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10 Questions with ... Rick & Cutter
August 9, 2022
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Rick: Like a prolonged dual psychiatric therapy session with commercials.
Cutter: It’s what happens when you put two stubborn assholes with a sarcastic sense of humor that are 20+ years apart in the same room together for four hours every day and give them each a microphone. So basically, what Rick said.”
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1. What led you to a career in radio and what was your first radio job?
Rick: I left college and needed a job. A friend with whom I had done a college show was working at WAPL’s sister station WHBY (back in the days when radio stations had only ONE sister station). He got me an interview and I guess they were desperate. I did that for a few months until they decided that I was so terrible I should never be on the radio again. Yet…here we are.
Cutter: I was a musician and music nerd so when it came time to figuring out a career path, I was working at Chuck E-Cheese and there was a kitchen lady that told me I had a nice speaking voice and asked me if I ever thought about doing radio? So that’s what I did. It was only supposed to be temporary until I became a rock star, but fingers crossed there’s still time. My first job was cleaning up after weddings at a classic Wisconsin supper club.
2. Can you give us some of the highlights of your radio career to this point?
Rick: Throwing a funeral for Brett Favre after he joined the Vikings and became dead to all of us Packer fans which garnered almost as much media attention as President Biden doing a whoopsy on his bicycle.
I also have a fond memory of doing a show from Washington DC the day before the 2004 presidential election. G. Gordon Liddy was broadcasting from the adjoining studio. We asked G. to come over for a chat and he was happy to do so. In the middle of him explaining to us why we should reelect George W. Bush, my then partner interrupted him to ask what the best way was to kill somebody with something you had lying around the house. In a fraction of a second, G. had the business end of a Bic Pen tightly pressed against my jugular vein. That's maybe not so much a highlight as much as it's just something that still gives me nightmares.
Of course, there was also the time we got word that the local newspaper, whose publisher absolutely hated us, had tried to cut costs by cutting back on toilet paper in their restrooms. We’re told the publisher’s head almost exploded when he learned that we staged a toilet paper drive to help them out and collected thousands and thousands of rolls of toilet paper. We could not have been prouder than when we learned that the listener who had donated the most toilet paper, hundreds of rolls if I remember correctly, had actually stolen it from the supply room at our city hall, where he was an employee.
Cutter: When I had decided to get into radio the one thing, I always wanted to do was a launch a specialty show where I got to talk to musicians on a weekly basis and play the music I loved. In 2010 I launched the show Hangar 19 which aired on about a dozen radio stations playing nothing but old school metal. After three years the show was not renewed so in 2015, I launched The Cutting Edge Countdown, two hours of the best new rock in countdown form where I get to play the music and talk to current rock bands every week. Then I launched the podcast Cutter’s Rockcast to go with it which has been an incredible journey. I’ve done it on my own with very little involvement from anyone else. Last year Corey Taylor decided to say some words about a certain rapper turned pop punker and because of that my name ended up in Rolling Stone. That was amazing. I grew up in northeast Wisconsin listening to WAPL so, and I’m not kissing ass or showboating here, when I got the call asking if I wanted to host the morning show on WAPL it was a pretty incredible moment. I listened to Rick and Len every morning, I listened to Randy Hawk do afternoons, I listened to Lou Brutus on the weekends. It was one thing to be the music director of this historic radio station, but to host the morning show? That to me was another level. Fingers crossed they don’t fire me.
3. I know the Rick & Len show has been a fixture in mornings on WAPL for years. After Len exited in March 2021, Cutter joined to form The Rick and Cutter Show. How has this transition gone for you guys?
Rick: There has been less bloodshed than you might expect.
Cutter: Rick was pretty set in his ways and to be honest so was I. I think we’ve learned a lot from each other and now that we are a year in it’s really been going well.
4. Cutter, you worked for sister station Active Rock WZOR as MD/Afternoons for years prior to joining Rick in the morning. How has that experience helped your perspective in moving to a station that plays Classic Rock?
Cutter: I started on WAPL originally as a teenager in 1999, then I moved to WZOR after we launched it a couple of years later. Plus, I’ve been the MD for WAPL for the past decade. I know the station inside and out so my perspective hasn’t changed. The only thing I really wanted to hit home on was the fact that we needed to young up a little bit with some of our content and some of the music. My age puts me right in the middle of Gen-X and millennial so I still grew up with and love most of the classic rock we play. On the programming side we’ve added in a lot more 90’s rock so I’m loving that.
5. Rick, same question for you…how has Cutter’s move to working mornings with you on WAPL changed your perspective of the morning show overall?
Rick: Our 20+ year age difference has served as a constant reminder of how differently people in the lower end of our target demo think than old coots like me.
6. Now let’s talk about the new morning show overall. If you were to describe the show to someone who’s never listened…what would you say?
Rick: Like a prolonged dual psychiatric therapy session with commercials.
Cutter: It’s what happens when you put two stubborn assholes with a sarcastic sense of humor that are 20+ years apart in the same room together for four hours every day and give them each a microphone. So basically, what Rick said.
7. Is there anyone else on the morning show with you guys and/or special go-to characters that contribute to the show?
Rick: Hell, WE barely contribute to the show ourselves.
Cutter: Yes, because like Rick said WE barely contribute to it. We have a local TV news anchor on every morning for the news and our Sports Director from our sister station does a sports break. We do try to book as many guests from the music world as possible and at least one comic every week, so if there are any PR people reading this, email me.
8. Describe your typical morning show. a) What is the process? b) How much show prep do you do and what are some of the key benchmarks of your show?
Rick: As for the typical show, see my answer to question 6. As for show prep, all I can say is, a lot more than fits into a 40 hour work week. Our long time most popular features are Small Town Crime Wave, which is our weekly roundup of the weirdest crime items from throughout the state of Wisconsin, and our Weenie of the Week. I know a lot of stations do police blotter stuff but with Small Town Crime Wave I think we’ve perfected it to an art. As for our Weenie of the Week, I guess a lot of stations do something like it these days, but I wasn’t aware of any back when we started it in the 1980s. For years, every new morning show on the market had to do some version of it to try to compete with us. I think the fact that we always keep it as local as possible has kept it a vibrant and entertaining feature.
Cutter: What’s a 40-hour work week? Right now I’m on “vacation” and yet here I am answering these questions. I get to the station later than I want to every morning, then I spill coffee on myself while trying to chug as much of it as I can and as quickly as possible. I’m still very much a gigging musician so caffeine is very, very important. After that I try to schedule what I can for the day, meaning where we are going to talk about what and what features go where. After the show I produce all the audio for the podcast and best ofs and try to get some stuff out on the digital space. As for features, the two that Rick mentioned are for sure the most popular. I put together an entertainment news feature every morning and we do things like Cutter’s Guitar Shop where I play riffs from songs on my guitar and people must name them. Games like Rock band, Racehorse or Porn film, Dumb, Drunk or Stoned, and Did it Happen at a Walmart are all popular features as well. Oh and to play to our generational gap, once a week we quiz each other on pop culture from our specific eras and call it Generation Altercation. (ps…if these pop up now on other shows I’ll know where you got them from and I will find you, kisses)
9. I know it’s only been a little over a year, but can you tell us some of the best and most memorable moments to date on The Rick and Cutter Show?
Rick: Hard to say, I’ve barely listened since Len's departure. There is one moment that stands out for me. Each year we do a trip to a tropical location with 175 to 200 listeners. This past February when we were in Riviera Maya and doing our broadcast, we did a bit that used Google Translate. The premise was, these are some of the things our listeners might hear in Spanish from the resort staff, followed by the translation, all spoken in the recorded voice of Google Translate. I will never forget watching Jerry, the resort audio technician who was assisting us, laughing so hard he was literally crying during the Spanish portions and watching our listeners wondering what the hell was so funny before we played the translation. While our listeners laughed hard as well, I don’t think anyone laughed as hard as Jerry. It all must have been funnier in Spanish. I will cherish that memory forever.
Cutter: That trip was amazing and fond memories all around. Other than that, we’re pretty unmemorable so there’s not a lot to report.
10. Finally, who is funniest person on the show and why?
Rick: Wait! We’re supposed to be funny?
Cutter: Can you please use that in a sentence?
Bonus Questions
What do you like to do for fun and excitement when you’re not in radio mode?
Rick: Reading, watching TV, travel, all while continuously contemplating where my life went so miserably wrong.
Cutter: I play guitar, I ride my motorcycle, I yell at my kids, and they yell at me back. Repeat.
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