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There are those in the spotlight, and then there is Everybody Else.
Hosted by Wes Luttrell (Indiana-based artist growth coach and label founder), Everybody Else is a podcast dedicated to the invisible people who make music happen. Featuring solo commentary and insightful interviews with record label execs, tour managers, music tech founders, producers, venue managers, and a slew of others, this show's mission is to pull back the curtain on the lives and ways of thinking of those who make up the modern music ecosystem. New episodes streaming every Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (00:00)
This is the Everybody Else Podcast. ⁓
Speaker 1 (00:03)
The
invisible people of music today and what do they do to make music happen? Because behind every great artist, song, venue, festival and music service, there's a tribe of people who dedicate their lives to work that if done right, will never appear to have happened. There are those in the spotlight and then there's everybody else.
Speaker 2 (00:23)
son to a four-hour live broadcast at a county fair.
Speaker 1 (00:27)
I'd
say so. Yeah, that's actually where I where I first met you. I don't even know if you remember this Fort Branch put on a Fort Branch, the town of Fort Branch came together and put on a like town festivals, what we called it. And I was performing. I was helping organize the event, but I also performed a set on the stage. So but you came out one of the one of the nights.
Speaker 2 (00:36)
yeah!
right
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:51)
and set up at a tiny little picnic table by the ballpark fields. yeah. We're just interviewing and broadcasting. Right. Live from.
Speaker 2 (00:59)
Yeah, I did a lot of remote broadcast over the years ⁓ Especially here at the R.i.y. when I worked for them and also at the Mount Carmel radio station. I was at Wier for 20 some odd years and then I moved to Vincennes, Indiana work for Bob Green. I was program director of W aov which was the oldest radio station in Vincennes
Speaker 1 (01:14)
Okay
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:29)
And it was kind of strange. When I went to work there, which was about 89, 90, somewhere in there, it had a 34 share of the market. And it was the only AM. We had a three-man, 24-hour news department. Had a sports department which carried the, or the, the Vincennes University games and Lincoln High School.
and it was a country station, was a chart station, so we got all the music first and it lasted about five years. Bob Green passed away and the family sold the radio station and the hotels and everything and that's how I ended up at WRA Wine.
Speaker 1 (02:15)
So chart station, that's a type of station?
Speaker 2 (02:19)
that back years ago ⁓ stations would have to ⁓ report what songs were playing in light rotation medium rotation heavy rotation and you reported it each week to ⁓ record companies that's how they made the charts
Speaker 1 (02:29)
Yeah.
interesting. Is that based off of how many times you spun it on the station? So who was, how were you finding out about the records in the first place? they sharing?
Speaker 2 (02:47)
to us. had we had complete freedom to play whatever we wanted. If we were a chart station, you had record representatives calling us all the time, would you play this? We want you to play this song. ⁓ It wasn't payola, but you might get a free t-shirt or a free jacket in the mail, know, ⁓ or something. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (03:11)
wheels with the free t-shirt.
Speaker 2 (03:13)
Or you might get 10 copies. At that particular time in the late 80s, early 90s, you're still playing 45s and some CD. You know, in fact, you're having a mix of both. We preferred the 45 because, well, it was more reliable. It really was. CDs back then, CD players lasted three months and then you threw them out the back door and you bought a new one.
Speaker 1 (03:22)
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42)
and record players or turntables. ⁓ You had the good old quality turntables that were made in the late 50s, 60s and early 70s. Those things were great. You got a little cue burn at the beginning when you turned it on or cued the record up. Other than that, you know, that's how it worked. And later, of course, when I go to WRYY later, that's when you're getting into
Speaker 1 (03:59)
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:10)
music consultants programming radio stations and To be honest with you that stuff because and they have a strict playlist Luckily when I went on the air at WRA why they allowed me to play around with it a little bit Because I was doing a show in the afternoon going home show people getting off work And you want to have up tempo music
Speaker 1 (04:18)
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah
Yeah, but
Speaker 2 (04:41)
The program consultants did not take in consideration the tempo of the song. ⁓ Whether it's a male vocal, female vocal group, they didn't take any of that in consideration. All songs were just a number. So I'd start out the three o'clock hour going home and I have five slow songs in a row. Well you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (04:57)
Yeah.
It's
depressing, yeah. You know, I mean... Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:08)
I'm sorry.
So I would start changing the find us fast song or a medium tempo song and move them up and I could change the rotation of those songs. And I did that and then we had a cool classic on the half hour which we came up with. Back in the early 90s a lot of people still liked old country, new country was coming on. Of course the new country of the 90s is heck of a lot different than the new country of today. You know.
Speaker 1 (05:36)
Yeah, yeah
Speaker 2 (05:37)
And it was actually pretty good. Yeah, good stuff. But still, people were kind of slow to get into it. So we'd play a cool classic. And it had to be a song that was a top five hit from 1960 up. You know, you had Murrell Haggard, George Jones, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash. The good stuff. And people would request that song every hour. I didn't have to it out.
Speaker 1 (05:39)
Yeah
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:06)
all i had to do was find it and play it because people wanted to hear once in a great while we'd steve sneak past me because second one in just because or if it was failing jennings birthday or john has his burden on it and uh... yeah we would do a salute to them
Speaker 1 (06:24)
When you
say at that time you said to go find it you're going to look at a shelf full of records to find it? bin?
Speaker 2 (06:29)
And
not at that particular time, it was basically a shelf full of CDs. Then the computer systems come in, which makes life a lot easier. When I was at AOV and Vincennes, it was a combination of 45 RPM records and they were record racks all the way around the room. Well, they were in alphabetical order. You would have all the artists and it would be filed away by artist.
Speaker 1 (06:34)
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know in your mind did you know where everything
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:00)
and in the old days you knew what record label they were on you know and you knew who wrote the song because it was on the record yeah you remember the time because you seen it you know
Speaker 1 (07:07)
Yeah
Yeah.
Were you always curious about that stuff? did every disc jockey know that? Did every radio
Speaker 2 (07:17)
you
most of the time you didn't learn it you weren't you didn't you weren't you weren't ⁓
Speaker 1 (07:21)
Getting it. Okay. Yeah.
But so back then when before programming came in, when it was chart based, you were you choosing like it was, were a tastemaker. You were to some degree, or there was also, there was the interaction with the audience. They were requesting stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (07:38)
I
a lot of requests back then, know, radio had a purpose and that was to serve the people. You know, if you didn't have school because of a snow storm, you'd listen to the radio to find out if you went to school back then. If there was a storm coming, you didn't go to TV, you didn't go to your phone, you didn't have your phone. All that information was on radio and you had to provide that information.
Speaker 1 (07:52)
Yeah, yes.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:06)
and that was something that you took pride in. was never a sports fan or even a news fan, but on the show, when something like that, you had an accident on Highway 41, Fort Branch, you had to get that on the air. You mentioned that a couple of times it had to be there, because people expected it. When a fire truck went screaming through town,
Speaker 1 (08:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:31)
Why did that fire truck go screaming through town? know, turn on the radio. Five minutes later, you found out.
Speaker 1 (08:40)
Was that, is there somebody in the radio station taking phone calls and relaying information to you? Or how was that?
Speaker 2 (08:45)
and sometimes i was only one person in the radio station at the time you got that information somebody would call you and that you spend a lot of time on that the telephone mean you know not only the listeners ⁓ but with information and then you were running a a board you ran aboard yourself
Speaker 1 (08:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:08)
When you thinking about it, I have a friend, Dave Hurlbut, whose mom and dad I used to work for, they owned the station in Mount Carmel. He's been wanting to recreate a radio control board like we had in the 60s and 70s. Two turntables, couple of cart machines, and a massive board with big knobs.
Speaker 1 (09:31)
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:32)
thinking you realize how hard that is, much work that is, our arms will be tired.
Speaker 1 (09:39)
Yeah,
yeah, now we just push levers and twist tiny knobs.
Speaker 2 (09:44)
Yeah, yeah, push a button. But, you know, back then the commercials and the jingles were on what they call cart tapes, which looks like an eight-track. But they're not. They're actually work. They were invented at first. The cart tape was for radio and TV work for audio. It's a continuous loop.
Speaker 1 (09:55)
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (10:11)
cart tapes that were forty seconds long so you put a thirty second commercial on and yet ten seconds for two q back up again and yet two minute ones and three minutes went up to five minutes you put songs on eventually ⁓ many radio stations but all their songs on cart tapes and played on tape rather than cd because cds were so unreliable in a radio station
Speaker 1 (10:18)
Mmm, okay
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:39)
because you take a CD, put it in the machine, cue it up, it tooks along the cue it up, and you're bound to get a fingerprint on it, and they stick. It's like going to the bathroom, you were playing a record instead of a CD when you do that. You ran down the hall and back. But that's how the cart tape came along. Stations first had two players, and then we had six.
Speaker 1 (10:49)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08)
and then eight and uh... he would stack these cart tapes in the machines and he would get the first one and next one the next one the next one then go back to music
Speaker 1 (11:20)
Yeah.
So, so take me back. saw, went deep into your Facebook and saw a picture of you sitting, I believe it was your bedroom, sitting at a homemade, there's, you were surrounded by turntables, it looked like, and you had a set up there. Take me back to the beginning. Like, was that the first time, were you actually broadcasting from your bedroom?
Speaker 2 (11:44)
Yes. What happened was when I was in ⁓ third or fourth grade, WRYTV was on the air. Channel 52.
Speaker 1 (11:52)
Okay.
And just for context, how many, this was in Princeton. How many like radio stations or TV stations were in Princeton alone?
Speaker 2 (11:57)
Yes, he ha-
Just, well, W-R-A-Y radio and it was A.M. only. FM has yet to arrive. They had TV, which only lasted a couple of years. In Evansville, there was one TV station and that was in Henderson, 50 at the time. This was Channel 52. Channel 14, which originally went on the air, it was Channel 62.
Speaker 1 (12:10)
Okay.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:30)
and WRY had tried to get the NBC television network. Our thing here at Princeton was we can serve Evansville and Vincennes. The station in Evansville that becomes WFIE, ⁓ well, you know, we can do Evansville. don't, that's fine. It's all we need. Something happened. Princeton did not get the NBC network. At the time, there's only three networks.
Speaker 1 (12:50)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00)
cbs nbc and another network which i'm trying to think the name a bc no maybe sees not a player yet off dash completely one out of my mind that's what happens when you get older i'll pay her it's a big piece he doesn't come along doesn't come along until actually the late fifty so not fifty four
Speaker 1 (13:19)
up there.
Okay, okay. When was this? Okay,
okay.
Speaker 2 (13:29)
Well, they had a kiddie show, Cactus Kennedy's Western Roundup. And it was on at three, four o'clock or something. And in order, had a peanut gallery, so to speak. And they'd bring kids out, you got a candy bar, and you got to watch a television show being produced. Wow. And Lee Kennedy was the announcer, the guy. He was the morning announcer on the radio. And he was quite a character. He was a great guy, great announcer.
Speaker 1 (13:54)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:59)
and he put on a cowboy hat and western shirt guns and cowboy boots and he was cactus kennedy and while we were waiting that they would have certain classes you know and they would invite your class and it would really come out and the teacher would bring everybody in a star and we're standing in line to go back to the t v studio
Speaker 1 (14:07)
Hahaha
Great, yeah.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:27)
in front of the radio studio looking through the big glass windows and there's a guy in there playing records and I'm got fascinated. I said this is really neat. I'm seven, eight, nine years old somewhere in there. I'm going this is cool. I like this. Yeah. Went in and did the TV thing and that was interesting too. But the radio thing stuck in my mind.
Speaker 1 (14:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah
Speaker 2 (14:57)
So after that, you know, I went to the library, which some place I really didn't go much, and tried to find information on radio. Well, it's only books on radio and how to do ⁓ radio plays and stuff like that, because something was changing in radio in the mid-50s. Disjockey.
Speaker 1 (15:07)
Okay?
Mmm
Speaker 2 (15:24)
before that it was radio plays ⁓ lone ranger and and jack benny show
Speaker 1 (15:30)
⁓
yeah, yeah, yeah, like entertainment. This is what people gather on the radio to... Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:36)
Okay, that's becoming on TV, but it's still on a lot of radio And they might be a little two-hour record show in between some play radio play or radio was
Speaker 1 (15:40)
Yeah.
Play the predominant entertainment, like was music bigger or plays bigger at that time on radio?
Speaker 2 (15:55)
you
know it was a cross between the two small town radio stations were actually probably playing more music because that's the only thing they could do it was easy
Speaker 1 (15:57)
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
Okay, yes, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:09)
But your big city stations were different. And it took a while for a guy who was going to become a tisjockey to figure out, how to do this. So, couldn't find any information about it. I mean, it was so new. So I started listening to radio. And I, I mean, I listened, I'm laying bed at night.
Speaker 1 (16:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:34)
with headphones on and a blanket over my head. And I would listen to especially nighttime radio. And I would listen to WLS, ⁓ WSM in Nashville, which was a station that carried the Grand Ole Opry. But the rest of the time, it wasn't country. It was adult contemporary. And of a night, it played country or overnight and during the Grand Ole Opry.
Speaker 1 (16:50)
Yeah.
Mm.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:02)
And they had an announcer by the name of Grant Turner. This guy, I thought, had the greatest delivery of anybody I'd ever heard. He did a record show. He announced portions of the Grand Ole Opry. And he did it with such class. I mean, this guy was great. In fact, he worked there for 50 years. Wow. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (17:21)
Okay, yeah
Speaker 2 (17:30)
and he was endless when he he had endless energy for an old man he was really good so i kinda thought gosh that's who i'd like to be ⁓ yeah yeah and i continued listening to him till he finally passed away he actually passed away after doing a broadcast at midnight one night you know that was it what a way to go
Speaker 1 (17:42)
Yes, yes
Was that it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2 (17:58)
and when i first announced the grand a lot for you at something i've done five on stage ⁓ as guest announcers for the grand a lot and the first time was at the rhyming and that's where he was and i got stand behind his podium where he was at yeah he passed away at several many years before that i don't remember when he passed away my first ⁓
Speaker 1 (18:11)
Okay.
Yeah, he was passed away at this time.
Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:25)
Opry job was 2009.
Speaker 1 (18:28)
Okay, yeah. Post her up here.
Speaker 2 (18:30)
That was fun. That was probably the five times I did the Opry was probably the highlight of my career.
Speaker 1 (18:37)
It's interesting because at that time too, with Opry broadcasting on radio and that being such an, like you listening to it as a kid growing up, I just imagine when you step onto that stage for the first time and speak out into the audience, I mean, that's like full circle realization of a dream. Looking up to Grant Turner, like, and then here you are doing the exact same thing. And I bet people who were listening or who were in the audience thought, damn, that guy's got great delivery.
Speaker 2 (19:05)
Well, I tried to mimic him. guess or whatever. course, I have to admit I was a little nervous. normally don't get too nervous being in front of people, but to be at the Ryman, it was kind of funny. My son at the time, I said, we took three busloads of people from Princeton or the area.
Speaker 1 (19:08)
Yeah,
To the
Speaker 2 (19:29)
The
Grand Opry that night. Tour. And I told my son who at the time was not in the country at all, I said when you walk into this Ryman Auditorium, first thing you're going to feel is you're going to feel like this is a magical building. You're going to get goosebumps just by going in, even if you don't know anything about it. And then you're going to hear the most beautiful sound you've ever heard.
Speaker 1 (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:59)
the most ⁓ i mean beautiful sound they can laugh roll these eyes you know but we went in after was over he came out he'd said to me i can't believe it dad you call it exactly right and from that time on he actually wanted to start listening to country music that
Speaker 1 (20:24)
Isn't that interesting? And I would think too, how important of a venue it was just as a space for like, ⁓ almost like developing the sound of country music, almost like creating the foundation of what then becomes generations of country music.
Speaker 2 (20:39)
well a few times when i was a kid my mom and dad were opry fans and we took a couple of trips this would be in the late fifties early sixties ⁓ to the grand opera at the rhyman auditorium like to see patsy klein there and and many others back then i wish i could had the forethought to take a picture of the sound system
Speaker 1 (21:07)
Mmm. What was it?
Speaker 2 (21:08)
which was
a bogan 50 watt amplifier connected to an am radio with some little wall speakers around underneath the balcony and a couple of 12 inch speakers with a horn above the stage. I mean it was the simplest and yet it sounded good. I mean you would never ever think
Speaker 1 (21:34)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:39)
that this facility that was the sound system I don't know if you've ever seen a bogan 51 mean I don't think so tube amplifier connected to an AM radio that was the sound system
Speaker 1 (21:45)
Dad, I'm-
Yeah.
So it was the combination of that sound system and then in the room the performer on stage. This mix was the... yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56)
itself. Yeah.
It was beautiful. Of course, back then people weren't accustomed to the fine PA systems. Sure. I know I've been with the Gibson County Fair for over 50 years and back in the 60s and the 70s we ran sound for the Axe and they had three microphones on the stage.
and they were singing in the horn speakers without monitors. They were accustomed to it.
Speaker 1 (22:31)
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:33)
i mean i i ran sound on wailing jennings ⁓ johnny cash and june carter ⁓ hank williams junior ⁓ jimmy dean ⁓ back in those days a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1 (22:47)
Was country music at that time, sort of been when exactly? This would have been like late 60s?
Speaker 2 (22:53)
No, mid to late or in early 70s.
Speaker 1 (22:57)
So at that time was country music a big thing in just in the Midwest? it outside? How big was like country music?
Speaker 2 (23:06)
It
was in the South. was still considered hillbilly music by a lot of people. I grew up listening to rock and roll and country and country was always something I really enjoyed and over the years I've worked at radio stations and played all kinds of music and I've done record dances. used to play those. I played thousands of those things and played for wedding receptions, class reunions and bars and whatever, private parties.
Speaker 1 (23:12)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:35)
and i always enjoyed and played every kind of music you know like for play out for the people and always they would be a few countries on played in most places you know and some top forty star and some classic rock and that's you know that's part of it but ⁓
Speaker 1 (23:38)
Yeah. Again. Yeah.
Yeah.
So how did you learn how to build a radio station in your room? Let's go back to that. yeah. How the hell did you build? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:04)
Well, I had a friend, a couple of friends actually, that were electronic gurus, kids. They were a couple of years older than me and they were kind of into radio and doing building electronic stuff. And I said, man, I'd like to have a radio station to practice with. And he said, well, let's get an allied radio catalog. And this is a catalog out of Chicago that had electronic parts and kits.
Speaker 1 (24:17)
Yeah.
Hahaha
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:34)
You could buy anything and you could build it.
Speaker 1 (24:38)
I think I had read at one point or saw after World War II, there was an influx of, like World War II had advanced radio technology to the point where it comes back and now it's more of a mainstream thing. And then back then still, you can tinker, you can build your own shit, versus, yeah, eventually, like I don't, it'd be really hard for you to work on anything with a-
Speaker 2 (24:58)
Yeah.
You
could buy a kit to build a radio. You could buy a stereo amplifier, which was something new, or a hi-fi amplifier. And for $9.95, you could buy a wireless broadcaster. It's a little three tube transmitter. Now it's only 100 milliwatts, and it gets out maybe if you lived in town a city block. Oh, wow. And it has screwdriver adjustment that you can adjust.
Speaker 1 (25:15)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:32)
the frequency. It's AM only, you And you stretched a wire outside and connected it to a tree. Okay. Then we took a couple old junk record players and we built a console. We bought volume controls and knobs and a VU meter. If you notice, I've got VU meters in my studio here rather than lights. I love those things.
Speaker 1 (25:33)
Okay.
This is the antenna.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, warm. Yeah, warm ambience.
Speaker 2 (26:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, but anyway, so I had had quite a few records. I'd like records to listen to music. And we connected all this stuff up and hooked it up and we'd broadcast to the neighbors.
Speaker 1 (26:18)
Did the neighbors listen? Did you have like a thing? Was it just you playing records? Did you have like a like kind of a show?
Speaker 2 (26:21)
God, it was something neat.
Well, we'd get on the air every once in a while and play a few songs and whenever we went to, and I'd call my neighbor up the street, a guy, he was a year older than me, and he'd tune in the radio and his mom dad would listen and you know, stuff. And this other guy that I knew was electronic thing, he built a amplifier that went on the output of that thing to increase the power to 20 watts. Well,
Guess what? Now we can get in the car and drive to town and hear it. Yeah. And through high school, another guy helped out and we built one with a hundred watt amplifier on the end of it. And on a good clear day, you could drive Devin's spill. All right. Well, shouldn't admit this, but we almost went to jail.
Speaker 1 (27:03)
Yeah ⁓
Haha.
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That's it.
Speaker 2 (29:05)
Well, we played around with it and we had a little radio station in. A few guys, we'd get together and play a few songs and stuff and joc, you know. And then somebody turned us in and another guy heard about us getting turned in and warned us and we cleaned everything up and hid it and watched the FCC attack this building that was no longer a radio station.
Speaker 1 (29:33)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:33)
Well, we learned our lesson and we quit doing that.
Speaker 1 (29:36)
The
FCC was the governing, still is the governing body of the airway. You were on there interfering with...
Speaker 2 (29:41)
Yes, radio.
We weren't interfering. We found a slot, place on the AM dial that there was no radio station. And it was some other people that did this. This was back in the early 60s. was probably hundreds of people all over the country doing the same thing. It become a kind of a thing to do. And was just illegal because...
Speaker 1 (29:51)
Yeah.
Why was it illegal?
Speaker 2 (30:06)
to get a radio station you got it prove that you're not interfering with other radio station okay blah blah blah and you have them at certain time equipment you were your broadcast quality has to be a certain quality
Speaker 1 (30:10)
Yes, yep.
okay
and there's regulation that you guys
Speaker 2 (30:23)
coming millions of regulations and you know it was extremely expensive and hard to get a radio station
Speaker 1 (30:30)
So then what happens? How do you go from shutting all that down to then...
Speaker 2 (30:34)
well i'm here at the time i'm working at w a y a and that on my cat uh... during high school i'm working uh... five midnight that i just started working before you drive car and my dad had to pick me up and midnight you had to go work at eight per five thirty in the morning but anyway he did it which was nice of it well when there's only i got a car so
Speaker 1 (30:54)
Absolutely, yeah.
What was your show from five to midnight? What were you doing?
Speaker 2 (30:59)
I
started out at five, we played top 40 to eight o'clock. And which was cool. And then eight o'clock, we did a show called Night Flight. And that show was basically jazz. From eight to 10, you could play vocals. After 10 o'clock, instrumental only. The way they wanted it done. That is... Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:18)
Okay.
Why was that? ⁓ So interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:27)
and i was kind of typical except you know we had this station in evansville to be jps that was top forty twenty four seven basically you know and i was new and then you had a station rosie wro c and they started playing top forty and competed with ⁓ jps and actually beat him in the ratings in evansville even though they were smaller station soon as they did that
they went country which was really strange but uh... and there was w g b f which was uh... i visited their studios years ago and that was like going into a radio station in nineteen thirty five big studio boom mics uh... in star piano and organs room studios for that is this and barb it was it was on diamond avenue
Speaker 1 (32:18)
Still around?
Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:24)
But it was really really neat and They had a central engineer who ran the station basically all the sounds except the DJs had their own individual room with a little sound mixer microphone and two turntables hmm, but when they played a commercial they went to the guy in the center I it was run like a big radio station like a Chicago or something, you know
Speaker 1 (32:45)
Mmm.
Speaker 2 (32:51)
And all the radio stations, WJPS and Rosie and WIC and all those, were running their own control board. They were basically like WRAY.
Speaker 1 (33:04)
What side note where what is the WRA why what are those letters? What is it? Are they just made up is it?
Speaker 2 (33:12)
Now
they back then they usually had a reason the guy that the Langford family on the station still do and their grandfather started it and his name was Ray Why yeah, just our Ray our a yeah, I'm gonna put a W on it, but that could be but his name was Ray. Yeah
Speaker 1 (33:24)
WRA
Okay, that's
interesting. Because I always wonder what is all this, what are all the, you know the numbers or the, sorry, the letters, like the names really well. I'm just like, what is all the, where do they come from?
Speaker 2 (33:42)
Well, I WJPS with Jack, Sam and Paul. They were the three guys who started WJPS. So.
Speaker 1 (33:46)
Okay.
So at this time you're getting into radio as a high schooler. This is like an internship type thing or this now?
Speaker 2 (33:58)
It's actual job.
Speaker 1 (34:00)
And then it transpires into what?
Speaker 2 (34:03)
Well, I did up until I graduated from high school. I worked at RAY. And then after I graduated from high school, I thought, you know, I'd kind of like to try a little TV. And there was an opening in Channel 14 for a camera operator. So I went and applied for it and got it. And they taught me how to operate an old RCA TK-11 black and white TV camera. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:30)
Big ol' sucker I've
Speaker 2 (34:32)
and we have it but it was beautiful if they are well balanced ⁓ they had two cameras one way to zoom lens the other at a turret which you change the lenses the program manager or the production manager he said you need to learn how to run a camera the way it should be ran with a turret zoom lenses suck and he showed me the difference and after i looked at it i said you're right they suck
Speaker 1 (34:43)
Okay.
Hmm
Speaker 2 (35:01)
If you take the camera and you physically dolly in or move the camera into a shot, the perspective of everything is totally different than zooming in. But it takes an art to learn how to do that. So the first week I spent with a carton of cottage cheese on a table and practicing taking the camera physically.
Speaker 1 (35:12)
⁓ yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (35:29)
and doling it in and of course as you go you have to focus it until you got a close up of it and then I was to truck the camera sideways to the right then to the left and then back it up. Now when I got that perfected I would let him know and he'd come and inspect it. Well I did it. He oh that looks good and that was with a 30 first it was a 35 millimeter lens.
Speaker 1 (35:33)
Yes.
Speaker 2 (35:57)
and then we went to a fifty and it worked fine i could do that then we went to a seventy five i worked on that and worked on that finally i said i can't do it he said don't worry about it nobody can so anyway and and that was the time that marshy aki came back to channel fourteen after leaving for a while
Speaker 1 (36:25)
Who's more Shiaki? Okay, did she have a following or she was the bitch
Speaker 2 (36:27)
she was the weather girl ⁓ god
she was the biggest thing in weather she had worked at first at channel fourteen and ⁓ she got mad one day because they changed the theme music to her show and she didn't like it and walked out went to channel seven for a while then came back to channel fourteen she was she worked for the weather bureau and she was a character
A lot of people thought she was drunk all the time, but she really wasn't. Very shrewd, very nice person, very funny person. ⁓ She would not associate with the other air personalities, but she liked the crew. She liked to hang around with the crew. So I did that for a couple of years, or a year and a half, I worked at Channel 14, and then I got an offer from a friend of mine to...
Speaker 1 (37:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:21)
get back in radio at malcarlo some i kinda missed radio
Speaker 1 (37:26)
At the time though, like this would be in the 70s.
Speaker 2 (37:29)
This
be- well this 65 and 66.
Speaker 1 (37:33)
this is so... At the time, local personalities mattered. It's hard to say these days what is a local personality because the communities, I feel like a lot of them exist online versus in the real world. But it's funny thinking back that a news or that a weather person on the news would have a following or be such a recognizable... It's kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 2 (37:58)
yeah.
same with the people on the radio. I mean, the people that they listen to on the radio every morning, afternoon and evening. ⁓ you know, when you did a live, a live broadcast, you know, they would be a commercial that so-and-so is going to be there, be in the newspaper. They were going to be there. And it was important. And people would come, I listen to you every day. You know, ⁓ that eventually goes away. And that's when you know that
Speaker 1 (38:03)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:28)
radio in local televisions still doesn't have it doesn't have the impact that it did in the sixties and seventies it changes and you get used to it you still get some of that you know ⁓ especially somebody like me has been on the radio for so long ⁓ i know one time i was doing a radio show and i was at wry why and i really felt bad you know you do that you have days that you you don't feel good
Speaker 1 (38:35)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You still gotta go to work.
Speaker 2 (38:58)
mister and know working you still got to play the music in the state of the sound good some lady call me and said david you know if you need it i'm well no if you do i just thought i could tell in your voice and i'm going on guys you know getting a little scared here but i don't know but they were people who listen to you that carefully
Speaker 1 (39:06)
Yeah
Wow.
Speaker 2 (39:25)
And back before the answering machines that were added to the radio station, it used to be you answered the phone all the time and you had a telephone stuck in one ear and your headphone on the other and your microphone talking to people. You know, that was the way it was.
Speaker 1 (39:39)
Yeah.
And you're on, when you're working at that point, you are on, you are focused because here we go, we're about to change and then I got ⁓ the fire truck going through town again or whatever it might be. And you're on the fly, you gotta adjust and yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:55)
And sometimes you'd wonder why when I got off work or anybody got off working on radio back in those days, they kind of crashed when they went home. And it got to be easier and easier, more laid back. But then again, you're not doing all the things you used to do that was a part of the job. And it's sad. think that, you know, it's like, well, we don't need to do weather anymore. They can get it on the phone.
Speaker 1 (40:03)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (40:25)
That we don't need to do school closings. They can get it on their phone. What are we doing here? ⁓ we're a jukebox. You know.
Speaker 1 (40:31)
Yeah.
It becomes almost completely passive at that point instead of an engaged interactive thing.
Speaker 2 (40:41)
You know? And you're thinking, well, I guess I'm still important. ⁓ really? No. Maybe I am. But sometimes you wonder.
Speaker 1 (40:47)
Yeah
Well, it's funny, you know, in preparation of like, of talking to us, thinking back to being in high school, you were still on the radio at 98.1 and you'd be in the afternoon, Uncle Dave and the Going Home Show. Did you play Kenny Chesney? She thinks my track, you're sexy. Like as like an intro, like I feel like you played that song a lot.
Speaker 2 (41:14)
I played
it lot because we had a contest going at the fair, a photo contest. Take a picture ⁓ and submit it to the... and people vote on it. And ⁓ that was a very popular thing. And we did that for a couple of years. They were some really great photographs. And people would vote on them at the fair. And of course we had Kenny Chesney at the fair the year that song was popular. ⁓
Speaker 1 (41:29)
Yeah.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (41:43)
and nobody knew who he was. That's his second or third, but you know, he had sort of a following. He was beginning, but he was at the fair. In fact, he walked up to Midway and we took him up to one of the food stands and ate a fish sandwich. You know what I...
Speaker 1 (41:51)
Yeah.
Well, nobody knew it the thing how things have changed last year. went to a Kenny Chesney concert at the Fort Center sold out Yeah, it was epic. I mean the whole it was like a giant karaoke party the whole 10 000 people singing along to every damn song. It was epic So things have changed in that
Speaker 2 (42:18)
Yeah, they have. And he had a couple of hits back then. I can't remember the other two. But we had a promotion out of it. She thinks my tractor's sexy. And there was all kinds of high school girls in their Daisy Dukes standing in front of a tractor. And people voted on them, except somebody blew the whole thing. Somebody submitted a picture of a pedal tractor.
Speaker 1 (42:40)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:45)
with a little boy sitting on it with a farmer hat on and a little girl in a bonnet handing him a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. What an imaginative thing that was, but it sort of ruined the mood.
Speaker 1 (42:55)
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (43:04)
Anyway,
no there were some great photos and we did that for two or three years.
Speaker 1 (43:09)
Yeah. So it's funny though, like you're to me, I think there are still a few, I listen to the radio a lot actually when I'm driving around, but ⁓ it's funny. I think about kids coming into just entertainment today or broadcast today, if there even is such a thing, it's more like social media, I think, but it's funny that you grew up listening to personality. So you carried that on as a legacy to something I still remember.
Even when you picked up the phone, I was like, yeah, there he is. Like it's like a voice. It's a voice.
Speaker 2 (43:41)
Well
it's not as good as it used to be but well I'm 78 years old working on 79. Brain don't work as good as it used to. I work slower, you know. You have to. But I have to admit I've had a very rewarding career. was able to do whatever, the things I wanted to do most of my life. Never made a lot of money at it, but I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (43:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. And
I- at the- I mean the people you list- you listed off a legendary lineup of people you've run sound for through the fair for example-
Speaker 2 (44:17)
I met people that used to go to the ⁓ country radio disc jockeys convention in Nashville. I met a whole bunch of people there. Performers, one on one. I've talked to Garth Brooks, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., Charlie Pride, know, the list goes on and on. ⁓ George Strait.
Speaker 1 (44:30)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:47)
used to walk by he had a he was first starting he was a little country band singing on a flatbed trailer in front of the municipal auditorium and passing out free record
Speaker 1 (45:01)
So let me ask you this, like when you were, let's go back just throughout the career, throughout your career, when you would see young country artists, could you sense that these people were on their way to greatness? What's the difference between them and all the others?
Speaker 2 (45:18)
I don't know, it's just something that you have a feel for. You used to listen to when we picked our own records. I could listen to the first 10 seconds of a song and tell you if it's gonna be a top 10 hit. It just, it had the sound, it had the feel. I missed one in my life that I guess wrong. But anyway, I don't even remember what it was now. There was one song, ⁓ I can't think of the name of it. But anyway, that was one of those songs.
Speaker 1 (45:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Haha
⁓
Speaker 2 (45:49)
something about the holes in the floor of heaven can remember you did i listen to that song and i said my god that's the worst song i've probably ever heard and i can understand somebody but actually right it then somebody but actually recorded yeah and somebody would listen to it became a big hit and i can remember who but anyway that was probably twenty thirty years ago
Speaker 1 (46:09)
Did did
Did local bands ever, did you guys play local bands?
Speaker 2 (46:19)
If
they made a record, we'd give them a shot, tried to.
Speaker 1 (46:22)
So what would you, what was the litmus test or like what was the test you played and if people
Speaker 2 (46:26)
Probably a record, we listen to it and we'll give it a spin, see what the people like.
Not today, no. That has become, well, no, we don't want to do that, you know. But it had to be within the format, of course, what you're playing. know, if you're country or if you're not, if you're playing top 40 or classic rock or whatever you're playing, you tried to, you know, it had to be within the mix of what you're playing. you know, we used to do that once in a while, especially in the early days. Just radio was wonderful back then and people...
Speaker 1 (46:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was important.
Speaker 2 (46:59)
It was important. were important. that, I mean, you still are, but it's not like it used to be. well, of course nothing is. Even the Evansville TV or the TV stations, the local TV stations, they got so much competition from your cable and your phone and podcast and everything.
Speaker 1 (47:02)
Yeah.
Yeah
yes and water area yes yeah
Speaker 2 (47:28)
is different there's so much entertainment out there so many ways and the old-fashioned way of just listening to radio and getting all the information you need sounds like a real good new novel idea that you know it's went went by the wayside
Speaker 1 (47:41)
It does.
When you were, let's just take it, let's say the heyday of radio at some point, whatever pops up in your mind for the heyday of radio, the relationship with ⁓ record promoters or labels, at what point does labels, at what point do you stop talking to them so much and get passed down programming?
Speaker 2 (48:06)
That's when the radio station hires a consultant or a music programmer.
Speaker 1 (48:12)
Which is a third party person who's bringing stuff. Yeah. This is why would they do that?
Speaker 2 (48:17)
It's
easy. You're on the air, Normally back in the so-called live radio days or live programming days, you had a guy who was a program director. He would format the radio station. As long as he was keeping that radio station in the ratings, he had a job. But if he started to slip, they looked to replace him. You know, it was intense.
Speaker 1 (48:38)
Okay, yeah.
Yeah
Speaker 2 (48:46)
And you had to keep at... You listen to the new music, you got a rotation, like you had a hot rotation that meant that this song was going to play every two hours. You had a medium rotation, this one of these songs is going to play every four hours. A light rotation, the song would play every six hours. One would play every six hours. Or this song would play every six hours. And then you had what they call a recurrent, which was an oldie.
Speaker 1 (48:56)
Okay. ⁓
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:15)
and not a real only but something that was not too was a hit not too long ago and then you'd have a two or three oldies per hour remember you're playing songs only last two two and a half minutes back then that's the average length of a record you know today five four five six minutes so you played fifteen or twenty twenty five songs sometimes an hour you know played a lot of music
Speaker 1 (49:27)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:45)
So anyway, you had a rotation of those songs and that's what you did. Well then, but their owner of the radio station was spending some money having a program director play a little extra money to do all this extra work. Well we'll do it for you. We'll ship it all to you. You don't have to listen to nothing. Well they got all the record companies talking to the...
Speaker 1 (50:07)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:12)
to the guy who's now programming this programming service and you lose so much because they get lazy they and they go my numbers once they get into a computer it's a number and as i said it doesn't tell you if the songs got up ⁓ you know upbeat medium-tempo slow it's male female ⁓
Speaker 1 (50:19)
Yeah, I would assume yeah, yeah
Yeah.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (50:42)
the old is but the old thing was don't ever played two females back-to-back you know why that was a rule i have no i
Speaker 1 (50:51)
Sure, yeah. But, times,
Speaker 2 (50:53)
That
was the time, you know. You could do two males back to back, a group and a female, but most songs back then were male. There was a few females and were big stars, but there wasn't as many, so that was probably a good rotation for the time to think about. So that's how that worked.
Speaker 1 (51:05)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, if you... Yeah.
It's interesting because I have a friend who works in radio promotion today for country. She's actually now a third party promoter for radio. But I asked her, was like, what is your day job? Like, what does the day to day look like? She's like, I'm on the phone calling radio stations. I said, that still goes on. I thought that was like, I thought that those days were passed. But then in preparation of talking to you, was thinking,
that must have been all there was at one time was people calling you saying i got a new record coming out by Merle Haggard I'm gonna ship it to you and give it a
Speaker 2 (51:45)
Or they stop by the station.
Speaker 1 (51:47)
They would drive up here and-
Speaker 2 (51:49)
They would drive through, they'd have tours. I had one where when I was at Vincennes radio station, Aaron Tippen came by, ⁓ Garth Brooks stopped by and dropped a record off.
Speaker 1 (52:01)
So what was that like? Yeah, I was gonna say, was it like a fan? Sure.
Speaker 2 (52:04)
It's Garth Brooks.
God! Yeah, who the hell are you?
Speaker 1 (52:09)
Yeah, seems
like a nice kid. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:13)
and you know there's others that that happened over the years and who are they yes the time when you meet him like that they don't have this is their first or the second you know they're in the street were at a land did that when she first started now i never did talk or i did talk to ran sound on and she played the gibbs county fair and ⁓
Speaker 1 (52:26)
Yeah.
Affairs were important back then too.
Speaker 2 (52:42)
And yeah. ⁓
Speaker 1 (52:43)
Because that's where people were. mean, I'm just thinking out loud. I'm just thinking ⁓ that's where you would find country music listeners is at county fairs.
Speaker 2 (52:52)
at
county fairs and sometimes rock and roll performers uh... most of the there's in this area use country because of all four eight and uh... sure it's a a country type thing still do and uh... even though they'd be the eight from we deviated uh... from an ad
Speaker 1 (53:05)
still do. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:12)
a rock concert with foreigner and and ⁓ somebody else forget about anyway we had a a different concert and we've had thirty eight special effects there has a one time years and years ago
Speaker 1 (53:23)
How does it work today, booking at the fair? How does it ⁓ happen today?
Speaker 2 (53:27)
Now that's...
You go to a booking agent and they give you a list of back in September and remember that's coming up here in a month. We'll get the list. Sure. Right.
Speaker 1 (53:41)
Who gives you the list?
Speaker 2 (53:43)
⁓ by promoter record our record booking agent yet booking company they'll they'll send ⁓ people are listed names to us and vanderberg county and other counties we all get the same
Speaker 1 (53:57)
So that's what what is I'm curious what that list is that just people looking to play county fairs? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:02)
Okay. price. And every year the price gets higher and higher and higher. And anyway, they'll give you a suggestion of three people that they think you ought to have at the fair. And you don't know who these three are. Or there are three people that I don't want them at the fair. And then you pick out three people from this list that you would like to have.
Speaker 1 (54:17)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:29)
and then you send it back to them and they send it back in a week or two later. Well, those, they're going to be here, here and here. The routing is not right. They can't make it to your county fair. So you fight for three or four months and you usually end up with one of the three that they predicted that they wanted you to have in the first place. And, uh, whatever. A few years ago, we had an act that we wanted to me and a couple of other guys wanted at the fair.
Speaker 1 (54:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:58)
and ⁓ held all they won't draw them on nobody will come and see them and said well he just played over to link an amphitheater and sold it out
Speaker 1 (55:09)
Thank you,
Speaker 2 (55:11)
and
mom they won't be date and besides that they're not available when i called in later and found out they were available they just never they didn't want to play so you get into that
Speaker 1 (55:22)
yes yeah the politics of the yeah yeah i was curious because i mean i feel like we consistently i mean typically have pretty good in my opinion pretty good now they come through
Speaker 2 (55:24)
Yeah, there's politics in
It's
usually been rough the last few years because the price of doing that concert has went from back in the old days of four or five thousand dollars to thirty five to forty thousand dollars for an hour and a half. And you just can't, you can't do that and have a free grandstand and you know we've had some really big concerts.
Speaker 1 (55:49)
Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (56:03)
⁓ we had justin more hunter haze was real popular one time we've had others begining sample justin more i was probably one of the biggest nights at the fair but if you took everybody's i think at the time it was five dollars to get into the fair everybody that and that there was an x another place to park in fair still can't pay for the concert unless you have a sponsor
Speaker 1 (56:29)
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2 (56:30)
there's not enough cars, not enough room, not enough parking places to physically pay for it. And it's hard to imagine that.
Speaker 1 (56:35)
to physically pay for them.
Yes, yeah.
Yes, yeah, I mean that's but even that is like that's the problem of touring for most artists that I'm connected with is I've got to find some sponsors to help go out on the road. yeah Yeah, even to play even to go get to the venues is we're gonna lose money Traveling down south or to the East Coast or whatever it might be. It's like just the tour. Just the cost of Travel or getting there logistically We need some help. Yeah, just to get to the damn venue to make some money, which probably isn't even gonna cover Yeah, yeah
Speaker 2 (57:13)
it's it's it's amazing you know and most people complain why why don't you get this guy or gal or whatever do you realize excuse me that those people cost ⁓ a hundred and fifty thousand dollars hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1 (57:26)
Yeah,
just googled what does Zach Top cost for a private event? know Zach Top? Yeah, right. googled 250,000 dollars is what I read. Yeah. holy shit. I mean I know he's getting big but boy that is, that is, that's a million dollar a week. That is right. That
Speaker 2 (57:47)
And
it's amazing that some of the performers, I listen to little offbeat stuff. I like traditional country, I like a little bit of outlaw stuff. I was a big Waylon Jennings fan when Waylon Jennings first started. I followed him all the way through, seen him five or six times. Always thought that the man was a great entertainer. He did exactly what he wanted to do. He was cool to watch.
Speaker 1 (58:03)
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:18)
You know, he just was, I don't give a damn if you like me or not, here I'm gonna sing this song for you. Got a guy. And he had an attitude, and yet it was great. And so, I've always liked the little off the wall kind of... So I kind of listened to a little outlaw country on Sirius XM and stuff, because it's something different. And I like some of the artists, new people, and who never really have a big hit or anything, but...
Speaker 1 (58:24)
Yes, yeah.
Yes. You know. Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:47)
cody james on and i told you jane i'd like to look at snows yet willy son thing is great you know and all that kind of stuff ⁓
Speaker 1 (58:48)
Yes, yeah.
Mmm. Yeah.
Can I ask you, when you look back at your experience, when you look at Nashville, Nashville, I talk about this a lot, because I think that I'm just really curious about it. Nashville seems to have stood the test of time in terms of a infrastructure of country music, of honestly, of greater music. Yeah, yeah. It's got.
still got like kind of all the layers of like from the smallest open mics to the biggest arenas. ⁓ What from your experience, how have you like, how has Nashville sustained? One thing I think of and maybe I'm wrong is that it's in the Midwest and it's people who, a lot of normal people who treat it like a job.
Speaker 2 (59:39)
you
Speaker 1 (59:52)
Yeah. that a kind of a theory? that a, you know,
Speaker 2 (59:55)
I
don't know. Nashville is its own thing. And over the years I've had the luxury of going to Nashville as a kid with my mom and dad. had the luxury of going ⁓ to do some radio broadcasts on the stage of the opera. And I've I think, 10 or 12 broadcasts. did the going home show live from backstage of the opera. We talked a couple of stars as they come in, you know.
Speaker 1 (1:00:19)
Yeah, that's epic. Yeah. ⁓
Speaker 2 (1:00:24)
and that was cool then we went downtown and i started going and i'd still go to the dj conventions always loved all yeah they said they're now in february they used to be it used to be what is now fanfare was the dj convention was held in october was in brown the celebration of the grand o'opry birthday ok well and then they changed it
Speaker 1 (1:00:35)
Yeah, does it still happen?
Speaker 2 (1:00:52)
I was lucky enough to be in the audience of the last Ryman Auditorium broadcast on Friday night and the new Opry House on Saturday. And I swear to God the Ryman sounded better. anyway, still, it was great. ⁓ And then going downtown there was Tootsies and Roberts and a couple of other places originally.
Speaker 1 (1:01:04)
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
what was it like back then dot cover music or the original
Speaker 2 (1:01:22)
No,
just little bands and every once in a while, like when the Opry was at the Ryman, some of the performers would come in the back door of Tootsies or Roberts or something. Have a drink or two and shoot the bull a little bit, then go back on stage. And I, this is 20, well 23, 24 years ago, I was at one of the DJ conventions that happened in February.
Speaker 1 (1:01:36)
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (1:01:50)
and that's when they moved into and it was one night they took it the convention center which downtown across from ronan on torrent and i didn't like who they were gonna have i was rascal flats i'm sorry i'd not listen to rascal flats lies yet but i mean i can hear my record and play them live
Speaker 1 (1:02:00)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:02:14)
my ears hurt. I never thought that guy could carry a note no matter what. Okay, I'm sorry. But that's it. It's just me. So I decided I'm going to go downtown. So I walk around the block, go into Tootsies a little bit, and there's some band up there. Really a grunge country band, I guess you would call it. And I was all right. So went down to Robert's.
Speaker 1 (1:02:23)
It's just maybe-
Speaker 2 (1:02:40)
and there was a band playing in the window and I walk in and they sound fairly good you know not too many people this is back before
Speaker 1 (1:02:49)
millions
of people.
Speaker 2 (1:02:52)
There's
still big crowds, but it's not like now. And I sat down and I had a table for four and I'm the only one there. And this band and the guy comes over, waitress in a little short skirt and everything. You want a bologna sandwich? That's their special. They got bologna sandwiches and beer and they still do by the way. Okay, cool. All right. Anyway, I said, yeah.
I'll have a bologna sandwich and I'll a beer. And all of a sudden there's two ladies, young gals come walking in and the place gets busy. And this man packs up and leaves. And now I've got two young ladies and one has sat at the table with me because there's no place to sit. And then this other guy comes in, anybody sitting in this chair? I said no. And he sits down. I'm eating my bologna sandwich and drinking the beer.
All of them are going, you here to hear Kenny? I'm going, Kenny? Kenny who? Kenny, the guitar player, the greatest guitar player you'll ever hear. And I'm going, yeah, right. You know. So this goes on, the band comes up and it's the Don Kelly band. Guy in a cowboy hat and they got a guy plays a snare drum, a guy with an upright bass.
Speaker 1 (1:04:00)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:04:15)
and this long tall skinny guy with a fender telecaster and I'm looking that is one ugly dude. How many is?
Speaker 1 (1:04:26)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:04:29)
until he started playing. And I'm going, ⁓ my god. The whole crowd is going, Kenny, Kenny. And he plays, the rest of the band could have went home. And then they got started yelling, ghost writers, ghost writers. Well, the band walks off the stage.
Speaker 1 (1:04:45)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:04:54)
And this guy does 15 minutes of Ghost Writers in the Sky playing notes I never knew a guitar had. I mean, it was unbelievable. When he gets off the stage, he takes a break now, and he comes walking out, and I have this lanyard on that says I'm with the radio thing, you know? And I said, man.
Speaker 1 (1:05:03)
Yeah
Speaker 2 (1:05:21)
What are you doing playing for tips? In his podunk bar. Well, he laughs and he said, well, he says, ⁓ I'm actually a studio musician. He said, I and I played with Lucinda Williams. I'm on the road with her and on the road with Patty Loveless and was and a few things. He said, I'd I'd make a living doing that. And I just love play guitar.
said i come down here once more whenever i can this that okay cool he said by the way sonama gonna be uh... i guess you heard about being skill and patty lovelace and marty steward all been fired from the record labels closer to all isn't yet and this was back in the early two thousand he said well uh... men scale said
Speaker 1 (1:05:53)
Bye.
Ha!
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:06:18)
Ask him what he was gonna do and he said, well, I'm gonna live off my wife, Amy Grant. And Patty Loveless said, well, I'm gonna go back to Kentucky. I've always wanted to do some bluegrass. And Marty Stewart said, I'm gonna find me three of the best musicians in the world and travel around the country playing whatever the hell I want. And he's asked me to be his guitar player. Okay, I'm thinking, well.
Speaker 1 (1:06:22)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:06:48)
damn i want to hear you play more guitar so i guess i need to look up a marty sturt concert well that was in february around june it's ⁓ the little nashville opry up in brown county they i noticed it marty sturt and the fabulous superlatives are going to do a show my son says dad what do you want to do for father's day
Speaker 1 (1:06:52)
Yeah, yes, yeah.
Yes, uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (1:07:17)
Well I'm gonna go up and hear this guitar play.
Okay, and he rolled his eyes again and away we went. We go in there and we sit down. I had a camera, put in my lap, I thought I might take a picture or two, you know. Went to this hour and a half show with our mouths open.
And at the end of it, my son goes, that's the best concert I've ever seen in my freaking life. They did electric guitars, went to acoustics. They did staying alive, ⁓ bluegrass time. They did a cool rock version of dragging the line.
Speaker 1 (1:07:58)
Yeah
Speaker 2 (1:08:05)
Mmm. I mean it went from all I think he did hillbilly rock and a couple of other his songs and then he You want to hear? want to hear That was the best band I'd ever heard in my life since then I've seen him 18 times And my son has been to 12 of them and a few other friends I've taken with me has went six and seven times
Speaker 1 (1:08:12)
What are you- ⁓
my god.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:08:34)
So if you ever get a chance, it's the most unbelievable music experience that you'll ever experience. And I wasn't a big fan of him when he was popular. He's okay. He was good. But this band and him, the last show they did, I think it was in Evansville, that they was there two or three years ago in Evansville at...
Speaker 1 (1:08:47)
You're talking about Marty Stewart. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:09:02)
i can't remember one the smaller venues in town there ⁓ they ended the show with i'm a believer monkeys it was better than the monkeys the guitar work and everything yeah is jessiper the guitar player i'm talking about is kenny vaughn if you want to hear a guitar player
Speaker 1 (1:09:10)
song yeah
Yeah
Okay. Okay.
It's the same band? these years?
Speaker 2 (1:09:30)
Wow. Except the bass player has changed. They now have Chris Scruggs, who is Earl Scruggs' grandson. And he's a multi-instrument guy. And during the show, every one of those guys, the drummers, Harry Stenson, is a... He's been a record producer and everything. He's been on records for 40 years. Big artist.
Speaker 1 (1:09:37)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:09:54)
I mean these guys are all the best musicians you've ever seen in your life. And during a show, they each get to do two or three songs by themselves. And I mean it's just amazing. You'll have to check it out.
Speaker 1 (1:10:05)
Yeah.
I
would love to. didn't even know who Marty Stewart was really until I saw Ken Burns documentary on country music. He's like one of the personalities throughout the documentary. ⁓ And then I think he played, maybe he did. I thought he played maybe a romp or something. Yeah. Romp. Yeah. Now that sounds great. But it's like, does that, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (1:10:29)
He did.
Speaker 1 (1:10:38)
with all those talented musicians who have a legacy of records and playing on records and producing records. ⁓ That's the part of Nashville that I really have come to to be interested in or infatuated in is this ecosystem of people who care deeply about the song, care deeply about the music. ⁓ And it just so happens that when they all come together, like it makes the best show.
Speaker 2 (1:11:02)
Yeah, and it's something you would not expect. You just wouldn't expect to see this. I didn't expect it. I went because I wanted to hear this guitar player play again and find out Marty Stewart's as good as he is. If not better. And when they two of them play together, you have never heard two telecasters in your life sound better. I don't care what kind of music you've listened to. I mean, it's that good.
Speaker 1 (1:11:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:11:34)
And it's like effortless. It's just like.
Speaker 1 (1:11:36)
Yeah.
Masters. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:11:40)
and then he pick up a mandolin and play it and and then Kenny may pick up a 12 spring guitar or a rekenbacher or something you know I mean it's just unbelievable they did wipe out with a with one guy the bass player doing the lead on an upright bass and the drummer doing a thing with his lips or mouth
Speaker 1 (1:12:04)
Wow. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 (1:12:06)
I mean, and you never know what kind of song they're gonna do. Which is totally amazing. I love stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (1:12:13)
Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:12:15)
and just raw, good entertainment.
Speaker 1 (1:12:18)
Yeah, real, real music. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:12:21)
and not necessarily country others in good country stuff in it but there's some like where now did that come from yeah you know why did he do that but i'm glad he did
Speaker 1 (1:12:28)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, yeah, you
know so so I Want to thank you for inviting me into your house around your your your vintage microphone collection I'm talking into a SM 59 59 59 you're talking
Speaker 2 (1:12:48)
Maid, everybody knows what SM58 is.
Speaker 1 (1:12:52)
Everybody
knows that's the standard mic at every bar, venue, everything. ⁓
Speaker 2 (1:12:55)
yeah right 59
was a TV version they made of it and it never was popular but it's a cool looking using SM7 and I have the RCA 7740 or 77 DX's and RCA 44 BX's and and
Speaker 1 (1:13:04)
It's a beautiful mic. Original. Not the 7B.
The ⁓ the electoral voice, you said it's an R10?
Speaker 2 (1:13:25)
Yeah, it's a baby version of the ⁓ RE-20. I've never been a fan of electric voice mics, but anyway, I've been playing with these. They're surrounded in foam and the foam had all dissolved and it's a mess. So I got some ⁓ air conditioner. ⁓
Speaker 1 (1:13:31)
RE20, yeah that's right.
Speaker 2 (1:13:53)
foam that's for the filter and I'm gonna try to re-sum it to see if it works. I know I've done it before.
Speaker 1 (1:13:58)
works. yeah.
We're in like a yeah it's like I'm in like a little workshop surrounded by these beautiful. I mean this one here like I've RCA. Yeah okay.
Speaker 2 (1:14:06)
Well,
before BX.
And then I have a Western Electric 639 which is the Caldaburg cage microphone. It's my favorite. I always thought that was the best sounding microphone. It's the ugliest thing ever made. But I always thought it was the best sounding microphone ever made. It's unbelievable. And then behind that closet door there's a bunch more. And I have a few trains around. kind of...
Speaker 1 (1:14:27)
It's awesome.
I, you know,
Yeah
Speaker 2 (1:14:38)
To
be a model railroad, I like model trains. And since my retirement, I spend a lot of time by the railroad tracks taking pictures. I love trains. I just grew up by the railroad track when I was a kid. And I love watching trains. I like listening to trains. I like for people to get stopped by trains. Especially here in Princeton. But we have two overpasses. There's no reason you ever should be able to be stopped by a train.
Speaker 1 (1:14:58)
Yeah
but people fix their problem.
Speaker 2 (1:15:08)
But
people stay in line for 15, 20 minutes. Why are you there? I've seen this train on both sides. Yeah. Well, it's been here and you're still there. But trains are very important because, here in Princeton, that's the only reason Toyota moved here. They had two railroads, East and West, North and South, two mainline railroads.
Speaker 1 (1:15:12)
Yes, yeah. ⁓
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:15:34)
and eighty five percent of every cars made is leaves by rail hundred percent of the steel comes in by rail you know and you can't build a car without a railroad
Speaker 1 (1:15:46)
I have a buddy who works for interrail. Oh yeah. Yeah. he, he was, sometimes we talk about, I'm asking questions about it. He'll talk about like when a, a car falls off the tracks, they got to bring in the, uh, he says like 40 grand just to get the, the people, the crank, like the, crane car thing, lift it back on the track falls off. And if it's, if it's got vehicles in and it's even, we're talking even more. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:16:11)
ran it through a switch and didn't throw it. That happens.
mean, human error. You know, it's like we have 50, sometimes up to 50 trains a day going through Princeton. And most of them go through real quick and every once in while one stops. There's a coal mine out here, north of town. And there's a loop where they load the coal. One of the trains going south.
Speaker 1 (1:16:17)
Yes
Yeah.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (1:16:39)
Coming out of that loop, it has to go five miles an hour through town until the last car clears.
Speaker 1 (1:16:48)
Don't you wish everybody knew that then they may complain less if they knew that this the logistics this train can't take off till the rest of the loop or until it comes out
Speaker 2 (1:16:57)
of that loop at five miles an hour. Wow. And there's a hundred cars on that train and each one of those coal cars hold a hundred tons. That's four semi-pulls, you know. So you know, just think if they were hauling that by semi. They'd be 400 trucks.
Speaker 1 (1:17:11)
It's wild. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:17:21)
Would you rather have a hundred car train go through town or 400 trucks?
Speaker 1 (1:17:26)
You know, I mean, I gotta say, like, I am amazed at how much information, you talk about being old and your brain not working, I'm like, you are full of so much information. I mean, and it's really impressive to me, and I think on behalf of everybody who's ever listened to you, thank you for everything that you've done, honestly. I the Gibson County Fair, all of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (1:17:49)
I've enjoyed it. It's always been a fun thing. And I really appreciate it. you want to do a part two sometime, let me know.
Speaker 1 (1:17:55)
Yeah, shit, we barely even got in. We missed decades we didn't cover. absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (1:18:01)
Well, when you've been doing the same job for 60 years and you loved 58 of them, you've got a lot to talk about and half of it you forget sometimes. And I've never been one to associate with a lot of other people in the business. When I got done, when I left the radio station, I was just Dave.
Speaker 1 (1:18:09)
You know, let's talk about
Yes.
Speaker 2 (1:18:27)
I had my glory, I was on the air, blah blah blah, and I would go home play trains or draw or do something or listen to music on my own. I loved to listen to music. So I did that and like some people, you know this guy works at ⁓ WIKI or something, I know I don't. I really never associated with anybody.
Speaker 1 (1:18:40)
Yes. ⁓
Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (1:18:56)
when I got done. In fact, when I went to a drive-thru, I changed my voice. ⁓ you're the guy on the radio. Hey, I'd like to have a McDouble. You know what mean? Seriously. There's a time it's over with. Well, I appreciate it too,
Speaker 1 (1:19:16)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah,
and it's funny, I you don't associate, but I appreciate you coming, or just being so open and being so honest about your experience. like, this is what this show, the reason I started this show is because I know that there are people who have dedicated their lives to, you know, I mean, I know you were a personality on the air, but I know that there was a person who
did all of that. It wasn't just the personality, you know what There was a real person.
Speaker 2 (1:19:47)
I always try to, you know, do the show, do the best I can, have people listen and enjoy. And you try to please everybody and you can't. There's always something you'll do, you know, that somebody don't like. And sometimes that's rough to take. Somebody doesn't, when you work so hard at something, of course, I'm glad that, you know, I'm kind of out of the Facebook time and stuff, you know, I mean, I do have Facebook page and all that.
Speaker 1 (1:19:59)
Yeah.
Yeah
Speaker 2 (1:20:16)
But, you know, people don't have a reason to complain at me anymore if I do something they don't want. People will complain. so much anymore. Don't understand that, you know.
Speaker 1 (1:20:26)
Yeah, that's right.
It's nice. It's kind of like you went out on a high note and then you just you left it. You just left it where it lied. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1:20:36)
Well, know the times have changed I had got to the point where when you get old I mean, I'm as I said, I'm almost 79 years old. It's almost 80 ⁓ I never expected even live this long, you know And I want to live a few more years if I can But you know you have a different perspective of life when you got fewer years ahead of you, you know You know you kind of
Speaker 1 (1:20:47)
Almost there.
Yeah.
yes yeah
Speaker 2 (1:21:06)
think a little different about things and some of your priorities the only trouble is sometimes I well I should have retired earlier because I would have felt better and could do more things you know now you can well that's gonna be a long walk over there and I walk into a room and the first thing you look for there's a chair I might need that
Speaker 1 (1:21:08)
Yeah.
Yeah.
You
Yes, yeah, where's the bathroom over there? Yeah? ⁓
Speaker 2 (1:21:30)
Yeah,
and I guess it's it's hard to be cool ⁓
Speaker 1 (1:21:39)
Hey, thanks for listening to this show and thank you again to Uncle Dave Conkle for being a great guest. I I just, I hit him up and I said, hey, can we, you know, I had to hit him up a while back about doing this. And then I said, hey, can we, should I come to the radio station? Is that something you want to do or would you rather do it at like somewhere else? He's like, come to my house. I'll show you my mic collection. I'm like, okay, sweet. So get there and we go through all of his mics. He's like, which one do you want to use for the show? I'm like, wow, okay, sure. I used an SM 49.
I didn't even know that existed. don't even know what it was, you know, it looks like a haircut. I'm going to post it on Instagram. It's on my Instagram if this is out already, but ⁓ he, he was such a sharp minded person. just couldn't believe that the amount of specifics that he knew about, you know, like a WRAY, WXP, all these like, you know, all these names and then the names of equipment and all this stuff and his memory was so...
dang sharp, I can't remember information to save my life. And maybe that's a byproduct of being a modern person with a little bunch of digital tools where I store stuff. anyway, I thought that was a great episode. was fun to record Uncle Dave from, or just, you know what? It's just Dave. It's Dave Conkle, a great guy. So thank you for listening to this show. This is episode 10. So if you've been riding with us for these first 10 episodes, I appreciate you so much. It's been a great journey just to get things started in this.
been a very fruitful experience and I really feel like it's just getting started. It's just getting started. And so if you like this podcast, please share it with somebody who you think also might be interested or do the business of liking and following and subscribing. if you want to go above and beyond just to be a great human being, I would love a review of some sort on either Spotify or Apple. Those two matter most to me personally, just because.
Mostly Apple, I love Apple in terms of the podcast platform, but also follow me on Instagram, Wes underscore Luttrell. That's where you can find everything about me. I have a link on there that links to the record label that I run with a couple of great people here in Southern Indiana. ⁓ There's links to the artists that we work with, links to this podcast for past episodes, and there's links to my coaching and artist development services.
It's a website called artistdev.co. You can check that out. And if you're interested in getting some hands-on support as an artist trying to develop your project out in this world, please hit me up. Tell me about your project. And I think that's it. I think that's all of it. So thank you, and we will see you again next week.