Bare Bones

by Bobby Bones

  When I first came to Nashville, I was unfavorably compared to Gerry House constantly. It killed me to walk every day into what used to be his studio and see his sign, HOME OF THE HOUSE FOUNDATION. It was during that period that I said to myself, “When I hit number one, I’m going to take that sign down.” Until then, I didn’t deserve to take it down.

  So when we hit number one around a year later, I took a screwdriver into the studio and removed that sign. I didn’t say anything about it afterward, because I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I respect anyone who can stay in a job in the entertainment business for any amount of time—particularly one who did it as well and as long as Gerry. It’s not easy, and I know that.

  But this was now my workplace, and so I took the two-by-one-foot sign down. Someone in the building—I don’t know who—called one of the broadcasting trade magazines, which printed an article about how I was being disrespectful once again. Another backlash followed, but luckily this time it was just within the industry. No one outside radio knew or cared about the sign, which was no surprise to me. Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, Gerry and I, we don’t matter much. People move on.

  When I took Gerry’s sign down, I moved it to the trophy case upstairs, where hopefully my name will go one day. I thought I was doing a natural thing, making my studio my own. But it created discomfort that I didn’t want, and I wondered if I hadn’t subconsciously made things harder for myself than they needed to be.

  While I worked through the tough times at the job, I continued to wreak havoc in my personal life. When it came to women, I sabotaged everything. It was the same old problem over and over. I jeopardized my happiness, because I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I worried anyone I committed to would leave me, like everybody else in life had. So in a counterphobic move, I was the one to cut off the relationship every single time.

  Betty and I had been dating for more than four years when I arrived in Nashville. When she and I first started to get serious, I’d warned her to stay away from me. Because I cared for her!

  “You don’t want to be in this relationship,” I said, and I meant it.

  In the beginning, I tried all my tricks to try to ice her out (not returning texts, bad attitude, going away without telling her). I didn’t want to play games or be a jerk. An unconscious fear sabotaged any kind of intimacy in my life. I slowly withdrew without realizing I was doing it. But Betty just stuck with me, and stuck with me. I’m not sure why, because I can’t figure out the appeal of dating me.

  Four years later, she was still there by my side. When I decided to move to Nashville, she wanted to come with me. But I wasn’t having that, of course. I didn’t think it was fair to her. Betty was such a great person, it wasn’t worth her giving up her whole life to move to a new town for me. She deserved better. She deserved somebody who could love her fully. And it wasn’t me. In all those years we were together, I never told her that I loved her.

  So Betty stayed in Austin. We tried to make it work for a second. We talked on the phone and she visited, but we both knew that it wasn’t going to last. Not long after I moved, we broke up.

  I never told her I loved her. And you know what? I probably did. See? I can’t even say the words here. In text. In past tense.

  Despite the fact that I ran from her like a coward, Betty continued to be a source of support at the times in my life when I needed someone the most. One of those was about a year after we broke up. Out of the blue, I couldn’t balance and I couldn’t read. I had no clue what had happened, only that it was impossible for me to function on air, and something was really wrong with me. But I didn’t tell anybody at work that I was sick, other than Amy, who I needed to cover for me. Again, it was the old paranoia that I’d get fired in a hot second if I showed weakness. I would hand Amy news stories, because I couldn’t read them. But sometimes I couldn’t even speak in complete sentences. Terrified, I went to the doctor immediately, who didn’t put my mind at ease when he said, “This could be a lot of things.” There was a lot of “blah blah blah.” Then I heard, “You may have MS.”

  The only neurologist I could get an appointment with quickly was one I found through connections in Austin. So the next day I flew to Austin for an appointment. Worried, I called Betty to explain that I was coming to town and why. She took off from work and met me at the doctor’s office, where she stayed in the waiting room for the entire day while I went through a battery of tests including MRIs, CAT scans, and one where I had to do breathing exercises until I passed out with all these weird things attached to my head. No matter how scary the stuff got, it was a relief knowing she was right outside.

  It turned out I’d had a seizure in my sleep, and once I knew I wasn’t dying, I slowly recovered. It took weeks, but I bounced back fully. The doctor told me that I may suffer from seizures again, but that it isn’t anything that I can’t handle. My brain is okay, but my mind still has a lot of problems. Case in point—I ran away from Betty because I started to feel things most people really want to feel. As soon as it became apparent this was a girl that I could have a really happy life with, I was out. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to know that I had made a huge mistake.

  GNAWING AT THE BONES

  After my breakup with Betty Boop, I was pretty down in the dumps for a while. I went on dates with a few girls, but nothing serious. That is, until the day of “The List.”

  In case you didn’t already pick up on it, I’m a little OCD. So I really like lists. I list the times, places, and locations I need to be every single day. Before the show, I list segments that we are going to do in order of how good I think they will be. After the show, I change that list and list them in order of how well they went on air. I list my favorite soaps. I list my favorite teas. So of course I had a list of pretty girls I wanted to come on my radio show.

  Rachel Reinert, one part of the three-member hit country band Gloriana, was definitely on The List. In fact, she might have been at the top of it. When we did a bit on air where we picked the ten most beautiful women in country (given the classy title “The Bones’ Babes”), I put Rachel at number one. (People magazine had just come out with their “Most Beautiful” issue and didn’t pick anyone from the country world, which I found annoying. But the real inspiration behind the segment was my newly single status. As I said on air, “I’m putting a bunch of girls who I would want to date on this list.”)

  I didn’t think it would actually work, of course! But shockingly, it did, because the day after we aired this list, with Rachel on top, her people called up the show and asked if I wanted the singer-songwriter to come to the studio the following day. No way! I thought to myself. How embarrassing. But my rule is, the more embarrassing something is for me, the more the listeners will probably enjoy it. And of course I thought it would be funny to strike out on the air with a beautiful girl who I knew wouldn’t want to date me. So I agreed. I even made the whole experience even more embarrassing by writing her a song, which I imaginatively called “Rachel,” that I played for her in the studio. It could have won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Here, let me show you:

  Rachel, I think you are so pretty

  When I see you, you make my heart all giddy.

  Rachel, I got you that trophy

  Do you like guys like me that are dopey?

  She smiled and laughed uncomfortably as I performed the whole thing for her, as if I were a creepy stalker. As you can see, my song stylings have met with varying responses when it comes to the ladies. Luckily, the tunes I cowrite for my band the Raging Idiots get a better reception. But at the end of her visit I got her cell number. Well . . . I had a friend tweet her friend to get me her cell number. I’m a total ladies’ man, you know. Anyway, Rachel and I started seeing each other fairly soon after. That’s right! She agreed to go out with me. It was very casual at first, as she was on the road a lot and I woke up at 3 A.M. But it turned into a strong relationship.

  Rachel was fun to be around. I was just coming off my fou
r-year relationship with Betty, probably the best human I had ever met, and she was a tough act to follow. But going out with Rachel was not only different, but equally good. Betty, who worked in sales, helped me find balance. She was great at that work-life thing, with a successful career and a strong circle of friends and close family.

  Rachel, who had signed her first publishing deal in her teens and moved to Nashville soon after, was a lot like me—i.e., a workaholic. You have to be if you want to make it in the music business. She was always on the road with Gloriana, which had toured with Taylor Swift and won the Academy of Country Music’s award for Top New Vocal Group and a Teen Choice award for Choice Country Group. I would have given her an award, too (oh wait, I did: the Bones’ Babes #1 Hottest Country Singer Award). She was one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard face-to-face. I would just ask her to play stuff around the house so I could hear her sing. Unfortunately, she never asked me to just tell jokes.

  Her talent as a performer was only one aspect of Rachel’s appeal. She was also very open-minded in a climate that, in my opinion, can be too judgmental.

  Rachel was just cool, but there was never any kind of country music “power couple” thing between us. First of all, I don’t go to many industry events because I’m a freaky, antisocial dude who feels like everyone at those parties either wants to use me or doesn’t like me. (I know, fun.) I didn’t perceive myself as half of any “celebrity relationship,” as some gossip sites called us. I also never really thought of Rachel as famous. She was super talented and driven, and I was attracted to that. Yet I also saw the grind of her job from the inside: the long bus rides, the program directors you have to drive all over the country to talk to in order to get your song on the radio, the many, many struggles of being a recording artist.

  Struggling, which we all do, whether you’re a truck driver or a country music star, is what brought a common humanity not just to Rachel but to all the good and talented folks I’ve met in Nashville. Recognizing that beneath the makeup, four-hundred-dollar distressed jeans, and perfect hair (or steamed baseball cap—seriously, I’ve seen some country music dudes get that done to their hats before they go onstage), we’re all just the same. Knowing this to be true is what’s helped me most with my on-air interviewing of celebrities.

  Most people, even those in the media, get intimidated by famous folks. Often interviewers are so worried about making celebrities uncomfortable or unhappy in any way that they ask the same questions as every other journalist, which means the famous person gives the same answer over and over until it becomes muscle memory. I think having to say the same thing again and again is the most annoying thing ever for anyone, famous or anonymous. I’m not in the business of making musicians uncomfortable or annoyed (at least, I don’t think I am). So if I can break the verbal rut they’re in, there’s no telling where I can go. Awful or awesome, either way is great.

  The way I do this is by humanizing people who don’t seem human to others because of their larger-than-life status. “What did you eat for breakfast?” “Did you have a dog, growing up?” “What kind of underwear do you wear?” I ask about simple stuff that celebrities don’t usually get asked.

  I do interviews constantly, in a medium where the conventional wisdom is that they’re not good for ratings. But I’ve always felt that listeners tune out when they hear interviews because most people on the radio or television aren’t doing interesting interviews. We once were given research that compared The Bobby Bones Show to other morning national shows, and what they found was that while other hosts gushed over their guests just for showing up, my interviews were more of a back-and-forth between peers.

  I was happy the research bore out what I hope comes through on my show. Not only do I feel the peer-to-peer quality of my questions makes for more interesting radio, but I do believe it also puts the artist at ease. When Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert split up, I was the first one who got him to talk in any real way about his divorce, because I talked to him in, well, a real way. Instead of asking him a fawning nonquestion, like “It must be so hard for you,” or making an accusation, like “Was there someone else?” I went at the angle, “You’re famous, and she’s famous. And you guys kept it secret until it was finalized. Now, all personal things aside, how did you do that?” With that Blake was able to separate himself a bit, talk about the law, and then he kind of just went, “Our whole thing was, we are going to be cool about this. It is what it is . . . we’re buddies.” That might not seem like big news to you (and it wasn’t to me), but that interview was picked up by every media outlet from the Today show to CNN to the Christian Post.

  Even celebrity listeners, like Tim McGraw, liked what we were doing on the show. Although now we’ve done a few specials together for TV and radio, the first time he was on our show was when he called in to our request line! The country superstar said he was just a fan of the show and that he listened every day as he drove his kids to school. It was so crazy that honestly we didn’t believe it was him, and so we asked him a lot of trivia questions to see if it was really him. (Obviously, he passed with flying colors.) When I moved to Nashville, I had been told, “Tim is really quiet and doesn’t warm up quickly to people.” But that’s not what I found at all. When he found out that I’d never owned or worn a cowboy hat, he gave me the black one he’d worn throughout his whole Las Vegas run. Tim even sent me a murse (man purse) that he had bought but was too embarrassed to wear.

  At the beginning, not everyone appreciated my goal to find a shared humanity. When I first started this job, few artists wanted to come on my show because my interview style was so different. A lot of big stars were upset with me because I took them out of their comfort zone. I didn’t say, “Hey, let’s talk about your record and what inspired this song.” Instead I wanted to know what they ate for dinner last night. (That isn’t a real question, but rather the kind that always leads to something else. So I ask it, and then I just listen. Often interviewers don’t listen to the answers—they are just preparing for their next question. I listen to what the artist is saying, because that’s what takes me to my next question.)

  Jason Aldean, one of the biggest guys in country music, acted like he hated me when he came on the show. He didn’t think my questions were amusing and rarely smiled. Because of that I didn’t really like him, either. That’s not childish, is it? But now, we totally get each other. And I genuinely like that dude, so much so that if I needed a favor, I’d call him. And I think he’d call me, too. Turns out, much like me, Jason is just a quiet guy. He was dragged through the mud a couple of times and I felt bad for him, because he’s a quality person under the persona. First impressions aren’t always right. Not about Jason, not about me, not really about anyone.

  Jason aside, some artists lack any sense of humor about themselves whatsoever. I can live with that. It’s very important to me to keep some sense of equilibrium between my guests and me while we are on air. I’m not bigger than they are, and they’re not bigger than I am. Nor are they bigger than the listeners and fans. We are all people. Except for Garth Brooks, who’s the greatest of all time. He’s bigger than us all. Yeah, Garth Brooks stands alone.

  I’ve interviewed Garth Brooks (I can’t call the guy who’s sold 134 million albums “Garth,” but Mr. Brooks seems a little formal, so I’m just going to keep going with Garth Brooks) a few times now. I couldn’t believe that the first time he came in the studio he brought a guitar and played whatever songs we wanted. By pretty much any metric you can come up with, from album sales to monster arena tours, the man is bigger than any musician living or dead, including Madonna, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, and even the King himself, Elvis. He was just the nicest guy, though, which is what 95 percent of country music stars are. Then, at the end of his visit, he gave me his guitar, which he signed. Oh my god. It was such an amazing experience that although I often listen back to segments of my show in order to figure what I could have done better, I didn’t listen to this interview. I wanted
to preserve the memory of how great it was in my mind. I didn’t want to ruin it by focusing on a question I should have asked or a word I stumped on. (I’ve only ever done that on two other interviews: Clerks director Kevin Smith and my first interview years ago, with John Mayer. But Garth Brooks is definitely the most sacred.)

  In my apartment I have a wall of guitars that are hung the way I guess other people hang art. That’s where I keep the guitar Garth Brooks gave me. There are also guitars from John Mayer, Ben Harper, and Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish, who came in as a guest my first week in Nashville. (I no longer take guitars from guests, but I buy one or two a week for artists to sign and then I give them to charity.) There’s one over in the corner on the wall from Dierks Bentley, whose song “I Hold On” we really championed on our show. After it went to No. 1, he wrote all the lyrics on a guitar and gave it to me. Eric Paslay, who was a big songwriter in Nashville before he went solo, did the same thing with his first single, “Friday Night.” I was the first to play the single, which also hit No. 1. So I have a guitar with every lyric to that song written on it. It’s quite special to me. In the land of constant competition that is show business, things like that are still pretty awesome.

  Dierks and Eric are just a couple of the artists The Bobby Bones Show has helped hit the charts. When I say this, I’m not bragging about myself (well, maybe just a little: I do have a keen ear for awesomeness) but rather about our listeners, because they’re the ones who buy the music and make the hits. It took about a year for our radio show to influence the charts, but since then it’s crazy how loyal and how trustworthy the listeners of my radio show have become.

  One of the most gratifying chart-toppers who have come through our doors is Chris Janson. Although he’d written songs for the likes of Tim McGraw, Chris got dropped from his own recording contract. He was playing bars and struggling, like so many musicians in Nashville. Talent is everywhere, all the time in this city. Everybody is a musician, singer, and/or songwriter. And I’m not talking about second-rate guitar players or people who need Auto-Tune to sound good. If you aren’t the best of the best, you will be chewed up and spit out here. You can go to any bar on any street and watch somebody who’s amazing and only working for tips. So Nashville is crowded with people struggling to make it in country music—and yet talented people from all over the country still move here year after year.