The Rick and Bubba Show
For those not in the loop, the Rick and Bubba Show is a syndicated morning drive time radio program. The show is very popular in the south, especially in Alabama where the show is broadcast (Birmingham). Rick Burgess and Bill “Bubba” Busey are the hosts, along with side commentaries from their producer, Calvin “Speedy” Wilburn. I have listened to this show for years and respect their opinion on life, religion, politics, and music.

In May of 2007, we were scheduling a trip to Biloxi, MS to cover the Heart concert on a Friday and then come back through to cover the Elton John concert on Saturday in Birmingham, AL. We weren’t getting a response from the Heart staff about our credentials, but we were 90% sure we could get credentials for the Elton John concert in Birmingham because it was promoted by Live Nation and they had worked with us on many shows. I noticed that Rick and Bubba were about to release a new book, so I emailed Speedy to ask his thoughts about a media swap. We would be on the Rick and Bubba show, then we would interview Rick and Bubba to be on Concert Blast. Speedy replied and he said Rick loved the idea. When I got the reply from Speedy, I immediately requested a vacation day from work. Once that was granted, I called Brian and Tom to see if they could do the same. We were in! Speedy informed us we were going to be on their show on that Friday morning of our trip about 9:15.

The Thursday afternoon before we left, Jennifer McKell (our contact from Live Nation), informed me that our Elton John credentials did not go through. Naturally I was pretty disappointed about this. Then I received a surprising phone call from the Memphis in May organization asking me if we were coming to the Beale Street Music Festival. Though we had not contacted them, they said they never received our credentials request. I said we would be glad to attend the music festival, giving us a new set of plans. Thursday night we drove to Birmingham to spend the night, got up the next morning and drove to the WZZK Studios to be on the Rick and Bubba show, interview them, and then took off to Memphis to attend the Beale Street Music Festival. What a day!

We loved being on the Rick and Bubba Show. Everyone was wonderfully nice and offered us all kinds of food. We thought we might get one segment of the show (10 to 15 minutes), but they gave us three segments! We talked about podcasting, our road trip, what makes a good concert, Christian rock music, and some of our favorite concerts. We loved being on their show. We got the radio bug! From that point on we always talked about how great it would be to have our own afternoon drive time syndicated radio show… Who knows?

The Beale Street Music Festival lasted all weekend and we were beat when we got home. On that Monday morning I checked our stats and discovered we had over 1,000 extra unique visits to our website and hundreds of extra downloads. It was all due to being on the Rick and Bubba show for about 40 minutes. Thank You Rick, Bubba, and Speedy!