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beautyisyours · 4 years

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EVERY DAY IS A GOD DAY 2

I know it has to start with saying “I love you.” The only living creature that I’ve ever said “I love you” to is my dog. I know. It’s sick. In my defense, Dusty has been sleeping with me since he was a puppy (he’s thirteen now). He’s most comfortable whenever I have a body limb laying on him, so that’s how I sleep—on top of him. He accepts me as I am; even though I roll around and yell and kick and do everything while I sleep, he’s used to it. I am able to love my dog because I know he’s not going to leave me. He’s not going to declare, “You know what? I think I’ve had enough of you. I’ve moved on.” Dusty doesn’t have a choice. He’s got to eat, and I’m the one who feeds him.

I don’t like the fact that I’ve never said “I love you” to a sentient being with free will, but now it’s become a thing where I don’t want to waste it. I want to save it, like one of those Duggar girls saving her virginity for marriage. That’s how big a deal the words have become to me.

My whole adult life, everyone’s said, “Eventually you’ll find the right person.” It’s eventually now. I know by now that I’m not going to just meet “the right person” and butterflies will appear in my eyeballs and my untrusting soul will turn into light. I’ve been around (well, sort of, at least by a hermit’s standards). If it were going to happen, it would have. I’m smart enough to know it’s not an “it” thing but a “me” thing.

There are a lot of things other people do easily that are murder for me— like saying “I love you” or paying my bills. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a debtor. I overpay my bills all the time. So if my cell phone bill is $87, I’ll pay

$110 in order to build up a credit. That way if I’m ever poor again—scratch that—when I’m poor again, I’ll have a couple of months to bounce back.

Recently I had to hire a business manager, because now in addition to doing the radio show and the band I also have a TV production company and clothing line. The first thing she noticed were all these credits on my various accounts, from electric to water to my cell phone. After I explained my rationale, she turned to me and said, “No. Just no.” Although it made me nervous, she cashed out all of those credits. It still makes me nervous. I’ll always be a poor person, even if I have money.

But I stopped overpaying my bills, and that’s progress. It might be slow, but I do think I’m moving toward my other goals, such as being more vulnerable and positive. I’m still way too skeptical of everyone and have trouble trusting, but I’m better than I used to be.

As to my goal of being more optimistic, I’m also much better at it than I’ve ever been before. A big part of that has to do with the fact that in everything I do I surround myself with positive people. But just as with finding love, I know that the real transformation won’t happen by some external event or other person changing me. It has to start from within.

I used to discuss my general predicament with happiness a lot with my therapist. As I said, it wasn’t that I was depressed; I just never got out of being sad. Even when something good happens to me—like winning an award or becoming the country’s number one country morning radio show—I kill it by thinking about the next bad thing that is surely right around the corner.

My therapist suggested that when I get good news or something cool happens to me, I should take thirty seconds and let myself be happy. To set aside half a minute and make it a moment. At first it was weird and strained, like flexing a muscle you’ve never used before. But after a while it got easier and I found more and more little moments to enjoy.

When the Raging Idiots signed a record deal with Black River Entertainment in the spring of 2015, it was a dream come true for me. I never, ever thought I would be in a band that was on an actual legitimate label. My natural inclination was to immediately suffocate my happiness by imagining all the different ways I was surely going to screw this up. Instead, I took myself out for a chicken-fried steak at Cracker Barrel. I didn’t think about whether I was going to succeed or fail. I just enjoyed that steak. And that was it. I had my moment, and I moved on (then I was sure the Raging Idiots were going to fail).

As much as possible I’m trying to enjoy right now, because as my high

school football coach Vic Gandolph says, “Every day is a good day.”

Now, I know you are thinking, Wait, everyday really isn’t a good day. No, it’s not true in a literal sense. But while I was in Mountain Pine, Coach beat it into our heads that every single day was an opportunity for a good day. While doing up-downs for seemingly hours at a time, Coach would yell “EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY!” Trust me, at the time it didn’t feel very good.

When I returned to my high school to speak at graduation, Coach Gandolph showed up even though he doesn’t work there anymore. He gave me the ball that we had given him my senior year, and we talked for a bit. I told him that it was only recently I understood what he meant by his mantra.

It’s all about the choice and the chance that comes every morning when each of us rises to face a new day. Like yesterday, when I received the call that the television talk show, the one for which I survived about forty-five auditions and ten thousand different panels, didn’t get picked up for a pilot. It’s a bummer that I won’t be on TV, but out of the experience I made a new and important friend: Deion Sanders.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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In a way

In a way, the scholarship is a selfish act. I can admit it. The award is money that the winner can use in any way he or she wants. Books, tuition, anything. Want to go out and eat a few hundred times? Whatever’s going to make your life slightly easier as you try to navigate through college, I GOT YOU! It feels selfish, because that is what I would have wanted when I was entering my freshman year of college. It’s almost as if I’m entering a time machine, finding the younger me, and saying, “Hey, Little Bobby, I’m going to help you out.”

It always comes back to me. That’s a major reason I like to help people: I want to help the Me’s out there. With everyone on the show and great dudes like Jason Aldean (remember—the country music star who I thought hated me when I first came to Nashville? I told you, he’s my buddy now), Keith Urban, and Dierks Bentley, we have raised millions for different children’s hospitals all over the country. That cause in particular always brings me back to when I was in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. We couldn’t afford medical care, but someone paid my bills. And now I can help places like the hospital that took care of me.

I’ve often thought I should give for the sake of giving and not because it makes me feel better about an issue I’ve experienced. Like, I should donate to a bird refuge or something. But I guess I’m way too selfish for that. I’d much rather give Christmas presents to children whose parents can’t afford them, because I can imagine how psyched a kid will be opening them up, just like I was when I was little and getting cool stuff.

I don’t know that I was put here for any reason. I don’t think so. But I do

know that I want to leave this place better than how I found it. And the way I help best is when I have a personal connection. That’s why I regularly speak to groups of people who are dealing with alcoholism or addiction. Although I’ve never had a drink or touched an illegal drug, I don’t give any kind of moralistic speech. It’s not about that. What I’ve found is that whenever I meet people who’ve been affected by substance abuse—either their own or that of someone they love—there’s an inherent bond. It’s almost as if you come from the same place. It’s just that this place is where your pain comes from. I want others to know that if they have trouble letting go of the past or continue to struggle with that demon over and over, they aren’t alone.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY

I was driving down the small country road leading into Mountain Pine on an overcast afternoon in late May 2015 when I noticed in the distance a green road sign with white writing on it. I hadn’t seen a sign on that road for a while; I think it had been stolen or something. I had no idea what the name of the road was, either—probably Truck Road 379 or whatever. It didn’t really matter, since there’s only one way into and out of Mountain Pine.

As I got close enough to make out the writing, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The sign read:

MOUNTAIN PINE, POP. 772

WELCOME TO THE BOYHOOD HOME OF BOBBY BONES

The new addition to the sign came as a total shock. I was back home to speak at the high school graduation ceremony and to present the scholarship I had created to its first recipient. But I had no idea that Mountain Pine had done this.

I immediately pulled over to check it out. There it was for whoever happened to find themselves going to this tiny town in Arkansas: “The Boyhood Home of Bobby Bones.” It was awesome, but also weird. I mean, I’m not dead yet. You never know what’s going to happen with someone who’s still alive. You should definitely never, ever name a school or institution after someone living in case that person screws up big time. All those Bill Cosby elementary schools right now are like, “Oh crap.” I guess they can always take down the sign outside of Mountain Pine if I go off the rails.

Joking aside, I didn’t feel like I had done enough to deserve my name on

that sign. The sign outside of Hot Springs says, THE BOYHOOD HOME OF BILL CLINTON. He was the president of the United States. Me? I was Quiz Bowl captain, and I play Miley Cyrus and Brad Paisley records. It’s quite the difference. Still, I wasn’t going to ask them to take it down, either. It felt good to see my name up there.

The town put up the sign in tandem with my scholarship fund, which is called the Don’t Be Skipping Class Scholarship. That’s really the name of it. Because, as I’ve said, success is mostly about just showing up (and being on time), and I wanted to honor those who did just that in school.

I consider the scholarship as one of my top three accomplishments, none of which have anything to do with my career other than that they’re cool things I’ve been able to do since becoming moderately successful. I mentioned the other two already. First there was getting my teeth fixed. I never went to the dentist until I got insurance in my twenties. So there was a lot of retro pay to pick up in the form of surgery after surgery after surgery, root canal after root canal. While it was never pleasurable, getting my teeth fixed was a big deal to me. It didn’t make me prettier—as my grandma would say, “You can’t polish a turd”—but having straight, nonrotten teeth (and yeah, some of them are fake) feels like I’m on the come-up. The second achievement that stands out for me was buying my mom a couple of acres on the hill for her trailer. It meant something to be able to provide for her. In the end, it didn’t save her. But at least I can say she had a place to call home.

My third accomplishment, the annual scholarship that goes to a Mountain Pine high school graduate attending college, lends a helping hand to a motivated kid who probably doesn’t have a lot. After I went to college, the lumber mill shut down, and that is when the town really suffered. Mountain Pine was already a place where folks struggled, but it became more so then.

Mountain Pine can feel like a forgotten place (it didn’t have cell phone reception until 2015), and kids growing up there can feel forgotten in it. That’s certainly how I felt. So the scholarship is doing for someone else what I wish could have been done for me.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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The first messed-up thing happened after I’d been in Nashville for only three days

On my company’s suggestion, I had moved into a fancy, gated neighborhood right on a golf course. I thought it was way too expensive a place to live, but they insisted. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve had too much crap happen to you,” one exec said, referring not only to the crazed lunatic with a knife who had been waiting for me outside the radio station in Austin but also to repeated death threats against me.

I wasn’t even that controversial. I talked about not getting girls and my dog, Dusty. Still, people wanted to mess with me. (After a person repeatedly called to say, “If you walk outside of the radio station, I’m going to kill you,” the station had to build a whole bulletproof-glass room in the front of the building and hire security.) So I moved into my super safe house in Nashville with twenty-four-hour security. And three days later (I hadn’t even started to unpack my boxes) I was asleep when everything went insane—my phone, my computer, and my sense of well-being.

As it turned out, about ten houses down a guy apparently had murdered his wife and was now on foot in my gated super safe neighborhood. SWAT teams had invaded and were shouting through bullhorns for everyone to lock up and stay inside, because the man was armed and dangerous. They caught him in the woods a day later, but it proved to me that anything can happen anywhere. (And I soon moved.)

The wife murderer was an unfortunate but random event. Others were directed at me. Next up were two agent-type guys who showed up at my front door and showed their badges.

“Do you mind if we come in?” one of them asked. Did I have a choice? Not really; they were IRS agents.

“You’ve been compromised,” one agent said. “Someone who works for us has hacked into your files.”

They showed me a picture and I recognized the woman instantly. A huge fan of the show, she had come to a number of our live events. Because her work computer was monitored, they were aware when she breached security by looking into my files. Of course they were! What kind of employee of the IRS doesn’t know they are going to be caught if they dig into people’s personal information? A dumb one, that’s who. The agents asked me if I wanted to press charges. “Yes,” I said, and never heard anything more about the woman again.

That might have been my last interaction with that woman, but it wasn’t my last with government agents. Shortly after the IRS showed up at my house, two other secret agent types showed up at my studio while I was in the middle of my radio show. This time, though, it was immediately clear the situation was a lot more serious.

“Get off the air right now,” one of them said.

“Well, two guys with suits walked in,” I said on air. “I guess I’ve got to go.”

I hit a song and told someone, “Just play songs till I’m done.”

The two men escorted me to a room in the station and said, “We want to know about the threats you’ve posted to the President of the United States.” Or something like that. I was so freaked out my ears were ringing, which made it hard to hear.

“I did not threaten the President of the United States,” I insisted to them. But in my head I tried to remember what stupid thing I had said on air that could have been misconstrued as a threat. It was hard to think, though, when I was pretty sure I was about to get a one-way ticket to Guantánamo.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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Whenever I do something on a massive level

like when I hosted morning TV with Kelly Ripa or some of the biggest music managers in country came to see one of my Raging Idiots shows—I don’t experience it as pressure and get nervous. Instead it’s time to compete and win—and I get pumped. Now, sometimes I don’t win. But I always try to.

The Million-Dollar Bad Thing rocked me pretty hard, though, not only because of the enormous sum of money iHeartMedia was facing in terms of FCC fines but because I let down the same people who had taken such a big chance on me. Unlike many of the other disappointments I have experienced, this was one I couldn’t compartmentalize and put away.

Work wasn’t the only thing in my life that was out of control at that moment. After Rachel and I dated for about a year, her team convinced her that she needed to stop seeing me because it was ruining her career. I had predicted this moment months before. “You know what’s going to happen?” I had told her. “They’re going to tell you that I’m hurting your career. And maybe I am. If you date the biggest radio personality on iHeartRadio, you may be penalized by Cumulus or CBS.”

Rachel didn’t want to hear it. She told me how much she loved me and wanted to stay together. But I cut it off. I couldn’t stand the idea that there was even a chance I was hurting someone’s career for a relationship that probably wasn’t going to last anyway—no matter how good it was. It didn’t matter that we laughed all the time. Or that we started as friends and morphed into a relationship in the best possible way. I knew no one would stay with me long term.

As soon as Rachel and I split up, I found myself in a bizarre scenario. For the first time in the short history of Bobby Estell, women, and lots of them, were interested in me. It was crazy. Women, real-life women, wanted to go out with me. So, like a man who’s been starving for years and is taken to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I dated everyone. At the height of this small blip in an otherwise flatlined social life, I went out with six or seven girls—all at once.

They were actresses and musicians, famous folks, but I never talked about

any of it on the air. I would have, but it was their business. That’s always my rule with what I’ll say on air—I’m not going to talk about you; I’m going to talk about me. And then, if you’re okay with me talking about you, I’ll talk about you, too. But in terms of the women I was seeing during this period, I didn’t need everyone to know I was dating them. I especially didn’t want the women I was dating to know about each other!

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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“Buy Me a Boat.”

I thought the song was good, but my tastes don’t always mix perfectly with everyone else’s. Well, this time they did, because “Buy Me a Boat” exploded. Within thirty minutes of me playing forty-five seconds of the song, it went from nonexistent to one of the top downloads on iTunes. So then I played the full song (again risking pissing off the higher-ups at iHeartRadio, because you’re taught not to play untested music on a national level), and by the end of the day, it was the No. 1 song in iTunes country and in the Top 10 on the pop chart, too!

Of course, every record label was after Chris immediately then. Chris wound up signing with Warner Bros., which put out his debut album, named after “Buy Me a Boat,” its lead single, which went to No. 1 on the Billboard country charts. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Top Country Albums chart and No. 18 on the Billboard 200. The song, which sold more than 805,000 units, went gold, and Chris landed an opening spot on Toby Keith’s summer tour. The day his song climbed to No. 1, Chris sent me a note: “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you opening that e-mail, listening to my song, and playing it on the air. You got me a deal.”

If “Buy Me a Boat” didn’t convince me of the power of our listeners and the show, then “Girl Crush” really nailed it for me. Little Big Town—the band featuring Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook, and Phillip Sweet, all on vocals—had released their sixth studio album, Pain Killer. The single they were pushing was a party song called “Day Drinking.” But as soon as I heard “Girl Crush,” which was a deep track, I knew that was the real single.

It’s slow, and right now ballads are out of favor in country music, but I thought the song, with Karen on lead vocals, was different, in a good way, from anything else out there. So the next morning, I took to the airwaves to introduce the song to my listeners. I don’t want to sound like a broken record or a jerk, but “Girl Crush” instantly skyrocketed up the iTunes charts to the Top 5 that morning. Because of that segment, they put it out as the album’s second single after “Day Drinking.” And the rest is history. “Girl Crush,” with sales of nearly 1.5 million in the U.S., literally made Billboard history

when it spent eleven weeks at No. 1.

I should have gotten a shout-out by country music programmers everywhere, right? Nope. I created blowback. Apparently the song’s topic, one woman’s obsession with another, was too risqué for country radio. Playing lyrics like “I want to taste her lips / Yeah, ’cause they taste like you” were “promoting the gay agenda,” according to some angry listeners and station managers. Frightened program directors refused to play the song. Although so many country music fans downloaded the song that it was No. 4 on iTunes, it was only No. 33 in radio airplay rankings because DJs were afraid to play a song about lesbians. (Meanwhile the band says unequivocally that the song isn’t about lesbians. Who cares? I like lesbians.)

When I had Little Big Town in the studio, I went on a rant. “Is it frustrating to you that here is your song—that is one of the top ten sellers for weeks and weeks and weeks—and people on the radio are still afraid to play it because they think it’s a ‘lesbian song’?” I asked. “It would drive me insane!”

My bosses weren’t happy about me screaming on air at the country radio industry, which paid me my salary, for being small-minded hypocrites. But I wasn’t worried. I knew the listeners had my back.

They always do, which is why I can say what I believe—or maybe it’s the other way around. Because I say what I think, the listeners always have my back. Either way, I have enough strong support to take up the issues important to me.

When it comes to the current country music industry, the biggest issue for me is the prevalence of what’s known as “bro country.” If you aren’t up on country music, that’s the kind of song where a male singer belts out lyrics along the lines of “Hey, girl, get up and dance on my truck; I want to watch you while I drink whiskey.” And I hate it, and I have since I started working in this format. By the time this book comes out, it could have gone the way of the boy band, but right now I am still praying for its death.

In addition to being an epicenter of talent, Nashville is also a factory. With people who just write songs and others who just sing them, the whole thing can get pretty formulaic. There’s a particular songwriter voice, where everything sounds about the same, which is male dominated and really demeaning toward women. Plus, the radio industry is infiltrated with dudes while women are often pushed to the side.

I speak to women daily. Not only was I raised surrounded by women—my

mom, grandma, and sisters—but they are also a huge part of my audience. I might as well be a woman. So at a time when there are so few female artists getting to the top of the charts (unless you’re Miranda Lambert or Carrie Underwood), I’ve been focusing on really strong females inside of country music.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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I have a dream girl on my mind. She is so perfect she is so fine.

Yes, the song was really that dumb (my songs still are). But a girl actually came up to me after the show to say she liked my song, and we made out. That was my entrance to music, and I was hooked. But that was pretty much it for my career as a musician—other than a brief moment in 2005 when I recorded a song with Olympic gymnast (and aspiring pop singer) Carly Patterson. For the remix of the song called “Temporary Life,” I was billed under the rap name Captain Caucasian. Oddly enough, the song got some radio play, so I did a few shows as Captain Caucasian and the Raging Idiots.

But the real Raging Idiots didn’t get going until Eddie joined The Bobby Bones Show and we began doing parodies of current hit songs on the radio (he on guitar and me “singing”). The Raging Idiots were good for ratings, and it was fun to write and play again. We really had no aspirations of doing anything other than sitting in the studio and making fun of songs until Amy had a charity event and needed a “band” to play. After that, we started playing shows. But not for money, though, since we donated all the proceeds to charity. Driving hundreds of miles every weekend, we went everywhere from California to North Carolina to D.C. to Wisconsin to Texas, only to be back on the air Monday. Before we knew it, we had raised $30,000 for various charities, then $300,000, then $750,000, until we eventually hit $1 million! It was fun and meaningful but also exhausting being on the road that

much. But I have nothing on Eddie, who does it with a wife and two kids. So although he’s perpetually late (on tour and on the show), I get past it because I know he’s a stand-up dude.

Sometimes I think the best thing about my show is that I get to work with friends, people who I hired because they are trustworthy, interesting, and enjoyable to be around. But none of them were radio guys. We were the top- rated morning show in Austin and syndicated in five other cities—and no one other than me had any experience or background in radio. Like I mentioned, Amy sold granite. Lunchbox was delivering for Jason’s Deli. Eddie was a TV producer. Ray was a . . . well, I’m not sure what Ray was. He did some telemarketing. . . . I love the fact that everyone on The Bobby Bones Show was a real person, but it means that I have to work behind the scenes, too, in order to preserve that authenticity.

I put four or five hours of preparation into a four- or five-hour show that to listeners sounds (hopefully) like we’re just talking about whatever we want, whenever we want. So the whole radio show is planned out, minute to minute, but if it ever sounds like that, then it means I’ve done something wrong.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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BONES BARED

After Amy traveled to Haiti on a mission there, she became very involved with the country and eventually created her own nonprofit called TEEMHaiti, which works to improve the lives of a wide variety of Haitians—including providing hunger relief. Listening to her talk about the struggles people were going through down there, you couldn’t help be moved to do something. There are a lot of people here in the U.S. struggling, too, but when your friend finds a passion, it also becomes important to you. In that same way, many of my projects have become important to her. Later on, when we moved to Nashville, I helped Amy with an event where volunteers came out to pack up meals for the orphanage in Port-au-Prince that Amy supports. We wanted to see if we could break the Guinness World Record for most hunger relief meals packaged in one hour by a team (just because we were doing something good doesn’t mean we couldn’t turn it into a stunt), and we did, with 530,064 meals packed in forty-five minutes.

That’s just one example of so many ways Amy brings positivity into life, even during its darkest moments, like when her mom, Judy, was diagnosed with cancer in 2012. Amy and her sister, Cristi, are both really close to their mom and to each other. They were devastated when they learned of their mom’s illness. But Amy heeded her mom’s message to “choose joy,” so much so that she had JOY tattooed on her wrist in her mother’s handwriting. Before Judy passed away in 2014, we decided to do something called “Pimpin’ Joy Week” on The Bobby Bones Show, where we were looking not for donations or money but for stories that “inspire, influence, and encourage people to Choose Joy.”

People still call in to the show almost every day to tell us how they are “pimpin’ joy.” As I write this, I just had dinner, and my meal was paid for by two listeners from Houston who didn’t hang around for a thank-you but just wrote “pimpinjoy” on my receipt, which was just awesome. However, they paid for it before I ordered pie. So I still paid for the pie. Just a few more minutes and I’d have gotten some pie pimpinjoyed, too!

Amy doesn’t just make me a better person; she also makes me a better radio personality. She’s so real that she challenges me to stay real. As our radio show continued to grow in popularity, it would have been natural for me to slip into a fake image of who I thought I needed to be, which ultimately would have become stale to listeners. Sitting every morning next to someone who wears her heart on her sleeve, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t maintain the same level of honesty.

Honesty is kind of the through line for everyone who wound up joining The Bobby Bones Show. Oh, and also that Lunchbox hated everybody when they first joined the gang. He hated Amy. He hated Ray. He hated Eddie. It’s happened every single time, with every single person that comes in. But as with any family, I always say, “No one’s going anywhere. You’re just all going to have to sort it out.”

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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Why Song7

Why Song 7, you ask?

Well, in the middle of Wilma’s medley of favorite indie rock music it cut off and suddenly my voice came through the iPod.

“Go ahead and lock the door and come outside,” the recording of my voice went.

Wilma did just as the iPod told her to; she locked the door and went outside, where she was greeted by a trail of flowers, made to look like arrows, leading her down the stairs and straight to a huge limo I had rented. I had even put my clothes in the limo so I could make a quick change before she got down to the car. I felt like I was Carrie Underwood doing a wardrobe change during a concert as I peeled off my sweats and T-shirt and jumped into a pair of slacks and a button-up. (Although I struggled with the tie, so it wasn’t fully tied when she arrived at the car, which would have never happened to Carrie. Of course, she has dressers.)

When I plan this kind of massive display of emotion, I am the best boyfriend. But really I’m the worst boyfriend, because I’m not good at proving emotion through words. I can romance like crazy, but I can’t say those three little words: “I love you.” And because of that, no act, no matter how romantic, can ever be enough.

Wilma and I reached the inevitable I-love-you impasse the following Christmas. Because I had never said those words, and she was understandably nervous to be the first one to say them, she decided to illustrate them instead.

After finishing a pre-Christmas dinner out and returning to my apartment, both of us prepared for our gift exchange. I don’t remember exactly what I got her—probably a journal with the time and date of every single time we had made eye contact or one of my classics, The Book of Us.

Of all the things my friends have made fun of me for, The Book of Us may be the winner-winner-chicken-dinner of them all. It is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a book that celebrates all the memories I’ve shared with a woman. This is no small thrown-together book. It’s memories of first dates, menus from wonderful meals, notes written after really great times together, movie ticket stubs, hair left in the sink (just kidding about the hair. Or am I?). I did the ol’ Book of Us twice, once for Wilma. I honestly can’t remember if it was for this exact Christmas. But you get the point; I gave her the gift I had been working on for months.

Then she handed me my gift, which I quickly unwrapped. As soon as I saw it, though, I wished I had taken a lot longer. It was a picture of the two of us together in a frame covered in the words “I love you,” in seven different languages!

I freaked out so badly that I couldn’t even remember how to speak English. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said in a repeat loop as I laid the

frame down and backed away from it like it was an explosive device.

With tears welling up in her eyes, she said, “I just want you to know that I do love you, and this was the easiest way.”

You want to know the worst thing in the world? It’s when someone says “I love you” and you don’t say it back.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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Fight. Grind. Repeat. And Sometimes Lose

If I had to describe my life in Austin in three words, it would be these: Fight. Grind. Repeat.

When I started doing mornings, soon after I arrived in Texas, and had to start waking up at an ungodly hour, I became very disciplined. I mean, I was never a slacker. In college I hardly had time to breathe. But this was different. The stakes were much higher and the margin for error much smaller. Like I’ve said before, the first step, foundation—whatever you want to call it—for success is being reliable and on time.

I wanted more than anything to be successful at my job, so I began a routine that I follow to this day:

Wake up at 3 A.M.

Arrive at the office by 4 A.M. Start the show at 5 A.M. Lunch at 10:30 A.M.

Nap before noon (if it’s not before noon, I don’t take a nap) Work out at 3 P.M.

In bed by 8 P.M.

If that schedule sounds tough, that’s because it is. And remember, I don’t drink coffee. But I forced myself to do the right thing over and over and over again until it became ingrained in me. Every day was a fight—a fight against my own exhaustion and a fight against every other show on the air. The chip on my shoulder that I seem to have been born with only made me that much

more competitive. If everyone else in radio was out to get me, I was going to retaliate by getting every listener out there on my side. Fighting every day— that was the grind. And then I just woke up again at 3 A.M. to repeat it.

My fight club mentality was good for the show but not quite as great for my personal life. There was a period in Austin of about five years that I was single. That’s one hell of a dry spell to have in your twenties. It got so bad that it became a running joke on the air; we kept a tally of how long it had been since I’d had sex. That’s right, I didn’t have sex. Not one time. In five years.

I liked to say that my hours were not conducive to a social life. Not too many girls love going to dinner at four thirty in the afternoon. But the truth is that my problem with women ran much deeper than having to ask them out for an early-bird special.

It started with an inherent sense of guilt that makes casual sex impossible for me. I have a similar viewpoint on food, sex, and anything else that is pleasurable but could potentially affect my life in a negative way. Before I engage in the act, I always ask myself, Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the worry about the potential risk? Then I weigh the rewards against the punishment.

For example, if I drink a milk shake, I’ll enjoy that milk shake for twenty minutes. But then I’m going to feel guilty about it for about five hours. When I compare those two time periods, there is no question about what I’m going to do: skip the milk shake.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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GNAWING AT THE BONES 2

At the beginning, not everyone appreciated my goal to find a shared humanity. When I first started this job, few artists wanted to come on my show because my interview style was so different. A lot of big stars were upset with me because I took them out of their comfort zone. I didn’t say,

“Hey, let’s talk about your record and what inspired this song.” Instead I wanted to know what they ate for dinner last night. (That isn’t a real question, but rather the kind that always leads to something else. So I ask it, and then I just listen. Often interviewers don’t listen to the answers—they are just preparing for their next question. I listen to what the artist is saying, because that’s what takes me to my next question.)

Jason Aldean, one of the biggest guys in country music, acted like he hated me when he came on the show. He didn’t think my questions were amusing and rarely smiled. Because of that I didn’t really like him, either. That’s not childish, is it? But now, we totally get each other. And I genuinely like that dude, so much so that if I needed a favor, I’d call him. And I think he’d call me, too. Turns out, much like me, Jason is just a quiet guy. He was dragged through the mud a couple of times and I felt bad for him, because he’s a quality person under the persona. First impressions aren’t always right. Not about Jason, not about me, not really about anyone.

Jason aside, some artists lack any sense of humor about themselves whatsoever. I can live with that. It’s very important to me to keep some sense of equilibrium between my guests and me while we are on air. I’m not bigger than they are, and they’re not bigger than I am. Nor are they bigger than the listeners and fans. We are all people. Except for Garth Brooks, who’s the greatest of all time. He’s bigger than us all. Yeah, Garth Brooks stands alone. I’ve interviewed Garth Brooks (I can’t call the guy who’s sold 134 million albums “Garth,” but Mr. Brooks seems a little formal, so I’m just going to keep going with Garth Brooks) a few times now. I couldn’t believe that the first time he came in the studio he brought a guitar and played whatever songs we wanted. By pretty much any metric you can come up with, from album sales to monster arena tours, the man is bigger than any musician living or dead, including Madonna, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, and even the King himself, Elvis. He was just the nicest guy, though, which is what 95 percent of country music stars are. Then, at the end of his visit, he gave me his guitar, which he signed. Oh my god. It was such an amazing experience that although I often listen back to segments of my show in order to figure what I could have done better, I didn’t listen to this interview. I wanted to preserve the memory of how great it was in my mind. I didn’t want to ruin it by focusing on a question I should have asked or a word I stumped on. (I’ve only ever done that on two other interviews: Clerks director Kevin Smith and my first interview years ago, with John Mayer. But Garth Brooks is definitely

the most sacred.)

In my apartment I have a wall of guitars that are hung the way I guess other people hang art. That’s where I keep the guitar Garth Brooks gave me. There are also guitars from John Mayer, Ben Harper, and Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish, who came in as a guest my first week in Nashville. (I no longer take guitars from guests, but I buy one or two a week for artists

to sign and then I give them to charity.) There’s one over in the corner on the wall from Dierks Bentley, whose song “I Hold On” we really championed on our show. After it went to No. 1, he wrote all the lyrics on a guitar and gave it to me. Eric Paslay, who was a big songwriter in Nashville before he went solo, did the same thing with his first single, “Friday Night.” I was the first to play the single, which also hit No. 1. So I have a guitar with every lyric to that song written on it. It’s quite special to me. In the land of constant competition that is show business, things like that are still pretty awesome.

Dierks and Eric are just a couple of the artists The Bobby Bones Show has helped hit the charts. When I say this, I’m not bragging about myself (well, maybe just a little: I do have a keen ear for awesomeness) but rather about our listeners, because they’re the ones who buy the music and make the hits. It took about a year for our radio show to influence the charts, but since then it’s crazy how loyal and how trustworthy the listeners of my radio show have become.

One of the most gratifying chart-toppers who have come through our doors is Chris Janson. Although he’d written songs for the likes of Tim McGraw, Chris got dropped from his own recording contract. He was playing bars and struggling, like so many musicians in Nashville. Talent is everywhere, all the time in this city. Everybody is a musician, singer, and/or songwriter. And I’m not talking about second-rate guitar players or people who need Auto-Tune to sound good. If you aren’t the best of the best, you will be chewed up and spit out here. You can go to any bar on any street and watch somebody who’s amazing and only working for tips. So Nashville is crowded with people struggling to make it in country music—and yet talented people from all over the country still move here year after year.

With Chris, I kept inviting him into the studio, even though I got some heat for it. A show of our scope is only supposed to have guests with as much mass appeal as possible, and that means at minimum a record deal. But anytime we did some sort of feature with artists, we would always invite Chris in, because he was our first-ever guest and just a guy. Most important, though, he is a great musician. That’s an important element to our listeners’ loyalty; we don’t push bad music on our show for any agenda, so they know they can trust us.

Anyway, one night Chris e-mailed me a song with the message “Hey, tell me what you think. I just put it up on iTunes myself.” I liked it and wanted to play it the next morning, so I e-mailed it to my producer, Ray, asking him to

put it up on my screen in case I had time to play it.

We ended up with about forty-five seconds to kill before a commercial break that morning in early 2015, so I said to our listeners, “I got an e-mail from our buddy Chris Janson . . .” Then I played just a snippet of the song “Buy Me a Boat.”

when it spent eleven weeks at No. 1.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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GNAWING AT THE BONES

After my breakup with Betty Boop, I was pretty down in the dumps for a while. I went on dates with a few girls, but nothing serious. That is, until the day of “The List.”

In case you didn’t already pick up on it, I’m a little OCD. So I really like lists. I list the times, places, and locations I need to be every single day. Before the show, I list segments that we are going to do in order of how good I think they will be. After the show, I change that list and list them in order of how well they went on air. I list my favorite soaps. I list my favorite teas. So of course I had a list of pretty girls I wanted to come on my radio show.

Rachel Reinert, one part of the three-member hit country band Gloriana, was definitely on The List. In fact, she might have been at the top of it. When we did a bit on air where we picked the ten most beautiful women in country (given the classy title “The Bones’ Babes”), I put Rachel at number one. (People magazine had just come out with their “Most Beautiful” issue and didn’t pick anyone from the country world, which I found annoying. But the real inspiration behind the segment was my newly single status. As I said on air, “I’m putting a bunch of girls who I would want to date on this list.”)

I didn’t think it would actually work, of course! But shockingly, it did, because the day after we aired this list, with Rachel on top, her people called up the show and asked if I wanted the singer-songwriter to come to the studio the following day. No way! I thought to myself. How embarrassing. But my rule is, the more embarrassing something is for me, the more the listeners will probably enjoy it. And of course I thought it would be funny to strike out on the air with a beautiful girl who I knew wouldn’t want to date me. So I agreed. I even made the whole experience even more embarrassing by writing

her a song, which I imaginatively called “Rachel,” that I played for her in the studio. It could have won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Here, let me show you:

Rachel, I think you are so pretty

When I see you, you make my heart all giddy. Rachel, I got you that trophy

Do you like guys like me that are dopey?

She smiled and laughed uncomfortably as I performed the whole thing for her, as if I were a creepy stalker. As you can see, my song stylings have met with varying responses when it comes to the ladies. Luckily, the tunes I cowrite for my band the Raging Idiots get a better reception. But at the end of her visit I got her cell number. Well . . . I had a friend tweet her friend to get me her cell number. I’m a total ladies’ man, you know. Anyway, Rachel and I started seeing each other fairly soon after. That’s right! She agreed to go out with me. It was very casual at first, as she was on the road a lot and I woke up at 3 A.M. But it turned into a strong relationship.

Rachel was fun to be around. I was just coming off my four-year relationship with Betty, probably the best human I had ever met, and she was a tough act to follow. But going out with Rachel was not only different, but equally good. Betty, who worked in sales, helped me find balance. She was great at that work-life thing, with a successful career and a strong circle of friends and close family.

Rachel, who had signed her first publishing deal in her teens and moved to Nashville soon after, was a lot like me—i.e., a workaholic. You have to be if you want to make it in the music business. She was always on the road with Gloriana, which had toured with Taylor Swift and won the Academy of Country Music’s award for Top New Vocal Group and a Teen Choice award for Choice Country Group. I would have given her an award, too (oh wait, I did: the Bones’ Babes #1 Hottest Country Singer Award). She was one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard face-to-face. I would just ask her to play stuff around the house so I could hear her sing. Unfortunately, she never asked me to just tell jokes.

Her talent as a performer was only one aspect of Rachel’s appeal. She was also very open-minded in a climate that, in my opinion, can be too judgmental.

Rachel was just cool, but there was never any kind of country music “power couple” thing between us. First of all, I don’t go to many industry events because I’m a freaky, antisocial dude who feels like everyone at those parties either wants to use me or doesn’t like me. (I know, fun.) I didn’t perceive myself as half of any “celebrity relationship,” as some gossip sites called us. I also never really thought of Rachel as famous. She was super talented and driven, and I was attracted to that. Yet I also saw the grind of her job from the inside: the long bus rides, the program directors you have to drive all over the country to talk to in order to get your song on the radio, the many, many struggles of being a recording artist.

Struggling, which we all do, whether you’re a truck driver or a country music star, is what brought a common humanity not just to Rachel but to all the good and talented folks I’ve met in Nashville. Recognizing that beneath the makeup, four-hundred-dollar distressed jeans, and perfect hair (or steamed baseball cap—seriously, I’ve seen some country music dudes get that done to their hats before they go onstage), we’re all just the same. Knowing this to be true is what’s helped me most with my on-air interviewing of celebrities.

Most people, even those in the media, get intimidated by famous folks. Often interviewers are so worried about making celebrities uncomfortable or unhappy in any way that they ask the same questions as every other journalist, which means the famous person gives the same answer over and over until it becomes muscle memory. I think having to say the same thing again and again is the most annoying thing ever for anyone, famous or anonymous. I’m not in the business of making musicians uncomfortable or annoyed (at least, I don’t think I am). So if I can break the verbal rut they’re in, there’s no telling where I can go. Awful or awesome, either way is great.

The way I do this is by humanizing people who don’t seem human to others because of their larger-than-life status. “What did you eat for breakfast?” “Did you have a dog, growing up?” “What kind of underwear do you wear?” I ask about simple stuff that celebrities don’t usually get asked.

I do interviews constantly, in a medium where the conventional wisdom is that they’re not good for ratings. But I’ve always felt that listeners tune out when they hear interviews because most people on the radio or television aren’t doing interesting interviews. We once were given research that compared The Bobby Bones Show to other morning national shows, and what they found was that while other hosts gushed over their guests just for

showing up, my interviews were more of a back-and-forth between peers.

I was happy the research bore out what I hope comes through on my show. Not only do I feel the peer-to-peer quality of my questions makes for more interesting radio, but I do believe it also puts the artist at ease. When Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert split up, I was the first one who got him to talk in any real way about his divorce, because I talked to him in, well, a real way. Instead of asking him a fawning nonquestion, like “It must be so hard for you,” or making an accusation, like “Was there someone else?” I went at the angle, “You’re famous, and she’s famous. And you guys kept it secret until it was finalized. Now, all personal things aside, how did you do that?” With that Blake was able to separate himself a bit, talk about the law, and then he kind of just went, “Our whole thing was, we are going to be cool about this. It is what it is . . . we’re buddies.” That might not seem like big news to you (and it wasn’t to me), but that interview was picked up by every media outlet from the Today show to CNN to the Christian Post.

Even celebrity listeners, like Tim McGraw, liked what we were doing on the show. Although now we’ve done a few specials together for TV and radio, the first time he was on our show was when he called in to our request line! The country superstar said he was just a fan of the show and that he listened every day as he drove his kids to school. It was so crazy that honestly we didn’t believe it was him, and so we asked him a lot of trivia questions to see if it was really him. (Obviously, he passed with flying colors.) When I moved to Nashville, I had been told, “Tim is really quiet and doesn’t warm up quickly to people.” But that’s not what I found at all. When he found out that I’d never owned or worn a cowboy hat, he gave me the black one he’d worn throughout his whole Las Vegas run. Tim even sent me a murse (man purse) that he had bought but was too embarrassed to wear.

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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BONES GOES COUNTRY

(Side note: it’s so weird how things change but stay the same. Now I am constantly scolded for putting acts on our show that aren’t “country” enough. So, like in real life, I never really fit in perfectly on the radio, either. I may be the only guy to play 2Pac into Luke Bryan into Lou Bega on a country station. I also bring in acts to perform on the country stations that aren’t country at all. I’ve had Ed Sheeran in performing live. Even Shaggy came in to do a couple of songs. Yeah, “It Wasn’t Me” Shaggy. The station managers were like “WTF?”)

Because Rod and I had been talking about my moving into a country format, I didn’t think it was all that odd when he invited me to the Country Music Awards in November. “I know you’re wanting to spread the word about your show,” Rod said. “So why don’t you come to Nashville? Everyone’s going to be in town at the same time. Station managers, company managers. Ordinarily it’d be tough to get all these people in the same room.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. I booked my Southwest flight and off I went to do my Top 40 show from the heart of country music, and hopefully get station managers to see it was a good fit for their stations. Almost as soon as I landed in Nashville, Rod and his team (from the company then known as Clear Channel but later rebranded iHeartMedia) were wining and dining me. Well, just dining me. They took me to so many awesome dinners and cool places it was freaky. Maybe they just like me, I thought to myself. But that wasn’t what it turned out to be at all.

On my second day in Nashville, Rod casually suggested we check out a shoot where all these top bands were doing national promos for our company. “Of course!” was my speedy reply. Tim McGraw was there; Lady Antebellum was there; Carrie Underwood was there. And everyone was super nice, and so clearly A-game. “Well, this is pretty cool,” I thought to myself. “I’m in Nashville to meet all of the bosses. And I get to see a few country stars, too!”

Right after I got done talking SEC football with Tim McGraw (and texting all of my friends, “I’ve been talking with Tim McGraw for the last twenty minutes about college football!”), Rod took me aside and gave me one of those serious the-police-are-outside-to-take-you-to-jail looks. “Listen,” he said. “You’re about to be hammered. They’re going to tell you something that will really shake you up. I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but I just

wanted to give you a warning, so brace yourself.”

What?

Thanks, Rod Phillips! I mean, what the heck did that mean? Was I about to get fired? You brought me out here to fire me? I imagined the worst flight home ever: being fired and then having to sit on a plane for two hours wondering why. I know it’s not customary for bosses to take their employees out to big fancy dinners and promo shoots if they are about to fire them, but common sense wasn’t floating around anywhere in my head in that moment.

It only got worse when I was taken over to a corner of the video shoot where huddled together was a group of bigwigs: Rod; John Ivey, the program director of KIIS FM in Los Angeles, one of the two biggest Top 40 stations in America; and Clay Hunnicutt, who was then the director of country for Clear Channel, were gathered around talking. They sat me down and said, “We want you to move to Nashville to be our national country morning show.”

And then I went deaf. Just like when something loud pops in your ears, I heard a loud beeeeeeep and then nothing after that. I was shocked. Their offer came out of nowhere for me. It was the last thing I was expecting. I really thought I was going to Nashville to pitch my Top 40 show, based in Austin, to any station manager who would listen—not to be asked if I wanted to broadcast the largest daily country morning show in the history of the format across tons of Clear Channel’s markets.

“Are you kidding?” was all I could manage to say. They took a picture of me as they asked me the question. In the photo, I’m pink haired (it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month) and my jaw was on the ground. I was shocked, sad, and slightly excited at the same time. In that order.

I didn’t say yes right away, not only because I was in shock but also because I really didn’t know how to feel about the offer. On the career side of things, I had built this entire “empire” in the pop format. It was a small empire, but it was definitely expanding. I had already accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to get a morning spot on Top 40 stations in New York or L.A. Elvis Duran and Ryan Seacrest had both just signed new contracts, and they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They were giants. But I was content in continuing to grow from where I was. In addition to my regular morning gig, I had started cohosting a new national sports show on Fox Sports Radio with tennis champ Andy Roddick. (Let me sidebar on Andy, who in addition to having become one of my best friends is also one of the most obnoxious

and best humans in the entire world. That dude can be a real dick on the tennis court or golf course. But man, he is a quality human being. One of the best people I’ve ever met.)

Despite the fact that I was comfortable with what I had done in Austin, I wasn’t stupid. I recognized that there was much more room for me to grow inside of country—the biggest format in America and one in which I felt comfortable because of my background and my deep appreciation for the music. But there was one other major factor that kept me from jumping at the promotion: I loved Austin. I mean I really loved Austin.

I was supposed to hate it, because I’m from Arkansas, and when you grow up in Arkansas, you are taught to hate Texas. Texas is the bigger and better brother—particularly when it comes to sports. So as an Arkansas sports fan, I was pretty wary when I first moved to Austin. But the people there are so great. The city embraced us, which was particularly unbelievable for as cool a place as Austin to do to a small gang of—well—idiots, who had never done a morning show like ours. In a city where everyone is always trying to be the biggest hipster in the room, my approach was always to keep it real. I mean I- hang-out-at-Chili’s-and-shop-at-Walmart real. And people loved us for it. I couldn’t imagine anything better.

I thanked the Clear Channel execs, who expected me to answer “yes” right away, and immediately went back to my hotel room, where I called Betty.

“You’re not going to believe what just happened,” I said to her. “I was just offered a national show from Nashville. They want me to move here and be the national country guy.”

I know that it had to be hard for her to hear, because the offer meant I would have to move away. I already wasn’t the easiest boyfriend in the world; a long-distance relationship would only make things more difficult. Still, because she cared about me so much, her immediate reaction was to think only of me.

“You have to do it,” she said.

It’s crazy just how supportive and unselfish she was. I don’t have that inside of me. But she did. She didn’t need to think about it. In a beat, her response was “You have to take the job.”

I was scared—not to go to country, because that was awesome. And not to go to Nashville, because Nashville’s awesome. It was because I had to kick down everything I had spent the last seven years building from the ground up and start all over. It felt very much like the move from Little Rock to Austin.

I’d never been there before, but I had to do it. “You’re right,” I said to Betty. “I have to do it.”

A few days later, I told the execs at Clear Channel that my answer was yes. Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. These kinds of offers are always followed by a lot of negotiating on both sides. One thing that wasn’t up for negotiation, however, was the rest of my crew on The Bobby Bones Show. I wasn’t coming unless all of the team could come too. If they wanted the show, well, Amy, Lunchbox, Ray, Eddie, and the rest of my crew were

the show. Thankfully, that wasn’t a sticking point.

Even though the gang had new jobs in Nashville if they wanted them, they still couldn’t know for a long time, which was weird for me. It went from uncomfortable to problematic when Amy and her husband picked a house to buy in Austin. Luckily (for me), something happened and the deal on the house fell through. But I went to Rod and said, “If we don’t tell Amy now, she’s going to buy another house.” So I got special dispensation to tell her months before everyone else. She was in immediately. Because for Amy, the bigger her platform, the more good she can do in the world. Also, despite how much the rest of us drive her nuts, she still likes being part of the gang. Crazy girl.

Eventually I was able to call in each person on the show one by one and tell them that I had some information I needed to share, but I had to have them sign a nondisclosure agreement first—which scared everyone. As soon as they had put pen to paper, I told them the news quickly. I didn’t take any pleasure from torturing people.

Except Lunchbox. He was the only person I messed with. “There’s going to be a lot of changes,” I said.

“What kind of changes?” he asked nervously. “The changes involve you.”

“Okay.”

“It’s tough for me to tell you this . . .”

I dragged it out forever. I took many deep breaths. I even faked a half cry.

It was an Oscar-worthy performance. I wish I had taped it! “I’m going to be leaving,” I said.

His eyes got real big.

“I’m really sorry that I have to leave. I don’t know what you’re going to do

. . . but I hope you’re going to come with me, because they’ve offered us a national show out of Nashville!”

He didn’t know whether to hug me or kill me. It was awesome.

On Monday, February 4, 2013, we formally announced that The Bobby Bones Show was moving to Nashville; Friday was our last show in Austin. I know this might not seem like big news to most of you reading this, but it made some waves in the city that built our radio show. As the Austin Chronicle’s Abby Johnston wrote about me: “He assembled his own dream team and turned KISS FM’s negligible ratings into a national goldmine, far outscoring any other local show. . . .

“The show feels like a conversation between friends, and that’s what kept me listening. I love to hate Lunchbox’s antiquated and misogynistic attitude toward women and his party-boy lifestyle. . . . Lunchbox’s foil, Amy, has captivated listeners with her struggle to have a child, and as she chokes up on air, I’ve shed tears with her. . . . Mostly, though, there’s Bobby, who through the years has revealed himself as one of the most genuine and open hosts on the radio.”

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beautyisyours · 4 years

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BONES GOES COUNTRY

I was scared to death as I drove up to Truluck’s restaurant. It was 2011. No, I wasn’t taking Kate Beckinsale out for dinner. (Although, Kate, I’m still available . . .) I was at the fancy seafood and steak house in North Austin to meet Rod Phillips, an executive at Clear Channel, the humongous radio company that now owned my radio show.

I was intimidated because Rod was the first executive I’d ever met. A national guy who had overseen the programming for regional markets that stretched from Miami to Chicago to Waco to what seemed like Egypt, the SVP of programming was known for his ability to make stations and the on- air “talent” better.

Getting a visit from corporate was kind of like being called to the principal’s office, even though there was really nothing for me to be nervous about. Over the last eight years, I had built The Bobby Bones Show into a decent radio program with a few affiliates scattered around the country. My tiny syndication company began back in 2005 when I begged the manager of KZCH in Wichita, Kansas, to put our show on his station. I literally begged. And pleaded. And maybe cried. And offered to do it for free! (I actually went into the hole with the Wichita deal, but it was worth it in the end.) Wichita didn’t have a morning show, and the station manager knew my old champion and local station manager Jay Shannon, so I (and Jay) asked him if he’d take a chance on me and a new technology called Comrex, which allowed us to transmit the show through the Internet. These days Comrex works seamlessly, but back then it was awful. It died three or four times a show, so that we had to reset it constantly. But we made it work, and eventually we won in Wichita.

(As soon as we became the number one morning show in Wichita, I said on air, “I will always be loyal to you guys.” And I have been. I go back to Wichita every year. Now we’re on The Bull, the country station there, and we’ve been number one there forever. When my band the Raging Idiots announced a show date at Wichita’s Orpheum Theater in the fall of 2015, we had to add another because the first sold out in less than forty minutes—faster than any other in the Orpheum’s ninety-two-year history. Yeah, literally outsold the Avett Brothers, Ray Charles, and Glen Campbell’s farewell tour. That was pretty cool. Sorry if that sounds braggy.)

I’m indebted to Wichita because it was there that we proved we could win in a place besides Austin, and after Wichita we were able to get bigger syndication deals in both Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas. And that’s when Rod Phillips arrived on the scene. Rod didn’t turn out to be the “corporate guy” I thought he was at all. He was just an ordinary dude in jeans, a polo shirt, and three-day stubble.

“You know, we’re messing up by not using you,” he said over his steak and what I was having because of whatever weird diet I was on at the time. It could have been fish with no butter; or an extra large slab of beef with extra butter to put on weight; or a veggie plate, as I also had my vegetarian chapter. “I want to put you on a couple of my stations,” Rod said, “because I think

you’re good enough to do that.”

I couldn’t believe someone outside my building was telling me I was good. For years I had been hearing Jay Shannon telling me I was good. But he was my station manager. Your own program director or station manager is always supposed to tell you you’re good—otherwise why would he have hired you in the first place? Rod, on the other hand, was the first guy on a broader level to like what I was doing and then fly all the way to Austin to tell me.

Even better than the compliments, he started putting my show on affiliates inside the company. He put The Bobby Bones Show on in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then it was Albany, Georgia. Soon, all in all we were on in more than thirty cities because Rod championed the show on a national level.

In the summer of 2012, Rod and I started talking about the idea of me putting my show on some country stations. Having grown up in Arkansas, I had country music in my blood. In fact, I got in trouble many times for putting country acts on my Top 40 show. I never worried too much about labels. It was just about finding the best music or best talent out there. Eli Young Band, Pat Green, Dierks Bentley, and Willie Nelson all came on when

I was on pop radio. And man, did I get crushed by my Top 40 music directors for putting on “country and western acts.”

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