Fresh Listen: KDRI (The Drive) Tucson

It’s hard not to pick up the “Fresh Listen” to KDRI (The Drive) Tucson, Ariz., where I ended my “First Listen” to the station a year ago. I was trying to file that article in a hurry on deadline day, but I kept hearing “oh wow” songs. Again, yesterday I kept trying to wrap up the new music monitor. Again, I kept hearing songs I wanted to add to the story. “Oh wait, there’s McGuinn, Clark & Hillman, “Don’t You Write Her Off.’ There’s Nik Kershaw, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good?'”

Typically, I listen to stations that play lost hits of the ‘70s and ‘80s with a radio programmer’s greater sense of detachment. I have those songs on my phone. I listen to SiriusXM ‘70s On 7 and a wide variety of other audio. I recognize “Magic” by Pilot as an “oh wow” for many listeners, but it’s never that far away for me. The Drive, on the other hand, surprises me a time or two in any hour I spend with them.

After the “First Listen” ran, Bobby Rich, veteran morning-man/programmer and co-owner/morning co-host of the Drive reached out. Rich let it be known that he didn’t see the Drive as being “in a category,” even with stations playing similar music. The Drive was trying hard to avoid any whiff of traditional AC radio liners or positioning. One piece of imaging I have heard declares it “more than a radio station, it’s Tucson,” and that has certainly been the mission since the station launched with a lineup of market vets.

It is definitely the case that if you grew up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, The Drive definitely sounds like the station you grew up with in a way that other stations playing “Magic” or “Magnet And Steel” do not. That sort of radio is at a premium now, except 70s on 7. I often bemoan stations that could be anywhere and don’t give me any sense of life elsewhere that’s even harder to do these days when radio is personnel challenged and life elsewhere is similarly challenged to yours.

But this morning, I listened to Rich and morning co-host Hill Bailey. The latter had just returned to the station after a few days of symptoms that she hadn’t been immediately able to dismiss as “just allergies.” (Fortunately, they were not anything more serious.) That led into a story about how Pima County employees returning to work after travel elsewhere were expected to quarantine for two weeks and use their own sick days to do it. It was what you would expect full-service music radio to be now.

Billing yourself as “The Drive” and seeking to invoke listeners old car radio memories might seem a little challenging in these less mobile days. “Thank you for getting up with the Drive,” said Rich in the first break I heard. “Even if you’re not driving. Even if you’re not in Tucson.” That latter category includes a number of Ross On Radio readers who tell me the station has become a favorite over the last year.

KDRI’s AM/FM translator signal combo was up 2.0-2.7 12-plus in August. It had a 3.2 in April. In a recent Tucson.com story, GM Jim Arnold says the station is in fourth place in its 45-plus target, and that the Drive has almost recouped its start-up costs, including the $650,000 purchase price of the radio station. For those readers looking for a broadcast radio renaissance, driven by a new commitment to local ownership (with brands that have appeal outside the market), that’s the story you want to hear.

Here’s the Drive at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept.29:

• Gerry Rafferty, “Baker Street”
• Carl Carlton, “Everlasting Love”
• Fleetwood Mac, “Little Lies”
• Bread, “Guitar Man”
• Terence Trent D’Arby, “Wishing Well”
• Andy Kim, “Rock Me Gently”
• Randy Meisner, “Hearts On Fire” (my first “oh wow,” and then I heard Meisner’s even more lost “Never Been In Love” later that day)
• Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain”
• Roxy Music, “Dance Away” (my second personal “oh wow”)
• Association, “Along Comes Mary”
• Steve Miller Band, “Abracadabra”
• England Dan & John Ford Coley, “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight” 
• Todd Rundgren, “I Saw The Light”
• Rick Nelson, “Garden Party”
• Joe Jackson, “Breaking Us In Two”
• Stevie Wonder, “My Cherie Amour”