Bobby Edwards drives tour buses for rock royalty, logging 26 years, 280 bands, and 3.4 million miles on the road.

By Bill Ramsey | April 19, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

More than 30 years ago, Bobby Edwards was working at Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga unloading gear for touring bands visiting town. One of those bands, Southern rock titans 38 Special—a particular favorite of Edwards’, who is also a musician—came to perform at the peak of their fame. He was a big fan of the band and remembers his first encounter with lead singer Donnie Van Zant.

“Like any teenager, I was in awe of rock stars,” Edwards says, “so I was very excited about seeing 38 Special and getting the chance to meet them.”

It would not be his last encounter with the “Wild-Eyed Southern Boys.” For almost a decade now, Edwards, a 1981 graduate of Hixson High School, has been the group’s tour bus driver, delivering the band—still “Rocking into the Night” after almost 40 years together—to clubs, fairgrounds and arenas across North America.

“I’ve told that story to Donnie. Of course, he doesn’t remember me from then, but he still gets a laugh out of it,” Edwards says during a brief break during a Chattanooga stop-over from the band’s current tour. “Who would have thought a 17-year-old kid who first met a band in his hometown would be driving their tour bus 30 years later.”

Edwards has been 38 Special’s tour bus driver for eight years, but he’s also driven buses for almost every chart-topping music act in a driving career that spans 26 years and almost 4 million miles. Indeed, Edwards’ driving career-span rivals—sometimes exceeds—the longevity of the bands he has driven.

For Edwards, it’s more lifestyle than business. He is on the road most of the year, crisscrossing the country in one of several custom tour buses, an exhausting but satisfying job he says, that has given him front-row access to some of music biggest stars. With a sterling reputation (not one accident), a massive mile count and an easy-going personality, it’s no wonder the soft-spoken Edwards is an in-demand—and perhaps the most trusted—tour bus driver in the country.

And while he’s one of the many unsung heroes behind the scenes of the music-touring industry, Edwards is also an invaluable asset and even “family” to such bands as 38 Special, who count on his endurance and skills to deliver them safely—and on time—to venues all over the country.

Edwards’ journey behind the wheel of touring music caravans began in the mid 1980s. The son of a musical family, he moved to Nashville after graduating from UTC in 1986 to chase his own dream of a music career. Solid and talented as a bass player, Edwards’ professionalism and reliability (a factor not unnoticed in a world of egos and debauchery) set him apart. Because of his background as a stage hand, he also had enormous respect for the crews who did the heavy lifting. So when the gigs dried up, Edwards was immediately drawn to the less glamorous but better-paying world of tour-bus-driving.

“When I started, there were only half a dozen or so companies with these kind of custom tour buses,” Edwards recalls. “It was a very small pool and you earned a reputation quickly.”

Edwards, a gearhead and custom car fan, took the road and driving like a fish to water and hasn’t turned back. While he doesn’t regret giving up his own music dreams, he still plays and will occasionally sit-in with the bands he drives. “They know I’m a musician, and that makes our relationship much more personal,” he says.

“I love the travel and the people I get to meet,” Edwards says during a brief stop to visit his parents in Red Bank, where I speak to him aboard the 38 Special tour bus parked in the lot of small church whose empty lot easily accommodates the massive bus and trailer he drives. “There’s a freedom to it that’s unrivaled.”

On this long road, Edwards has shuttled a “Who’s Who” of rock royalty, country superstars, at least one jazz legend and more bands than he can remember. At his home on the outskirts of Nashville, the walls of his office are filled with gold and platinum albums from the stars he has served. In the bus on this day are a few he has borrowed from his parents’ home—Alan Jackson’s smash 1991 album “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” among them—but his clients go well beyond the country genre and include Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughn and revered jazz icon Miles Davis. There have also been touring Broadway shows, as well as gigs with NASCAR teams and the occasional run shuttling soldiers from base to base.

And of course there are stories. Many, many stories. In the intimate confines of a bus, Edwards is privy to the most intimate moments of the stars he transports. His observations and encounters are sometimes amusing, sometimes hilarious, often mundane, but a few remain standout favorites.

“I was awestruck in the beginning, but as you get used to being around these people, you begin to recognize they are human,” Edwards says.

Driving skills, endurance and longevity are valued in Edwards’ profession, but perhaps just as valued is the ability to not speak out of school. Edwards does not, but he has plenty of tales he’s ready and willing to share.

One favorite involves notoriously gruff bandleader and jazz legend Miles Davis, who Edwards drove on tour just before his death in 1991. Davis, quite explicitly and not without reason, had a low opinion of white people. He had been subject to such brutal racism for so long, Edwards says, that he quite frankly despised 99.5 percent of the white population. “There were times when he would blow his nose on the first row,” Edwards recalls.

Ever the Southern gentleman—and knowing his place—Edwards completed his assigned role as Davis’ driver with the utmost respect. Davis rarely spoke to the hired help, but apparently took a liking to his young, competent driver.

“We had arrived at our hotel and his tour manager showed me the manifest,” Edwards explains. “Below Miles’ name was mine. After my name, it read: Bus Driver Deluxe. Everyone else, including the musicians, was below me. ‘That means he likes you,’ the manager said.”

Another poignant tale centers around the late Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn, who Edwards knew at the peak of his fame and new sobriety.

“He put his arm around me once when we were walking back from an AA meeting,” Edwards recalls. “And he said, ‘I’m glad you know me now.’ I said, ‘Why?” He said, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me very much when I had an 8-ball in my pocket. I wasn’t a very nice person.’”

Edwards is fond of his moments with these greats and treasures the experiences, but he recognizes that like the careers of the classic rock stars he often drives, it’s a road that will eventually end. But he doesn’t see the horizon any time soon. “As long as it stays fun, I’ll keep driving,” Edwards says.

And with that—the bus never stops running; it’s cheaper that way—he climbs into his “executive office” and prepares for the long road ahead.

Joe Ledbetter and Tim Piersant revive Chattanooga’s whiskey tradition with their new liquor label. Now if they can just make it here.

By Bill Ramsey | April 19, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

“First thing’s first,” says Joe Ledbetter, a gleam in his eye and a devilish grin on his face as he uncorks a fresh bottle of whiskey. He pours two fingers of the brown liquor into a sparkling high-ball tumbler emblazoned with the logo of the Chattanooga Whiskey Company above the slogan “The First Taste.” He studies the nectar for a moment, sips, and smiles again. “Now, where were we?” he says with a mischievous laugh.

It will be the first of many “first tastes” for Ledbetter and his partner, Tim Piersant, during the launch party last Friday at Lindsay Street Hall for the new whiskey the young entrepreneurs founded just six months ago and based largely on a Facebook post that asked, “Would you drink Chattanooga whiskey?” A flood of responses in the affirmative confirmed Ledbetter’s assumption and the fuse was lit. On Friday evening, hundreds of bottles of bourbon bearing the Chattanooga Whiskey Company brand fill tables inside the ornate hall as a small army of servers prepared to man their stations for the evening event.

“I just hope it doesn’t suck,” Ledbetter says, half serious, half joking, referring to both the event and the reaction to the fruit of his labor and passion. His whiskey—smooth and warm, with just a brief, sharp spike the liquor is known for—does not suck. Nor does the event. Hundreds are invited and hundreds turn out to sample the new whiskey, which Ledbetter proudly proclaims will both return and revive Chattanooga’s storied distilling history, an industry that has been dormant since pre-Prohibition days.

Ledbetter has reason to be excited. Thirty years ago, he might have been laughed out of town, such was the state of downtown Chattanooga (and, for that, matter the bourbon whiskey market). But these days, the Chattanooga “brand” reeks of a renewed spirit of revival, spirit and renaissance, and Ledbetter and Piersant are banking on that special brand of local pride and Tennessee’s history of fine whiskey propelling them to fame and fortune.

The only problem? The Chattanooga Whiskey Company’s 1816 Reserve is not made in Chattanooga—not even in nearby counties, where state law allows distilling and bottling of liquor. No, Chattanooga Whiskey is distilled in Indiana—Lawrenceburg, Ind., to be exact, home of Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana, which concocts such brands as Templeton Rye. At Lawrenceburg, Ledbetter says he found the right distillers offering the right mix (74 percent corn, 21 percent rye, 4 percent barley) at 90 proof (45 percent alcohol). “I’m the type of person who wants to know all there is about a subject when I become passionate about it,” he says. “I knew a lot about whiskey before, but I’ve learned a lot more. We had a very clear idea about the kind of whiskey we wanted to make—a pre-Prohibition mash build, something you’d find a 100 years ago—and then we found the right distiller.”

Jack Daniels might roll over in his grave, but Ledbetter’s “recipe” has less to do with the iron-free cave spring water and sugar maple charcoal Daniels favored and perfected on his Lynchburg property than reacquainting a city with it whiskey heritage. When distilling laws change in Hamilton County—something Ledbetter says he is campaigning for—he will be quick to reunite the whiskey with its city.

“We really want to make it here,” Ledbetter says. “It’s not about a person [like Jack Daniels] or even a fictional character [like Capt. Morgan]. It’s about a city with a rich history and heritage. Right now, it’s all about getting the word out and support.”

In other words, it’s a message in a bottle. Laws may change, but until they do, it makes no real difference to Ledbetter if his Chattanooga Whiskey is made in Chattanooga or Lawrenceburg. Mystique, after all, is rarely grounded in reality. And nothing sells, or indeed enhances, illusion better than liquor.

This week, Chattanooga Whiskey 1816 Reserve and its pricier companion, Cask, will get it’s first test as it goes on sale in liquor stores around the city. At $27 a bottle for Reserve and $40 for the premium Cask, it’s not cheap. But cheap bourbon is neither the goal nor the target market. Ledbetter and Piersant consider themselves connosieurs with a passion for fine whiskey and Chattanooga, and they’re banking on Chattanoogans returning the love.

So far, that’s happened—at least in enthusiasm for the product online, where Chattanooga Whiskey’s Facebook page boasts almost 5,000 fans seemingly foaming at the mouth awaiting the new brand’s availability in the city. After its debut this week in Chattanooga, the whiskey goes on sale around the state and Ledbetter has ambitious plans, fueled by a new Kickstarter campaign, to take the product nationwide over the next few months.

Ledbetter and Piersant have invested their own money and borrowed to fund their new company, guided by an intimate group of enthusiastic mentors and financial experts who believe in the idea. They’ve created a sleek website, hired local designer Steve Hamaker to create the company’s turn-of-the-20th century logo and both are investing increasingly more time to the new venture. Ledbetter is an insurance broker recently living in Washington, D.C., and now returning to live in his hometown full-time; Piersant works for his family’s business in Dalton, Ga. Both say they are “all in” as the company grows.

Just out of the barrel and onto the shelves of local liquor stores, it will take time to determine the success of Chattanooga Whiskey’s venture, but the company has at least two crucial elements in its favor: a nostalgia for Chattanooga’s rich history amid its blossoming renaissance as a center for culture, the arts and technology, as well as its increasing attraction as a business center located in a beautiful, hospitable mid-size Southern city; and the return of American bourbon whiskey as a popular, premium liquor and cocktail ingredient, fueled by the growth of small-batch bourbons that have attracted a cult following in bars from coast to coast.

First, some nostalgia. As Ledbetter is quick to point out, Chattanooga was once a liquor-distilling mecca. From the late 19th century until the early 20th century, the city was home to dozens of distillers before Prohibition became the law of the land. Businesses such as the Chattanooga Distillery, E.R. Betterton and the Lookout Distilling Co., among many others, were distilling, bottling and selling liquor in Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley. Many of these brands, such as Betterton’s White Oak Whiskey feature labels, packaging and bottling similar to the famed Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg. It is just that look—the old-style, ornate lettering, the etched engravings of the distilleries and the era-appropriate slogans (Chattanooga Whiskey uses “The Dynamo of Dixie”)—that attracted Ledbetter to research the history of American whiskey in general and Chattanooga in particular. “We want to bring back that spirit,” he says.

Of course, Prohibition sealed the fate of all of these companies, but even after its repeal in 1933, Tennessee made it difficult for whiskey-makers to distill their product in the state. Until a few years ago, only Jack Daniels and George Dickel were the only distilleries in Tennessee. That changed in 2009 with a new law that opened up the state to distillers in any county where both retail package sales of liquor and liquor-by-the-drink sales have been locally approved. Some counties opted out, including Hamilton County, but county commissions in those counties also have a right to opt in by vote of the county commission. Ledbetter says he is gathering support to help make that happen. “It takes time, people, support—and pressure,” he says.

The other element in Chattanooga Whiskey’s favor is the rise in popularity of bourbon whiskey as a premium liquor in the United States. The center of the so-called Bourbon Boom is, of course, the South, ancestral home to Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. As Robert Moss writes in the companion feature in this issue, not surprisingly titled “Bourbon Boom,” this was not always the case. “America’s Native Spirit,” as bourbon whiskey was christened by Congress in 1964, fell on hard times through the 1970s and ’80s, suffering an identity and ownership crisis while single-malt scotch became the coveted drink of high-brow, hip tastemakers. The younger crowd widened the divide, opting for white or clear liquor such as rum and vodka. That trend continues, especially in the vodka market, where high-end offerings are flavored with everything from chocolate to bacon and butterscotch.

Fine bourbon whiskey, of course, needs no added flavoring (and would be something akin to sacrilege amongst aficionados), although its bite—which caused many to make what is known in the industry as “the face,” a scrunching facial expression—spurred the large distilleries to trend toward blended whiskies. By the late 1980s, small-batch and special “reserve” brands came on the market, smoother, super-premium bourbon whiskies that retained the liquor’s character while largely reducing the sting.

The technique worked and bourbon whiskey has undergone a two-decade renaissance, replacing single-malts as the connoisseur’s choice, sipped straight or with only a cube of ice or splash of water to cut its sharpness. The high-end whiskey market has exploded and the South is ground zero, with brands such as Pappy Van Winkle occupying the apex in the galaxy small-batch bourbons, selling for as much as $65—a glass.

But in the world of liquor, like those of fashion, art, design and architecture, fancy is fickle and fleeting. Today’s hot small-batch bourbon may be tomorrow’s “brown water,” a swill “reserved” for gutter drunks. But it doesn’t hurt that such popular TV shows as “Mad Men” have revived a hip consciousness for an era when bourbon was the successful man’s drink of choice (Don Draper favors dark liquor, and frequently orders an Old Fashioned). It’s worth recalling that such “men’s men” as Frank Sinatra were champions of Jack Daniels, which Ol’ Blue Eyes called the “nectar of the gods” and rarely drank anything else.

All that swinging “ring-a-ding-ding” is good for boutique business. Retro-mania has sparked revivals in dozens of high-end, up-market business from cigars to motorcycles, guitars and gastronomy. Riding the coattails of a trend is easy, but in the end, however, nothing succeeds without a little savvy marketing and a skill for tapping the vein emerging markets. Ledbetter has those skills in spades.

While living in D.C., Ledbetter approached the proprietors of a favorite watering hole with the idea of launching a “whiskey society,” an exclusive club of young, upper-income men and women such as himself with a taste for fine liquor and cigars. He promised the owners he’d bring in 50 people who met those requirements—with the pre-requisite that if he did, he’d drink for free. It worked. Not long afterwards, Ledbetter typed the fateful Facebook post.

By Bill Ramsey | March 1, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

During one week at the peak of his career as an illustrator, Sandy Huffaker had assignments from Time, Sports Illustrated and BusinessWeek. He had to turn down a fourth assignment that week from Newsweek. “I just didn’t have time,” says the Chattanooga-born artist during a phone interview from his home in tiny Raphine, Va.


Sandy Huffaker and friend on his Raphine, Va., farm.

The 1970s were the “glory days,” Huffaker says, for himself and a stable of talented illustrators whose work routinely found itself on the covers of the nation’s premier newsmagazines and in the pages of The New York Times. For the better part of that decade, Huffaker was among an elite breed of commercial artists—his hero and fellow Southerner Jack Davis, the legendary Mad Magazine illustrator, among them—working during a remarkable period when art directors routinely turned to illustration to give comic relief to the country’s deeply serious and dark problems. From civil rights and the women’s movement to Vietnam and Watergate, the gas crisis and inflation to the rise of Jimmy Carter, Huffaker mined a deep well of material ripe for his brand of visual wit and caustic satire.



“All that work has gone away,” Huffaker says, somewhat ruefully. But it was a damn good run and, he says, an era for illustrators that may never come again. It didn’t come easy even then, Huffaker admits, but with changes in technology, the turn towards photography and computer graphics, art directors adopted new directions and never looked back. “I doubt any artist could expect that kind of work these days,” Huffaker says.



Huffaker’s work and style were a culmination of his years spent as an illustrator and political cartoonist for newspapers in the Deep South. Born in 1943 into a staunchly conservative family, Huffaker says he didn’t have any political leanings until he escaped Chattanooga after six years of military school at McCallie. His talent and inspiration as a cartoonist until then had been drawn from the sometimes subversive Mad, but it was his experience as an undergraduate at the University of Alabama that awakened the Liberal lurking within. “My father went to Annapolis (the U.S. Naval Academy)” says Huffaker. “He just didn’t understand.”



Arriving in Tuscaloosa at the height of the civil rights movement with then-Gov. George Wallace defying the federal government’s insistence that Alabama’s state-run universities open their doors to Blacks, Huffaker and his future wife witnessed first-hand the raw racism of Wallace and much of the South as the governor’s tactics became a national disgrace.

Huffaker had seen enough and his political identity began to emerge, but he found his first real job not far away at The Birmingham News, where he cut his teeth as an illustrator on the newspaper, penning illustrations for the daily paper and its Sunday magazine. After two years, Huffaker was determined to leave the South and pined for the big leagues, bright lights and the promise of fame in New York. He sent his portfolio to Maurice Sendak, the legendary “Where The Wild Things Are” illustrator to gauge his prospects, and when Sendak replied, “C’mon up, you’ll do all right,” Huffaker wasted no time. “I had a wife and two kids,” Huffaker recalls. “It was the ballsiest move I ever made.”

Timing and talent were on Huffaker’s side. The artist scored two book assignments during his first week in New York that helped him survive the initial shock and boosted his name recognition. Other assignments soon followed and Huffaker took his place among the nation’s most in-demand illustrators.

But New York was not all glamour. His wife was almost raped and the gritty reality of the city forced him to consider a less volatile environment. At the end of the 1960s, Huffaker joined The Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer as that paper’s first editorial cartoonist. Under Claude Sitton, a former New York Times correspondent, the paper became a government watchdog, earning it the nickname of “The Nuisance and Disturber” from the region’s conservative base. But the experience was transformative for Huffaker. During his three years at the paper, Huffaker says he earned the equivalent of a PhD in politics and civil rights.

Returning to New York via his new home in Princeton, N.J., Huffaker renewed his relationships at magazines and newspapers, quickly gathering assignments for The New York Times’ “Week in Review” section and Time’s “Americana” page. For the next 15 years, Huffaker’s illustrations appeared almost everywhere—on magazine covers, record albums and books—racking up industry and professional awards and the praise of art directors. “Sandy is one of the heavies in cartooning in America ... his stuff can be devastating,” says former New York Times art director Eric Seidman. “His understanding of politics is amazing.”

When magazines and newspapers turned away from illustration, and Huffaker’s own creative juices began to ebb, he turned to book illustration and fine art. He wrote two well-received books of his own during the 1980s and illustrated dozens of others before moving to Santa Fe, N.M., to open his own gallery.



“Cartooning was always considered a lowly art, but I knew it could make the leap to fine art if it was done right,” he says. Despite stellar reviews and shows across the country—including a one-man retrospective at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga—Huffaker closed his gallery and moved to Virginia to pursue his art and freelance illustration career. “It was the first time I felt I had failed, and it hurt a lot,” he says.

Distanced from politics for some 20 years, Huffaker says the events of 9/11 revived his political cartooning career, which continues to this day. His work is syndicated to hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world, but he maintains a slower pace, reflecting the calm nature of his life in rural Virginia.

Ever the reluctant Southerner, Huffaker says he has largely come to peace with his home, though Virginia, he says, is South enough and he rarely returns to Chattanooga. In 2009, reconnecting with his Southern roots and humor, he wrote and illustrated “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Redneck,” a tongue-in-cheek, slice-of-life tale that is less memoir than a recognition of all he finds palatable about the South.

“I would be one of the people in your series (Local Boy Done Good) who never returns,” Huffaker says, with a laugh. “But a couple of years ago, I was hanging out in a local bar with some rednecks. I’d always wanted to write a novel and I missed a lot of things about the South. The book was the result. I guess you could call it less of a novel than a slice of life,” he says.

At 69, Huffaker says he is at peace with most everything, despite the topsy-turvy nature of politics, which may stoke his ire at the drawing board, but not his personal life.

“I liked Obama and figured we were in good hands,” he says. “He’s been disappointing, but I don’t worry too much anymore. I’m out in cow country in a beautiful spot with no neighbors, painting and waiting for inspiration. It’s not a bad life.”

Sandy Huffaker

• Born in 1943 in Chattanooga, graduate of McCallie, University of Alabama; currently lives in Raphine, Va.

• Nationally syndicated political cartoonist, illustrator, artist and author whose work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, BusinessWeek and The New York Times, among many other publications.

• Latest projects: Political cartoons, illustrations and fine art for numerous clients.

• Latest book: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Redneck,” available on Amazon.com.

• Website: huffakerart.com

The Best Songwriter You’ve Never Heard of Drives South to Chattanooga. Don’t Make Him Say ‘Damn This Town’


By Bill Ramsey | Nov. 10, 2011
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

Every two years or so, John Hiatt makes a record that gives music critics and DJs at those few radio stations worth listening to in America something to agree on. Which is to repeat, this time in the words of WUTC-FM’s Richard Winham, “John Hiatt is the best songwriter you’ve never heard of, but you’ve almost certainly heard his songs.” It’s sadly true, but after 40 years, Hiatt has long made peace with this bit of cruel irony.



Hiatt, as he will tell you, tells me, tells anyone, really, doesn’t write songs for anyone else. Never has, never will. John Hiatt writes John Hiatt songs—tough, gritty roadhouse-ready rock and roll and poignant “this-is-what-I’ve-learned-about-love” relationship songs that give you pause and make you think out loud, “Damn, where has this guy been all this time?”

Turns out, he’s been around for a long, long time, and those same songs have caught the ears of others who’ve done with them what he has not—with few exceptions—been able to do: turn John Hiatt songs into hit records.

The short list: Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris—hell, even Ronnie Milsap—have covered Hiatt songs and made more than a few hits of them. “Thing Called Love” helped Bonnie Raitt come back from cutout-bin obscurity in the 1980s. “Angel Eyes” dovetailed into perfect harmony with Jeff Healey’s too-short career. Clapton and King built an entire double-platinum album out of Hiatt’s Riding With The King in 2000.

Hiatt shrugs it off, enjoys the royalties and keeps on writing, playing and hitting the road with various versions of the bands who record his music—20 albums’ worth now (if you count live discs and compilations)—that stretches back to 1974’s Hanging Around The Observatory and is now bookended by his latest, Dirty Jeans & Mudslide Hymns.

At 59, Hiatt’s never had a Top 40 hit of his own, but that fact neither haunts him nor deters him. At 21, he wrote “Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here,” a No. 16 charting hit for Three Dog Night that earned him a record deal with Epic and he’s never looked back. The idea that he’d write hit songs has likely occurred to Hiatt many times. At one point he very likely relished the idea, maybe still would. But these days a hit song doesn’t enter Hiatt’s consciousness very often. He is flattered that so many artists, some of them personal heroes he grew up listening to, have covered his songs, but says he was never comfortable writing for anyone but himself.

“I don’t write for other people, never have,” he tells me during a phone conversation. He was speaking from his longtime Nashville home, during a break from his recent tour, before making the short trip to Track 29 for his first Chattanooga performance since he can remember. “I love what I do and I just have a real passion for it. I love writing and recording—hell, I don’t know how to do anything else.”

That’s not exactly true—he’d probably be racing on the Indy circuit (and has) in another career—but modern American music would be much worse off were it not for Hiatt, and songwriting would be devoid of one of its finest craftsman. After years bouncing around record labels where he was variously (and futilely) categorized as new wave, country or blues, Hiatt found his own successful niche with the release of Bring the Family. This 1987 record marked the beginning of a rich, remarkable and uncompromisingly excellent period of songwriting and recording featuring his own flinty, whiskey-and-cigarette-aged vocals.

“I had not had success out of the box,” Hiatt says of his early efforts. “Success gains you freedom at record labels, so they keep intervening. [Bring The Family] was the first record we got to make on our own, independently. I was so screwed up, learning to live without drugs and alcohol, I didn’t know what to do. The producer said, ‘You can just sing in the shower and we’ll release it.’ ”

Sobriety unleashed something. Hiatt released seven albums on three labels prior to Bring The Family. Each had their moments, as Hiatt gathered critical momentum and a solid fan base, thanks to relentless touring in the U.S. and overseas. But mainstream success eluded him. His influences—Elvis (Presley and Costello), Dylan, the blues and country—produced erratic, often critically acclaimed records, but each failed commercially. Nuggets from these years ensconced him as songwriter to the stars. A young Rosanne Cash latched on to “The Way We Make A Broken Heart,” dueting with Hiatt on the song in 1983. The song went unreleased until Cash re-recorded it and took it to No. 1 on the country charts in 1987—the same year Hiatt released Bring The Family.

That seminal record, recorded with a supergroup that included Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and drummer Jim Keltner (who would together briefly form a side project dubbed Little Village), touched a nerve. Independence—from alcohol, drugs, record labels—marked a turning point for Hiatt, reflected in a song he says he would not mind being remembered for, “Have A Little Faith In Me.” Again, a string of other artists—Joe Cocker, Delbert McClinton, Jewel, Jon Bon Jovi—nabbed the song for their own, but Hiatt’s own voice rose above them all.

Nine successive albums all broke the Billboard 200, including Slow Turning, the follow-up album to Bring The Family that included such hits as “Paper Thin,” “Tennessee Plates” and “Angel Eyes.” But it was Bonnie Raitt’s version of “Thing Called Love” from her 1989 album, Nick of Time, which reached No. 11 that year and helped re-boot Raitt’s own floundering career, that earned him the most acclaim as a songwriter. More records, countless tours and another label (A&M) followed that success.

Not much has changed in the intervening years, Hiatt insists, besides the ability to record and release records on his own. “That certainly helps,” he says of his indie status, “being able to make records that I want to make when I want.” His latest is the ninth since departing A&M after Perfectly Good Guitar.

Hiatt now writes and records his own records in his Franklin studio and leases them to New West Records, with whom he’s had a fruitful relationship since 2003’s Beneath This Gruff Exterior. His prodigious output—more than 700 songs and counting—he says, is simply a matter of occupation, and, he has joked, aging. “I’m running out of time,” he’s said on more than once occasion.

These days, Hiatt consistently releases noteworthy albums that have earned him the sort of high praise—if not multimillions—that those who have recorded his songs are more often associated with. It is not unusual to see the terms “national treasure” and “icon” tagged to his name, though he blanches at such sobriquets.

His music is neither influenced nor tied to moments in time, although you’d get that sense from his most recent album covers, which reflect a “Grapes of Wrath” grit and weariness that echo the nation’s economic plight. Hiatt is not a “message” songsmith in the mold of his fellow Indianan, John Mellencamp. Instead, he deals in the politics of life, family—the joy, the pain and day-to-day moments that underscore his best love songs—and, occasionally, the reckless abandon of his youth.

“All my songs are message songs,” he says, turning my question around. “I’m talking to the people—that is political. Causes and such is not something I deal in. It’s not my thing. There are other people much more knowledgeable than me in that arena.”

Politics may not appeal to Hiatt, but the ravages of disaster, natural and otherwise, pockmark his songs. Dirty Jeans is filled with references to monumentous events from the past few years. From floods and blizzards to remembrance of 9/11, Hiatt brings an emotional resonance—felt if not explicitly expressed—to his songs that form boundaries.

Speaking recently to another interviewer (Hiatt does lots of interviews) he reflects upon the events of recent years, connecting his lyrics to the everyman assessment of life he’s become known for. Not the really big stuff; just the stuff of daily life we all muddle through and can connect to and relate with.

“The 2010 flood in Nashville tore up some of our place and thousands of people lost their homes,” he told one reporter. “It didn’t get much national attention because there weren’t enough lootings—not enough bad news. Then, we did a winter tour and every city we went to got hit by a blizzard. The songs that came out of that were about the impermanence of things—the constant shifts of people and things.”

Even after 25 years of marriage, Hiatt still regards his love affair with similar impermanence, as if it will flutter away with the prevailing winds. His love songs—“relationship” songs, really—chart his comfort levels, affirm his core beliefs and celebrate small tendernesses—but the songs don’t get any easier, he says. “Love songs are still the hardest songs to write because they can become corny so quickly.”

In “I Love That Girl,” he writes of such “corny” affirmations, singing, “And she wakes me with coffee and kisses my head/And starts to explain about something she’s read/I say, ‘Darling, you haven’t heard a word that I’ve said’/And I love that girl.”

You can’t help but find something in common with Hiatt’s scenes from a relationship and I ask him how is wife responds to such valentines. “She likes ‘em for the most part,” he says with a laugh. “She’ll say things like, ‘That’s nice.’”

Unintentionally, it seems, the corniness of Hiatt’s sentiments are the ones the ring most true and he mines the mundane as if these fleeting moments that pass us all by will disappear, unremarked upon. Love, Hiatt, seems to say, is what happens when you’re not paying attention.

Such moments, along with a healthy dose of rock and roll, Indiana-style—hot cars, fast women and nights under the bleachers—and the wicked sense of humor that Hiatt brings to his live show, combine into something he regards as the epitome of his essence. Even for an artist who has lived from eight tracks to digital downloads.

“Nothing beats live,” he says, seeming to anticipate the road shows ahead of him. “You can’t download live and that’s the most exciting part. We’ve got a great little four piece band, it’s rock and roll, the classic setup and we’ve been rocking all over the country—the shows have been a blast.”

John Hiatt’s road goes on forever, it seems. We’re lucky to catch a glimpse.

John Hiatt performs Thursday, Nov. 17, at Track 29.

By Bill Ramsey
The Pulse | Oct. 27, 2011
Photos by Lesha Patterson

If you’re looking for Dr. Shock, don’t bother lifting coffin lids or poking around cemeteries after dark. Ditto for the old WTVC studios in the Golden Gate Shopping Center, home of the original Shock Theatre. Shock’s current lair is in a suitably funky former hair salon on an appropriately shadowy block of a less-traveled downtown street. The windows are blacked out and a sign on the door alludes to the mischief within: “Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody. Not no how.” Just knock, goes the saying, the bell is out of order.

Most likely the Wizard of Odd will answer. That would be Scott Fillers, a local magician, horror movie enthusiast and yet another in a growing consortium of Friends of Shock Theatre who have lent their time, talent or, in this case, storefront to the recently revived horror host. Inside, a wall filled with Filler’s kitschy horror movie collectibles shares space with the set pieces that form Shock’s makeshift studio—cobwebbed stone pillars, a coffin, skulls and furniture that would not be out of place in Norma Desmond’s Sunset Boulevard home.

Before Shock himself appears, I regard his button-eyed puppet sidekick, Dingbat, in repose across the crushed velvet couch. When Shock enters from an anteroom, he is shocking only in his lack of Shock-ness: No cape, no dark eye makeup, no dangling cigarette, the latter a signature prop—along with the skull-topped cane—of the original Dr. Shock. “I had to quit smoking,” this Shock says, apologetically.

Shock is in street clothes, in this case his mortal form’s casual attire. Local musician Jack Gray is still feeling the weight of the cape and finding his footing a year after accidentally ascending to the role. But it’s surprising how much Gray, a heavy-set man with hound-dog eyes, a weary smile and an easygoing manner, resembles his predecessor, the late Tommy Reynolds.


Nurse Goodbody (Contstance Haynes) kisses Dingbat. Jack Gray plays Dr. Shock in a revival of the iconic Chattanooga horror host, whose program “Shock Theatre” aired on WTVC Channel 9 from 1968 to 1975.

Bob Brandy, Miss Marcia and, most notably, Dr. Shock, are figures who still exist in the nostalgic, gauzy memory of those who lived in the region during the 1960s and ’70s. With the exception of Miss Marcia, who still appears on local TV, most have died, as have the shows that propelled them into the hearts of viewers. Reynolds, a longtime program director at WTVC/Channel 9, earned cult celebrity status in 1970s Chattanooga as host of Shock Theatre, the station’s campy late-night horror movie fest that aired on Saturday nights from 1968 to 1975. Abetted by his curiously disturbing puppet sidekick Dingbat (created and voiced by Dan East) and the curvaceous Nurse Goodbody (Patricia Abney), Reynolds single-handedly introduced the genre to the local market.


Tommy Reynolds, the original Dr. Shock, in a 1970s promotional photograph.

At first, Reynolds—who began his on-air career as Shock in the 1960s hosting Science Fiction Theater on WTVC—adopted a camp Dracula persona, introducing and ridiculing a series of mostly low-budget horror and science-fiction movies during commercial breaks. He took the show to a new level when he began lobbing satirical bombs at local politicians, the Lookout Mountain elite and his fellow media personalities along with sometimes risqué comic bits that flew over the heads of youthful viewers but quickly caught older fans’ attention.

The pair would often push the envelope, straying into controversial territory, getting Reynolds and East got into hot water with station management, writes longtime local TV and radio personality David Carroll in his book Chattanooga Radio and Television. But their sometimes-naughty behavior just served to boost ratings—and advertiser response—Carroll recalls.

“Starting out as a radio deejay at that time, I can tell you that getting your name mentioned on Shock Theatre, even as part of a fake news story or other comedy routine, was huge,” Carroll says.

Dr. Shock’s reign of televised mock terror hit its zenith in the mid-’70s. Saturday nights after the late news mostly faded to black. But when a new, female general manager took over at WTVC in 1975, both Reynolds’ and Shock’s days were numbered. According to Carroll, “Evidently there was some disagreement between the two, so he went to WDEF, where he hosted afternoon drive radio show for a few years.”

Shock reappeared at Channel 12, but didn’t last long, nor did Reynolds, who landed at WHNT Channel 19 in Huntsville, Ala., where he briefly revived Shock Theatre. But Huntsville got only a glimpse of what had made Dr. Shock a legend in Chattanooga. Gone were Dingbat and Nurse Goodbody, along with the biting commentary. The show eventually fizzled and Reynolds retired.



But old horror hosts never really die—they just find new souls to inhabit. Enter Jack Gray and Johnny Stockman, a local film producer and editor, who had attempted a Shock revival in the early 1990s but was rebuffed by Channel 9. “I’d always loved the show and thought there was room for it to return,” recalls Stockman. “When I tried it [though], I ran into so many naysayers I gave up on it.”

News of Reynolds’ 2008 death again reminded Stockman of the character and when friends remarked Gray had more than a passing resemblance to Reynolds, the resurrection of Dr. Shock was under way.

What began as a Facebook gag quickly evolved into a serious attempt at reincarnating the character. Gray recounts donning the tux and cape for the first time, smearing greasepaint around his eyes and—most importantly—fashioning his hair in that distinctive Tom-Snyder-meets-Richard-Nixon look.

For better or worse, that simple act of bad grooming sealed Gray’s fate.

He’s tapped into the horror host zeitgeist. Reynolds didn’t invent Shock Theatre, nor was he the only Dr. Shock. A zombie army of horror hosts came to life on local channels nationwide when Screen Gems syndicated its fright films library in 1957 in a package dubbed Shock Theater, encouraging stations add a local host. The scheme worked and Son of Shock! followed in 1958, just as Reynolds began his career at WTVC. “When local TV stations were starting out, there wasn’t as much network or syndicated programming compared to what we’ve had since the 1980s forward,” says Carroll. “Stations had to fill some time, they were usually locally owned, so they were making stuff up as they were going along, trying a little of everything.”

Times, technology and programming changed, but horror hosts continued to grow in popularity with the rise of Elvira, Cassandra Peterson’s perennially popular “Mistress of the Dark,” in the early 1980s. Online, multiple fan sites catalog and document the genre’s history, and YouTube brims over with horror host clips. The 2010 documentary American Scary tracked down 300 horror hosts and profiled 60 of the most popular. “They set the tone for how we view horror movies as camp,” co-director Sandy Clark told USA Today last year. “I couldn’t believe no one had told this story before.”

In short, the timing was right for the rebirth of Shock Theatre in Chattanooga. Listen to Gray for a while and you’re convinced.

Baby Boomer masses that grew up with Shock, he says, are ready for it. As proof, Gray offers his large Facebook following and stories of fan encounters at numerous public appearances this year. He’s recruited an eager and enthusiastic co-host in Constance Haynes, who portrays the new Nurse Goodbody in an updated, goth style. Gray has even fabricated a reconstituted Dingbat after finding no one capable of recreating the iconic fanged puppet.

“Historically, it’s an honor to be part of this,” Gray says. “We’re really fans at heart and we’re having a lot of fun.”

Gray has spent the past year perfecting the character, attempting to faithfully honor Reynolds’ memory while adding his own brand of quirks and riffs. “I’m not an actor, I’m a musician. I get nervous in front of the camera and screw up, but maybe that makes it better,” he says. “It would be great to get into Reynolds’ psyche, but I’m developing my own technique as I go along.”

As Shock, Gray has worked hard to rekindle interest—making personal appearances at such events as ConNooga, the local sci-fi/horror convention; appearing at local haunted houses and pre-Halloween events; and preparing for a blowout Halloween night show at The Honest Pint, where his band, the Shock Theatre Orchestra, will perform its original rock opera, Hauntsville, a nod to Reynolds’ exile in Huntsville. All this has been a lead-in to what he expected, until earlier this month, to be the first full version of Shock Theatre on local TV in more than 30 years.

Gray has been doggedly pursuing a deal to return Shock to the air with WTVC management. So far, that relationship has been up and down. When Stockman and Gray first promoted the new Shock with videos on Facebook and YouTube last year, the response, says Stockman, was incredible. “They (WTVC) were calling us,” he recalls. The Shock team filmed segments promoting a Shock Theatre revival on WTVC’s digital channel, ThisTV, before Halloween last year which the station used in advance of the first program on Valentine’s Day. The results of that show didn’t sit well Stockman or Gray.

“They (Channel 9) rearranged and put it together badly,” he says. “It just sucked, the cutting made no sense. You had to watch the movie three times to see it all.” After the show aired, production went into a hiatus, but Gray was still thrilled with the response.

“We were really excited by the initial response from fans and WTVC,” Gray says. “Expectations were high. If we were going to do it, we wanted to honor the original concept and do it right.”

A few months ago, he forged a new deal with ThisTV to air a Shock special on Oct. 29 around Night of the Living Dead, the classic 1968 George Romero film. With the help of a sponsor, local restaurant Aretha Frankensteins, Gray paid $300 for the timeslot and launched a Kickstarter campaign he hopes will raise the $13,000 necessary to fund a full season of Shock Theatre.

But the ghosts of Reynolds’ ’70s quarrel with management and Stockman’s early-’90s attempts re-surfaced. The deal began to unravel, eventually falling apart completely.

First, the station questioned the legality and cost associated with airing Night of the Living Dead. Gray had done his research and assured station management that the film was in public domain, a detail he found odd considering he was dealing with a television station. (For the record, the film accidentally went into public domain after the distributor failed to use copyright notices on the original prints. The film is free and downloadable online).

But when Gray couldn’t produce legal documents verifying that fact, WTVC issued orders requiring Gray to write and film new bits (at his own expense) to air around commercial breaks for another film, most likely a classic from the 1930s already in their library such as Bride of Frankenstein. While this would have eliminated the cost of the airtime, the switch quashed his vision of running a modern horror classic around a coherent Shock program he’d already filmed—a deal the station had previously approved. The new segments would constitute two-minute commercial breaks, not a show, he says. He also had less than two weeks to write, rehearse and film the new bits to run Oct. 31 from 4 to 11 p.m.—not Saturday night, the night Shock fans expect. He was, in a word, shocked.

“They kept moving the target. We just couldn’t produce a quality show in that time,” Gray says wearily. “I’d had enough.”

WTVC General Manager Mike Costa declined to comment on the details, adding only, “It is unfortunate the Shock Theatre special could not become a reality. I made a decision in the best interest of the television station.”

In response, Gray says, “I’m constantly reminded of how Tommy Reynolds must have felt. This was the same way he was treated. I get the feeling they don’t like the fact that people want this to happen. Some things never change.”

Gray remains optimistic Shock Theatre will air again soon, this time, ironically, on competitor WDEF Channel 12 and its digital counterpart, Tuff TV, where he turned after the WTVC debacle and was warmly welcomed. The show will go on—only not on Halloween weekend. Gray says the all-new Shock Theatre will likely air Thanksgiving weekend on Tuff TV around Night of the Living Dead, a copy of which Tuff TV already has in its library.

“Tuff TV and WDEF are very open to what we’re doing, but we need some time to re-film and promote it properly. All this adds up to slowing down and getting this first show right. I think this is going to be a version of Shock Theatre that people will realize is different and much more developed,” says Gray.

But even a successful revival of the iconic show won’t likely usher in a new era of local programming, according to author and WRCB host Carroll. With the vast variety of shows now cheaply available to local stations for syndication, the cost and effort required to produce local programming doesn’t add up.

He notes, “Now that hundreds of channels, with every conceivable niche, are available, it’s unlikely that local stations would spend the money and energy required to launch that type of show.”

Still, you never know. The good doctor might just Shock everyone.

Tags: Dr. Shock, Tommy Reynolds, Chattanooga icons, Jack Gray, Dingbat, WTVC, Shock Theatre , Horror Hosts

By Bill Ramsey
The Hook (Charlottesville, Va.) and Seattle Weekly | November/December 2001

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the Quiet Ones. They always get the last laugh, the best revenge, and, in the end, even the girl.

While Bill Gates made it hip to be square, George Harrison remains the original Quiet One. Long before Gates made millions out of computer code, equally geeky Harrison—a gangly teen, all ears, Adam's apple, and crooked teeth—held the keys to being cool in his nimble fingers. He was a Quarryman, a stoic sideman to John Lennon's snide rebel rocker. And then a Beatle, one quarter of the best band ever—and an inspiration for Quiet Ones everywhere. The youngest (Harrison was 58) and still quietest ex-Beatle died on Nov. 29 following a battle with cancer.

But being a Beatle wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Not for Harrison, at least. Overshadowed as a songwriter, musician, and wit, Harrison would not shine until late in the group's career. By then, he'd introduced his mates to Eastern mysticism, the Maharishi, the sound of the sitar, and songs called "Something," "Here Comes the Sun," and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." However subtle or striking, Harrison's influence, in many ways, shaped the end-period Beatles.

Along the way, Harrison got one girl (the beautiful Pattie "Layla" Boyd who left him for his friend Eric Clapton); and found inner peace, marital bliss, and fatherhood with another girl (second wife Olivia Arias). And he was the Beatle who produced, arguably, the finest post-Beatles album, All Things Must Pass, the lead single from which became the first No. 1 song by a solo Beatle following the breakup.

With the 1970 release of the three- album set and the success of that single, "My Sweet Lord," Harrison blossomed. While Lennon and McCartney waged war on vinyl, Harrison stayed above the fray and emerged emancipated. Although he might never again match what has been called the album's "sprawling greatness," the Quiet Beatle, however briefly, became a master of the musical universe.

IT MUST APPEAR cruelly ironic to Harrison, his fans, and all of Beatledom that the Quiet One's death came less than a year after the rerelease of his milestone musical achievement. Remixed, remastered, and repackaged for the occasion of its 30th anniversary, All Things Must Pass continues to receive critical praise. Unfortunately, however, it's better known for the long plagiarism and copyright infringement lawsuit surrounding "My Sweet Lord" and the Chiffons' 1963 hit, "He's So Fine."
To the untrained ear, the songs have nothing in common. Compare "He's so fine/doo-lang, doo-lang, doo-lang" with its brash, unadorned girl gusto to the subtle chanting and slide guitar work of "My sweet Lord/hallelujah" and "My sweet Lord/Hare Krishna."

While the temperaments of the two songs may be continents apart, the notes of key passages are much the same. Had either Harrison or his producer Phil Spector (famous for his "wall of sound") recognized the similarity between the two songs, the albatross of the dispute that plagued him may have been averted. Harrison had said he could have easily changed a few bars. Instead of a footnote, the case became a cancerous sidebar in itself, drawing attention away from Harrison's otherwise landmark masterpiece.

Viewed in the context of precedent-setting legal cases, the controversial lawsuit is nevertheless a fascinating, if complicated and protracted, story with enough plot twists and greedy characters to generate a movie-of-the-week miniseries, if not a book.
"There's definitely a book," Harrison said in a 1996 interview with the CD-ROM magazine Undercover, "because, now with any kind of law pertaining to infringement of copyright, they always quote this case."

The colorful cast of characters includes a financially unstable music publishing company gasping its last breath; the incorrigible Allen Klein, the manager whose business practices are widely blamed for the breakup of the Beatles; a fleet of attorneys who made careers out of the long-running case; and, of course, Harrison himself, who at one point offered to give the song away rather than suffer either the indignity of being labeled a plagiarist or, more likely, the frustration of defending a song he had hoped would become a spiritual mantra for peace.

Klein eventually relinquished the copyright for "He's So Fine" to Harrison in the early 1990s. Through his appeals, Klein was granted negligible interest on royalties from "My Sweet Lord" during his stewardship of the song, but ultimately ended up with little more than he had paid for—rights to the song and a mountain of legal expenses.

Harrison—by then resurfacing on the charts after a spate of spotty albums with such efforts as Cloud Nine and his role as a "Traveling Wilbury," the supergroup featuring Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne (of ELO fame)—was relieved, but still haunted by the case.

"It's all over with," Harrison told interviewer Paul Cashmere in 1996, "and the result of it is I own 'My Sweet Lord' and I now own 'He's So Fine,' and Allen Klein owes me like $300 thousand or $400 thousand 'cause he took all the money on both songs. It's really a joke. It's a total joke."

The Quiet One got the last laugh, but the belief that he ripped off "He's So Fine" remains a common misconception. "I still don't understand how the courts aren't filled with similar cases," Harrison wonders in his book I, Me, Mine, "as 99 percent of the popular music that can be heard is reminiscent of something or other."

In an attempt to shed some "light comic relief" and to "exorcise the paranoia about songwriting that has started to build up in me" at the time, Harrison wrote "This Song," which begins, "This Song has nothing tricky about it/This Song ain't black or white/And as far as I know don't infringe on anyone's copyright."

Ironically, the Chiffons, no strangers to capitalizing on the episode, recorded "My Sweet Lord" in 1975, an effort that fell flat. Perhaps they were emboldened by the 1972 English rerelease of their 1966 hit, "Sweet Talkin' Guy," which became the group's highest-charting single.

Fans will also be happy to note that Harrison's dark sense of humor remained intact. Last month, he released a new song, "Horse to the Water," under the publishing credit of "RIP Ltd. 2001."

EVENTUALLY, ALL Beatles must pass, but the band's legacy—and each member's significant contributions to the world of popular music—continue. While legal textbooks coldly arrive at the fact that Harrison was guilty of copyright infringement, it is hardly the proper epitaph. George Harrison has been many things: Beatle, solo artist, husband and father, spiritual seeker, Formula One race car driver, and movie producer.

As a National Public Radio music producer and commentator so eloquently put it during a discussion of the rerelease of All Things Must Pass in January: "So, George Harrison, the one denied his rightful share of the spotlight blazing on the world's biggest band, the man stabbed by a crazed fan in 1999, the one who insisted on chanting Hare Krishna when it would have been easier to sing silly love songs—George Harrison has survived. And though perhaps his greatest work is All Things Must Pass, the album and its title song tell us otherwise. Some things remain constant—like the transforming power of this music."

Tags: Music, George Harrison, The Beatles, Celebrities

By Bill Ramsey
The Hook | April 11, 2002

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Try to remember a time when commercial radio stations didn't sound the same, from town to town, up and down the dial. If you long for the days when deejays played requests and when playlists at least pretended to reflect local listener demand, forget it. Those days are long gone.

You may not be old enough to remember such movies as FM and sitcoms such as WKRP in Cincinnati, which depicted the halcyon radio days of free-form '70s radio. But even the youngest of us can remember when President Clinton, under heavy pressure from a Republican-controlled Congress, signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

This law ended decades of regulations limiting the number of stations one company could own in any one market. From smallish towns such as Charlottesville to metropolitan megawatt cities, the act allowed commercial radio companies to create a pre-programmed, voice-tracked, market-researched, electronic beast. Amid this backdrop, one company, Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, came to program the songs that make the entire country sing ± or beg for mercy. Now the government is stepping back in to examine the ramifications of its actions.

In late March, the FCC made Charlottesville and Clear Channel the focus of its scrutiny. Finding the "potential for competitive harm," the Federal Communications Commission has set a hearing on Clear Channel's long-pending acquisition of WUMX, also known as Mix 107.5 — something the commission hasn't done for more than 30 years. If Clear Channel, which currently operates WUMX under what industry insiders term a "hostage" station, or a station managed, and even paid for by its suitor, but not approved by the FCC, thinks the deal will have smooth sailing, FCC Chairman Michael Powell may have news for them.

While the 1996 act allowed such "stewardship," it clearly defined any one company's ability to control market share. Making an example of WUMX, Powell says Clear Channel provides "no public interest benefits or mitigating circumstances. Indeed, the only significant evidence presented was that the transaction would create a market in which the top two owners would have a combined 94.2 percent market share."

For the past 30 years, a handful of broadcasting companies have bided their time, knowing the day would come when federal regulations designed to protect public airwaves from media monopolies would be lifted. But the watershed act of 1996 turned the piranhas into great white sharks, and no company took advantage of deregulation more aggressively than Clear Channel.

A year earlier, this relatively unknown but profitable broadcasting company owned 36 radio stations across the country (four less than the maximum of 40 then permitted by law), primarily in small- and mid-size markets. With the stroke of Clinton's pen, Clear Channel went shopping like a housemaid who had just won the lottery. Today, the chain is more than the nation's largest radio empire. In only six years, Clear Channel — its corporate name derived, ironically, from one of its early station's historic status as an FCC-sanctioned "clear channel" frequency audible in dozens of states during a national emergency — spread its money and influence far and wide. Besides its more than 1,200 stations in all 50 states, including its Charlottesville presence, Clear Channel also owns 19 television stations, has a stake in 250 radio stations overseas, operates an enormous billboard chain, and is the nation's leading concert promoter. As The Los Angeles Times recently reported, Clear Channel's sales have rocketed from $74 million just 10 years ago to $8 billion last year — a mind-boggling 100-fold increase.

During this spending spree, the company acquired most of its notable competition. In the checkout lane, Clear Channel purchased its major competition, radio conglomerates such as Jacor (whose 400 stations were purchased for $3.4 billion in 1998), the powerful AMFM network of stations (purchased in 1999 for $24 billion), and expanded its empire and influence by becoming the country's largest concert promoter with its $4.4 billion purchase of SFX (now known as Clear Channel Entertainment) in 2000. Those billion-dollar deals have left the company with an onerous $9 billion debt, far surpassing its stratospheric profits. But is Clear Channel worried?

No, not even with the advertising slump following September 11 and four consecutive quarters of losses (during which revenue slipped more than 11 percent from $2 billion in 2000 to $1.86 billion last year). Clear Channel executives view the losses as a minor meteor shower in their galaxy. And, like many large corporations in the post-9/11 era, Clear Channel has plans to reverse the slide.

That doesn't mean reining in its ravenous appetite for new acquisitions (the company has recently laid the groundwork to purchase the Seattle-based Ackerly Group, another radio, television, and billboard conglomerate) it means downsizing its most expensive component: voice talent: we call them disc-jockeys. On the big map of radio stations dotted across the nation, Clear Channel's 10 percent market share may not appear monopolistic. But market for market, not even its closest competitors (Infinity, Viacom, or Heritage) brokers its influence as brazenly as Clear Channel. In February, company president Mark Mays, son of founder and CEO Lowry Mays, blamed severance packages paid to 2,000 employees axed after September 11 as much as 9/11 itself. Personnel is where the cuts slice deepest — just one reason why the company is known as "Cheap Channel" to many detractors and former employees.
“
Clear Channel had a reputation of buying up markets, slim-lining the product, and diluting the talent to the point of homogenizing," said former Charlottesville jock Hal Abrams, who was half of a morning drive team for WUMX.

Abrams said he saw Clear Channel cost-cutting first-hand.

"As the transition of ownership took place," said Abrams, "odd things started happening around the office. Little blue wires, Ethernet cables to be specific, started to appear from the acoustical panels in the ceiling. After 20 years in the business, you realize this is a good reason to fear your job."

But it was allegations of low ratings — not replacement by computer — that caused Abrams and fellow morning personality Naomi Spimoni to be axed about a year ago as their contracts ended in favor of replacements Vinny Kice and Brooke Shealy.

"As anyone in the business who has a brain knows," said Abrams, "it takes more than one ratings period and support from their program director to succeed."

Allegations of penny-pinching arose long before Abrams' firing or 9/11. In fact, Clear Channel gleefully defends its radio revolution. In what is known as "voice tracking," the company takes the age-old practice of syndicating popular programs such as Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" to a new level: putting its own core voice talent to work across its network and, through clever editing, making it appear as though such veteran star jocks as Rick "Disco Duck" Dees are spinning the hits and gabbing with rock stars in Your Hometown, USA. Clear Channel defends the practice as a broadcasting revolution, pointing out that by virtue of its vast resources and talent, it can bring big market talent to small town America.

Brad Eure, president of Eure Communications Inc., Clear Channel's largest local competitor, said that voice tracking signals the demise of community-based radio and severely limits the ability of new talent to enter the field. How, for example, will the next Rick Dees or Howard Stern break into the biz? As Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the watchdog agency Media Access Project, told the Los Angeles Times: "Our worst fears have been realized. A lot of the things Clear Channel is doing are the traditionally questionable industry practices, but now on steroids." Such as self-censorship.

This is the company that in the wake of 9/11 allegedly sent out the infamous songs-to-avoid list ("Walk Like an Egyptian," "Stairway to Heaven," and about 150 others) it has since denied issuing at all. Once the subject of tongue-in-cheek articles in business publications mocking its Texas origins, the little ol' radio company from San Antonio — much like George W. Bush — is no longer a laughing stock. And as W. has done, the man who started its meteoric rise to power may shock, stun, and surprise you.

Birth of an empire
Clear Channel founder Lester Lowry Mays, a petroleum engineering graduate of Texas A&M with an MBA from Harvard, is a smart but stereotypical Texas businessman. Which is to say he's more comfortable roaming his massive South Texas ranch than toiling in the company boardroom. In a 1992 Forbes profile, Mays is quoted claiming surprise at the course of his career: "I had no intention of getting into the broadcast business."

In 1972, a 36-year-old Mays was running a small investment-banking operation in San Antonio when investors approached him for capital to fund a failing FM country station. Teaming with future Texas business legend Billy Joe "Red" McCombs (a car dealership magnate who now owns the Minnesota Vikings), Mays borrowed $175,000 from a local bank, while McCombs chipped in an additional $125,000. When the investors backed out of the deal and the dust cleared, Mays was thrust into a business he knew nothing about. Others might have winced and swallowed the bitter pill of the gamble. Not Mays. He did his homework and decided to hitch his star to broadcasting. By the time of deregulation, Mays was rich beyond his wildest dreams. So what drove this soft-spoken, spotlight-shunning Texan into the ranks of the John Kluges of the world? Ego? Avarice? Greed?

None of the above, if the stories can be believed. For Mays, Clear Channel may just as well have been Coca-Cola or Nike. With his focus on the bottom line, Mays couldn't care less — then or now — about the music. If Britney Spears sells umpteen millions of records, then dammit, the pop princess will be heard on Clear Channel stations — as long as she remains a profitable product.

That profit-margin focus has come at a price. Mays, now 66, has morphed, in the eyes of critics, from an amiable Ben Cartwright into an evil Darth Vader whose Dark Star reaches into the smallest corners of the country. Like market #225: Charlottesville, Virginia.

As defined by Arbitron, the industry standard for radio ratings, there are 10 commercial radio stations in Charlottesville — a remarkable number for such a small market. Yet, in many ways, Charlottesville represents the sort of town Clear Channel built its empire on. Even before deregulation, Clear Channel's strategy was alarmingly simple: enter a smallish market, purchase struggling stations, double the sales force, and market like mad. In 1998, Clear Channel applied the strategy here. Almost instantly, the company scooped up five stations and has run and reaped advertising revenue from a sixth, WUMX 107.5.

In Charlottesville, Clear Channel's only substantial competition is Eure. Which is not to say that Eure's programming is always less pre-programmed or ratings-driven. After all, after bringing them here, it was Eure executives who fired such seemingly popular talk-radio stars as Lee Fielding (1997) and Nancy King (2001). But at least Eure is locally owned. And that fact, according to the company's top executives, remains a huge plus in the battle for Charlottesville.

Before passage of the 1996 act, Eure owned only two stations: WCHV and WWWV. The company acquired other stations in a merger with Charlottesville Broadcasting Corporation: WINA, WKAV, and WQMZ — plus the operation of WUVA ("Kiss FM”), the station it was denied from operating by the same laws that govern Clear Channel's pending agreement to purchase WUMZ. When the federal government uncorked the bottle and released the free-market genie, it also limited the number of wishes it allowed. Under a federal law designed to balance deregulation by capping not ownership but market share, Eure was grudgingly forced to release its sales agreement with WUVA. And in December 1999, Eure was ordered to sell WCHV. The buyer: Clear Channel.

The battle lines have been drawn: it's hometown Eure versus worldwide Clear Channel, only Eure is the little fish in its own pond, a position the company doesn't like. Chief among its complaints is the WUMX "hostage" situation. Eure said it wouldn't begrudge Clear Channel if it the same laws that forced it to release its hold on WUVA, the prized third coin in the Charlottesville radio market, were applied to Clear Channel's lease of WUMX. According to an industry news source, Duncan's American Radio, Clear Channel led the Charlottesville market in 2000 with 45.8 percent of revenue, followed by Eure's 38.5 percent, and WUMX, the so-called Clear Channel "hostage," with another 9.9 percent. If Clear Channel acquires WUMX, it's got a majority of the local market. But that situation may change.

On March 19, the FCC made an example of Clear Channel's Charlottesville "hostage" situation. The FCC's almost unprecedented hearing into the matter, and the resulting media attention will likely force the agency to re-examine the stack of complaints, petitions, and lawsuits piling up against Clear Channel at the FCC and the Department of Justice. The FCC's announcement of the Charlottesville hearing is good news for Eure. But the company still has a few beefs. Eure vice president and general manager Dann Miller is peeved over the loss of Rush Limbaugh. The entertaining, if histrionic right-wing commentator was a mainstay of mid-day talk radio on Eure's WINA until last year when Clear Channel announced to its competitors that its franchise was moving to Clear Channel stations, in this case to WCHV. It was a stunning loss for WINA and other non-Clear Channel stations nationwide. Didn't you know? Among its other holdings, Clear Channel also owns Premiere Radio Networks, syndicator of the nation's most popular talk shows, including Limbaugh, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Dr. Dean Edell, Art Bell and Jim Rome.

As for the controversial use of voice tracking, or "cyber-jocking," Clear Channel has eliminated thousands of DJs and their high salaries by having one jock send out his or her show to affiliates.

"Most Clear Channel DJs do shifts on two stations," said Miller, "and at least three shifts come via email from other Clear Channel stations."

Another commonplace, though hardly original, Clear Channel tactic is the big giveaway. Even if they don't like the music, a lot of listeners will tune in if a station is giving away big bucks, a trip to the Grammys, or some other fantastic prize. Local broadcasters such as Eure can give away dozens of CDs and restaurant dinner, but it simply can't compete with Clear Channel's war chest of big-ticket goodies. Here's the rub: If a Clear Channel station in Charlottesville runs a big-money contest, say giving away $1 million, as they have recently, what callers may not realize is that they are competing not only with other local hopefuls, but with listeners all over the country.

"We were very concerned at first because Clear Channel made it sound as if each station was giving away the prize being promoted," said Miller.

Clear Channel insists it made it clear that the contest was national in scope and that listeners were not duped. Legal? Yes. Ethical? Depends on your point of view. But more weighty and serious matters are now facing Clear Channel.

Though the company continues to defend its business practices as "aggressive but legal," others such as Congressman Howard L. Berman (D-CA) disagree. On Jan. 22, Berman fired off requests to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FCC Chairman Powell calling for an investigation into the negative effects of consolidation in the radio and concert promotion business, specifically citing Clear Channel.

"I am particularly concerned about widely reported allegations that Clear Channel has 'punished' recording artists who have not used its concert promotion service by denying them radio airplay," said Berman. "Also of great concern are reports of 'parking' or 'warehousing' of radio and television stations by Clear Channel. Press accounts and pending FCC complaints state that Clear Channel is trying to exceed legal limits of ownership of radio and TV stations by using third parties, shell corporations, or related entities to make the purchases," Berman's letter states. "If true, this practice is both against the public interest and hurts competitors."

The Congressman asked the Department of Justice and the FCC to investigate and to vigorously prosecute any wrongdoing. Berman gets an "A" for effort. But will it happen?

"There's been some communication between the Justice Department and the FCC," a Berman spokesman who asked not to be identified said.

Washington, D.C., attorney Arthur Belenduik, who specializes in communications law and represents Eure and an advertiser in Ohio suing Clear Channel, holds his cards close to his vest, but admits the company is near the edge of the safety zone, a lesson such Bush pals as Enron CEO Ken Lay have learned all too well.

A lifelong Republican with a history of putting his wallet behind the GOP, Lowry Mays may not invite media attention personally, but behind the political scenes, the man is no shrinking violet. His political preferences and checkbook have always leaned right — from San Antonio to the Texas Governor's Mansion to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As the Los Angeles Times points out, while governor of Texas, Bush appointed Mays to a state technology council in 1996. In return, Mays contributed $51,000 to Bush's victorious 1998 re-election campaign. When W. became a serious candidate for president, Clear Channel sent a healthy $106,000 check to the Republican National Committee, while Mays personally contributed $37,000 to the party.

Will Bush pal Ashcroft really go after Mays? Ranking House Democrat John Conyers of Michigan has said he wants to hold hearings on allegations that record companies are making covert payments to radio stations to ensure that music from their artists gets airtime. As the Wall Street Journal reported in January, such hearings would focus on whether record companies are funneling tens of millions of dollars through third parties to get around a federal ban on "payola." But it's probably unlikely that Conyers' request stands a chance of actually derailing a company with the heft of Clear Channel.

Why? In an award-winning series for internet magazine Salon.com, reporter Eric Boehlert found that high-priced record promoters called "indies" do the dirty work for record labels. In larger markets, indies pitch records weekly and are paid directly by labels for each "add" to a station's playlist, sometimes as much as $2,000, according to Boehlert.

Sleazy, sure, but the bad news doesn't stop there for competing commercial stations. For better or worse, Charlottesville — which doesn't have big concert venues — feels the sting every time Clear Channel Entertainment entices Charlottesville's youthful college audience to shows in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, and Raleigh, North Carolina. In many markets, Clear Channel either owns or has a stake in the venues where its acts perform and have an exclusive agreement with Ticketmaster, the nation's largest concert ticket seller. While local Clear Channel stations doled out tickets to such shows as Dave Matthews' April 4 spring tour opener at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., Eure's stations could pay for tickets to give away, but do little more than stand on the sidelines.

Though Clear Channel's local operations director maintains that his stations purchase the tickets they give away on the air, it's a barely kept secret that Clear Channel has $2 million invested in Musictoday.com, the Ivy-based online merchandising company set up by Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw. The thousands of dollars Clear Channel spends purchasing tickets from Capshaw are a drop in the bucket compared to the windfall of profits from the shows and the expensive merchandise rabidly purchased by fans.

Cleaning house
A year ago, Hank Kestenbaum, 48, a 25-year radio veteran, was ready to land in cozy Charlottesville. He was also the man Clear Channel wanted to "clean house," and shore up its sales operations in town, some of which were reputedly less than productive. A former DJ, program director, and station owner, Kestenbaum said he had more or less peaked in the radio business by the time he arrived in Charlottesville. The owner of several stations in Tallahassee, Florida, which competed against Clear Channel, he said that the company's offer, along with the sale of his stations, was the right move at the right time.

Congenial but prepared to parry with any thrust at Clear Channel from a reporter, Kestenbaum said his job is to make his advertisers happy and to educate them in the proper use of radio advertising. His position on voice tracking? "It's a better product than what I can produce locally.

“If the product suffered," Kestenbaum, said, "I'd spend the extra money to hire local DJs."

Yes, he remembers the "good old days"; sure, he's in the business of making his company money; and yes, if such elements as voice tracking deliver a better product than he can offer by paying a local DJ as much, then he pleads guilty.

"Radio," he said, in a moment of clarity not associated with business, "is theater. It's what comes out of the speakers. It's all imagination."

He said it's easy to point the finger at big, bad Clear Channel, a company Boehlert called a "big bully," but what's not so easy is the matter of keeping radio —and not just Clear Channel stations — on the air.

"We're not perfect," said Kestenbaum, "but we're getting better. Deregulation was good. It kept hundreds of stations on the air that would have gone dark. That's good for radio."

This isn't just about money or market domination. Commercial radio thrives on attracting the largest audience possible to make its station(s) attractive to advertisers. But as long as indies dictate the playlists of Clear Channel or Eure (which both insist is not the case) or any station, and voice tracking becomes the cost-cutting standard, a large segment of listeners may increasingly turn to alternatives such as WNRN, the six-year old independent station Mike Friend (known as Mike Seay on the air) started and still successfully runs.

"Syndicated, voice-tracked, satellite-delivered, cookie-cutter radio drives away educated listeners," said Friend. "Commercial radio listening has dropped every year since the late 1980s," he added citing industry reports. "In that time, non-commercial radio listening has tripled."

Friend said that such National Public Radio drive-time shows as "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" find a healthy audience among those weary of hearing the latest Creed hit played three times an hour.

"In places like Charlottesville where there is an option like WNRN," said Friend, "that option tends to do very well. Even fare such as that produced by stations like WTJU does okay if it's competently executed and promoted."

As for the future of commercial radio and the music industry, Friend offers little hope.

"For cutting-edge aficionados of various music genres," he said, "commercial radio has been irrelevant for a generation."

On its way to publication, a funny thing happened to this article. Waldo Jaquith mentioned the FCC's action on his online chatroom, cvillenews.com, and got over a dozen comments almost immediately. Even Jaquith himself chimed in: "This company is truly evil. If you don't know about Clear Channel, I highly recommend that you read at least one of the articles from Salon.com."

Charlottesville can consider itself fortunate, perhaps, that the creator of WKRP, the show that depicted radio as it could be — absolutely local and absolutely loveable — lives here. We called Hugh Wilson to see what he thinks of the Clear Channel influence and radio in general. Wilson said he doesn't even listen to the rock stations he captured so crisply with WKRP.

"I'm of a certain age," said Wilson, "where I listen to talk radio — and NPR."

But at least the feds seem to be listening. And it's been a long time coming.

Tags: Clear Channel, Radio, Media