Speaker 1: Carola. She's the queen of talking. He was sown. She's
Speaker 1: only this side. You got the scoop on on the
Speaker 1: ones side. No one can do with Clie Carola Carola.
Speaker 1: No one can do with Cli Carola Carola. Hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: welcome to Hyper Caroline Hobby. I am your host, Caroline Hobby.
Speaker 1: I know music, I know people, and I know the
Speaker 1: questions do you want to ask? So let's get hyper
Speaker 1: heads up. These are adults having adult conversations, so there
Speaker 1: could be adult content. You guys, I am so excited.
Speaker 1: I have skipped Bishop joining me today. This guy is magical.
Speaker 1: It's the only way I can describe him. He You
Speaker 1: see him, and he's like a musical wizard. He walks in,
Speaker 1: he has all these turquoise rings. He's got this wild hair,
Speaker 1: this huge, light, effervescent personality, and he comes in and
Speaker 1: he literally cast a spell on you. He's amazing. I
Speaker 1: got to work with him. He started a label called
Speaker 1: Hit Shop Records, and we worked together. I worked on
Speaker 1: his radio promotion team. It was an amazing experience. He ran.
Speaker 1: He was vice president of Sony Promotion, vice president of
Speaker 1: a Risk of Promotion. He's worked in record labels in
Speaker 1: the industry for over forty years. He's worked with Lisa Lowe,
Speaker 1: Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood, everyone at Sony. He's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: He has so many stories. He got started off as
Speaker 1: a fake radio personality when he was a kid talking
Speaker 1: into a cardboard box and performing for the whole neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He is incredible. His stories are great. So I'm so
Speaker 1: excited you guys welcome skip Bishop. So I'm here with
Speaker 1: Ski Bishops. So strange, it's fun. Is it weird that
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing Yeah, it is your employee. I think I
Speaker 1: interviewed you once for a job and then you made
Speaker 1: me um from a special ops regional I did. That
Speaker 1: was really fun. That was you know, that really worked.
Speaker 1: I really did. That was one of our craziest ideas.
Speaker 1: And it's just so worked. Did I really interview you
Speaker 1: or did we just say, hey, should we do this?
Speaker 1: I think you just said, hey, let's do this. I
Speaker 1: think I did, so okay, so going back and we did,
Speaker 1: and we did, and we did a really good job.
Speaker 1: So I worked for you at hit Shop Records. To
Speaker 1: all you guys listening, Skip Bishop is a promotion extraordinaire
Speaker 1: which most people don't know anything about what record labels are,
Speaker 1: or what working in promotions means or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's a mysterious profession, it is, Isn't it kind of
Speaker 1: give us a breakdown of what that even means to
Speaker 1: be head of promotions at a record label. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can um, But you know, to someone who you know
Speaker 1: out there in the in the outside world, they don't
Speaker 1: really realize that there's this very mysterious profession called record
Speaker 1: promoter and they sort of work in the shadows. They're
Speaker 1: not openly known. But if they make it all happen,
Speaker 1: and you think about the importance of it that take
Speaker 1: a great song like like the House of Building, the
Speaker 1: House It built Me, or you can go all the
Speaker 1: way back to Marvin Gay What's going On? Or Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan like a Rolling Stone, and all these songs that
Speaker 1: either launched a revolution or became the theme of a cause,
Speaker 1: or was maybe your daughter's first dance at a wedding,
Speaker 1: or was something that will always remind you of a
Speaker 1: beach relationship that you had in nineteen something. Somebody had
Speaker 1: to get those records played. They did not just mysteriously
Speaker 1: appear on the radio, which is what probably most people
Speaker 1: think yeah, they think, ah, these songs are so great,
Speaker 1: and they and there is a machinery that that gets
Speaker 1: records on the radio. There's there's a there's a serious profession,
Speaker 1: there's an education process, there is an economic structure, their
Speaker 1: staffs of usually at a record company, it's the biggest
Speaker 1: staff on a record company. That the staff, right, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. There's a huge staff that has to get
Speaker 1: records played correct. It takes a team. It takes a
Speaker 1: team that. It also takes about a mountain of money,
Speaker 1: a ton of money. Yeah, it's really not. It's not cheap.
Speaker 1: It takes just you think about the travel alone. And
Speaker 1: when you're trying to break a new artist, let's say,
Speaker 1: let's come up with an artist stealing angels. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Those they never quite made it, did they? You know
Speaker 1: they did. They did pretty darn well though. But you
Speaker 1: think about just how many radio stations they walked into.
Speaker 1: I think it was a million dollars at least spent.
Speaker 1: It had to be, it had to be. And they
Speaker 1: were so talented, thank you, thank you. Adorable stealing it's
Speaker 1: so talented the world will never know. You know where
Speaker 1: I saw stealing angels for the first time. I think
Speaker 1: I told you this at Al Gore's house. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we did playoffs. Yeah, and that was the first time
Speaker 1: I think I met you. And it was the first
Speaker 1: time I saw stealing angels. And we got in trouble
Speaker 1: there because we used to always like post pictures and
Speaker 1: we always had video cameras, and we started videoing everything
Speaker 1: in the Secret Service confiscated all of our videos. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. And that was the first time I
Speaker 1: ever really learned something about politics. That was quite a
Speaker 1: that was quite a little event. A war said that
Speaker 1: the lay public knows about two of what really goes on.
Speaker 1: I think I agree. But I think that in today's
Speaker 1: immediate environment, immediate environment where you look at the things
Speaker 1: that have happened in the last forty eight hours in politics,
Speaker 1: things are changing. People are starting to really be able
Speaker 1: to because of social media and because of of everyone's
Speaker 1: life being so broadcast and so visible that people are
Speaker 1: starting to find out now that you can run, but
Speaker 1: you can't hide. That's right. I mean, I'm I'm frightened
Speaker 1: when I when I checked the news in the morning,
Speaker 1: which I do, I say, Alexa, can you give me
Speaker 1: the news headlines. Did you re name Syria Alexa? Oh god,
Speaker 1: you are so yesterday cyber girlfriend Alexa is my cyber girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and she's also so many other people's cyber girlfriend's. That
Speaker 1: site where married men go to cheats. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I certainly do not. I am. I
Speaker 1: am married to the most beautiful woman in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh God, who happens to be in the room. So
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the name of it later. Yes, your wife,
Speaker 1: your beautiful wife, Diane is joining us and m h
Speaker 1: the dog and this is really cool. Emma used to
Speaker 1: be your dog. Now Diane was never your wife's, but
Speaker 1: Emma was your dog. And now Emma is our dog.
Speaker 1: So when I was working at head shop, I had
Speaker 1: a friend who had Emma who ended up staying at
Speaker 1: the house with this a show called a d D
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah, it's a rabbit trail. And so when
Speaker 1: my friend Byron, he moved in with me in my
Speaker 1: roommate Emily and his son Booker and Emma the dog,
Speaker 1: and then I ended up keeping Emma brought in the
Speaker 1: office every day. You ended up falling in love with her,
Speaker 1: and now Emma is your dog. Yes, yeah, it's really funny,
Speaker 1: and that you let us bring dogs to the office.
Speaker 1: It was a dog friendly environment. It was we had
Speaker 1: rules if they if they pet on the floor, out
Speaker 1: they went. Unless you're ruby. Yeah, your ruby can stay
Speaker 1: on the floor. And they had to take their little
Speaker 1: walks every day and if they made too much noise,
Speaker 1: they were banned. But they weren't banned for long because
Speaker 1: we missed them. We had a good time. It okay,
Speaker 1: when I ask you a few questions, a little rapid fire,
Speaker 1: I gotta move the Buddha all right. If you had
Speaker 1: to have one word to describe yourself, what would it be? Tornadic? Tornadic?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I came up with that. It's
Speaker 1: just you have so many moving pieces swirling at all times.
Speaker 1: I am tornadic. I'm tornadic. My life is tornadic, but
Speaker 1: in a good way, in a fantastic There is nothing
Speaker 1: slow and peaceful going on in my life. It is
Speaker 1: all one big spinning mess, and it's a beautiful mess.
Speaker 1: But you can juggle the spinning mess. I'm a juggler.
Speaker 1: How do you juggle the tornado? Tornadic spinning mess? I
Speaker 1: don't know where I came up with tornadic. It just
Speaker 1: just gave to me. I've I've always done that. I
Speaker 1: like doing a lot of things, a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: and a lot of and have you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of different interest and a lot of different friends, and
Speaker 1: that you know, keep everybody connected, and it moves fast
Speaker 1: and it's really exciting. I mean, my our audience over there,
Speaker 1: we were talking about was it twenty minutes ago that
Speaker 1: we were thinking about doing this in New York? And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden our lives have been spending sometimes
Speaker 1: out of control, but mostly in control. For for as
Speaker 1: long as I can ever remember it. I do like
Speaker 1: it that one. What was your upbringing like? Did you
Speaker 1: grow up with a lot of moving pieces all the time?
Speaker 1: I did. My mother was an absolute, uh dynamic person.
Speaker 1: She raised myself and my sisters and uh she was
Speaker 1: a high school teacher and she she she she wrote
Speaker 1: books as her life went along. She had people in
Speaker 1: and out of the house all the time. People would
Speaker 1: come and stay in the house, and they would like
Speaker 1: these these kids that were either bounced out of their
Speaker 1: house or people that needed a place to stay for
Speaker 1: six months. We're always in with us. And there was
Speaker 1: like twelve people at the dinner table and everyone had
Speaker 1: different less names where you eyes get it because you
Speaker 1: and Diane always have like Sunday dinner and all everyone
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood and their dogs, like everyone can come over.
Speaker 1: We do and they do. So you get that from
Speaker 1: your mom, I guess. So. Yeah, she always said come one,
Speaker 1: come all. Yeah, And it was it was a wonderful environment.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was a kid, people were sitting
Speaker 1: around in our living room playing guitars and singing. And
Speaker 1: some of them I knew who they were, and some
Speaker 1: of them I didn't. They were poets, there were painters.
Speaker 1: It was all a very artistic group. Uh. Yeah, she was.
Speaker 1: She could draw. She she was a pretty good writer. Creative. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she wrote a book and she wrote a weekly column
Speaker 1: in the newspaper. And she was very very smart. But
Speaker 1: she was crazy as hell. She was really wacky. Was
Speaker 1: her crazy like could be annoying. It was a little annoying.
Speaker 1: She was. She loved to She was kind of a
Speaker 1: somewhat of a puppet master. Okay, yeah, okay, so but yours,
Speaker 1: I've met your beautiful mother. Oh yes, my parents are fantastic,
Speaker 1: they really are. Your dad's very very cool too. I
Speaker 1: met him. He survived a shark bite bite attacked to
Speaker 1: the face. Excuse me, you didn't hear about that? The
Speaker 1: World Wide Web, he was, We don't have the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web yet. Over here on sneed Road, he was
Speaker 1: spear fishing in the Bahamas with my whole family and
Speaker 1: got a fish and a shark bit him in the face.
Speaker 1: And you're kidding. Yeah, he was excited about it. How
Speaker 1: does his face look great? Just a few scars and
Speaker 1: he thinks it adds character and I'm sure it does.
Speaker 1: That is so exciting. Where are you from, Danville, Virginia?
Speaker 1: What brought you to Nashville? What brought you to music?
Speaker 1: I know you haven't always been a Nashville You've been
Speaker 1: in New York. You've done all sorts of record label stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: Nashville is kind of a funny story because we were
Speaker 1: in h New York. We were living in New York
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Love living in New York, Yes,
Speaker 1: and we miss it very much. Was there yesterday and
Speaker 1: I called home and I said, we have got to
Speaker 1: move back here because miss it, miss it, miss it.
Speaker 1: Do you think you love it? Love it? Love it?
Speaker 1: I hope so at some point. But we love Nashville too.
Speaker 1: I mean we ideally we'd like to have a house
Speaker 1: here in Nashville, a house in New York, and a
Speaker 1: house in Mexico. You have to well we do you
Speaker 1: have the Mexico in the Nashville. So I had it
Speaker 1: would just skill a little apartment in New York, tiny,
Speaker 1: one little bitty. All you need is tiny apartment in
Speaker 1: New York, a little bitty bitty. Our first department in
Speaker 1: New York was about as big as the closet right
Speaker 1: over there behind that curtain. Though it was great. The
Speaker 1: living room, the dining room, the bedroom, the dressing room,
Speaker 1: and the den were all one room. And then there
Speaker 1: was a kitchen that was separate. And it was really
Speaker 1: that was it was like we go on vacation. We
Speaker 1: go into the kitchen. It was like a trip. I
Speaker 1: love that. It was very nice. So how did you
Speaker 1: get into music and the music industry and all of
Speaker 1: that from your town, your little town, because it was
Speaker 1: your family. Never know, I've never done anything else to
Speaker 1: do it, because it's I was born knowing that I
Speaker 1: wanted to do it. You know what existed? Well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you why. Because when I was tiny, all I
Speaker 1: did was listening to the radio. Just it's all I
Speaker 1: ever did, and and collect records, and that's all I did.
Speaker 1: That's all I did, and I mean and it was
Speaker 1: it was crazy. I tell the story all the time
Speaker 1: that my parents used to tell because I remember when
Speaker 1: I was really little, my parents bought some new carpet
Speaker 1: and the carpet came in a huge cardboard roll. It
Speaker 1: was like this big around and it was like about
Speaker 1: seven two I guess it was about seven ft long.
Speaker 1: It was this big tube. And they pulled the carpet
Speaker 1: out of the big tube and at the end of
Speaker 1: you know, one end was wide open. The other end
Speaker 1: was closed off and had a hole in it about
Speaker 1: this big. So I took the two the big carpet tube,
Speaker 1: and I put it on the porch and I put
Speaker 1: propped it up on a propped it up on a chair. Yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: should we should? Should we have headsets on? But we don't, okay,
Speaker 1: So I would I took my little record player out there,
Speaker 1: and what I would do is I put the I
Speaker 1: propped the tube up on the railing and put the
Speaker 1: other end on a chair, a ladder back chair, and
Speaker 1: I would play a record on my record player, and
Speaker 1: then I would talk into the hole like okay, that
Speaker 1: was the searchers with bumblebee, And before you know it,
Speaker 1: all my my buddies in the neighborhood, the kids in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood would be sitting in the front yard and
Speaker 1: I would do it every day I was there, DJ
Speaker 1: and I would play it through the carpet thing and
Speaker 1: I would I would move the tube over to the
Speaker 1: record player when the record was playing, and then it
Speaker 1: was time for me to talk, and I would change
Speaker 1: records with one hand and talk about the record that
Speaker 1: I was about to play. That's creative. Well, it was fun.
Speaker 1: And then the audience started getting bigger, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is working. I'm building up a fan
Speaker 1: base all right here on carpet Radio. Oh you should start,
Speaker 1: I think so. And okay, it has a sad ending.
Speaker 1: Oh no. I left the carpet tube on the porch
Speaker 1: and there was a very very bad storm and it
Speaker 1: just warped it. How long did you have it? Weeks?
Speaker 1: Months and maybe a month. I'm going to call it
Speaker 1: six weeks, but you know, and I had first I
Speaker 1: had to walk up and down the street and say
Speaker 1: and say hey, guys, you need to come down and
Speaker 1: find out that. You know, I'm doing something kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I'm playing all my favorite records and I dude. Okay,
Speaker 1: the dude wasn't invented, but yeah, it was a blast.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. And they would come and
Speaker 1: then you know, get to your fan base that now
Speaker 1: you're no longer going to DJ. Well, it was pretty sad.
Speaker 1: That's a little hard the neighborhood. Well, I found a
Speaker 1: way around it. Yeah, I did. Um. I was every Saturday,
Speaker 1: uh W y PR, which was the town's top forty
Speaker 1: radio station, would broadcast from the Ballue Park Shopping Center,
Speaker 1: not Blue Balu Balu Park Shopping Center, and every Saturday,
Speaker 1: Dandy Dan Henderson would go up there, and I started
Speaker 1: riding my bike up to see Dandy Dan. I befriended him.
Speaker 1: I would go get coffee for Dandy Dan. I would
Speaker 1: was his gopher and after a while he invited me
Speaker 1: into the van and I would do things like you know,
Speaker 1: used to work for free for people. Oh, absolutely, there
Speaker 1: wasn't work. It was heaven. It was heaven. You were
Speaker 1: his errand boy, I was his errand boy I would
Speaker 1: do whatever he needed me to go get me a newspaper. Okay.
Speaker 1: Then he started making little quips about me on the air.
Speaker 1: He would say, you know, the skip the kid or
Speaker 1: whatever he called me, is back again. But one day,
Speaker 1: one fateful day, this is shortly after the carpet tube incident.
Speaker 1: Am I moving too fast? How old am I? Now?
Speaker 1: I'm really I'm I'm thirty eight. Now I was probably nine.
Speaker 1: I could have been somewhere between seven and nine, which
Speaker 1: would have made me eight if my math is correct.
Speaker 1: I was eight. I could have been nine, Okay, so
Speaker 1: somewhere in there, which would be eight. Anyway, So I've
Speaker 1: been hanging out with Dandy Dan all day. I even went,
Speaker 1: oh by the way, I would get him coffee at
Speaker 1: one store, and they knew I was getting it for dance,
Speaker 1: so they would give it to me for free. And
Speaker 1: then I started going to the ice cream store and
Speaker 1: they would I would say, I'm getting an ice cream
Speaker 1: comfort for Dandy Dan, and then no, no, it was
Speaker 1: for Dandy Dan. I would do one for myself of
Speaker 1: course that was they never charge. It was like the jack.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. So what was the Fateful Day? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that part. A d D radio So
Speaker 1: what happened was, is I take my ride my bike
Speaker 1: home after I had a great day hanging out with
Speaker 1: Dandy Dan It's been it was great, are having a
Speaker 1: great day, so I am. I get home and the
Speaker 1: Danville be which is the afternoon paper, the registered Danville
Speaker 1: Register was the morning paper. The B was the afternoon paper. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's review. Which one was the morning paper, the Register?
Speaker 1: The Register was the morning paper. The afternoon paper was
Speaker 1: the B. I get home Saturday afternoon. The Saturday B,
Speaker 1: that's what we referred to it as the Saturday B
Speaker 1: is on the on the and I pick it up.
Speaker 1: I take the little rubber band off. Newspapers used to
Speaker 1: come in rubber bands. I take it off and unfolded,
Speaker 1: and right in the bottom of the front page it said, uh,
Speaker 1: soul singer. I don't even think they use the word
Speaker 1: sould back then. R and B singer Sam Cook was
Speaker 1: shot in his motel room in Los Angeles and is dead.
Speaker 1: Details Intomorrow's Sunday Register. And I thought, this is long
Speaker 1: before you had you know, like internet or anything else,
Speaker 1: and you know Dandy Dance sitting out there enough, you
Speaker 1: had breaking news. I had breaking news. I got on
Speaker 1: my bike. I slammed that thing into the basket. It
Speaker 1: was I was rank. You were just peddling as fast
Speaker 1: as you could. Oh please, my little I was probably
Speaker 1: about eight inches off the ground. You knew you had
Speaker 1: breaking news? I did. I was thinking. I was thinking
Speaker 1: Dan does not know this. This is big. So I'm peddling.
Speaker 1: So I go up and I, hey, am I you're
Speaker 1: so excited. Oh boy? Uh? So I slide, you know,
Speaker 1: do a skid mark, and up the bike and I
Speaker 1: walk up to the to the window of the van
Speaker 1: and I just very cinematically pressed it up there against
Speaker 1: the glass with with you know, my hair falling in
Speaker 1: my face and I'm gasping for breath. I'd pedaled for
Speaker 1: so hard. And Dan looks at it and he says,
Speaker 1: this is a really big news. And as he said,
Speaker 1: come in, you're going to have to read it. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, did you of course? I did?
Speaker 1: Did you find words? I did? I did? I got
Speaker 1: into Oh of course not. They didn't ask about the carpet.
Speaker 1: So I get into the van and he puts the
Speaker 1: little headphones on me. Back then, they were ceramic. There
Speaker 1: were ceramic headphones with like a metal thing going over
Speaker 1: your head. And he says, what you're gonna hear is
Speaker 1: you're going to hear do you know when news breaks
Speaker 1: out whip breaks in? And I said, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what I've heard it on. He said, okay, when you
Speaker 1: hear that. After that, you're going to hear the did
Speaker 1: did did? And when you hear that, you read this.
Speaker 1: And he took the actual piece from the from the
Speaker 1: newspaper and he edited it. It's hard to say, that's
Speaker 1: a tough one. Uh So luckily that word was not
Speaker 1: in the copy. Yeah, he revised it much better. And
Speaker 1: he said, you know, he took the whole thing and
Speaker 1: then he tagged it out for w y PR News.
Speaker 1: I'm skip Bishop and he said, when you hear the
Speaker 1: deep didet, I'm going to open your mic and you
Speaker 1: read it just as it is. Yes, my heart was
Speaker 1: coming out of my ears. Have you ever been that
Speaker 1: nervous again in your life? Do you think now? No?
Speaker 1: But I have to tell you I steadied myself right
Speaker 1: before it all happened. And he was playing a record
Speaker 1: that you do not remember because you weren't even thought
Speaker 1: about back then, by an artist called Millie Small, and
Speaker 1: the song was called my boy Lollipop. It was a
Speaker 1: big record. Did you have a radio voice at eight
Speaker 1: years old? So how did you talk real? A little
Speaker 1: bit more high pitched back then? Probably I was eight
Speaker 1: year old. Probably, I don't know what it sounded like.
Speaker 1: There was no I don't I really, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was ever recorded. I doubt it. Uh. So Dan,
Speaker 1: I'm we're listening to my boy Lillypop. That it Di
Speaker 1: did you make my heart go flip? It flop? That
Speaker 1: it did it? And all of a sudden, bam, he
Speaker 1: hits the news sounder. Boom when news breaks out, whipper
Speaker 1: breaks in and then the deep did he did heat start?
Speaker 1: And what Dan did, which was a mistake and I
Speaker 1: will never forget it, and I knew it was a
Speaker 1: mistake when he did it. He dumped out of the
Speaker 1: record without turning it down, so it go went on
Speaker 1: the air. But then the sounder came in, so it
Speaker 1: was like Millie Small was singing along and people were
Speaker 1: grooving in their cars, and then it was boom down
Speaker 1: when news breaks out. So I said, oh my god, damn,
Speaker 1: that's wasn't cool, man? Uh in my head, I said that.
Speaker 1: So the D D D comes on and I read
Speaker 1: the copy and I and I nailed it. I just
Speaker 1: and I knew I had nailed it. I knew it
Speaker 1: feeling it was incredible, you know that feeling after you're
Speaker 1: like you're on stage, you're doing a song and the
Speaker 1: song goes great. Yeah, Yes, smacked it out of the park.
Speaker 1: And then he brought up the sounder and here comes
Speaker 1: Millie small back. He goes right back into the record
Speaker 1: and I'll never I fell back on the on the chair,
Speaker 1: and I remember I fell back and I closed my eyes.
Speaker 1: I was catching my breath and then I looked up
Speaker 1: and Dan is doing this thing where he's nodding. He's nodding,
Speaker 1: not saying anything. He's just nodding. And he said, stick
Speaker 1: with it. You said stick with it? Do you know what? No,
Speaker 1: And I have googled him several times with maybe we
Speaker 1: will find him on He was incredible. I will tell
Speaker 1: you this confidence he did well. Yes, And I would
Speaker 1: hang around every radio station in town every I mean
Speaker 1: I would every weekend. I would go from w BTM
Speaker 1: to w d v A to YPR in any event
Speaker 1: where they were, I was there and I got to
Speaker 1: be buds with all this is available that's very like um.
Speaker 1: For a child so young to have that kind of
Speaker 1: confidence and hustling power is very was a really hustling patty.
Speaker 1: It was pure joy, nervous to go talk to adults
Speaker 1: and put themselves out there like that. Oh well ship,
Speaker 1: it was just fun. It was fun. I would go.
Speaker 1: But you weren't scared, that's the thing, Like most kids
Speaker 1: would be too scared to do it. I would knock
Speaker 1: on the door at radio stations on the weekend until
Speaker 1: someone would come, and it was usually the weekend jock,
Speaker 1: and they'd say, they come on in, and they let
Speaker 1: me sit in the control room. They did, you know,
Speaker 1: because I would, you know, can I get you anything?
Speaker 1: You know, like you know, I can go to the store,
Speaker 1: I can get you some coffee. No, no, no, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I would be quiet or or I
Speaker 1: would ask questions. Sometimes I said, look, you can't come in,
Speaker 1: my boss is coming. But they would give me Billboard magazine,
Speaker 1: you know, which was like the you know that would
Speaker 1: they'd give me free copies of records gold. So that
Speaker 1: sparked it. Did that lead to you? Were you on
Speaker 1: air as a radio personality? First? Okay? So then you
Speaker 1: became a radio personality and that lasted for how many years?
Speaker 1: How long were you on air as a radio I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to think about that, the voice of stations.
Speaker 1: I was mainly a morning show. Dude, did you like
Speaker 1: me on the morning show? I did? That was the
Speaker 1: only show I liked. Would you like about the morning show?
Speaker 1: Not you? You were ahead of the world. You had
Speaker 1: to jump on everything. It was more of a creative palette.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just go in there and do the time
Speaker 1: and the temperature and talk about what record was coming
Speaker 1: up next and talk over the intros. This was top forty,
Speaker 1: by the way, pop pop. So what how did you
Speaker 1: find your breaking news? Like where did you gather that?
Speaker 1: Because point shows you have to know what's happening. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you we we rewrote the newspaper. You just
Speaker 1: read the news things. We rewrote it. We rewrote it.
Speaker 1: I had a couple of people in there and we
Speaker 1: would bring in the morning paper. And you also had
Speaker 1: a teletype, you know, you would have the machine that
Speaker 1: would from a p or U p I which would
Speaker 1: constantly spit out all the news and you'd get there
Speaker 1: early enough to take all the human interest stories, all
Speaker 1: the headline stories and then you take the local news
Speaker 1: out of the newspaper, which we just blatantly stole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what't really plagiarism, was just you know, like it is
Speaker 1: the news, this is what's happening, and you know, and
Speaker 1: we would just rewrite it. But how do you know
Speaker 1: the news was correct? Who cares? It's certainly not now,
Speaker 1: is it. Well? No, I've realized now doing some hosting
Speaker 1: and working with some news news taken straight off the internet,
Speaker 1: which isn't really like, well, no strong sources. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: are finding that out, aren't. So tell me one of
Speaker 1: the craziest stories that happened as a morning show host
Speaker 1: and some of the celebrities that you worked with that
Speaker 1: blew your mind? Um, I really, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: can't off the top of my head. I can't think
Speaker 1: of who that. Probably my favorite interview I ever did
Speaker 1: of all time was Vincent Price. Do you know who
Speaker 1: he is? Yeah? You do, not do He's so good looking.
Speaker 1: He's all dead though, Yeah, but when he was alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have actually somewhere in this office, it's that guy
Speaker 1: right about Diane. That's my son in law. That's Andy.
Speaker 1: Andy's got some good eyes. Going on. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: self portrait he painted at himself. Vincent Price, uh was
Speaker 1: in town speaking and I got to do the interview
Speaker 1: ask him, Well, it's really funny. I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: it was. Uh I had a lot of questions prepared
Speaker 1: for him about films, and I knew he was an
Speaker 1: avid art collector. And I was so excited because I
Speaker 1: think I had seen every Vincent Price horror film ever
Speaker 1: made and loved them. I loved him. I mean, you
Speaker 1: couldn't collect movies back then. This was before you could
Speaker 1: collect movies. You just got to see them when they
Speaker 1: came on. But uh I knew a lot about his
Speaker 1: films and I was so ready. But when we got
Speaker 1: into the interview, on every hand he had a turquoise ring.
Speaker 1: Is that where you picked up your turquoise rings? That
Speaker 1: is exactly the moment top it way way way, So
Speaker 1: I go and you can ask you about your rings,
Speaker 1: because here's flash rings. You're known for your rings, your
Speaker 1: turquoise rings. That's where it started. It's it's exactly where
Speaker 1: it started. To go by them all the next day. No,
Speaker 1: I was very poor. I was a poor college student.
Speaker 1: But he had these cool turquoise rings, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop looking at him. And you know, we get seven
Speaker 1: eight minutes into the interview and I say, Mr Price,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you your rings. You're they're just beautiful,
Speaker 1: They're stunning. Could you tell me about him? And he says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they're all different designs of turquoise and this
Speaker 1: is uh. I love them. And we spent probably a
Speaker 1: good piece of the interview talking about talking about his
Speaker 1: rings and and that that moved on to that he
Speaker 1: collected other arts besides painting, he collected other things. But afterward,
Speaker 1: after the interview, we chatted about rings a little bit
Speaker 1: more and I just, you know, I thought, man, that's
Speaker 1: the coolest thing ever. So I have been collecting turquoise
Speaker 1: rings since that day. Wow, and you have you wear
Speaker 1: five every day, five turquoise rings. And that's well, that's
Speaker 1: not that's not in the five Okay. So then you
Speaker 1: move on to promotion. So how did you decide to
Speaker 1: leave radio world and morning show and start working at
Speaker 1: a record label and how did you move from pop
Speaker 1: radio to country. Here are some of the acts that
Speaker 1: you broke in country music because you had a seven
Speaker 1: year number one streak at Sony. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. Well, I was there for seven years and
Speaker 1: we had a tremendous amount of Number one. I think
Speaker 1: that the time that I was there, we had a
Speaker 1: total of I don't remember, forty seems to come to mind.
Speaker 1: I can't do that. Well, it was, it was several
Speaker 1: things number one. It was a really good time for
Speaker 1: music and we had a strong roster, and and Sony
Speaker 1: still does that time. When I got there, I was
Speaker 1: at Arista proper came into work at Arista. So sometimes
Speaker 1: people don't know this. There's like a major label, which
Speaker 1: is Sony, and then sometimes there's like labels underneath it. Correct,
Speaker 1: so there's four labels I think under at the time.
Speaker 1: At the time it was Arista R c A where
Speaker 1: I was the first record yeme I ever had was
Speaker 1: at our c A Records on the pop side, where
Speaker 1: I met that girl over there, Beautiful was hanging out
Speaker 1: in New York winking at me. She moved to New
Speaker 1: York and she's following me around and she's trying to
Speaker 1: get me coffee just like I'm Dandy Dan Anderson. We
Speaker 1: had formed a company in New York after I had
Speaker 1: gone from our CIA Records to m c A Records
Speaker 1: on the West Coach Records. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're pop rock everything but country rhythm records. Uh Urban Records.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, where do you want to? Good Lord? Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know where to start in sync? Uh? Rick Astley,
Speaker 1: Jefferson's Starship, Uh, Lou Reid Uh, Elton John the Band Live,
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley not not not as a current hall of notes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lisa Lope Yeah, Lisa Lowe, who is still one of
Speaker 1: my dearest friends in the world. Yes, yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually we became very very close during the state days
Speaker 1: because she was unsigned at the time and we boom
Speaker 1: boom boom boom. Anyway, so we had left New York
Speaker 1: and gone to Los Angeles, and I was at m
Speaker 1: c A Records. Then we left there because we had
Speaker 1: decided to start our own company, which my my business
Speaker 1: partner over there, Diane and Skip have decided to start
Speaker 1: their own company, even which my wife was in the
Speaker 1: music business. She was before she retired. Uh. Which here's
Speaker 1: how she retired. Promotions she did. Okay, So y'all met
Speaker 1: in promotions, Yes, yes, promotions we're talking about earlier where
Speaker 1: they are kind of what launches. We're the ones that
Speaker 1: go out and get the record. Yes, that's where we were,
Speaker 1: the hands and feats of getting a single play exactly.
Speaker 1: That was a long time ago. We have really just
Speaker 1: bounced all around radio. Yeah I like it. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you and I and have met working promotions. You
Speaker 1: are both in the pop world in l A. And
Speaker 1: we decided we're going to start our own company, which
Speaker 1: was a promotion and marketing company, and we went to
Speaker 1: Florida for a few minutes to play with our baby
Speaker 1: who had just been born, and we moved back to
Speaker 1: New York after that, and we started a company called
Speaker 1: Bishop Bait and Tackle. And if you think of what that,
Speaker 1: you know what that really means. You know that we
Speaker 1: would bait and tackle. We were a marketing company and
Speaker 1: people would call all day, gone, do you guys have
Speaker 1: uh worms and shiners, and like, no, we're not really
Speaker 1: a bait and tackle company, but but we we get that.
Speaker 1: So that company grew and grew and grew and grew,
Speaker 1: and um for one reason or another that we won't
Speaker 1: get into, we just really got tired of it. It
Speaker 1: was really successful, unbelievably fun, but it was just it
Speaker 1: ran its course and almost ran me ragged. It was
Speaker 1: just so huch craziness. It was crazy. So we decided
Speaker 1: to bull the plug, shut it down, and moved to
Speaker 1: from New York City, living on Broadway. We decided, okay,
Speaker 1: where do we want to move to? Where do you
Speaker 1: think we moved to? I know where you moved because
Speaker 1: I researched you some little tiny town on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain, Lookout Mountain. Yes, we moved to Lookout Mountain. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we like, we want to piece out from city last.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and we it was like Green Acres. Did
Speaker 1: you like it? Well? Have you ever seen the movie
Speaker 1: The Shining? First of all, okay, okay, alright, let me
Speaker 1: The purpose was we were going to move there and
Speaker 1: I was going to write a book. And you have
Speaker 1: been to have you written a book? About eight chapters
Speaker 1: in skit? Bishop? I have known you not for three years,
Speaker 1: and you've been talking about writing. Let me get word
Speaker 1: press unt. I'm writing the book and a lot of
Speaker 1: these stories are in the book. So when it's out,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear him again. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: started writing. So we went to Lookout Mountain. We bought
Speaker 1: this big old rambling house on the with this gorgeous
Speaker 1: view of a bunch of trees and wild turkeys and
Speaker 1: the rocks. Yeah, it was so peaceful. So we moved
Speaker 1: up there and in about it took about six weeks
Speaker 1: for me to go completely out of my skull. It
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, in heaven and y'all did
Speaker 1: y'all did a fat diet for moving? You were so
Speaker 1: ready for, like a change in a diet that you
Speaker 1: but then you got there and you wanted out. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's not that we wanted out, but we knew like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what I mean? It was there was
Speaker 1: no one there. There was the town was one thousand people.
Speaker 1: There was one thousand people in our building in New York.
Speaker 1: And then we're in and this town and it was
Speaker 1: so isolated and crazy. And I would go down to
Speaker 1: the grocery store just to have conversations with people, and
Speaker 1: I would drive him nuts, are like, hey, let me
Speaker 1: let's talk about something, and chase him around and so uh.
Speaker 1: Then butch Waw, who I worked with my entire career,
Speaker 1: and Joe Galante who was running Sony at the time,
Speaker 1: but that too correct. He's the guy that hired me
Speaker 1: into from radio into our c A Pop. So he
Speaker 1: took you from the morning show, butch Wall took him
Speaker 1: in the morning show to our pop promotions. Correct. Now
Speaker 1: he's taken you to Nashville. Correct, but has been like
Speaker 1: you're kind of like he's he I'm telling you, he
Speaker 1: and I have been and we today we have two
Speaker 1: companies together now we have Studio to Be and we're
Speaker 1: we have Hits Me Up. And he was the best
Speaker 1: man at our wedding and to work with and for
Speaker 1: that many years and still love each other. We love
Speaker 1: each other. Best man at your wedding is an amazing sign. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a funny story. So we're on the
Speaker 1: way to the church and we're getting married, you and Diane, Yes,
Speaker 1: and and her. We're getting married. Butch and I are
Speaker 1: in one car going to the church. This is in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Diane's in another limo, which is a whole another story,
Speaker 1: because the limo driver got lost. It was twenty minutes
Speaker 1: late to the wedding, so you thought Diane was not
Speaker 1: showing up to the wedding. Correct, Oh my gosh, did
Speaker 1: you have a heart attack? Yes, Anyway, I'm already sweating
Speaker 1: bullets because I'm getting married, right, I mean, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course yes. I'm like, I'm calling onto the cell phone.
Speaker 1: They had just been invented. Uh and nothing, I'm getting
Speaker 1: nothing and awful. Yeah, And I understand that she used
Speaker 1: some very un Christian language to the limo driver who
Speaker 1: got lost in Manhattan traffic. So we're all standing there,
Speaker 1: and you know, the music is playing and people are
Speaker 1: looking and up. Anyway, the point is is on the
Speaker 1: way over. I'm already a nervous ray and BT says
Speaker 1: to me in his true Southern accent, he says, you
Speaker 1: know the only difference between my tuch ceda and your tuxeda.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, what's that? He said, I tried
Speaker 1: my own first. And I'm like, oh god, do I
Speaker 1: need this? And he and the whole time we were
Speaker 1: backstage or whatever you call it, at the church and
Speaker 1: he's looking out going she ain't coming, she ain't coming.
Speaker 1: Your tuxeda doesn't fit and she ain't coming. So you
Speaker 1: really didn't try your tuxedoing of course I did. He
Speaker 1: was just giving me grief. So anyway, she shows up
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half late. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: we get married? And where were we going with this? Friendship.
Speaker 1: So thank god I could keep talking a little bit.
Speaker 1: I haven't try worse than you, though. So now he
Speaker 1: plucked you out of pop radio, and he looks he's
Speaker 1: not running our c A or is he running Sony?
Speaker 1: He is the president. When uh, when I left pop radio,
Speaker 1: he was the regional guy for our c A. Pop.
Speaker 1: He hired me to be one of his regionals. Then
Speaker 1: he got promoted to New York to run the promotion department,
Speaker 1: and shortly thereafter he called me and said I need
Speaker 1: you in New York. So he took me from Texas
Speaker 1: to New York. And boy did we have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun and gotten a lot of trouble. Trouble trouble, trouble.
Speaker 1: Martini's as big as your head. But it was great.
Speaker 1: But we got a lot done. We broke a lot
Speaker 1: of records, and we tried a lot of We took
Speaker 1: a lot of chances and did a lot of innovative things.
Speaker 1: Actually said a quote about you wish I have to read.
Speaker 1: It's so cute. He goes asked the question, if you
Speaker 1: could trade last with anyone for one day, he would
Speaker 1: it be, And he said, I would trade with Ski Bishop.
Speaker 1: He's the most creative person. I know. I would like
Speaker 1: to get in his head and find out what's going
Speaker 1: on in there? What I never heard that? Where'd you
Speaker 1: find that on the internet. I gotta get that. He
Speaker 1: actually quotes you a lot. He talks about you a
Speaker 1: lot on that talk about each other with a big buddies.
Speaker 1: You talk about him too, Yeah, he's the one of guy.
Speaker 1: So then so now you are in pop Radio New
Speaker 1: York together. So now he gets asked to do what
Speaker 1: at Sony He uh, well, he well, he was the
Speaker 1: head of promotion. He was a senior VP. I think
Speaker 1: he was the e v P, the executive VP of
Speaker 1: the label. And Joe Glani came up short, yes, Joe
Speaker 1: of our CIA in New York. Yeah, And Joe Glani
Speaker 1: left Nashville and came to New York and became the
Speaker 1: president of our c A pop went from country to
Speaker 1: pop correct and we were all up there, you know,
Speaker 1: we were it was hill Billy's running the show. It
Speaker 1: was like a reality show before reality. Country folk were
Speaker 1: doing great. Yeah, we had a good time great. So
Speaker 1: then what happens now, how do y'all get to know?
Speaker 1: So I go to m C A boom, Joe goes
Speaker 1: back to Nashville and become chairman of Nashville. Uh. Butch
Speaker 1: goes with him to coome become the e v p
Speaker 1: g M of Sony Nashville, which wasn't Sony at the time.
Speaker 1: I think it was still b MG. And then the
Speaker 1: merger happened. Uh. There's mergers everywhere left and right. Um,
Speaker 1: and I was still out on the West Coast with
Speaker 1: m c A. So when I left and I started
Speaker 1: Bishop Peyton Tackle, they were already fully entrenched in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and my one of my jobs in my company was
Speaker 1: to cross their records to pop so for organ crossover.
Speaker 1: Correct a matter of fact. Um, Butch and Joe brought
Speaker 1: Lone Start to New York and said, I gotta play
Speaker 1: this record. Do you think we can get it played
Speaker 1: on pop radio? And Butch and I took it to
Speaker 1: to Z one hundred, the biggest top forty radio station,
Speaker 1: and of course, and then there's Kissing l A. I
Speaker 1: have to say that because John Ivy is probably watching
Speaker 1: and he would give you really mad at me if
Speaker 1: I said that Z one hundred was bigger. But I
Speaker 1: happen to be living in New York, so Z one
Speaker 1: hundred We convinced them to play it one time, one
Speaker 1: time and the things that you have to like really
Speaker 1: work hard to get the lately. Oh it was crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean it would go around and around and I
Speaker 1: have to go back in. I will look, I would
Speaker 1: plead my case, and they go, we don't play country.
Speaker 1: Records were a top forty radio station in New York.
Speaker 1: We're leaning dance right now and I'm going play it
Speaker 1: one and I had and here's what I had. Here's
Speaker 1: what I said. I said, Look, if you play it
Speaker 1: one time in mid day and if you don't get
Speaker 1: any reaction and it's nothing, I won't work you on
Speaker 1: any more records. What does the reaction meaning calls? Back
Speaker 1: then it was phone calls. Now it's it's that an
Speaker 1: immediate reaction through things have changed and we could talk
Speaker 1: about that later. But back then it was phone calls
Speaker 1: and and sales. But it's still sales to a degree.
Speaker 1: They radio steal monitors that, but it then it was
Speaker 1: mostly phone calls in the phones. Balloonded, Yes, yeah, one time,
Speaker 1: one play in the middle of the the you know,
Speaker 1: hot Rock and Flamethrow and Zee one d from high
Speaker 1: top of the world's rad question, Yes, why is it
Speaker 1: so hard sometimes to convince radio to play songs? Because
Speaker 1: they are the gatekeeper and I love radio so much,
Speaker 1: but it is because their playlists are so tight, and
Speaker 1: it's so expensive, and it's money driven because sometimes people
Speaker 1: might think, oh, a superstars putting out a song, or oh,
Speaker 1: an act is putting out a song. You know what's
Speaker 1: really more important than money when it comes to a
Speaker 1: radio campaign is passion and belief true that it's true
Speaker 1: you you can have a tremendous budget, and and there's
Speaker 1: three things. Passion belief in great music, because if you've
Speaker 1: got a lousy record and a trillion dollars, you can't
Speaker 1: make it a hit. You can't. You maybe get it
Speaker 1: played and put it in position to be a hit,
Speaker 1: but you it won't become a hit if it's not
Speaker 1: a hit. If you've got great music and you know
Speaker 1: it and you feel it and you believe in it,
Speaker 1: and it's like they become they become your children. If
Speaker 1: those songs you will you like it's only they're very
Speaker 1: similar to the same thing. It's it's it's a similar
Speaker 1: emotion to your to how you love your children and
Speaker 1: I love my children. So you have to love the
Speaker 1: songs you're promoting us. You can't do it. You you do,
Speaker 1: but you can make yourself believe. Sometimes there have been
Speaker 1: times that we have to make ourselves believe. But the
Speaker 1: key is is when you're in a position to where
Speaker 1: you can influence what gets what gets released as a
Speaker 1: single because you know that one is better than that one.
Speaker 1: So how do you know when a song is better
Speaker 1: than another song and it's gonna work on radio? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you there there is a way and
Speaker 1: it's and a lot of people don't believe this, but
Speaker 1: I do. And I've had a fantastic career because I
Speaker 1: do believe it, and I and I and I will,
Speaker 1: I will fight for this till the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Is people are born with the gift. They are born
Speaker 1: with the gift of hearing hit records. It's a weird gift.
Speaker 1: It's a you know, it's like, well, I like to
Speaker 1: be you know, if you know if God said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to make you a fantastic accountant or we're
Speaker 1: gonna make you a brain surgeon, you know, of course
Speaker 1: you have to do all that. You have to study it,
Speaker 1: and you have to but you study it because you
Speaker 1: love it. There's people who study the art of records
Speaker 1: and hit records because they love it and they become
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the I can give you
Speaker 1: a list of three hundred and twenty six things that
Speaker 1: I am so bad that I just terrible. But I
Speaker 1: know I get that feeling when I hear one that
Speaker 1: it's good, it's good. No, no, no, no, it's as
Speaker 1: time goes by, and you do it, it's like everything else.
Speaker 1: It's like flying a plane or blame professional football. It
Speaker 1: becomes your d n A that you know that track
Speaker 1: is going to work faster than that track, and that
Speaker 1: track may work not work at all, but if it's
Speaker 1: a great song, and you know it's a great song.
Speaker 1: But there's sometimes you hear a great song, you're like
Speaker 1: radio doesn't won't play this slow? Well, that's true, and
Speaker 1: then you have to be you have to be creative,
Speaker 1: and you have to be tenacious and sometimes like the
Speaker 1: contents too serious and they don't want to. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the the toughest and best record I ever
Speaker 1: worked in my entire career was Brad Paisley's Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Future. We had a it was right after Barack
Speaker 1: Obama was elected for the first time, is when that
Speaker 1: it really was welcome to the It really was. That's
Speaker 1: what the song was about. It well, at least the
Speaker 1: song was about a lot of things. The song was about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it landed itself. And remember the last verse was it
Speaker 1: addressed racism and uh. And we had pushback. We really
Speaker 1: had pushback over that song. There were people who were
Speaker 1: upset that, you know, that their candidate didn't win, and
Speaker 1: they would say, I didn't vote for the guy, and
Speaker 1: it's a valentine to our to Barack Obama, and I
Speaker 1: don't think my listeners want to hear it, and I'm going,
Speaker 1: it's a great song about the world changing. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not about Barack Obama per se. It's about the
Speaker 1: world changing. And if you don't think it is, you
Speaker 1: need to get out of your job. And we really
Speaker 1: had to wrestle and fight and go back and people.
Speaker 1: There were people that refused to play it. There were
Speaker 1: people that played it and took it off because they
Speaker 1: intentionally said, oh, it's not working for me, but they
Speaker 1: didn't really know. There were other people who would pound
Speaker 1: it because they thought it was an innovative piece of art,
Speaker 1: but it was tough. When do you know when to
Speaker 1: give up the fight for a song? Never? Never a song?
Speaker 1: I that? Or when when you're seeing nothing And if
Speaker 1: you've given it all you have and radio is just
Speaker 1: resisting and the sales aren't happening, then that's then you
Speaker 1: you know, if you're getting nothing, it must be a
Speaker 1: hard feeling when one of your babies isn't taking fight. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: and it happens, um it happens. But you know, the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing is is these artists have other songs, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's songs that you believe in so much
Speaker 1: that don't grow grow legs or wings. And it's a
Speaker 1: difficult thing. But if you if you know, and you
Speaker 1: stay in it and you're seeing the signs, if you're
Speaker 1: seeing you know, back then it was all about sales,
Speaker 1: but now it's all about streams and uh streaming, uh
Speaker 1: a lot of that. You want to have like millions
Speaker 1: of streams. You want to have millions of streams, and
Speaker 1: you still want to have sales. Yeah, and you have to.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really interesting record promotion has changed. You
Speaker 1: have to I talk about, you know, the endgame being
Speaker 1: terrestrial radio, but I just like the radio station you
Speaker 1: turn on in your car and a lot of time. Correct,
Speaker 1: that's the one with the antennas, the ones that that
Speaker 1: you listen to. And but ten years ago we didn't
Speaker 1: have what we did ten years ago. But there was
Speaker 1: a time that we didn't have Serious XM. Right, we
Speaker 1: did not have Spotify, we did not have Pandora. Uh,
Speaker 1: we didn't have robust social media campaign. Also those are
Speaker 1: important to notice because terrestrial radio in your car, they
Speaker 1: are run by major corporations and they are only allowed
Speaker 1: to play a certain playlist for the most part, which
Speaker 1: is like twenty songs. Right, Well, it depends on the company.
Speaker 1: It depends on the company. And x M they can
Speaker 1: play whatever they want. So that's a whole new appot.
Speaker 1: They don't play whatever they want. They just take more
Speaker 1: chances and they're more aggressive. But I will tell you
Speaker 1: some radio stations are as aggressive. But the corporate stations
Speaker 1: tend to have guidelines and they also have they rely
Speaker 1: on let's look at the two difference of the models. Uh,
Speaker 1: Spotify and Serious XM rely on subscript and where radio
Speaker 1: relies on add money and and and time spent listening.
Speaker 1: And they want everything to be familiar and they you know,
Speaker 1: theyre it's a different it's a different yardstick. And luckily ratings,
Speaker 1: ratings turned into dollars for for terrestrial radio. It's a
Speaker 1: different game. And but but since the whole landscape is changing,
Speaker 1: you've got um I Heart Media spending so much attention
Speaker 1: and time and creativity with I Heart Radio an app,
Speaker 1: so that you know, they have changed their model because
Speaker 1: we we didn't have that before. We didn't have before
Speaker 1: you went to radio, and you really didn't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot more except for touring and and those sort
Speaker 1: of in marketing and press in print. But now it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful new world where you can break a record
Speaker 1: off serious, Spotify, Pandora, all the other sites. Uh and
Speaker 1: and really I can't ever downplay the importance of social media.
Speaker 1: You can break a record on social media and in
Speaker 1: some cases, in some cases, radio is the last piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. That's still yeah, yeah, but it it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, these records will become hits and other sources.
Speaker 1: But that's great for radio because they someone someone will
Speaker 1: take the chance that they don't have to take because
Speaker 1: they're constantly being asked to take chances on new side
Speaker 1: everybody is. That's what we radio gets a little bit
Speaker 1: like I can't adda right now. I can't because they're
Speaker 1: having people call them every day saying add this song,
Speaker 1: add this song, and they're like, I have fifty songs
Speaker 1: that people want to add today. I was on the
Speaker 1: other side of that desk for a long time. And
Speaker 1: if you allow the amount of phone calls, if you
Speaker 1: take the amount of phone calls that you get, you
Speaker 1: will never get any work done because a day endless.
Speaker 1: Well at first you've got the major labels, then you've
Speaker 1: got the you've got the smaller labels, then you have
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the smaller independence and it's
Speaker 1: it's very different. It takes of course, that's how you
Speaker 1: find the hits, by the way, because a lot of
Speaker 1: those records break out of the lower sectors. And but
Speaker 1: you you have to have someone on staff usually to
Speaker 1: be able to filter, filter, not filter, but really take
Speaker 1: the information, compile it. Let's look at what's happening, break
Speaker 1: down the charts. Uh, I mean, it's it's it's quite
Speaker 1: a thing. I mean, if you you can't spend the
Speaker 1: whole day on the phone with every record promoter, because
Speaker 1: your head would explode. So and also I think it's
Speaker 1: quota segue. So you speaking of record promoter. So you've
Speaker 1: had record promoters calling you wanting you to play their
Speaker 1: songs when you worked on the on the other side,
Speaker 1: like the morning shows and at the radio station. Correct.
Speaker 1: Then you move and you're actually being the promoter calling
Speaker 1: who you used to be saying play my record. So
Speaker 1: you're like, you totally get it. You get both sides
Speaker 1: of the fence. Then you go, you're working in a
Speaker 1: major label. When you leave Sony, you start your own
Speaker 1: independent label, which is like a really big deal because
Speaker 1: it's so much harder to get independent acts played. But
Speaker 1: at the same time you have more freedom and more flexibility.
Speaker 1: How was the difference of working in a major and
Speaker 1: running an independent Well, I'll tell you the thing that
Speaker 1: that always comes to mind was I would think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we let's do a campaign. We need here's what we
Speaker 1: need to do. We need to do a marketing campaign
Speaker 1: on this particular artist, on Natalie Stove all in the Drive.
Speaker 1: What we need to do is this. And before I
Speaker 1: was so used to picking up the phone and calling
Speaker 1: someone in the marketing department or someone in in the
Speaker 1: art department, or someone in the A and R department.
Speaker 1: I would think, well, if I want to do that,
Speaker 1: I kind of kind of have to do it myself.
Speaker 1: There's no one to call, and you're, you know, a
Speaker 1: small group of people. How many people were we twelve? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not a big staff. And uh, it really
Speaker 1: brings out the best in people. You find out everyone
Speaker 1: rises to the occasion. And it was fantastic because I
Speaker 1: think that we were a very creative, a very driven,
Speaker 1: and a very tenacious group of people who had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. It was so nice. Oh we had
Speaker 1: a blast. It was so yeah. And um, that's that's
Speaker 1: really the main difference. And it's really funny. You can
Speaker 1: have a gazillion hits at a major label and then
Speaker 1: you call and say, hey, I'm starting my own label. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they go, okay, well what do you got your
Speaker 1: your even some of your best relationships musically, you're kind
Speaker 1: of right back in the back of the line. You
Speaker 1: have to sort of start over. Luckily, you do have
Speaker 1: the relationships that were people that will give you a
Speaker 1: shot and they will listen to your music. Acts and
Speaker 1: major labels always have the manpower and which we never
Speaker 1: have to hear are some of the acts that you
Speaker 1: were breaking at Sony. Well, the first record I was
Speaker 1: handed was Carry Carry had just when I got there
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, she had just one IDOL
Speaker 1: and uh, I love Carrie. And the first when I
Speaker 1: first got there, like when even before I even showed
Speaker 1: up for work, it was when I was just kind
Speaker 1: of hanging around the office. Uh. Butch handed me a
Speaker 1: white label copy and said, this is the first record
Speaker 1: you're going to work And I put it on and
Speaker 1: it was Jesus Take the Wheel. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be easy, because this is awesome. And
Speaker 1: I it was familiar with Carrie because I watched Idol
Speaker 1: and she came to the office and she was just
Speaker 1: such a little munchkin back then, and she was so
Speaker 1: hard working and so sweet. Uh. And at the time
Speaker 1: we had just launched when I got there, Brooks and
Speaker 1: Done had believed, which was they were probably four weeks
Speaker 1: into it, and it was slow going because people were going,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's a that's a really long record. And
Speaker 1: it has the same tempo as first time ever I
Speaker 1: Saw Your Face by ROBERTA. Flack, which is something you
Speaker 1: won't remember. It was a slow song and it was
Speaker 1: tough and it took ballads are harder to break than
Speaker 1: you know. Even though Brooks and Dunna had a gazillion hits,
Speaker 1: they it took it took fifty weeks to get that
Speaker 1: record all the way through Wow, when they were at
Speaker 1: the top of their game. Fifty weeks. That made my hair.
Speaker 1: I had brown hair when I started working at Record
Speaker 1: because it looks great. Thank you so much. Those songs
Speaker 1: that are superstars take like what twenty weeks? Well, a
Speaker 1: typical back in those days when it was when Brad
Speaker 1: and Carrie and Brooks and Dunn and Alan Jackson and
Speaker 1: when we were you know, we had Kenny Chesney and uh,
Speaker 1: you know we Miranda was you know, it'd come to
Speaker 1: us from Sony. A an act would be from fourteen
Speaker 1: to twenty weeks, some as much as fourteen as quickly
Speaker 1: as fourteen weeks. The charn they are the chart is
Speaker 1: very slow now. And why did artists cycle out? Like
Speaker 1: why does artists be huge stars like Alan Jackson and
Speaker 1: Brooks and done and then all of a sudden they're
Speaker 1: just it's just they're not the ones that are the
Speaker 1: huge stars on the charts anymore. Well, I will tell you,
Speaker 1: because just like everything else, it's a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of it's it's it's life, it's you know, the artists
Speaker 1: are they have earned the right to try different things.
Speaker 1: I remember when Alan came in with he had two
Speaker 1: consecutive albums. One of them was Read on a Rose,
Speaker 1: which was produced by Alison Krauss, and it was brilliant.
Speaker 1: It was brilliant, and but it was not your typical
Speaker 1: radio record. It was Some even called it a side
Speaker 1: project for Alan. He had had a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: hits and he kind of took some time off and
Speaker 1: did this brilliant record, and I I thought it was
Speaker 1: a masterpiece. And but then I was also thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I gotta get this thing played. And you know,
Speaker 1: country radio, we did. We had a song on there
Speaker 1: called a Woman's Love which went top five. It could
Speaker 1: have been number one. It was definitely inside the top five,
Speaker 1: and it was the most radio record on there. But
Speaker 1: the rest of it was a very ethereal esoteric, beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautifully produced love song collection with you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of pain, and it was almost like Alan had listened
Speaker 1: to a Joni Mitchell record. Yeah, and then after that
Speaker 1: he came with his gospel record, which sold two and
Speaker 1: a half million units, but radio wasn't going to touch it.
Speaker 1: So Alan had earned the right to take chances. But
Speaker 1: that's what happens. I mean, you know, you look at
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney and you look at Elton John. You know,
Speaker 1: they right symphonies, and they write whatever they want to write.
Speaker 1: And and you know, is pop radio or is rock
Speaker 1: radio gonna play Paul McCartney song. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he's going to give them the song that they want,
Speaker 1: because he's going to do what he has earned the
Speaker 1: right to do. So maybe when they're making their more
Speaker 1: creative albums, someone else just slips up into that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be. It's just like it's just
Speaker 1: like the young kids in the school. There's always new
Speaker 1: geniuses coming along, and you know, some people will rus
Speaker 1: to the top and some will. Really there's it's it's
Speaker 1: the way life is. It's the people. Just because you're
Speaker 1: not having radio hits does not mean that you're not
Speaker 1: a viable relevant artist. Sometimes it's even more so because
Speaker 1: just because you're having radio hits doesn't mean that your
Speaker 1: music because that radio plays one type of record. Records
Speaker 1: that are gonna work for the masses. Someone could be right.
Speaker 1: Case in point, when you know there's there's rock artists
Speaker 1: who have written symphonies and they you know, do they
Speaker 1: hit a water audience? Of course they don't. And I
Speaker 1: always always go back to an artist that I loved
Speaker 1: working with, Bruce Hornsby. Bruce keeps up with Joe and
Speaker 1: Butch and I. We were there when Uh. He had
Speaker 1: a tremendous record called The Way It Is and three
Speaker 1: other hits on that album. And Bruce is a unbelievable musician, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: He's one of the smartest, most brilliant musicians. His albums,
Speaker 1: if you follow them, are some of the most musically
Speaker 1: sophisticated records. He's still putting out these albums that will
Speaker 1: never get typical terrestrial radio, but they're brilliant masterpieces because
Speaker 1: he goes out there and does art, and he's still
Speaker 1: tours and does great but he has written classical pieces,
Speaker 1: he's written soundtracks. He's UH, and he is having an
Speaker 1: unbelievably successful career producing the art that he is there
Speaker 1: to produce. He's happy with that, happy with it, and
Speaker 1: he's still practices his piano two hours a day. Two
Speaker 1: hours a day. The man practices. That's crazy serious. Okay,
Speaker 1: have three more questions for you. Okay, what does the
Speaker 1: music industry mean to you? Everything? I just love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. I think of my family and the
Speaker 1: music industry and my friends are one big thing. Because there,
Speaker 1: it's I've never known anything else. And I just love
Speaker 1: the people in the music business. Their characters. They're smart,
Speaker 1: they're creative, their geniuses, they're shysters there, hucksters, their comedians. There,
Speaker 1: it's like a Faulknerian type thing. It's just fantastic and
Speaker 1: I and I love it, and I doubt I'll ever
Speaker 1: do anything else. And I love songwriters. Oh, I love
Speaker 1: songwriters because they're there. They're like Picasso and Monet and Renoir.
Speaker 1: They're there creating their art and I just love them. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's what the music business means to me. It
Speaker 1: means everything. How would you describe God? Well, God is
Speaker 1: that's a that's a crazy question because I'm a deeply
Speaker 1: spiritual person. Uh. I believe very much. I have a
Speaker 1: very deep sense of faith, and God is a force
Speaker 1: of goodness and light and love, love being the operative
Speaker 1: word there. I think that the feeling of true, unquestioned
Speaker 1: love is as close to you can get to touching
Speaker 1: God's face, the love that you have for a child,
Speaker 1: the love that you have for your friends and family,
Speaker 1: the love that you have for that you would give
Speaker 1: your life for something because you know that there's something
Speaker 1: beyond it that's touching the face of God. And and
Speaker 1: I love talking about the fact that sometimes you can
Speaker 1: see what I call the tangible touch of God's love.
Speaker 1: And I don't think God is an old white man
Speaker 1: sitting up on a throne where with a beard, you know,
Speaker 1: calling the shots with a scroll of who's right and
Speaker 1: who's wrong, because I think that I think that the
Speaker 1: you know, the Jewish faith, and the Catholic faith, and
Speaker 1: the Baptist faith, and the Muslims and and the some
Speaker 1: of the Eastern religion. I'm fascinated with a religion called Caldai,
Speaker 1: which is a modern um Asian religion, which is fascinating.
Speaker 1: But if you look at them all, it's kind of
Speaker 1: all about this. It's all aimed at a force, a
Speaker 1: force which is love. Why do we have to suffer?
Speaker 1: Because that's life? Life is is real. You know, our
Speaker 1: bodies are real. You know we're not perfect. Our bodies
Speaker 1: aren't perfect. We that's why we This is a shell
Speaker 1: and we decay and we fall apart. And why do
Speaker 1: some people get sick? Because it's life. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: this time. It's what you know. It's like a beautiful
Speaker 1: flower that wilts. That's what happens. This is just what
Speaker 1: life is. And and there's pain. Pain is very much
Speaker 1: a part of life. And then there's happiness. And if
Speaker 1: you believe in love and the power of love, it
Speaker 1: starts to overtake you and you start doing the right
Speaker 1: things and you start realizing the power of of of
Speaker 1: believing in loving others and loving other people and in
Speaker 1: this powerful word called respect. That you know, you look
Speaker 1: at someone and so it's so easy to judge, and
Speaker 1: you don't judge, and you find out that somebody, my grandfather,
Speaker 1: who was the smartest man I've ever met in my life,
Speaker 1: loved him. That's his portrait over there. You can't see
Speaker 1: it on camera, but he looks over my desk. He
Speaker 1: was the president of a college. He had a PhD
Speaker 1: and divinity and a PhD in theology. I don't know
Speaker 1: the difference of the two. Genius, eccentric genius. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I got quite that far, but he
Speaker 1: was a very very smart man. He was also the
Speaker 1: mayor of the city and he was so smart. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he always told me, he said, you can learn
Speaker 1: something from everybody. And he said you need to listen.
Speaker 1: And he's I remember he he lived in the President's
Speaker 1: house on the college campus, in this beautiful home, and
Speaker 1: my grandfather Pop would love to sit and talk to
Speaker 1: the to the people that worked in the garden. Then
Speaker 1: there was an old African American dude that sort of
Speaker 1: had a cot and everything in the basement where he
Speaker 1: need to live there, but he had his own room,
Speaker 1: and my grandfather would go down there and sit for
Speaker 1: hours and talk to him. And I want to said, what, Dad,
Speaker 1: why do you always talk to I can't remember his name,
Speaker 1: Clarence or Amos one or the other. And he would say,
Speaker 1: because you learned something from everybody, he said, he's so smart.
Speaker 1: He has so much wisdom, like everyone does. They said,
Speaker 1: you need to listen to to everybody's story because everyone,
Speaker 1: as wisdom, has something that they can offer you and
Speaker 1: you can learn from. It was great and it's true. Okay,
Speaker 1: So one more question on this topic. And then I'm
Speaker 1: wrapping up why are we here on this earth? Because
Speaker 1: you're very smart, well for one reason, to break records,
Speaker 1: to break artists wide open and bring joy to the
Speaker 1: world through music. Because I know that that's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a joke, but I think that we're here
Speaker 1: to identify what we love and what we find our
Speaker 1: joy in, and to make the world a better place,
Speaker 1: and to create as much positive energy we can and
Speaker 1: move on to the next level, and to teach our children. Crosby, Steels,
Speaker 1: Nash and Young. Okay, so leave your light. This whole
Speaker 1: interview has been inspiring, but I like trap up, but
Speaker 1: leave your light. So leave some inspiration of how you
Speaker 1: would like to inspire people. Um. I think the only
Speaker 1: thing that I could really say is open your mind,
Speaker 1: question authority, love the neighbor, and search for peace and
Speaker 1: remember the emotions of of of hatred and the emotions
Speaker 1: you have and when you get angry is just you
Speaker 1: being a human person. And we're again we're inferior beings.
Speaker 1: I mean we we we we come and we go.
Speaker 1: You know, our time on this earth is short. Even
Speaker 1: though it's when I let I pick that back, it's
Speaker 1: kind of long's it's long and short, but you know
Speaker 1: the real is it's it's a it's a rotating wheel.
Speaker 1: And enjoy your time on earth and make the place
Speaker 1: a better place, and and just be kind to people
Speaker 1: and respect them, and it just it pays off in spades.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. I don't either,
Speaker 1: But is it kind of like whatever you put out
Speaker 1: you get back? I think more so. Yeah, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: O lord Caral's the Queen. I hope you loved all
Speaker 1: of the adventurous, wild, colorful stories of Skit Bishop. He
Speaker 1: is such a character. I love him so much. Next week,
Speaker 1: I'm super pumped. I Adam Wakefield joining me. He was
Speaker 1: the runner up on the Voice for season ten, and
Speaker 1: he talks all about that journey, what it was like,
Speaker 1: who he is as an artist, the whole process of
Speaker 1: being on TV. It's so interesting. And then I have
Speaker 1: American Young joining me for the second half and they
Speaker 1: are a duo signed to Curb Records. They're both incredible
Speaker 1: songwriters and musicians and their own right, they've written some
Speaker 1: awesome songs. John Stone wrote Me and My Gang for
Speaker 1: Rascal Flats, Seven Days for Kenney Chesney, he wrote kiss
Speaker 1: my Country, asked for Blake Shelton, A Woman Like You
Speaker 1: for Lee Bryce Um Only guy could love you more
Speaker 1: than new song out by Jared Neman. Christie wrote Cheater
Speaker 1: Cheater for Joey and Roy when my all time favorite duos,
Speaker 1: and she was also in a duo called Bombshell. She
Speaker 1: had singles on the radio called Fight Like a Girl,
Speaker 1: nineteen and Crazy. They are both so talented and this
Speaker 1: interview is so funny. We did it at the end
Speaker 1: of the day and so everyone's feeling a little loopy,
Speaker 1: so we have a lot of offs. So you guys
Speaker 1: make sure to tune in next week for Adam Wakefield
Speaker 1: and American Young See y'all then Bye. M