Straight From the Mouth

now to when you first started.

Brad: I want to start to answer that with, f*&@ you Don! (said jokingly)

Rick: Brad is pissed off about everything anyway. Rock doesn't have anything to do with it. He's always pissed off about everything. I want to say that's his character on the show, but it's not. Its not something that we sat down and developed. But that's just how he is. I know you hate to hear it, but we've learned to kind of be who we really are on the air. Add a touch of show biz kind of thing to it. He just takes a more cynical look at things than most people.

In terms of change, how much did Stern or people like him, impact morning radio on rock stations?

Rick: I don't think it's so much Rock as it is Top 40. He brought that element of being yourself. Prior to him hitting it big, it was the Morning Zoo. It was 'RBQ in Tampa and Scott Shannon. It was a lot sound effects and rim shots.

Brad: Frankly we're too lazy to do that kind of stuff for one thing. So it's cool we are on a Rock station where we can say, God that's so cheesy. Truth to be told, we are just too lazy to put a bunch of bells, slides and whistles in there.

What do you do on the air in Oklahoma that most others can't or don't?

Rick: Well, we are still telling dick jokes, but now we are talking about our dicks. It's more personalized. We are doing the "Survibrator bit" where we have three women on the phone and they turn on their vibrators and use them simultaneously. Callers then call and kick two of them off the island. They really have to get a good moan, groan, just good sound effects going. We give the winner whatever we might have laying around here at the station. The KATT has always been known as one of the premiere Rock stations in America.

What do you think has contributed most to its success?

Rick: We have had good Program Directors over the years, I think. There

had some good PD's. The morning show has been a different story. The station has always out performed the morning show because of it's great programming. Now, it's the other way around. Depending on the book, Brad and I have about a four or five share lead over the rest of the station.

Brad: Yeah. We don't just talk to guys that like rock-n-roll. We talk about everything. We had some Barry Manilow tickets one day to give away. Years ago they would have said, No that's not rock-n-roll. Of course, we are going to do something with those. We do a contest and we give them to whoever loses the contest, or something along those lines. We don't just tailor and curtail our morning show to rock-n-roll stuff.

One of the tough things about doing the kind of show you do, is when there's a local tragedy, like the Oklahoma bombing. What was it like for you, as personalities, during that period?

Brad: The thing about that situation goes back to something we were talking about earlier. I like to explain it as the caricature you get at the amusement park, where it's the big giant head on a little tiny body that's riding a bicycle or something. It's you, but it's you blown out of proportion. Because it's us, we can talk about whatever it is. We had the bombing and then a year or two later we had the tornado that devastated the city. We are able to be real people and react to that naturally. For the bombing, for example, we stayed on the air for that day for 12 hours.

Rick: 12 hours straight, no music. It happened at 9:03 and we usually get off at 9:20, that's when we do our last break. When it happened, we just opened the phone and started taking information and passing along information. And talking to people about it.

Was it hard hiding your own emotions and still try to be professional and informative?

Rick: We didn't try to entertain during the 12 hours we were on the air. There is no entertaining that can be done. We didn't try to hide any emotions. We were so caught up in what we were doing it didn't hit me, and I think Brad can answer for himself, until I got home and saw the images of the bombing on television. Then you tear up and start getting choked up and everything. And in that building, etc.' We were doing our job here. We were trying to be professional, put people on the air, remind people what to do and what not to do. For example, we had to remind people to stay off their cell phones. We were telling them that we need more doctors and nurses downtown and bring rubber gloves, etc.

How does that differ from being a personality?

Rick: It's our personality, so it's not tough. Don't you think, Brad?

Brad: I think you can split it either way. I think that during a normal morning you can take your personality and be yourself on the radio, and try to spin it to a more entertaining or funny way. Whereas on a day like that, instead of taking that spin and you take it the other way and you are more serious and direct about what's going on. We did the same thing on the May 3rd tornados, but obviously, we didn't stay on the air 12 hours. It was a very similar situation, because we came in the next morning and half the town was gone.

How tough is it for radio to compete with TV in situations like that? Something that was so visual.

Brad: What we did at the time, if I remember correctly, was we didn't think of it as a competition. We really looked at it as, there is so much going on and there are so many people who are in a situation where they can't be near a TV that we are going to do what we can to pass along the information. If we saw an image on TV that we felt like people needed to know then we talked, 'Hey, we just saw on Channel 9 a fireman carrying a baby out of a building covered in blood.' We didn't really look at it as a competition.

Rick: There were so many people in their cars, in route to the location. The same thing with the tornados. There were so many people without power in their houses that had radios. We had our own group.

Let's move to something lighter. What are some of your favorite, stranger moments on the air?

Rick: We've had a ton of interviews walk out on us. The "I'm With the Band" chick, what's her name? Pamela Debarr. We just said, 'how many rock stars have you slept with?' She was offended by that. Her book is called, "I'm With the Band." It was all about all these rock stars she was with.

Brad: I think what made her mad was when I said, "So basically you're famous for nailing rock stars." Rick pissed off the old lady from Titanic one time.

Rick: Yeah, Gloria Stewart.

Brad: The thing about that is she's like 90 and in her bio she talked at length about how she's a huge fan of masturbation. And she's committed to masturbation and yada yada. So Rick asked her....

Rick: If she uses porno or magazines or anything like that when she was doing her dwiddling jamboree.

Brad: We tried to use a politically correct term.

Rick: I didn't know what to call it. I asked her if she uses pornography, and she was offended by that.

Brad: We really tried to apologize and swing it back around and she was having none of that.

Rick: We some how reeled off 30 phrases for masturbation in a row.

What are some of your tricks to having successful interviews?

Brad: I think the worst thing you can do is write down questions. If I'm going to prepare, and you want to be prepared. Like when Mills Lane was here, I wrote down Tyson/Holyfield, let's get it on...

You write thought starters rather than questions.

Brad: You don't want to sit down like Barbara Walters does, and everyone loves Barbara, but I think her interviews are brutal. She reels off a question. I don't think that flies on the radio, it needs to be more conversational. You can have more fun. You can lead to something that the guest is amused by, and you start playing off of that and opening them up a little bit more.

Who inspires you as personalities? People you look at that make you want to jump back and get on the radio and be even better?

Rick: I am inspired by that Van Winkle kid, Rip. He gets a lot of sleep. I look up to him. Seriously, I like Letterman.

Is it fair to say that Letterman changed morning radio?

Rick: Absolutely. Totally. Everybody started doing Letterman in 83 or 84.

Brad: I'll tell you two people. When I first opened my eyes to things on the national level I loved Jonathon Brandmeier. Love what he does. You talk about him and Stern bringing personality more to radio. I thought Brandmeier was doing that before Stern and doing it better. You could tell that they had a good time doing the show, he and Buzz whatever his name was. They just had a good time. And I tell you, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show is just amazingly funny. He's probably the funniest host on TV. The show is so well written and is so quirky. There are so many things that you can take from it. I try to watch it whenever I can.

Rick: We especially like it because he rips on Kathie Lee Gifford, like us.

Is there any kind of a routine that you employ when you have guests there in the studio? Is anything pre-planned? When they show up do you put them in a room? Do you have coffee, tea, fruit, whatever?

Rick: We try to put our pants back on. We have a show coordinator, Crystal, that kind of gets them ready and takes them into a green room type situation.

Brad: She gets them whatever they want. She's so good at it. She's just someone we stumbled upon as an intern. She's so good at it that we've had several guests try to take her away.

Rick: Let me ask you a question. We were just talking about this morning. What is the difference between titties and boobies? Why can you say boobies on the air and not titties? I don't get that.

What does your audience think?

Rick: I don't think that audience cares. The audience wants to say shit every time they get on the air.

Is that the new trend?

Rick: Yeah. It is such a part of the vernacular that people don't realize that they are saying a bad word. They aren't saying it in the context of defecation.

If someone wanted to reach you via email, what's the best way?

Rick: Rickwalker@KATT.com and Bradcopeland@KATT.com. We have a webpage, rickandbrad.com.

What's the natural job segue way for a personality who does mornings on a rock station?

Rick: It's a cardboard sign on the street corner.

What will the sign say?

Brad: Will tell jokes for food.