Today is my one year anniversary here at KICK-FM.

Yes I started on Valentines Day last year, at least on the air. I was in the building parts of the three days prior but my first day behind the mic running the morning show came a year ago today.

It's been a good, sometimes strange trip so far. Most of the time that's the way it is in this crazy radio business. From last summers county fairs in the heat, to interviews with Tracy Lawrence, John Michael Montgomery and getting to know the guys in Madd Hoss Jackson better, there has been a lot of fun.

The highlight of my time so far has to be interviewing Tracy Lawrence on his bus before the fire fighters concert last June. As I said at the time, Tracy was one of the nicest and certainly most accommodating stars I've ever met. We were scheduled to video tape a short interview with him and went backstage to do it right before the show. It was a little windy that day and Tracy was afraid the wind would wreak havoc on our microphone, so he invited us onto his bus to do it. I can tell you from experience, you don't generally get invited onto a stars bus for anything, let alone by the star themselves. That's most often an off limits area. It's their private sanctuary. It was a very nice and very air conditioned bus by the way.

Take a look at the interview...

The most challenging thing I've faced in my first year here was going on just last week. We upgraded to an entirely new computer system on all four of our radio stations. If you don't know, computers run pretty much everything in radio these days. All the music you hear, all the commercials (wonderful commercials... without them we wouldn't get paid or be in business), everything except a live air personality is playing off a computer hard drive. Needless to say a major upgrade is a major project... and it was. There's a lot to learn when you trade in your 10 speed for a stretch limo, which is pretty close to what we did. Last week was full of 12 hour days for me and even longer days for a couple of others. It was all worth it though. We're loving our new system and it's going to allow us to do things better than we've ever done them before.

So it's been an interesting and fun year. The very best thing about it is just being back here... working with old friends again that I worked with over a decade ago. Dennis Oliver, Michael Rose, Jeff Dorsey and Anthony Oliver... and making some great new friends too. They say you can't go home, but I feel like I did. It's good to be home again. Here's to the next great year.

 

 

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