him at the front door of history. Thanks to his boss in Madrid, who went on to be chief speechwriter during Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign, Kieve landed in Washington. “I was the guy who had a very important job. I was the guy who drafted letters to people who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries.” Copies of letters that Kieve composed, marked in Eisenhower’s handwriting, adorn Kieve’s office walls. “Eisenhower edited them. He wanted it his way.”
After serving under press secretary James C. Hagerty in the early 1950s, Kieve returned to local radio in New York state, in “Rottenchester,” as he put it. After several years, when that station was sold, he and a couple of coworkers decided to buy their own radio station. “We didn’t know where the hell we were going to get one,” he says. They got word that one was available “somewhere near San Francisco.” That “somewhere” was San Jose, and he has continued in radio ever since.
A now-familiar KLIV voice was on the air back then. “John McLeod was the only person sitting in the studio on July 1, 1967, when I first took the key and opened the radio station,” Kieve says. Today, McLeod reports weekday traffic from 6 to 10 am and 3 to 7 pm. Empire Broadcasting now has 50 full- and part-time employees.
The programming has changed over the years. First, surfer music (think Beach Boys) led the play list, then Top 40 and disco. At one point, “the music of your life” had its turn (that translates into Sinatra and ballads; “That didn’t work,” Kieve recalls), and eventually, news radio.
The news radio format has stuck since 1982, concentrating on San Jose news, weather, traffic, and sports. KLIV broadcasts all San Jose Earthquakes games as well as San Jose State University football and basketball. “It’s working, but it’s not a money maker,” Kieve concedes. “KLIV is a station that we like to see break even. We’re trying to establish ourselves as the San Jose station. If we’re going to go all news, we better have a niche.”
Right now, that niche is everything San Jose. Approximately every seven minutes during the day, KLIV broadcasts live local traffic reports. “Look out for a garbage can on the first lane,” one recent report shared.
“Through [radio] you can communicate with a large number of people in a community and hopefully have some impact.”
A segment called Economy and Silicon Valley airs weekdays around 55 past the hour, from 5:55 am to 9:55 pm and various times on weekends. Find out about the local pollen count at 7:45 am weekdays, and stock reports that focus on Silicon Valley stocks air weekdays at approximately 25 minutes past the hour from 7:25 am to 6:25 pm. There’s even news about produce about 43 past the hour from 9 am to 6 pm weekdays, when Phil Cosentino from J+P Farms presents tips and information about fruits and vegetables during The Produce Report.
Kieve broadcasts his own particular views in his commentaries, which end with, “This is Robert Kieve, and that’s a personal opinion.” His commentaries air on KLIV, KARA, and KRTY in San Jose, perhaps once a week, sometimes three times a week—really, whenever inspiration strikes. Recent topics have included the gentlemen’s club downtown, Cindy Chavez, pension reform, local airports, and his own pet peeve, signs. “My big issue is signage. One of
the mistakes our city and county in general, make is that they restrict signage. They’re restricting commerce.”
Today, even after 74 years in the business, Kieve does not have all of the answers and ponders the future of radio. “It’s going to have to morph in some way because of the presence of the Internet,” he says. To that end, Empire Broadcasting has embraced the World Wide Web and has three Internet-only stations: head to everybodysmusic.com, where you’ll find Beethoven Only, KRTY Classic (country), and Big Band Central.
“I was looking for something at the time. I realized it was possible to have other radio stations to take advantage of the Internet. Wouldn’t it be sexy to have all Beethoven?” He says that station has more listeners tuning in from Europe than it does here in the United States.
So why does he love radio? “The fact that through it you can communicate with a large number of people in a community and hopefully have some impact.”
Kieve’s own personal impact won’t end anytime soon, despite turning 92 in November. “I really don’t have my eye on retiring. What the hell would I do?”