What's Been Goin On with Lucas Nugent

Lucas, we know you’ve got a lot going on so lets get started! So how have you been??

CRAZY! And I mean crazy GOOD! 2016 was such a supernova year, I had no idea how 2017 was gonna top it… but it did! And not only professionally, my wife and I adopted two baby brothers. Our two guys, we just love them to death. So now I’m living the #dadlife. When they start school I’m assuming they’ll be the only ones with a recording studio in their basement.

Professionally I’m hitting places I only dreamed about years ago. And that’s all thanks to my rep team. My agent Nate at CESD and my manager Marc at ACM. Wow. Where to start with them. Having solid representation is key. It’s access to work, access to coaches, access to their knowledge and experience. And they just know what to do with every deal and every challenge that comes up. You get to working as such a team. I hold so much love and admiration for them. And trust. That’s the key. Your team will fight for you, support you, and I know I can bring anything to them and it’s gonna get handled.

And not to mention of course the amazing Benztown people. Some of the most professional people on the planet here. It’s crazy. Do any of you have bad days? I have no idea cause every time I pick up the phone you guys sound on top of the world.

You are becoming the new sound of Urban radio. Was that a goal of yours?

We initially fired things up with my imaging in spring of 2015, and my first get out of the gate was Big Boy. Which I know is ridiculous. But there’s the “ten year overnight success” thing. You make friends, and contacts, and you practice, and you’re just there and present and available. There’s a dear dear friend and mentor of mine that is almost solely responsible for my entire career. He’s kinda on the inside so I’m not sure if he wants me to mention him or not. But there’s people like that you just end up being close with. And when they say ok we need this or that, hey Lucas is ready, let’s give him a shot. And hopefully you hit it out of the park when you get that shot.

The Urban thing is definitely one of my areas that I wanted to jump on. Urban radio is one of the most fun formats to listen to. It’s so unapologetic. It’s intense and sometimes over the top and funny and serious and a nonstop party, and just everything. It’s in this big growth mode right now and is everywhere. And it’s so great to read. You can be silly and fun, but then menacing and dangerous all in the same ID. I give it this driving modern sort of sound. Seems to work well!

Any new gear or upgrades?

Yes! Can I talk about this for hours?? My wife is bored to tears hearing about it, hopefully you’re a tad more interested. I’ve upgraded a few things, I added the Audient ID22 to my chain. What a beast. It’s got some serious preamps. I had been using this old gear that wasn’t doing what I needed it to. But this thing picks up stuff on mic I hadn’t heard before. It’s funny I actually had to improve my mic technique. And for some reason I waited until this year to investigate these “plugins” that everyone talks about. I now roll a 1073 EQ on my VO then feed it into an LA-3A plugin.

You don’t just do imaging, you branch out into other VO areas. How’s that going?

It’s challenging but going well. I’m currently in the midst of some in-depth trailer and promo coaching. Every aspect of this is so competitive, you need to be on the absolute top of your game at all times.

For this aspect, the job is auditioning. Competing in it is like being signed to the Red Sox. You’re a draft pick in the majors. Every audition is a pitch. First you need to learn how to hit the ball (return a good audition), then you need to learn how to hit a homerun (nail it). And then once you can hit a homerun, you get compared to all the other homeruns that were hit, and hope they like your homerun the best. It’s here that your demos don’t matter. Your resume doesn’t matter, the sound of your name doesn’t matter. All that matters, is how good that particular read is.

Also, you gotta be available. If they go to you once and you’re difficult “oh sorry I’m out shopping” you can bet they won’t be back. You need to be really flexible. Tuesday at 2? Thursday at 9pm? You got it. Everyone’s got a story about having to leave dinners out with your wife, family vacations etc.

You’ve also gotta step off one type of read and step up to another. I could be cutting liners for my kickin’ San Diego station Jam’n 95.7 SHOUT OUT WHATUP ROB AND FRANKIE AND PABLO AND MELISSA, LOVE YOU GUYS and then an audition comes in. National TV insurance commercial. Or a trailer for an animated movie. Changing gears is something you don’t think about until it hits you and you’re frustrated and straining “why isn’t this sounding good”. Oh right I’m still in that imaging mindset.

Anyone Can Get Car Insurance Easily at Kanetix.ca from Lucas Nugent on Vimeo.

Looking back, what do you think about?

I think about how I’m glad I worked at it as much as I did. I have no idea if I’ve hit my 10,000 hours yet (probably not), but the fierce intensity and laser focus of this is something I am truly thankful of my past self. We were talking about this last time. Like how I used to do morning radio, work at it during my shift, go home and sleep, then go back to the studio after dinner and train more, etc. I also think about what everyone looking back thinks about: what was I so worried about. It would keep me up at nights. I gotta do this, gotta do that. What if, what if. But of course that is what drives you. If I got into coding I’d be up all night practicing until I could make an app as good as Angry Birds.

Looking forward what are you excited about?

Honestly I get excited about all of it. Every aspect of this has something that gets me pumped. I gotta say there’s something magical about finding a passion where I actually get a little bummed out when the weekend comes!