Straight From the Mouth

D: Neither. We are the most atypical radio guys you will ever hear. It wasn't until we got to the Quad Cities and eventually stayed in the Quad Cities forever, that we developed our style.

You say that, but did you ever have a point where Bill or you just sat together and set up some kind of guidelines as to who does what?

M: I don't think it was ever that structured or formal. I think we both contributed to a certain extent. Don't you think that?

D: Yeah. The most organized we have ever been is about five years ago when we started at our new station here in town. Michaels or I, as the song is fading, will say, "Hey, follow me on this." That is about as much structure as we have or about as much role definition as we have.

Do you have a strategy?

M: What can you do to make the other guy laugh? I don't know if it was a consultant that told us that or how that developed, but that has always been what it is. That's why, other people use this term, "save it for the air." A joke is always funniest the first time around.

D: Of course, when we recycle it at 7:10 and 8:10 and 9:10, you know we just ham it up all over again.

Your show has always been know for it's unusual guests. Do you have a favorite?

M: Well, tomorrow morning we are talking to a guy, who for the last ten years, has eaten nothing but macaroni and cheese. Now, don't laugh, that is a marquis guest on our show. We started promoting that today and we will promote that tomorrow morning.

D: That is bigger than Clapton tickets for us.

Where did you find this guy?

M: There was this story in the paper. His phone number was unlisted. So we tracked down a relative, and asked for his number. Kirk used any kind of

we could talk to him and he said, "Sure, what do you want to know?"

You seem to have a special knack for getting through to hard-to-get people. Is there one you pulled off that stands out?

D: The one that jumps out at me right away is Columbine, and the show we did the morning of Columbine. That was a horrible tragedy and a horrible day to be on the radio, but it seemed to unify the entire country. Our show was kind of like a microcosm of that. Bill and I, Katherine and Kirk, each one of us was thinking the exact same thing. I couldn't even tell you what it was right now, but we were all so focused on putting on a show that meant something to somebody and answered some questions. We each capitalized on our ability to put it together. Kirk and Katherine working in tandem to get guests that meant something to our listeners, or Bill and my ability to draw out information that really struck home with our listeners. We still hear people talk about this.

M: We should tell you that we got pretty lucky. Katherine was able to track down the kid who was best friends with Isaiah Shoals, who was the only black kid who was killed at the high school. We had that kid on and he described what it was like for him in the cafeteria. He was crying. We didn't know at that time that Isaiah had died. We just knew that we had the best friend of the kid who was shot. So, we asked, "How is your friend." He said, "Well, he didn't make it. He's dead." It chokes me up just thinking about it. I can still hear this 16-year-old kid talking like that.

You're also known for your unusual stuntage. Is there a favorite?

M: A really fun thing, we had access to a helicopter for one morning. So we were sitting around thinking what we could do with a helicopter. We came up with, at 7 o'clock we were going to ask the listeners who was so late that they were in jeopardy of being fired if they didn't get to work on time this morning. We didn't mention the helicopter to the listeners. Kirk worked the phones and found a woman, who turned out to be great. The helicopter needed a place to land to pick her up and at work. So, you have a whole bunch of problems. Fortunately, he found a woman who lived next door to a baseball stadium and she works at a parts manufacturing plant that has a parking lot job. We dispatch this helicopter to her house, and we got one of the interns in the helicopter with her. It's five minutes to 8 o'clock when it lands. She clocks in on time.

In difference to a lot of rock-oriented shows, the female role has always been important to you. How does Katherine fit into your act?

M: She completes that third slice of the pie. She is the den mother that reels us back in when we step over the line.

D: You know what sucks, though? A lot of times I have the female perspective and Katherine is right along with Michaels.

M: There's a role, whether it is filled by Katherine or Dwyer.

D: Before we got into radio, we all went to college together at Illinois State.

Did you ever think back in college that you would be on the radio together?

D: Think about those conversations we use to have in the middle of the night. Michaels and I did overnights simultaneously on two different stations in two different markets and we would talk about how we would do things on a morning show. We never said when we had our own morning show. We just each knew that we would be in morning radio, somehow. It just so happened that it was together. It's funny he and I have been hooked at the hip. It is just a fun ride. It really is.

You said earlier that you're goal is to make each other laugh. What's on tap tomorrow? Do you have a blueprint that you follow?

M: We have two guests lined up. We are going to talk to the Macaroni and Cheese man and we got a guy who was Tim McVeigh's pen pal. His execution is coming up and we are going to talk to him. We have a major promotion that we will be finishing up.

D: And don't forget the virtual colonoscopy?

M: Dwyer had his colon reamed out earlier this week, so we will get he results of that. Those are three major pegs for tomorrow and we will fill-in the rest with what else is in the newspaper and what will be in the news tonight.

D: Going back to what we said before, "Save it for the show." Even if I'm on the board that week. Even if Michaels has notes, he covers his paper like a 5th grader. But you know what, I don't need to see it. I know that when he brings it up, it will be ok. It's my job to make it ok. If it has passed his scrutiny, I just have to trust that it's going to be good enough. When he brings something up, I immediatley run through the rolodex in my mind, for how I can skew it; how to best cook this piece of meat that he has thrown out there. A lot of times, the thing will run itself. Sometimes it doesn't. If I want to make sure that he stays positive and in a good mood, if he brings it up, it better well work.

Okay, a trick question. Do you ever monitor your competitors

M: No, we can't. I don't know how other guys do it.

Does your PD?

M: I don't want to hear about it. These guys who flip the monitors over and check what the other shows are doing while they are on the air, I don't understand that.

D: There was an exception to that, when Stern was in town. We had no choice, but to listen to what he was doing. He spent a good part of a morning tearing us new assholes. Then the local station used that as drops for the next six months. So it was very distracting to us, to the point that he pulled us off of our game without really trying. It wasn't until one of us said to the other, "What the fuck are we doing? Get off of this. Let's start doing our show again." For guys that have a 27 share, we are not the most confident dudes in the world. A lot of times we get caught up in how bad the show is sucking, before we can shake ourselves out of it.

How do you keep from being distracted by a new competitor?

M: You remember, I was all freaked out. Especially when we had Stern talking about how we ripped him off our whole career. Our former owner was on the air bad-mouthing us with him. We got Ba-Ba-Bouie calling the studio trying to get us on the air with him. So, what I did was I called you and you said, "I need to talk to Brother Wease. I need to talk to Jerry St. James. I need to talk to somebody who has been through this." Wease was great, "Here's what he's going to do..." They all told me, "Here's his next move." Here's what you guys got to do." Dwyer let stuff roll off his back a lot better than I did.

D: I was just going to say, do you get the idea of who was the guy that said, "We just got to shut up and do our show."

M: We did consciously adjust on our show, like with Bob & Tom. We consciously took out any kind of parody songs that we would try to do, simply because you can't beat them at their own game. If people want to hear parody songs all morning they will go listen to those guys. Who is your PD?

D: Jim Hunter.

Do you ever go to Jim and say, "Did you listen to the show lately? What do you think?" Do you clear things with the station?

M: We have always kind of operated under the: It's better to get permission...

D: No, forgiveness than permission.

M: How do we operate?

D: It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. I don't know who said that, but it was at the first Boot Camp we ever went to. So, God bless you for sending us. Whoever told us that has at least 33 percent in our success.

You mentioned before that your show centers around unusual guests, does some of that have to do with being in a smaller market, and not being able to get the big names?

M: Sure. I wouldn't encourage everyone to do this, but we have to lie to get crappy names. We couldn't get Leif Garrett. We had to lie and say we were a Chicago suburb. We will get the occasional break and get some celebs. You can't count on the celebrity interview. They are nice when you can get them, but the availability is too few and far between in this size market.

In spite of this, you've made national television, right? What were some situations that got you there?

M: We were in Forbes magazine not too long ago, with an annual thing that we do. We buy the largest locally grown pumpkin that we can find. The winning pumpkin came from Des Moines which is three hours away.

That's on your web site, right?

M: Yeah. We drop it into or onto something different every year. This year we wanted to see, instead of dropping it and letting it bust all up, would it be possible to put bubble wrap under it and have it not break. So, Katherine called the people at Sealed Air Corporation and they sent a whole crew and a semi-load of bubble wrap. We built a six foot pad of bubble wrap. Long story short, the CEO or whoever, was talking about this stunt in the business profile in Forbes Magazine. That was kind of cool. You don't have to do anything as extravagant as that. We did the oldest promotion and wound up on MSNBC here just a few weeks ago. There was an automatic car wash opening up, so we put guys in scuba masks and a convertible and sent them through, as the first car through. Got a camera down there and video taped it, and MSNBC picked it up.

You started out by sounding like your radio heroes from Chicago. Did you ever have a chance to meet them?

M: Yeah, I got to meet John Landecker (at Boot Camp).

Do you remember the first thing you said to him?

M: I said, "Hey I just wanted to let you know that you are one of the reasons that I got into radio." And he said...

D: Might as well say it...

M: He said, "I'm just trying to learn here like everybody else", and he walked away. I was fuckin' crushed.

D: You know who was cool? We met Fred Winston there one time. This is how dorky I am. I asked him for an autograph, and I told him that I use to pretend that I was him when I was yelling into my hair brush and wearing my sister's headphones. He wrote me the coolest thing and I have it sticking on the wall in my office and I look at it every morning before I go on the air. He said, "Never stop learning" and he wrote "respect", and to this day I don't know if he signed it, "Respect, Fred Winston" or "Never stop learning respect". Either way, I take it at its face value and I try to always inject that into what we are doing.

M: It is usually an Aretha Franklin record at 6:05. I do love the Motown. Remember my idea for Motown Mondays on the Rock station? I'm surprised we're still working.