10 Questions with ... The Morning Cruise

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

Christian radio has few on-air brands as adored by its audience and sought to be emulated by industry peers as The JOY FM's The Morning Cruise. Over the past dozen years, Dave Cruse, Bill Martin and Carmen Brown have become a daily clinic on how to engage, influence and love on their listeners through insightful, moving, and often-comedic banter that not only draws them to the "family" trio, but also invites them to be a part of it.

Based in The JOY FM's main studio in Sarasota, FL., The Morning Cruise currently covers 1/3 of Florida (including Tampa, St. and Petersburg), Georgia (Atlanta, Athens and Macon) and most recently, Dothan, AL.

1) Career-wise, where were each of you before forming The Morning Cruise?

Dave: At KSBJ/Houston doing mornings with Susan O'Donnell.

Bill: Back at The JOY FM after baby #5 and a graduate degree.

Carmen: Freshly out of doing mornings in Country radio in Tampa, and our Promotions Director and guest on TMC.

2) What is the timeline of TMC's evolution into its current formation?

Dave and Bill had worked together at The JOY FM in the mid-90s. In 2000, Bill broke up the band and thought he was done with radio. Dave moved on to Houston. When Bill finished his "prodigal son phase" (at seminary!) in 2003, he finally listened to God and got back into mornings at The JOY FM. In 2005, Dave and Bill put the band back together. Meanwhile, Carmen's Tampa Country station had flipped formats, leaving her without a radio job. She thought she was done. When she took the job in Promotions at The JOY FM, she had little knowledge of the CCM format and little desire to be on-air at a Christian station. All of that changed when the three of us got together and experienced the chemistry. It grew organically from there, resisting the pressure to overly define or stage what was happening naturally. The Morning Cruise with Dave, Bill and Carmen has been a thing since early 2007.

3) Can you recall the moment and what you felt when it was clear you three clicked as an on-air team?

Carmen came to The JOY FM in 2004. Dave came back in 2005. Almost immediately, the magic happened. When we were collaborating on anything or talking-up a promotion on-air, we genuinely enjoyed working together. We each filled a piece of the puzzle. We knew it would work when we experienced a natural give-and-take. We recognized this sort of chemistry was not forced or orchestrated (as cheesy as that sounds). We all felt a true, three-person partnership was forming. And the listeners were responding. The show fast-tracked from those early, unrehearsed conversations. Momentum breeds success.

4) Was there ever a time when, collectively or individually, you felt like the team's dynamic wasn't working?

We have our dysfunctions just about every week, as would be expected with any team of people as...extra...as we can be! But after 10-plus years together, we began to ask ourselves how long this could last, what we needed to do to keep hitting the target, and what changes needed to be made. Honestly, we're still working together with the help of our amazing consultants (counselors!) to freshen up the "marriage." Carmen's already there. Dave and Bill are working on it!

5) How would you describe each TMC member's "character" on the show? How long and difficult was it to adapt to those roles, or was it a completely natural thing from the start?

Carmen is the Alabama blonde (whose roots are showing). She's everyone's friend. She's Lucille Ball if Lucy were a Beth Moore fan.

Dave is the sometimes-snarky, bottom-line, down-to-earth, "get-off-my-lawn," Community Coffee-loving, opinionated one.

Bill is the absent-minded professor who can be sweet, sappy or sage, depending on his hormones.

Together, Dave and Bill make the perfect girlfriend for Carmen. (They hate that description!)

These characters were neither crafted nor adapted. They are our natural personae, appropriately exaggerated.

6) How would you suspect the core show listener relates to each of you individually?

What we hear from focus groups and on the street is that listeners typically relate to Carmen as the most accessible one. She has amazing empathy, so that listeners feel she cares about them personally. They tend to get Dave and Bill confused, but they relate to specifics of each of our lives ("has five kids. . .avid cyclist. . .loves LSU. . .reads poetry") They can't always tell who is who, but the most important indicator is when they talk about the show as one "person" who they have done life with, especially through milestone moments or devastating depths. When someone can specifically identify how our content helped them, made them laugh, cry, or hope, we feel immensely thankful. And when they say "we," including themselves in the life of the show--a moment "we" shared or an outreach "we" did-that's a huge win.

7) What have you discovered has been the best formula to keeping the show fresh and unpredictable?

The best formula is having no formula. For years, we resisted external pressure to "formulize" our show; now we have to resist the internal pressure of "we've done it so long" and try to surprise ourselves. One way to do that is to do something on the show each week that makes us nervous. Another way is to involve more personalities and regulars. We are currently working on these things.

8) Having been together for so long and in such close quarters, how have you learned to navigate disagreements or frustrations with each other?

We've had our share of sibling moments. It truly is like two brothers and a sister. Over the years, we have learned the importance of two things: 1) Talking-out our disagreements, differences and dysfunctions. Through such struggles, we learn to apply the gospel to our own hearts and to each other, respectfully and honestly; 2) Talking outside the control room! A quarterback and wide receiver don't discuss a blown pass route in the huddle...they figure out how to execute the next play. We deal with things off the air and outside the studio. We pray a lot too. And we tease. If we can't do both, we won't survive.

9) How would each of you describe how the other two individually make you a better person?

Dave: Bill challenges me spiritually. It can be an "iron sharpens iron" relationship at times. He also keeps us as a show from falling into predicable patterns or ruts. Bill is the one that tracks the breaks, something I just don't have the patience or aptitude to do.

Carmen has stretched me. When you've done this for a while and had some success, it's easy to rely on things that have worked and just ride that horse until it falls over. Carmen gets bored too easily to allow that to happen. That's a good thing, because it pushes us as a show to stay fresh and hungry. Plus, riding that one trick pony will only get you so far. Eventually, your audience ages out and so do you. As a show, we try to be conscious of our need to constantly reach into the younger demos without sacrificing the audience that has been with us all along.

Bill: Well, Dave is my brother from another mother. We started this thing with a lot of common background and experiences. As we have gotten older, our lives have branched out more, but there's that shared core that anchors my perspective as I spin around life like a tetherball. And when I do get tangled, Dave is there to shake his head and comment on it! Ha! (Yes, he does, but he also helps me get untangled and back in play.) Dave's spiritual solidity and relational patience give both Carmen and me space and support to take risks.

Carmen is the sister I never had. She absolutely won't let us be "less than," because she so values the relationships we have. Status quo is intolerable for her. In anything. In someone else, that could be a type of spiritual restlessness. With Carmen, it is her God-given temperament and her passion for the gospel and what we do. Carmen makes both Dave and me better by encouraging us to own our strengths and personalities and to use our gifts to the full. Plus, her love for Jesus and the gospel is inspiring.

Carmen: Dave is our "Steady Eddie" in the best sense of the term. He's our constant. He's made me better by not sweating the small stuff. I'm a pretty easygoing person, but criticism used to really get to me. We didn't have that in Country radio. I had no idea the glass house I was stepping into. There have been seasons when I heard the voices in my head, making me feel like I had to qualify things to death. Dave is so great at letting things roll off his back, and he's helped me learn to stay true to who we are and silence those voices. Dave is the pithy one on the show, and he can say in five words what takes me five sentences. I love this about him! Over the years, he has helped me get to the point much faster. (Of course, I'm still a work in progress.) He is great at translating Carmen too.

Bill has helped me mature spiritually. Growing up with a very Southern, legalistic background as well as with an alcoholic father, I had some ideas about God that simply weren't true. Early on, I swung from (resentful) legalism to (cheap) grace. Neither were good places to be. I ended up just being legalistic to the legalists. And I certainly didn't want to cheapen the cost of the Cross by stumbling into a trendy, progressive spirituality in the name of grace. Avoiding those extremes takes wisdom as well as understanding, and Bill helped me work it out. Bill has also helped me to be less critical, and assume the best in people. Always.

I do tease that together they make up my best girlfriend. But in reality, they are the two best brothers a girl could ask for. I know-for sure-that this is a "once in a lifetime" partnership.

10) What would each of you say is the most memorable on-air moment since TMC began?

Bill: Why do the horrible ones stick out to me? Like when I fell asleep on-mic, or when I announced--with staging bits--the death of the wrong Stapleton (Maureen, not Jean!), or...but let's stop right there. Having Amy Grant tell me something I said would be "our little code" was pretty memorable. (But that leads to another horrible moment. Hmm.) There have been lots, but my favorites are when a guest like Louie Giglio or Denver Moore (Same Kind of Different As Me) or an artist like Chris Tomlin, Joel Smallbone or Natalie Grant tell us they feel like family and become a fourth member of the team.

Dave: Well, there are many memorable moments. Some are memorable because of the good, some bad-like the youth mission trip winner's dad that was so excited he cussed live on-air. On the good side, there are so many it's hard to narrow down. I'm going to say the moment Brandon Heath helped us reunite a daughter with the father she hadn't seen since she was eight years old. I'll never forget that morning.

Carmen: In the hilarious column, Mike & Jay Weaver hold the trophy for literally making me pee my pants! Their "weigh station" story is one for the record books. Dave Barnes holds the honorable mention for the "pizza & squirrel" story.

In the heartwarming column, I'll never forget the day we told Renee Napier to turn around, only to find Matthew West in the other studio. Matthew had just penned Renee's story in Forgiveness, and we got to tell Renee!

In the most personal column, the day we launched our full-market signal in Tampa was a full-circle moment for me. That was the day I knew for sure God had ordained every single step that led me to The JOY FM.