Meet Daniel Leon

We recently connected with Daniel Leon and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniel, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout

That’s a good question, that’s a constant struggle for me because I work full time and produce two different shows weekly
of my oldie radio show for two different stations. It’s a lot of work, but I love the music. Each show takes about, anywhere from twelve to fifteen hours to produce. To keep things fresh and new with my show I add new features: interviews, drops, soundbites, songs I’m always looking for some new way to innovate my show. All the music I play on my show comes from my own personal collection. A collection that easily has over 100,000 songs- so the time that I’m compiling the music for each show I get to go through my music and find some forgotten jems that I forgot that I have.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I do a weekly radio. I spin blues, doo wops, classic soul and oldies outta Arizona. My show airs in Tucson, Arizona on 100.3 KPYT, this is my homebase station. Back in February 2024, my show got picked up by Crown Sounds Radio, an internet radio station based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early this year my show was on two other stations. One in Seattle, Washington and the other in San Bernadino, CA. I dropped both of those stations only because the workload was way too much. I chose to pull out of those two markets only because those were the two stations with least number of listeners. My dream city to have my show air in would be Memphis, Tennessee. Majority of the music that I love, and play comes out of that area.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Hmmmm (takes a long dramatic pause, eyes light up once he realizes what three things he’ll be talking about).

My willingness to learn the history of the music. It could be a fun fact about the group, the recording studio, the backing band, the record label. Anything that I believe will just make the listeners ears perk up. All those nights I spent at home reading about the history of the music is actually paying off.
Second, I believe my willingness to adapt my show to fit each market
helps a lot. What I mean by that is, my listeners back in Philadelphia are an older group of listeners. Normally, my show starts off with a rap song intro….I decided to not use it for when my show airs back east. They seem to really enjoy the history aspect of my show back there. Here in Tucson, it’s a younger crowd that tunes in, so I kept my rap intro in, and just recently I decided to make a drastic switch up and take out most of the music history. I feel most people who tune in, do so while cruising, at a kick back or at a cookout and I figure the last thing you want when you’re in a social setting is someone talking when they could just as easily be playing music. So, from here on out that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. Less talking, more oldies music.
Last, I would say patience. Patience has been key for me at all my stops except for two. I had to deal with everything from
equipment glitches to having a station not want to pay me for my show. At peak, my show was on in four different markets, Tucson, San Bernadino, Seattle and Philadelphia. The station in Philadelphia is top-notch. The way Crown Sounds Radio operates is unmatched. I feel lucky to have my show featured on their station- I’m surrounded by wonderful DJ’s there, some who have been in radio since the 1950’s.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

Hmmmm that’s a good question, a challenge that I’m currently facing is…for a lack of a better word, Iet’s just call it burnout- but I think a better description would be time management.
Producing one 2-hour show for me, takes me anywhere from 12-15 hours. I always double check the year of the songs because I’m horrible with years. Each market that I’m in I produce a different show. So, on a good week just with producing my shows that’s 24 hours- plus I work a full-time job so that comes to about 65 hours a week spent working and producing my show.
To keep things fresh and keep myself on my toes, I switch up things on my radio show. It could be anything from looking for interesting interviews, as I mentioned earlier- making format changes to my show and of course going to record stores to search for new music to play on my show.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: tiodannyoldies
• Other: email: [email protected]
  request line/contact: 520-320-4981

Image Credits

All pictures were taken by family/friends with my personal phone.