The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Johnny Brennan was a wise cracking kid from New York who had a natural gift for doing voices and making up characters. First, he did it to crack up his family. When he started recording the prank phone calls that he made to try out his characters in the real world, he made tapes for his brothers. At the time, he was “hanging off of buildings, doing construction.” His friend Kamal Ahmed got involved and the duo would eventually call themselves The Jerky Boys. Those original tapes started circulating, being passed around at college campuses and among musicians. The Jerky Boys became one of the most bootlegged acts in the world, before ultimately signing a proper record contract (their first record was on Atlantic Records) and going on to sell millions of copies of their prank call collections. They made a movie, did commercials, became famous, launched careers, and created classic characters. Then the Jerky Boys stopped making new recordings and the two friends went their separate ways. Johnny became a voice a