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The Bones Are Good
Bobby & Team Remain Role ModelsOctober 24, 2022
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The first time I highlighted Bobby Bones and his teammates on these pages, they hadn’t yet found their sea legs in Nashville and were still getting mocked, shamed, ridiculed, and badgered for their entry into the Nashville scene. I didn’t know Bobby then, but I knew the work he and his show were putting in daily as I got to hear them on my way into Franklin TN, along with Woody & Jim, the Bert show and at that time, my morning show with Wally at Way-FM was ranking Top 5 in Music City, ahead of Big 98, where Bobby, Amy and the team had roosted.
But you know when you know that life is happening before your ears as I did every day dial surfing between shows, confident that despite ratings showing it to not yet be a factor -- that the Bobby Bones show was about to show up lickety-split like cobwebs do on your ceiling fans seconds before you’re about to have a houseful of guests.
Bobby has this ‘Johnny Carson’ quality, where, while he is capable of owning the airwaves himself, he will remove himself fully allowing other people on his team to take center stage and be most important in that moment. If you’re too young to know what Johnny Carson did on the Tonight Show, long before Leno and Fallon, it was exactly that. He highlighted the human spirit of others, even though he had enough talent to own the space himself. This is a quality so rare in entertainment that when it is witnessed, it is refreshing.
Back when I knew Bobby and team were about to become Nashville’s morning team, Bobby was giving Amy Brown full spotlight in a time she was living through her mother’s illness and then her passing. And then through child adoption struggles, woes, and victories.
The Tonight Show with Bobby Bones
Amy showed strengths, extreme sadness, joy in troubling times, and a determination to rise when depression would have held most of us down like a barbell landed on our chest, with no spotter in the room.
Radio has changed a lot in those short few years, not just with covid, but with the ways a show today must engage with an audience outside of their airtime. As I set out to find radio shows who do this well, integrating Tik Tok, Snapchat, Reels, Instagram, etc., I kept running into heritage morning shows doing the latest Tik Tok dance, challenge, or rendition of the latest viral craze. While this was entertaining, I couldn’t help but feel like they were riding a wave that had peaked despite having enough energy to still wash them to the shore.
@webgirlmorgan bougie like Natty in the styrofoam 😜 @walkerhayesofficial @radiolunchbox #fyp #fancylike ♬ Fancy Like - Walker Hayes In Winter ’21, shows in every genre jumped aboard Tik Tok dances and videos to Fancy Like, and this was where I glaringly saw the divide of timing as a Fancy Like video of Web Girl Morgan and Lunchbox from Bones’ show popped up and it was dated June of ’21. It led me to another video where Morgan was attempting to teach Lunchbox gymnastics moves, and while Lunch camped it up, even had he tried his best to really do a cartwheel instead of giving up, the videos do a superb job of telling us who Lunchbox and Morgan are, sometimes referred to in radio, as ‘Character Definition.’
Morgan would later be seen doing a handstand into the window of a Jeep, a Tik Tok challenge I personally succeeded at, although I looked like lunchbox while doing it, minus the Chicago Cubs shirt, although I own several.
Can I Take You To The Prom?
If you’re doing videos on Instagram or Tik Tok because you’re supposed to, then you’re actually missing the real opportunity, that is rich in Morgan’s offerings and that is letting them know who you are in the process. An impactful video from Morgan is one where she shows pictures of herself in dresses from high school prom, then shows up in her living room wearing the same dresses in real time.
There’s so many elements to this that scream INCREDIBLE, the first being that the girl held onto these dresses, the second being that she still fits them and does them justice and the third being that she identifies to the season of prom, and that this was an important time to her in her youth. Why did she hold onto them? I have no clue, but it was either because the time meant so much or that she can’t get rid of stuff, and both are powerful clues into character traits that will draw us into the heart of a human being because they remind us of ourselves or someone we know.
Once we can relate to a person on this level, every next time we see them or hear them on the radio, we get to begin with them at a level of KNOWING them already, and it’s in THIS quality where the Bones’ team has been fantastic in utilizing social media, for MORE than just to entertain, but as a continuation tool to better get to know who they are.
Even Bobby’s Johnny Carson quality of lifting other people up, instead of himself; there’s the story of Josh Woods who noticed the acoustics in the car wash he managed were stellar for singing and began doing covers on TikTok. His version of a Brooks & Dunn song got Bobby’s attention, enough that Bobby duetted the video.
Walker ‘n the Woods
Woods would later come to Nashville to be on the Bobby Bones show, surprised by the entrance of Clay Walker; and the two would do an impromptu performance of a Clay Walker song, to which Clay was impressed enough with to completely back out and let Josh just go.
It would be a great story if it ended there, but Josh would later get overwhelming reaction, playing live at the iHeartCountry Festival along with Bobby, and now he’s also been back to Nashville recording songs.
@mrbobbybones #duet with @josh_woods4 #CandyCrushAllStars ♬ original sound - Josh Woods Amazingly, Woods credits God, which makes me love him dearly, and I agree with him, wholeheartedly, that when a radio show utilizes social media as a tool for their show and not just as a device to pass the time or be in the moment, that people’s lives can and will be changed.
Was Woods looking for a singing career? The fact that he had tried out both, for American Idol and the Voice in years’ past to no avail would point to yes. And the fact that he had remained diligent to a job as manager of a car wash, would point to an incredible work ethic which would pay off in spades for that day when his career finally blasts off into outer space.
And it all happened, yes, because God is the King of timing, but because radio folks decided to be diligent in their efforts on social media.
@sarahleewagman You can touch the truck just don’t touch my man. He did it! #donttouchmytruck #HeIs55YearsOld #hedidthat ♬ My Truck - Breland -
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