Bare Bones

by Bobby Bones

  “So you guys lost?” I said. “Again? That must sting. We won. Again. Let me know if you want JV to show you a few moves.”

  Missing my clearly brilliant humor, the mill workers escorted me directly to the bathroom, picked me up, and shoved me into a stall, where I came face-to-face with the toilet. I couldn’t avoid the high-school-style waterboarding coming my way, but I fought it just long enough to flush the toilet. Then they dunked my whole head and held me down while they flushed again. As the water rushed around my head, I thought, Well, I was going in anyway. Now at least it’s clean water. And then for a second I thought I was going to drown in the toilet: This is how I’m going to die. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t die.)

  After the seniors released me, I went back about my business and headed to class—even though I had a soaking wet head. One thing you can say about me, I don’t give up easily.

  SMOOTH OPERATOR

  People ask me all the time how I got into radio, and I’m always happy to tell the story because it’s a testament to the fact that to make it, you don’t have to know someone in the biz; have a friend that knows someone in the biz; or have a cousin whose mailman’s uncle knows someone in the biz and owes your cousin a favor. All I knew was what I wanted to do, which was be on the air. And I was going to take any job that would lead me to getting to that spot.

  I didn’t have any connections to radio, only passion. I had decided that radio was my calling after my fifth birthday, when my aunt Cindy bought me a small radio. But that wasn’t the only present. She had the local station’s DJ say, “Happy Birthday to Bobby Estell,” which we listened to on my little radio. And from that moment on I knew that I was going to be that DJ on the radio. When my kindergarten teacher had us fill out a paper that asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I answered, “I want to be on the radio and TV, and I want to be a stand-up comedian.” If I were handed the same piece of paper right now, I’d answer the same exact way. Almost thirty years later. How crazy is that?

  The moment the DJ wished me a happy birthday I also became obsessed with our local Top 40 radio station, 105.9 KLAZ. When I got a little older, I called in to the station almost every night. So when I was twelve years old and I won a contest where you got to guest DJ for the night, it was as if I had won Powerball.

  At this point I had been calling the station every night for years, begging to be put on the air. I even had created a DJ name for myself, Bobby the Barbarian, in a really dumb homage to one of my favorite professional wrestlers who went by the moniker “The Barbarian.” Sting was my all-time favorite, but Bobby the Stinger didn’t have the right ring. It would be cool if Sting read this book. Actually, when I think about it, here in descending order are the top five people that I remember from my childhood who I’d love to read this book:

  5. Sting: The blond wrestling Sting. Not the Kristen Stewart Goth Sting.

  4. Alyssa Milano: My childhood crush. I loved Who’s the Boss? Mostly because of her.

  3. Mark Grace: The former Cubs first baseman was my favorite baseball player growing up.

  2. Kate Beckinsale: My lifelong crush. I’d drink all of her bathtub water. But not in a creepy way (in case you are reading this, Kate).

  1. The entire cast of Home Improvement.

  Back to my childhood obsession with the local radio station. Occasionally, Flyin’ Brian, the guy who worked nights, would let me on the air to introduce a song.

  “Hey, everybody,” I would say on air. “It’s Bobby the Barbarian. And at number three in the countdown it’s Divinyls with ‘I Touch Myself’—on KLAZ.” I had no idea what that song title meant, although I became all too familiar with its meaning over the next . . . twenty years.

  As soon as the station publicized the contest in which you had to write a poem for a shot at guest DJ’ing for a night, I poured my heart into a series of verses.

  “Hey, everybody, there, up at KLAZ,” my poem began, “Bobby the Barbarian, yo, that’s me.”

  Kendrick Lamar, watch out. (For the record, I was just going to write “Kendrick, watch out,” but even though I think I have the street cred to call him Kendrick—even if no one else does—I felt it more appropriate to use his full name, at least in a book. I also thought about going with 2Pac in that reference, but then realized that the much younger audience that is surely reading this book would have no idea about the cultural significance of 2Pac.)

  Even though I didn’t have the lyrical stylings of a 2Pac or Biggie Smalls (another ancient rap reference, for those counting at home), for some reason, the powers that be at KLAZ chose me as the winner. Maybe they felt sorry for Bobby the Barbarian or maybe this was their way to get me to stop calling every night. Either way, on Christmas Eve, I got the best present I could imagine: a shot as guest DJ.

  The moment I walked into the studio it was love at first sight. A love that quick has only happened three times in my life: with a radio studio, my dog, and Kate Beckinsale (more on her later). The studio seemed massive and awesome. (It was actually tiny and quite crappy.) Surrounded by all these buttons, shiny lights, and microphones, I pictured millions of people listening as I began, “Hey y’all, it’s Bobby the Barbarian . . .” (In reality, fifty people tops were listening. I mean, it was Christmas Eve.)

  The moment was surreal because here I was on the other side of the radio, which was my favorite thing in life. Because I grew up sleeping on the couch with people walking by or the TV playing, that kind of constant noise became comfortable. If nothing was happening, I couldn’t fall asleep. (I still don’t sleep well if it’s dark and quiet. My heart beats fast and I get really anxious. I sleep better on a couch with ten people in the room than alone in silence. So if I turn on the TV or the radio, it puts me back in my comfort zone.)

  When my mom was out, and there was no noise to keep me company when I went to bed, I listened to the radio. I liked music of all kinds—still do. Living in Arkansas, there was obviously a heavy country music influence. But I was also into nineties grunge and alternative and hip-hop (see above 2Pac and Biggie references). I didn’t see any problem jumping from Garth Brooks to Nirvana to Cypress Hill. Good music is good music.

  But I didn’t call KLAZ every night because of the music. I wanted to be in radio because I wanted to talk. I wanted people to hear my opinions. I wanted to entertain.

  I had my favorite radio personalities, one of whom was the Outlaw Tommy Smith. He’s still on in Little Rock, where I listened to him every morning. He and his sidekick, Big Dave Sanders, were pretty outlandish for the time and place. When they talked about booze and butts, which they did a lot, I said to myself, “This is crazy! I can’t believe they’re doing this on the air!” In reality, their morning show was a Howard Stern copycat. I had no idea, because I didn’t know who Howard Stern was and wouldn’t learn of Stern, who truly is the King of All Media, until I saw his movie Private Parts in college. But I looked up to Tommy Smith like crazy for the longest time.

  As I prepared to graduate from high school in the spring of 1998, I was still a starry-eyed kid who had one goal and one goal only: to work for KLAZ. With the naive confidence that only eighteen-year-olds have, I got myself an interview with Kevin Cruise, the program director and afternoon host of KLAZ, through sheer persistence. I basically went into the same radio station where I had guest DJ’ed on Christmas Eve six years earlier and begged for a job. Sitting across the desk from Kevin, a small guy with a thin mustache, I offered up my only qualifications (other than that I was willing to work for no pay): “I’ll do whatever you’ll let me do, and I’ll be on time.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  Unbelievably, Kevin called me a few days later to say yes. I wasn’t hired to be the new morning-show personality or anything, just to clean the lobby on Sundays and switch out a Rick Dees Top 40 countdown. (Back in the days when the countdown was played on CD, you played half the countdown on one CD, switched it out, and then played the other half of the countdown on another. Super tec
hnologically advanced.) I think eventually I made five bucks an hour, but I would have seriously done it for free. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

  As soon as I found out that I had a job working at KLAZ on Sundays, I called my high school guidance counselor to change where I was going to college from the University of Arkansas to Henderson State University. Now, the fact that I was going to college at all was a major victory. Only a handful of kids from my high school went on to college—and no one in my family had ever been.

  My senior year had been all about that goal. I was smart enough to know it wasn’t enough to be smart. I also had to be good at the standardized admissions tests for college. There was a formula, and I needed that formula. So I spent my own money on an ACT prep course. I had saved up from my job at the marina on Lake Ouachita, where I pumped gas for boats and sold live bait to fishermen, like crickets and worms. The three-day class where I learned to take the test was worth every penny. My scores were good enough that I would be able to attend a state school on full scholarship. I wanted to go to the U of A. It had been my lifelong dream because of its football team, the Razorbacks. It was the team I loved so much that I physically hurt when they lost—and still do—so that’s where I was going to college. That is, until I landed a job at KLAZ. It would have been impossible to work there in any meaningful way and attend U of A in Fayetteville, which was more than three hours away. So at the last minute, I had my guidance counselor, who used to work at Henderson State, pull some strings and transfer me to the four-year liberal arts college in Arkadelphia, only an hour away from Hot Springs.

  It was a decision I made all on my own. My mom and my grandma, who never asked me if I was going to college in the first place, didn’t know I switched to Henderson until I told them. I’m not even sure they knew I’d been planning to go to Arkansas, either. It didn’t matter. I had a plan, and breaking into the radio business was more important than whatever university I attended.

  My decision turned out to be even more important because a few days before what was supposed to be my first day at work, I got a call from Kevin. As it turned out, the station had had to fire the weekend DJs. I don’t know the story behind it—I was just a kid—but the upshot was that Kevin needed someone to put on the air, and he needed someone immediately.

  “We need you to go on the air,” he said.

  Me? I was hired to sweep up cigarette butts and switch a CD, not be on the air. I was a kid! Although I was scared to death, I said, “Great!”

  “Okay, you need a name,” he said. Everyone on radio had a cool name. “What do you want it to be, Bobby Z or Bobby Bones? You can pick either one of the two.”

  Now, I have no clue how or when he came up with those particular options, but I thought they were both terrible. Out of my two choices, at least Bobby Bones sounded like a real human. I mean, a pirate or a porn star—but still, a human. So I went with Bobby Bones. (I have never been able to shake that name, and although it’s now just who I am, I still hate it. It’s so stupid. For someone who built his career and identity on being authentic, having such a fake name has always bothered me. Not to mention the unfortunate echo of T-Bone, that nickname that haunted me as a kid. Although one had nothing to do with the other, a story quickly went around my hometown that I named myself because of the T-Bone story. As if I would give myself a nickname based on one of the worst moments in my life?)

  “Congratulations,” Kevin Cruise said after I picked my name. Then he tossed me an oversized white KLAZ T-shirt. I was probably a small, but the shirt was an XL. (Isn’t it annoying that all free shirts seem to be XL? You’re so excited to get it, and then you can’t even wear it unless you want to look like you’re going to sleep in your dad’s T-shirt. I’ve seen many people get into fistfights over shirts shot out of a T-shirt cannon, and I always want to shout, “It’s not worth it! The shirt’s the size of a circus tent!”)

  The night after I got my gigantic free T-shirt was Saturday and my first on-air. I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say it was the worst night of radio since the invention of the medium. I had no idea what I was doing, so I did most everything wrong. I pushed the wrong buttons; I announced the wrong station; I even played songs on top of each other. If it could go wrong, it did go wrong. But I got through it, and little Bobby Bones was born.

  Although I was terrible, I loved every minute—being on air was a rush—and I wasn’t so terrible that Kevin changed his mind about my doing Saturday and Sunday nights. I don’t think he expected me to be good. He needed someone quickly, and I was the closest warm body. It was timing and the fact that I seemed trustworthy. Otherwise I showed no other promise that I can think of. I didn’t even have a good voice. As I started my weekends on KLAZ (and for years after), I tried to be the guy with the deep broadcaster voice. You know, the voice of God. But I couldn’t pull it off. I don’t have a distinct voice, which now I recognize as a plus, because I sound like the regular guy I am.

  I wanted to do a good job, because in my book this was the coolest job in the world. My first-ever radio interview was with Darius Rucker. You’ll know him as either the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish or a country superstar—or maybe both—but I know him as one of the nicest guys I’ve ever been around. I was just some teenager from Nowhere, Arkansas, sent to an amphitheater in Little Rock to get an interview from one of my favorite bands. Petrified, I waited in a back room for one of the band members to come out, since the manager didn’t specify which one he was sending out. No offense to Mark, Dean, or Sony (as a Blowfish fan I knew all of them), but I wanted Darius. And in he walked: Darius freaking Rucker. Naturally my response was to start shaking so badly, I couldn’t hold the microphone steady. Darius took the mic from my quivering hand and led me though every single question. When we—or he—was done, he actually hugged me and said, “Keep up the good work.”

  Over the next couple months of doing weekends, my radio and interviewing skills improved (I wasn’t playing two songs at the same time or shaking like a leaf when I talked to a celebrity anymore). But they didn’t improve so much that I deserved the promotion I soon got from Kevin. However, when the night guy announced he was moving to Little Rock, Kevin offered me his spot. And at eighteen, I got my own night show on radio! Again, it had nothing to do with talent. I was simply at the right place at the right time—and had proven that I was reliable (which I maintain is half of the formula for success in life).

  I knew I was incredibly lucky to get that opportunity, but it also meant I was starting a full-time job just as I was starting college. I signed up for twenty hours of credits for the semester (about five hours more than required, just in case I failed anything) with the full knowledge that I had a job every weekday night an hour away from my college. My schedule was only one of the many new things I had to get used to. Although Henderson was by no means a huge, cosmopolitan campus, it was so different than the tiny place I came from.

  That was pointed out to me on my very first day of school by Courtney, the one real friend I made in college. (Courtney is a dude, by the way.) We were both in an oral communications course, which I walked into wearing my high school letterman jacket. After class, Courtney, a hulking guy who had been recruited to play quarterback for the football team, took me aside and said, “Dude, we don’t wear high school jackets anymore. We’re in college.”

  Humiliated, I felt like I was right back in junior high with everyone laughing at me. I might as well have had a boner. I stopped wearing the letterman jacket right away, but the problem was that I only had one coat—and that was it. So I ended up going to class in the freezing cold wearing just a sweatshirt until I saved up enough to buy a new coat.

  Although I was embarrassed when Courtney called me out for wearing high school apparel in college, I also appreciated him for it. He was a college quarterback and I was a nerd in Buddy Holly–style glasses. But appearances aside, we had a lot in common. Courtney was from Hope, Arkansas, which was the same kind of place as Mountain
Pine. We were both broke and busting our butts to get through school. After meeting in that communications course, we started to hang out. He was supportive of my career, rooting me on as I struggled to keep my job and get my homework done. I asked him how practice was and gave him free CDs. We were in it together.

  (Courtney is still my best friend; if I were to get married he would definitely be my best man. Mainly, that’s because Courtney is just a really good dude, and we’ve had a lot of good times together. But another reason is that he was my best friend when nobody wanted to be my friend. Now that I’ve achieved some success, I worry about motivations in almost every relationship. Why do people want to be my friends? Is it because I’m on the radio? Is it because I’m not poor anymore? I just have to trust that people like me for me, and it isn’t easy. With Courtney there was never a question.)

  The fact that Courtney was my only friend at Henderson was fine, because honestly, I really didn’t have time for friends. Check out what was a typical day in the life of Bobby Estell’s college career:

  wake up at 8 A.M. and go to class

  spend most of the day in class

  drive an hour to KLAZ to work from 4 P.M. to midnight

  get back in the car and drive three-quarters of the way back to college and stop at Waffle House, where I study until 3 A.M.

  get into bed at 4 A.M.

  wake up at 8 A.M. and do it all again

  And that was just freshman year. Because my scholarship required work credits, I worked at and eventually ran the college radio station, KSWH 91.1 FM, too. I pretty much had every job at the station from radio host to program director to general manager.

  I remember people telling me when I was at Henderson, “Wait until after college, that’s when life gets really hard.” Not for me. College was the grind. No matter how hard it got or how tired I was, I couldn’t quit anything. While I was certain radio was going to be my career, it was also crucial to me that I get my degree. I was determined to be the first person in my family to graduate college. It was truly the first time in my life I had to “Fight. Grind. And repeat.”