Fragile Eggshell Mind

We’re broadcasters.  It’s what we do.  Perhaps we’re fighting for our relevance…our very careers.  I’m 50, and pretty soon I’ll have lived half of my life in Montana – the state where my dad was born and raised.  I love my job and the people that I work with and I love Montana.  I love the fact that I’ve been a big part of bringing new things to commercial radio in Montana.  I’ve been a part of some of the first fully digital stations in Montana, progressive talk radio, FM talk and FM sports radio.  We certainly were among the first if not THE first in the state to originate programming on FM HD channels and bring them to a large audience on FM translators.  And from the early 90s in Bozeman with the Moose through today in Missoula with the Trail I’ve been fortunate to have the latitude to play a lot music not often heard on commercial radio in this state.

Every day I read how terrestrial radio is dying and every day I read advice from consultants who insist that we must blur the line between radio and the internet.  They’re probably right.  Perhaps our biggest competitor in town is totally focused on building their local and national websites and converting their local radio advertisers to online.  They’re probably right….but they have a national platform of dozens of markets and the economy of scale to launch those web initiatives.  I’ve got some nice digital transmitters feeding an antenna atop a mountain overlooking town.  We’re going to make the most of that.  We’re going to do radio…and events.

I’m the General Manager of 4 FM stations.  These are big market stations in Montana but small market pretty much anywhere else.  I sure didn’t get to be a GM because of my radio sales ability.  I’m responsible; detail oriented and have an operations background.  And I have a pretty amazing sales staff including one of our owners who is in the building every day.  Our other owner is in our Helena market every day.  He’s an accomplished engineer with an operations background as well… and he also has a very strong sales manager to lean on.

I like my job because no two days are alike, but this past Friday was just about as unique (and uniquely Montana) as it gets.  When I got to work I could not hear one of our stations on my HD desk radio.  That radio is probably one of a handful of HD radios even in service in Montana, so it wasn’t a crisis as our standard FM signal was just fine.  Still I knew that if I didn’t get up the mountain early that morning, I wouldn’t get another chance for a couple of days.  Off I went in the station 4WD for the 45 minute trip to the top of Mount Dean Stone.

Even with the bumpy ride I knew I had a flat about 3/4^th of the way up.  There’s something especially frustrating about a flat tire up on a mountain.  There’s a ton of thoughts that immediately hit even before you get out from behind the wheel. (Do we even have a spare?  Is it full size? Is it fully pressurized?  Am I going to be able to find a flat enough space on this road to change a tire?  Christ, I hope the jack is actually in here)  Luckily, all those questions were met with the best possible answers and I was back on my way in about 20 minutes.  Thankfully the flat didn’t happen on my earlier trip up the mountain…which was close to midnight a couple days prior.  I’m not even sure what the HD issue was, but it was solved with a simple reboot and I was heading back down in no time at all.

I figured that I’d better get the vehicle to the tire place and have the flat fixed or the tire replaced so we would be ready for our next mountain trip.  It just so happened that the RV that our “Jack FM” station is giving away was also at the same shop and ready to be picked up and transported to the local Harley dealer for an event that night.  I jumped in the 1978-vintage “Jack Shack” and drove it over to Grizzly Harley Davidson so it would have its place of honor for that night’s “Battle of the Bands.”  That promotion went well Friday night as there was a big crowd there to see 5 local bands play for the right to open up for Great White and Slaughter (another Jack FM promotion) next week.

I had other plans and would miss the Battle.  I returned to the station and did my afternoon shift on the Trail and then headed to Fairfield, Montana 150 miles away.  We cover the Loyola Rams on our ESPN station and they were opening the season vs. the Fairfield Eagles.  Since we also cover the Missoula Osprey and they were playing at the same time I didn’t have a play-by-play guy, a board-op, any sports broadcast equipment….or a radio station to air the game on for that matter.  Not deterred, I had found an iPhone app earlier in the week and determined that I could do a low-tech, internet-only play-by-play broadcast with a mic and an Apple product.  You may well debate the wisdom of the General Manager driving 300 miles round trip to Fairfield, MT (population 708 and the smallest Class “B” enrollment in the state) for an internet sports broadcast.  Well, Loyola is our team…they won the state championship last season.  We (okay, I) thought it would be a nice service for their fans and for our sponsors to cover the game.  Plus I’m likely going to do a few more of their football games this season and I was anxious to get my first look at the team with the reduced pressure of the internet-only broadcast.  One of my salespeople actually knew someone in Fairfield and we confirmed a couple days in advance that AT&T cell service was a strong 3 bars at the football field.  What could go wrong?

I actually caught up to the team bus somewhere between Lincoln and Simms. I thought I’d just draft along behind all the way, but there were too many hills and I was forced to pass on one of the long uphill stretches.

I was all set to go in the press box when it was announced that the game would be delayed 30 minutes due to lightening in the area.  Good thing, as my app (which I had tested 3 times in Missoula) would not launch in Fairfield.  I used the extra time to contact our owner in Helena.  We managed (this is the Cliff’s Notes version…) to figure out how to use a different app I had already installed on an iPad that I brought to connect via ip protocol to a receiver we have in Helena.  We then mapped that receiver to the online stream link already created and waited for the storm to clear. It didn’t.  Two hours later the game was cancelled.  I had a lot of time to think about all this on my drive back to Missoula.  I was at least satisfied that we COULD have pulled it off had the weather cooperated.

We’re broadcasters.  This locally-owned company aims to survive and thrive despite all the challenges that technology and the economy can throw at us.  We work hard for our clients and listeners whether it’s throwing a Battle of the Bands promotion in a parking lot or attempting to cover a sports team against all odds.  Yep, we’ll work harder and probably have more fun doing it.  Small market radio…still working in Missoula, MT.

The best album of the year is released today (6/11/13).  It’s Jason Isbell’s Southeastern.  “Best” is pretty subjective, especially when it comes to music.  If you think that Taylor Swift or John Fogerty or Black Sabbath or Rascal Flats has released the best disc of the year…well, you’re right.  Although what you probably mean to say is so-and-so released your favorite album of the year.  Music = subjective.  So, Southeastern is my favorite album of the year.  But, I’ll battle you on one aspect; Southeastern is lyrically the best written album of the year.  What is it about these Southerners?  Their plays, poetry and songs are so frequently better than any others.  I think you have to go back all the way to the period after Kris Kristofferson left the Army to find a collection of songs so rich and characters so developed.

I’m pre-disposed to like alt-country, power-pop, lo-fi, and neo-soul.  Perhaps it’s actually hyphens I like best.  No, I like alt-country best, so I was pretty anxious to hear Isbell’s new album and lucky enough to get hold of it a few weeks before its release.  I hardly even notice the music surrounding Isbell’s strong vocals and songwriting.  I’d buy this disc if it was a cappella.  If you printed the lyrics in a fancy book and put a nice picture on the cover, I’d buy that too.  I laughed and cried when I first heard it.  I still laugh and cry after a dozen spins…even though I know how all the stories end.  Isbell has an amazing ability to develop characters that you really grow to care about in just a couple of minutes.  Who among us can create rhymes for Pedialyte, Klonopin and Wheatherby and not have to color outside the lines to do so?  Who dares release an album full of cancer, incest, drunkenness, loneliness, suicide, murder and despair and expect commercial success?  Jason Isbell does.  Or maybe he has no expectations.

Much has and will be written about Isbell’s split with Drive By Truckers, his drinking, his relationships, his drinking, his new wife Amanda Shires, his rehab and his drinking. If every step along that path was necessary to create Southeastern, I’d argue it was all worth it.  There’s probably a thousand ways to say “I was an asshole.” A thousand more ways to apologize and express regret.  We’ve heard them all before….yet Isbell invents poetic new ways to own his recklessness and illustrate his remorse.  Isbell can describe bad behavior at a party leading to a black eye and a breakup with an amazing economy of words yet without sacrificing hi-def detail as he does in the first few lines of “Songs That She Sang In The Shower.”  He’s a loveable hell raiser in “Super 8,” the funniest and most rollicking song of the collection.  Another altercation is described there and you can almost hear the pork rinds grinding underfoot as Isbell sings:

Big boy bustin’ in / screamin’ at his girlfriend /swinging round a fungo bat
Bass player steppin’ up / brandishing a coffee cup / took it in the baby fat

The shits and giggles of “Super 8” are quickly forgotten as it segues into the next track.  The first time I heard “Yvette” I immediately replayed the song to confirm that I had processed it properly.  Yvette’s dad may be dead, but chivalry is still alive.

Isbell closes with “Relatively Easy,” perhaps his way of shrugging off the challenging subject matter that has just been presented with a “worse things happen at sea” attitude.  In Jason Isbell’s world, there’s always someone worse off than you.  He knows – he’s been that guy.