O P I N I O N
Granite State of Mind
Washed out by 10 a.m. after a morning of work-related lashings, I needed to get off the road, down an ice coffee and recenter myself.
Pulling into the Dunkins on Manchester Street in Concord, I was certain the foot traffic inside would be light. I wanted that. No chit-chat. No sass. Nothing.
I got my goods without paying attention to who I bought it from or what they looked like. I was in a trance sitting at a table near the restrooms, peering out at the gloomy Monday morning sky.
Then, slowly, the pendulum of the day swung in my favor.
My anxiousness cooled; my mood lifted; a smile even broke out on my face. Not because I opened an email from an important referral citing my remarkable dependability. Nope, that did not happen.
Not even because someone finally shook the sugar out the bottom of my ice coffee without throwing a handful of napkins in my face and telling me to do it.
Over and over, I would clearly hear the voice of one of the workers taking coffee orders at the drive-thru window. He was killing me with his silky voice, his delivery, his radio style of speak. His voice was cutting through the gloom, past the bagels and right into my lethargy.
At first, I thought it was Ken Cail from WKXL working a side gig pouring Joe.
“Yes, how can I help you?” the hearty silver-tongued baritone voice bellowed out. “Okay. That’s a large French Vanilla with seven shots of Caramel, six sugars, and an egg and bacon on a bagel. Come on down!”
But it wasn’t Ken. It was 47-year-old Tom Yeager from Concord, a nearby resident to this Dunkins, and a voice you might recognize maybe more than you think.
Yeager, who has been working at Dunkins for two-and-half years now, has been, as he says, “fine-tuning my brand of delivery to lucky coffee drinkers for the last two years.”
According to Yeager, he recognized as a teen his voice was deeper than his peers, more pronounced, more mature sounding. Special. And as a long-time radio listener, Yeager knew he had a similar cadence to many of the “Top 40” radio announcers dishing out the hits around the dial.
“My voice just got better over time,” said the slender, dark-haired, ball cap-wearing Yeager.
Days came and went, order after order rushed through Yeager’s headset, as he welcomed every request as if announcing them as a guest on his own late-night TV show.
“Of course, I do it mostly for sheer entertainment,” he says. “I rather like seeing people smile throughout their day.”
Then, the most important coffee order of his life came through his headset.
“A local DJ came through the drive-thru one day and he liked what he heard,” Yeager explained. Turns out, that DJ was none other than DJ Kaine Legacy from WJYY 105.5 FM out of Concord.
“I couldn’t believe it was an actual real/life person,” said DJ Kaine, a music producer, nightclub DJ and the host of Overdrive. “I thought it was a pre-recorded movie announcer or something.”
DJ Kaine offered Yeager a gig a year ago in April, a sweet gig for someone who has never done a day of radio before. And it didn’t take much, according to Yeager. “We ended up doing a few recordings and off to the studio we went.” Boom.
“He’s a true talent,” continued Kaine. “And I hope I’m able to play a role in him being discovered on a national level.”
Now, we can all hear Yeager doing spots (“spots,” I said, not “shots”) on WJYY promoting the show and DJ Kaine on Overdrive Radio.
“The experience to lend my voice to a local radio station has always been a dream of mine,” says Yeager, who hopes to pursue more voice work in animation, video games and audio books.
How about that. Coffee, a smooth voice, a good attitude, and a smile, that’s what it took to change a life, to manifest a dream come true.
Order up! I’ll take a double shot of that action in my coffee.
Rob Azevedo can be reached at onemanmanch@gmail.com
