10 Questions with ... Bob Reeves

NAME:Bob Reeves TITLE:National Director of Radio Promotion COMPANY:Warner Bros. Nashville LOCATION:Nashville, TN BORN:Framingham, MA RAISED:Scotia, NY

Please outline your radio career so far:

Been all over, done all that and definitely bought a t-shirt at each one!

1. Bob, congratulations on your new position as National Director of Promotion at Warner Bros. In your career you've spent many years with SONY, then MIDAS, so a big company and then a smaller one. Are you going through re-adjustment again, since you're back at a big corporation?

Thanks guys. There's definitely an adjustment back to the big company, but honestly every gig is a bit different from the last so there's never NOT an adjustment. Lucky for me, I've had a lot of practice changing jobs. I just hope that this is the last time I do that for a LONG time. I'm certainly not planning on going anywhere for a while!

2. What's some of the music that you're fired up about for '07?

We just shipped a smash from Big & Rich's new project. I believe that this single will bring them to places they've yet to experience and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. The retail date on the album is not til summer but the rest of the music I've heard from it is just over the top terrific! B&R make great music and for me it's a reunion with Gretchen's management, whom I enjoyed working with at Epic. We've got new Faith Hill music coming and I'm excited to work with Faith and her people at Borman Entertainment this summer. We're continuing with the Wreckers project and I think we'll be shipping a single comparable to "Leave the Pieces" shortly on them. We've got what I would call "sleeper singles" from Rick Trevino and John Anderson. What I mean by that is these are tunes that listeners WILL react to, but some programmers don't want to deal with for one reason or another. Gatekeepers, if you're reading this put Rick's "Separate Ways" or John's "A Woman Knows" on the air and watch what happens! We're currently touring radio with our newest artist, Lance Miller, whom I consider an old buddy and we've got new music from a my new pal Ray Scott a bit later on this spring.

3. What's the first thing you did when you waked into your new office at Warner Bros.?

I got lost! No, really, this is a big intimidating building if you've never spent any time in here. About a week or so ago, I got lost in the garage, too. I didn't realize that the two sides aren't attached and I had a heck of a time getting to my car!

4. What's up with the air-guitar video game in your office and has Gator (VP/Promotion) challenged you yet?

Guitar Hero for PS2 could be the greatest game ever invented. Right after I started here, one of our regionals, George Meeker, and I were in Kansas City with the Wreckers and had some time to blow before check-in one day and we saw the game set up and had to try it out. BAM! We're hooked! I just ordered the second guitar controller and I am planning on setting up Monday night tourneys in the office here! I don't think Gator's played yet, but watch out when he does, he'll be hooked like the rest of us!

5. Say you were head of the FCC for one day. What is the first change that you would make in radio today if you would make a change?

Tricky question, politically anyway. I think I'll just recite the words most radio and record company officials state most often when dealing with the FCC (or the NYS Atty Gen's office) and answer simply, " I don't recall."

6. What is your fantasy job?

Quarterback for the New York Jets, hell, my arm is nearly as strong as the guy currently holding the job!

I have said time and time again, that I'm just looking for my LAST promotion job. The gig that confirms that I'm a good promo guy, working with people I like and artists who's music I love and hopefully finally propels me into upper management or convinces me that this is futile and I should resort to some other career that I'm uniquely qualified for. Hopefully that career doesn't involve selling used cars or the phrase "Would you like fries with that?" I'm thinking that this gig with Warner Bros. is that job! I love the artists and music, the staff here is a terrific group of people and I believe that there's a place and a plan for me here if I help them succeed. So there you go.

7. Anyone that knows you knows that you are not only a music industry executive, but a big music fan as well. Are the two conducive to each other? How does being in the industry affect you as a fan and vice versa?

Very little and whole lot, at the very same time! I'm a big fan of a lot of music from outside of our format. It's more about information than anything else. I can be one of the first to find out about my favorite acts and releases because I'm inside and have friends in other formats that keep me up on my interests. At the same time, it's easy to convince yourself that a record you're working is going to be easier than it should be because you're such a fan of the artist and his/her music, personally. Sometimes it's easier when you're a bit separated from the source. At the very least, it can lead to less frustration during the course of a single. I get sick of songs a lot faster than the average listener and I don't always stay for every note of every show I cover, but I couldn't be more excited about getting to see the Police in this year's reunion tour, hopefully in the same arena that I saw them last, Madison Square Garden and I have a spot marked on my calendar for the new Arctic Monkeys record in April. So you see, I'm completely jaded and a total geek/groupie at the same time!

8. On the Warner Bros. roster you have some new artists as well as some veteran artists that you are re-introducing to the Country audience. Do you approach the two differently? If so, how?

Depends on the song, really. For instance the two vets we have out there right now, John Anderson and Rick Trevino, the tunes are both ballads and songs of substance, but two very different records, so there's two different plans of action in effect. There's more pure marketing in the John Anderson plan. John's status as a living legend in our format made many non-traditional marketing opportunities available as we put our promotional efforts at radio into the secondary markets. George Meeker, our secondary promo guy (and certified Guitar Hero) is doing a terrific job getting a fire lit under this amazing singer's newest effort and it's beginning to translate over to the major reporters now. Rick's record has always been a more mainstream focus to start. We knew it'd be a battle to get the decision makers out there to believe as much as us, but the song proves itself, the toughest part is getting the listener the opportunity to experience the message first hand. Once that happens, a whole new life begins for the record. Again, the focus in the beginning is secondary and tertiary radio, but monitored reporters are listening and the results speak for themselves. Play either of these tunes and the audience will react. That's fact.

9. I know you have some really great pieces of music memorabilia that you have collected through the years. Tell us about a few pieces that are near and dear to your heart?

I have a surfboard autographed by the Beach Boys (everyone except Dennis who died in 1983). I have some great personal stuff; photos I took of the Dixie Chicks autographed with some racy (non-political) sayings, tons of collectible vinyl from my early days in the retail biz and a collection of signed original drawings of Nancy comic strips where my name appeared in at least one frame (Nancy artist Guy Gilchrist is a personal friend), I'm awaiting my first ever color Sunday edition strip that ran just last month where I was the voice of a DJ on a cell phone that Nancy finds. Otherwise, I've got wonderful memories; riding in a Vice Presidential cavalcade from the Watergate Hotel to the south lawn of the Capitol building for an event with of all bands, the Dixie Chicks (obviously before the "comment"), attending the Rock & Roll Hall Fame inductions the year that Chet Atkins went in (it just so happens that my all-time favorite band the Ramones were also inducted that year), riding rides at Hershey Park after hours with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Sarah McLaughlin, Emmylou Harris and Liz Phair following a Lilith Fair show. I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with many music, movie and television stars that I would've NEVER met without having spent the length of time I have in this biz.

10. What did you say to your new staffers on your first day? How did you go about introducing yourself and your management style to them?

Man, I don't remember, probably something like "Don't hate me, I'm just the new guy and I'm alright, you'll like me eventually, you'll see." I don't have much of a management style here just yet. I'm still feeling my way and Gator's a terrific leader, so luckily I've got time to assimilate and settle in before I'm looked at as a leader, so to speak.

1. You're from upstate NY where they've gotten like 10 feet of snow in the past month. Do you miss it? And have you been up there to drive through drifts, whiteouts etc. Feel free to explain what a 'white out' is.

I've been in Nashville now for 20 years; a White Out is either one-inch of snow on Old Hickory Blvd. or the liquid paper stuff that Mike Nesmith's mother invented. I grew up in the Hudson and Mohawk River Valleys in the foothills of the Adirondack Mtns, to the east and north of the areas that are getting upwards of 150 inches of snow this year. That lake-effect snow is really concentrated to areas closer to Lake Ontario or Lake Erie even further west. That's not to say we didn't get some serious snow where I grew up, but it's really nothing compared to ridiculous piles they get closer to Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.

2. What TV show can you not miss?

I'm a TV-aholic! Here's a short list of "Can't Misses" - Amazing Race, Survivor, Lost, Family Guy, Simpson's, King of the Hill, Life on Mars, Ed vs. Spenser, Dexter, Sopranos, CBS Sunday Morning, Saturday Night Live (yep, still and yes I know it's not good anymore), Penn & Teller's BullSh*t, CSI (the ORIGINAL, not the crappy spin-offs), Jeopardy, RealTime w/ Bill Maher, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dr. Who, Bobby Flay's Throwdown, Grey's Anatomy (my wife got me into this one)- to name a couple dozen.

3. What Hollywood actor would you want to play you in the Bob Reeves Story?

It's come up a time or two that I look a lot like Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller (especially before I cut my hair), but I'd like to think that a Clive Owen or Jude Law, while altogether too skinny, share my English heritage.

4. What's in your CD player right now, aside from WB stuff?

In my car is all unreleased new recordings by Big & Rich, Blake Shelton, Lance Miller, Rick Trevino, James Otto & Joanna Cotton, isn't it great when your homework is listening to fun new recordings?

At home I work out often to Arctic Monkeys "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" and Incubus "Light Grenades" and there's always a Ramones, Todd Rundgren or Television CD or something like that from my past in there, too.

5. Favorite Nashville hole in the wall restaurant that you take people to during CRS.

I have a few haunts that I frequent all the time and a couple of CRS (a.k.a "The Liver Olympics") traditions that involve a few radio folks (and you know who you are) at Mojo Grill/Broadway Brewhouse, Brown's Diner and Koto. But I guarantee that I can find something on ANY menu that I'll thoroughly enjoy, especially when there's beer involved!