“I don’t want to fade away—give me one more day, please!” pleaded Eric Clapton on the ‘70s radio staple, “Bell Bottom Blues.”
Brent Farris doesn’t want to fade away either.
But the recently retired radio personality—considered by many as “the voice of Sonoma County” at KZST-100.1 FM—knows all too well the fate of career DJs after they hang up the microphone.
“If you don’t have something to do, you fade fast,” Farris cautions matter-of-factly by phone from his Windsor home. He’s seen it happen to colleagues close to him.
Fortunately—and to the surprise of no one who knows him—the odds of the creativity-consumed Farris having nothing to do stand little chance. Fading away simply isn’t on his to-do list. He’s got a pair of children’s books in the can (the search for an appropriate illustrator is next) and is working on a screenplay with longtime collaborator Marc Hershon. On Oct. 7, he was feted at the Safari West 30th anniversary fundraiser in appreciation of his advocacy for its foundation’s wildlife conservation efforts.
And what did he do in the days following his last show behind the KZST mike at the end of September? Took a trip to Las Vegas, of course.
Farris has plans—and none of them involve slowing down. So why retire in the first place?
“I realized this is a young man’s game,” says Farris, 66. A recent knee replacement—and its painfully slow recovery—drove home the point. “I need to move out for somebody who’s younger and more talented than me.”
And by “somebody,” he means Debbie Abrams—his longtime copilot of the Brent & Deb morning show on KZST. Until a few weeks ago, when Abrams took her initial solo flight in 5:30 to 10 a.m. drive-time, the duo had worked together for more than 20 years. So long, in fact, Farris admits he’s not exactly sure when they first teamed up.
Abrams, however, clearly recalls meeting Farris at a local restaurant for an interview for a KZST gig in 1995. “My first impression of Brent was his size and stature,” she says of the 6-foot-4 Farris. “He was a big man with a lot of words spewing out of his mouth—all about radio.”
She says that first impression hasn’t shifted much. “He is still the ‘big guy’ with a ‘big mouth’—and a head full of crazy ideas,” Abrams says. “He still loves radio as much as he did almost 40 years ago.”
Yet, she understands why he decided it was time for a change.
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Farris wasn’t always the big guy with the big mouth. Born in San Diego in 1957—a great year for cars and DJs, he points out—his childhood was nomadic. The son of a Navy
commander, Farris moved frequently. Guam, Tawain, Japan, Philippines, Hawaii, Florida, Washington DC, various stops in California—he saw the world from a young age. He credits it for shaping who he is today. “It’s a weird thing when you meet entertainers who have military families—we’re all the same,” he says. “You don’t have a lot of close friends, you have no one place that is your home—and yet you are totally open to the world.”
He believes such a cosmopolitan upbringing spared him the same “baggage” about race that many people carry. “All over the world, no matter where you go, people are fabulous, people are great.”
He believes that experience gives one a better understanding of the world.
“It’s not—you live in California and so you vacation in Disneyland,” Farris scoffs.
Nonetheless, he was destined for the Golden State. By the mid-‘70s Farris had returned to California, was living in the North Bay, attending College of Marin and earning cash as a freelance photographer for the Marin Independent Journal, the Pacific Sun and People magazine. One day, he and a writer buddy were assigned to shoot the Doobie Brothers—the Bay Area-based “Listen to the Music” hitmakers were appearing on KTIM, the renowned free-form radio station in San Rafael.
Farris walked into KTIM and his life changed. “There was a guy in there smoking dope, eating jellybeans and playing the Rolling Stones,” he recalls. “I thought—well, this is for me!”
Farris quickly ingratiated himself at KTIM. “Those were the days when it was magical, all that ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll—Steely Dan, Stones, Santana, the Bay Area music scene was amazing,” he says. “I’ve got a platinum disc with a thank-you note from Fleetwood Mac.”
Still, he was “that kid” at KTIM and “nobody paid attention to me,” says Farris about station management ignoring his desire to get on the air, relegating him to creating sound effects for the DJs on his makeshift home studio built out of cheap gear from Radio Shack. “So I decided—screw this! And went to work at a little AM station in Lake County.“
Lake County was followed by radio stints in Ukiah, a second go-round in Lake County, and then over to Paradise—stops that allowed Farris to both hone his chops and, as he puts it, put those local stations “on the map.” It was in 1985 when the rising DJ returned to the North Bay and was hired by Gordon Zlot, founder of then-burgeoning KZST.
Farris describes his ongoing broadcasting contract with KZST as “two weeks long.”
“If I got a paycheck at the end of two weeks, I’m still on.”
Farris credits Zlot—who sold KZST to Amaturo Sonoma Media Group in 2022—with any success he’s had. “If it wasn’t for Gordon I’d be a nobody,” says Farris, adding that his former boss has a “weird way” of inspiring. “[It was] nothing he ever said or did, just his attitude that he was going to have the greatest radio station on the face of this earth.”
It was that drive to put KZST on the map that gave Farris carte blanche to develop the sort of crazy antics for which he became known. In one oh-so 1980s stunt, Farris auctioned off Cabbage Patch Kid dolls to listeners and delivered them to the families’ homes personally in an ambulance, wearing hospital scrubs. Such capers began capturing the attention of wider media, with snippets on the TV news and mentions in Herb Caen’s renowned column.
A later gag, in which Farris tested the gentleness of USPS postal handlers by mailing himself eggs at various levels of boiled-ness, was allegedly among the three-dot items in the column Caen had started just prior to his death in 1997. “He was writing about the raw egg when he died,” Farris says, proudly.
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Abrams may be losing her longtime partner in the studio, but she’ll be well-equipped with what she describes as “an abundance of radio knowledge” she’s picked up from Farris
over the years. The first thing she absorbed from Farris is his belief about “staying local, local, local!” And perhaps as equally important is to always “stay true to yourself on the radio.”
These are “lessons I will never forget,” she says.
Staying true to yourself, in Abrams case, will probably render the show “a bit more female-focused,” she says, while stressing “[but] it won’t alienate the male listeners that tune in.” She’s also planning more segments welcoming new businesses and people to the county, community “shout outs” for those doing positive things and “Debbie’s Daily Dish” of celebrity news. “I want to engage with listeners,” Abrams says.
Meanwhile, Farris has done his share of learning from Abrams over the years—specifically, he says, developing a better sense of perspective. “(I learned) to run things by Deb for a woman’s sensibility—because I don’t have that,” says Farris. “The thinking process [between women and men] is so radically different.”
“To know that one stupid comment over the airwaves could do real damage is a real eye opener,” he says.
It’s a lesson Farris learned the hard way some years ago when an amusing incident at a local bank became dangerous radio fodder. Farris had been doing his banking at a local branch in downtown Santa Rosa—and kept noticing a bell chime at various times while he was waiting in the queue for tellers. “Bing, there’s the bell. And bing, there’s the bell again,” he says.
When he eventually got to the woman at the counter, he asked her what the bell was for. She replied, “We ring it whenever a hot guy comes in!”
Despite the absence of “bings” upon his own entrance to the bank, Farris thought it was hilarious—and assumed his listeners would as well.
The next day Farris told the story on KZST—and identified the teller. “I used her name, and they fired her,” he says with regret. It was a reminder that “the things you say just to make people laugh can really cause pain.”
“One remark when you’re not paying attention to what you’re saying—it can really hurt.”
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As Farris passes the reins of the KZST morning show fully to Abrams, he’s given a lot of thought to another former colleague he’d long admired as he was cutting his teeth in the business—legendary Sonoma County radio personality Jim Grady.
Grady was a longtime voice on KSRO-1350 AM, anchoring the Santa Rosa news station’s morning show.
“(He) knew more about Sonoma County than any person I’ve ever met,” Farris recalls, fondly.
Farris describes Grady as “your stereotypical disc jockey—he partied and drank like a fish.” The two were friendly competitors for drive-time listeners for many years. “Jim was king of Santa Rosa [radio] from the ‘60s until when I got there,” boasts Farris.
In 2004, Grady and KSRO management had a falling out and they fired him after 44 years with the station. “When I found out how they treated him, I hired him and had him do weekends,” says Farris. One of those KZST weekend bits Farris urged him to do was “Yard Sale Saturday,” in which locals staging yard or garage sales would call in and pitch the most unusual item they had for sale. “He thought I was nuts,” laughs Farris. But the show was a hit and sealed a successful eight-year-long second act in Grady’s radio career.
Grady’s eventual retirement in October 2012 weighs heavily on Farris’s mind these days. Though Grady retired in his late-70s—a full decade older than Farris is today—and his health was failing, Farris is still mindful of the old chestnut about the lifespan of retiring DJs.
“One day he called and said, I can’t do this anymore,” recalls Farris, who begged Grady not to hang up the mike. “I told him—you stop doing this, in a year you’ll be dead.” His mentor died from cancer five months later.
“He was the last of an era,” Farris told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat following Grady’s death.
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“There simply is no way to calculate the importance Brent Farris has been to Sonoma County—and to KZST—over the past four decades,” says Michael O’Shea, president of Amaturo Sonoma Media Group. ASMG, which publishes NorthBay biz, operates multiple North Bay radio stations—and O’Shea had been an admirer of Farris’s work long before his company purchased its former rival KZST in 2022.
O’Shea concedes he’s disappointed Farris is calling it a day, but is happy his former colleague will now be able to “take a sledgehammer” to his alarm clock. “Getting up at 4 a.m. for 38 years is a massive commitment,” he says.
That said, O’Shea has confidence in the “talented superstar in morning radio” Debbie Abrams. “The torch is passed,” O’Shea says. “KZST has been ‘Sonoma County’s Radio Station’ with Brent and Debbie and will continue as such going forward, with Debbie Abrams.”
Farris is quite honest about whether he’ll miss shooting his mouth off for a living.
“Probably,” he concedes. “My whole life has just been reacting in the world today.” And it’s hard to let that go.
But so far, he’s content with traveling, noodling around on his bass, and enjoying free time with his longtime girlfriend Pamela and lovable pooch Walker. Family is close by—daughter Kelley, son Daniel and grandkids Karleigh and Murphy call the North Bay home; mom and brother also live in Sonoma County. “What can I say? We love it here,” says Farris.
Farris has only been retired a month and is already fending off questions about an eventual return to the airwaves.
“People say, ‘Are you coming back?’ No! Why would I do that?
“I’m happy, what do you want?”
He says he’s been taking a cue from professional football players who have to face the realities of their retirements at an early age.
“It all comes down to: How do you know when you’re done? Because at some point you’re done,” he says.
“And you have to know.”
Farris pauses, then adds: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just know it’s my turn to say goodbye.”
