Straight From The Mouth
The Morning Mouth's August Interview with Kevin & Bean
(Reprinted by permission; Copyright © 2001 Talentmasters Inc.)
In the Spring 2000 ratings, Kevin & Bean finished second 12+, behind only
Spanish-language KSCA.
What's the deal with one of you moving to Seattle? Describe the
studio set up in Burbank and Seattle?
K: I broadcast from the KROQ studios and Bean actually does his part from
his home in Seattle. I have a little TV screen so I can see him scratch his
ass. The reason is because I slapped Bean with a 954-mile restraining order.
He HAD to move and do the show from there. My therapist told me it wasn't my
fault. My therapist told me he shouldn't have touched me there.
B: After ten years in a room together even Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
wanted to get apart! And they had sex as incentive! Actually, I wasn't crazy
about living in L.A. and my wife felt the same so we decided to move. It was
swell that KROQ management and Kevin Ryder were willing to try the
long-distance thing as an experiment. If it didn't work out I would have just
looked for a job in another city but my first choice was to not have to start
over from scratch. It takes a long-ass time to start to make a dent and I
felt we had enough equity in the marketplace to warrant trying to keep the
show together. It is remarkably simple for us to do the show this way. I have
three sets of ISDN lines in my house. One is the broadcast line. One is the
video monitor so I can see the KROQ studio from home. The third is my
Internet access which I use for e-mail and faxes during the program. I also
use Telos software so I can see the KROQ phone call screen down in L.A. I can
get notes from our producer, phone-op or whoever, in addition to seeing who's
on hold and why.
Talk about the role played (at various times) by Mark Davis, Jimmy
Kimmel and Ralph Garman.
K: Jimmy Kimmel was amazing when he worked on our show. He did the sports
but also wrote ideas and in general, made us funny. But he farted too much.
Mark Davis did some voices for us, but went blind. So we canned his ass. And
Ralph works us like puppets. He slips his hand up there and moves our mouths.
Every show should have a Ralph. He writes, does voices, and comes up with
show ideas. He really is amazing.
B: Kevin and I contribute as little as possible to the show. And the more
talented the support team is, the better the program! Jimmy was our sports
guy for five years but was even more valuable behind the scenes. He is an
incredible idea guy, with his own warped spin on everything. I have no doubt
that if he weren't such a hit on television (on Comedy Central's The Man
Show), he would be a major syndicated radio personality right now. Ralph
Garman has been with us for three years now and can not only do every voice
from George W. Bush to Jennifer Lopez's ass but manages to put the comedy in
each character too. It's one thing to be a mimic, quite another to be able to
improvise "in character" no matter what we throw at him. Ralph also handles
the daily showbiz reports on our show and is the authority on all sex things
too. As the only single guy on the show he is there to remind the rest of us
what goes on out there. Ralph also is the primary writer and performer on the
annual Kevin & Bean Christmas CD for charity. Mark Davis? I am not familiar
with the name.
Which one of you is Kevin & which one is Bean?
B: I am not sure. I heard that one of us lives on a farm and the other has
twins, but I can't tell our voices apart.
K: That's a funny question because there are two things that are true
about our show. One is that there are not two people in this world that are
more different than Bean and myself. We are absolute opposites. That's why
number two is funny. Two, is that nobody can tell us apart. The audience
ALWAYS gets us mixed up. How bad a job are we doing with that?
Why has it taken you so long to get syndicated?
K: Basically our management doesn't want it. They tell other stations that
they have to take our show "as-is." We will not change it one bit for them. I
honestly can't imagine why that isn't working. It seems like such a good
plan! Besides, with our signal in Los Angeles as weak as it is, we can't even
be heard in all of our own city! Let's not get greedy. We're going to have to
leave KROQ to get syndicated.
B: KROQ program director, Kevin Weatherly, is a strong believer that some
of the success of the Kevin & Bean show is as a result of it being on KROQ.
That is, we sell the station, the station's events and personalities and the
station's music. He feels that both we and the radio station would suffer if
we could no longer integrate those elements into the show full time.
How has being on in Fresno changed your show?
B: Not one tiny bit. I forgot we were on there until I heard your
question. It is an unusual situation because they have a guy who holds up a
Mr. Microphone to a radio in L.A. And plays it over the phone to the station
in Fresno. It is something like that. I'm not sure. We don't refer to it
really and don't do anything differently in respect to call letters, phone
numbers, contests, or whatever. You should ask the Fresno station about it
because I would love to know what is going on up there.
K: Basically, more people can hear our show now. An extra couple of
thousand people are tuning into our sex and drugs talk. So it's filling us
with a sense of how important we really are.
Why is the Man always keeping you down?
K: We like to rhyme, we like our beats funky, We're spunky, we like our
oatmeal lumpy, We're sick with this. And I don't think the management gets
that.
B: The Man lets you go as far as your talent and ambition will take you. I
have no real complaints about the Man. In fact if you see the Man, give him
my best.
What are the certain lines that you do not cross?
B: I am very proud that we have never had an indecency complaint filed
against the Kevin & Bean show although we do walk right up to the line. We
almost put it in but stop just short. Okay, maybe just the tip. See what I
mean? We have only been sued twice and the most recent was about five years
ago so that seems pretty good. Both times we settled out of court (thanks
Mel).
What celebrity do you regret interviewing?
K: I don't regret interviews just because they go poorly. The Cardigans
came into our studio and basically refused to answer any questions. They just
sat there and stared at us. One of them actually fell asleep during the
interview! But we get much more mileage out of that than we would of if it
had gone well. We play that over and over again. We not only welcome the bad,
we worship it. The worse it goes, the funnier it is later. Screech, from
"Saved By The Bell," we actually threw out of the studio. That we played over
and over again too. Probably the only one I regret was Sandra Bernhard. She
sat down and Bean told her that I hated her. And then I just sat there with
my face hanging out, looking at her. That was brutal.
How many guests do you have a day or a week?
K: Probably 3-8 per week. Ten if you count fat guests as two each.
B: We have as many guests as get lost in the building trying to find the
Star 98.7 (KYSR) studios on the second floor. Optimally, I would love to have
one celebrity-type guest each morning and maybe two in-the-newspaper or
current events type people on. It varies wildly. Sometimes we have a
Letterman-worthy guest line-up and sometimes you can hear the sagebrush
blowing across the prairie. And even with all that sagebrush, we still can't
get a guest that day.
How many songs do you play an hour? Would you change it if you
could?
B: We play four per hour, five in the nine o'clock hour. I would like to
play none. The two camps on that are either that the music breaks up our
momentum and gives the audience an easy time to tune out or that the songs
are strong and keep people listening through. Kevin Weatherly checked the
second box on that one, so that's what we do.
K: We get pretty frustrated with playing music because it seems like just
as we get started, we have to stop for music. So we usually just check off
the songs as if we played them and then we drop them. We do that with the
commercials too. You'd be amazed how much extra time you have each hour if
you just check off the commercials and don't play them.
If not an Alternative station, what format would you do?
B: I would love to do talk radio. That is also the closest to what I am
now so it's cool.
K: That's a tough question because we like KROQ so much. But if I had to
pick one type of format, it would be playing love songs and taking
dedications. It's really sweet when girls force the pathetic losers in their
lives to call up and say something nice to them.
What are your plans after radio or will you be like Paul Harvey and
be on the air until your vocal cords fall out?
B: Three words: California State Lottery. But now I hear you can't win if
you don't play. That's bullshit, man.
How has the Internet changed your show over the past few
years?
B: I can't even remember how we used to do research for guests, topics,
and resources before the World Wide Web. We have it 100 times easier that the
morning shows of twenty years ago. Plus the ability to get instant feedback
from our listeners through e-mail is invaluable and provides some great
content and ideas.
K: The Internet is an unbelievable tool for research. For example, when
we're talking about the disappearance of Chandra Levy and the possible
involvement of a congressman, I can e-mail Bean and show him what it would
look like if my head were on Britney Spear's body. And that's the kind of
thing that is just invaluable.
What segments or features is the Kevin & Bean show best known
for?
K: Honk for Meat. Weapons for Brownies. Naked with Grandma and Candid
Phone. No, wait; we stopped doing that 10 years ago...
B: We have fewer benchmarks than most shows. In fact, I can't think of
anything really that is done on a daily, or even weekly basis outside of
Ralph's showbiz, sex and movie features. We tire of every game or bit we do
more than a few times. I know, familiarity is important in the morning but we
were on the side of something different every day instead. I mentioned the
charity CD for Christmas earlier. We also do two or three listener singles
parties a year, all with completely different themes and locations and those
are a pretty hot ticket.
Why is the Kevin & Bean audience the best audience in the
world?
B: You jest, but let me offer this anecdote. When Kevin and I took over
the morning show on KROQ on January 2, 1990 we opened the gates of hell in
many listener's minds. KROQ had not tried a "proper" morning show prior to
then, if you can call two first-time hosts that. The station had a very
alternative image, long before that term existed for a format. Many in the
audience hated that we talked so much and everyone thought we were brought in
to compete with and copy KLOS's Mark & Brian show. They were just at the
beginning of their meteoric rise to #1 and we were two 30ish white guys just
like them. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were bombarded
with hate mail and calls for almost two years. Fast-forward ten years though
and Mark & Brian are off the radar for anyone under 40 and we have, just by
virtue of staying on KROQ all this time, been accepted by young people as a
good fit for the station.
K: We always say that because no matter what we talk about, our audience
has done it. So we bring up the most bizarre thing we can possibly think of
and the phones just light up. "O.K. we're looking for people who have stuck
utensils in their pee-holes," and BOOM! There are a bunch of people who have
done that to tell us their stories...
How do you prepare for an average show? Do you have a conference
call? Do you map out every segment?
K: Hey, slow down Larry King... one question at a time. We have a daily
sheet that has every break of the day on it, and we fill it out completely
the day before. We used to have a conference call every day at 12:30 pm so
that we had time to go the batting cages and take some hitting practice and
do some shots before we got back to the grind. We'd quite often gamble on
each other and then end up drunk in a pool of our own sick. So we canceled
the conference call because it was getting in the way of our drinking.
B: Yes, we map out the whole show in a very general way. We are free to
throw it all out if something comes up but it's nice to know when the song
runs out at 8:10 that we have an idea to work with if we need it.
Lisa May is more than just a traffic reporter for your show. Talk
about her for a minute.
K: I prefer not to time my response, but I will say that she is a very big
part of our success. Without her point of view, which is almost always wrong,
we would sound like nothing more than a boys club. She's really quite good.
Wrong, but good.
B: We are the luckiest hosts in the world to have had her on the air with
us for ten years. It seems like traffic service people usually move on after
a short time. Every time that she takes a vacation we are reminded how great
she is because we have never had a replacement sit in that made us happy.
Obviously, getting a female perspective is important but she is also a very
smart and funny woman and a great audience for, and contributing to, our
nonsense.
Which would you rather have: marketing for your show or a
raise?
B: And marketing is when you don't make your audience find you by chance?
Hmm, that sounds interesting. Tell me more.
K: That question is completely bogus. It sounds like it came from our
general manager. There are stations that pay their morning shows AND market
them. It's pretty depressing to see television commercials and billboards for
all of our competitors and know that our station is not behind us like that.
I'm sorry. I need a cry break.
Read previous Morning Mouth interviews.
Return to Menu
Copyright © 2001 RADIO ONLINE ™
| 
