The Flatlanders scored a place in the regular rotation of Los Angeles's KZLA this week when the country station accepted a challenge from New York talk show host Don Imus. An outspoken fan of the Flatlanders, Imus had the Texas country legends as guests on his morning show and then went a step further last month, offering $10,000 to the charity of choice of the first radio station in a top ten market to agree to make the tune "Waving My Heart Goodbye" one of its most played songs. KZLA typically plays New Country stalwarts like Faith Hill, Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. The Flatlanders -- led by the trio of Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely -- play a far rootsier, more traditional brand of country. Now Again, their first album in thirty years, was released this spring.

"We can't help but be completely bewildered by the whole thing," says Ely. "[Imus] loves the record. He offered on radio to cut half his penis off if this song wasn't a hit. He did brag he'd still have fourteen inches left. We figure that's why he's doing this with the radio station offer -- to save face, so to speak."

KZLA accepting Imus' challenge has resulted in unprecedented exposure for the Flatlanders. "Los Angeles is the Number One-sized music market for country radio," says Jeff Cook, head of radio promotions at the Flatlanders' New West Records. "There's no country radio in New York, so Los Angeles is the biggest market there is. Our plan was exactly the opposite: to work secondary and tertiary stations and work our way up."

The irony of a talk show host having to pay $10,000 to get a country music station to play a country song is not lost on those involved. New West A&R man Peter Jesperson, who is familiar with underplayed underdogs from his work with indie rockers the Replacements at Twin/Tone Records, acknowledged that traditional country faces an uphill battle. "For many, many years the country played on the radio is not country you can draw a straight line to Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers from," he says. "Most of country radio is more fluff than substance."

KZLA operations manager R.J. Curtis says he had not even been sent a copy of the album before hearing of the promotion, but that KZLA played the song seventeen times Wednesday after Imus agreed to donate $10,000 to Tilden's Children, a foundation designed to benefit underprivileged kids. After a poll conducted by KZLA's Web site yielded 61,000 votes, with fifty-two percent cast in favor of giving "Waving My Heart Goodbye" continued airplay, Curtis says the song will continue in regular rotation until at least Sunday, and then its future will determined by callers.

Although slightly befuddled by the sudden uproar, Ely finds the unexpected excitement in keeping with the Flatlanders' story. "This whole record has had funny twists and turns," he says. "The way we made it was not normal or natural. We did most of the record without a record company. We didn't think we were making a record. We were just three old friends getting together and writing songs for the sake of writing songs. We did it backwards. We went out and played a fifty-city tour last summer before the record came out, playing almost exclusively new songs people hadn't heard before. Radio guys would come out and say, 'Why are you all here? You don't have a new record.' And we said, 'Can't we just tour for the fun of it?' They were shocked we weren't selling something."

COLIN DEVENISH
(July 12, 2002)