Buddy Guy online radio station launches with help of man fulfilling DJ dream

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Here's a story that proves it's never too late to go after your dream career even when you're close to retirement age, especially when that dream includes a legendary Chicago blues musician.

Pat Quinn met Roz Varon at a concert last summer and said he was starting an online blues radio station with Buddy Guy and now it has happened at BuddyGuyradio.com.

Quinn had a dream of being on the radio through high school and college, until an adviser talked him out of it.

"He was like, you think you're gonna be the next big host and jock on the 'LUP, it's not gonna happen, so I basically gave up on my dream," Quinn said.

But Quinn went on with his life, got married and raised a family, had a successful career in the mortgage industry, but kept his foot in the door as a weekend wedding DJ.

At the age of 58, Pat went back to finish broadcasting school, and start an online radio blues show. It was fate that turned a Buddy Guy concert into the beginning of BuddyGuyRadio.com!

"If you've ever been to a Buddy show, you know how he always talks about how they don't play the blues on the radio anymore and without thinking I yell out 'Hey Buddy, Buddy, I play the blues,' and he looked at me and said, 'Who the F - are you?' And I'm sitting here in front of two thousand people looking at me, and I'm like,' I'm nobody, but I do play the blues on the radio!'" Quinn said.

"I invited him backstage and said come back stage, you know, he's got a radio station and he told me to dial the number," said musician Greg Guy.

"And for somebody to come up and say, 'hey ma'n, you know we might be ready for some of that stuff you're talking about, bout that old fashioned radio, we can play everybody's music, and I'm like saying let me go home and I woke up and I said was I dreaming. Somebody finally got an idea like I got and hopefully we can make this thing be successful!"

"That's the point of us starting an internet station, it's because technology is advancing, the platform, radio isn't what it used to be, so we wanted to come up with something creative," said Carlton McDowell, VP of Even If, Inc.

"So I'm hoping me getting involved in this radio station will open someone's eyes and say ain't nothing wrong with letting some young people know a little bit more about the blues musicians and where it came from," Buddy Guy said.

"This is something we talked about that he would be able to leave to his kids and his grandkids," Quinn said.

The soft launch of BuddyGuyRadio.com was last month. The official launch will be within the next month or so at Buddy Guy's Legends. The most important things Buddy said regarding the radio station are that it's free, not subscription and that they include jazz, gospel, even rock music along with the blues, the music he grew up with!