Once upon a time I got a call from Thomas King saying he wanted to do an old-fashioned radio show. Since we had worked together before, on radio dramas he had adapted from his own stories, I knew he had a keen sense of radio. So we talked about what he meant by old-fashioned radio. He meant short plays with people talking directly to the audience from a single location. He meant cheesy sound effects created live in the studio. The show was going to be about contemporary life from a Native perspective. And from the perspective of someone who is keenly aware of how our lives are controlled by big corporate interests.

It didn't take long to come up with the idea of the Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour, which was a fifteen-minute show with three characters set in a café on the reserve in the fictional community of Blossom, Alberta. The Dead Dog Café comes from King's novel Green Grass, Running Water. The character of Jasper Friendly Bear is familiar from his novels and stories—he's a trickster character like Harlen in Medicine River, among others. Gracie Heavy Hand is the perfect foil, a woman who takes everything literally yet always seems to know what's going on. Although those two are the “country bumpkins” and Tom is the “city intellectual,” ofcourse it's Tom who is really naïve.