The Arkansas Rocks network prides itself on serving up an ever-growing lineup of music for the radio market over the airwaves and streaming online. The family of stations deploys an expansive playlist of classic rock staples and deep-dive album cuts from famed groups as well as rarely heard songs from bands of less renown.
“We’re just old radio hippies doing it the way we think radio ought to be done,” said Clyde Clifford, legendary mage of Arkansas rock radio. “I enjoy the fact I find stuff that people haven’t heard.”
Case in point: Clifford cues up “Breach of Lease” from the 1972 album “Bloodrock Live.” Did any other DJ in the world push play for a Bloodrock tune on this day?
Clifford delivers a live, three-hour dose of his revered “Beaker Street” show every Friday night with his free-form rock sensibilities.
He’s the elder statesman of the Arkansas Rocks crew of veteran DJs, who delight in rescuing rock music too often relegated to the bargain bin of time.
Bob Terrell, Mark Wallace, Tom Wood, Sonny Victory, Barry Mac and David Allen Ross, who all have left their mark on the central Arkansas radio market, bring a mix of live and prerecorded work to their time slots.
“We’re pretty busy working on growing our company,” said Jay Brentlinger, owner of Arkansas Rocks and on-air talent to boot. “That’s the key to building these small market radio stations into something.”
A string of sister stations along the Interstate 30 corridor carries Arkansas Rocks from Little Rock to near Texarkana, with extensions west to Hot Springs and east to Pine Bluff.
To maintain the FM signal while motoring from Little Rock toward Texas requires some low-power channel hopping from 94.5 in Little Rock to 99.3 in Benton, augmented by op-tions at 99.7 in Hot Springs, 104.1 in Malvern, 100.9 in Arkadelphia and 106.9 in Gurdon.
“Of course, you could listen to 880 AM the whole way,” Brentlinger said.
For now, the Mountain Home-area channel (94.3) is operating on reduced power thanks to the bane of many a radio station: a lightning strike.
Federal Communications Commission regulations require that the call letters of a station and the city specified in its license be broadcast near the top of every hour. Launched in October 2018, Arkansas Rocks throws in an extra bit of info in its alphabet soup of stations and communities.
“You might as well tell them what city goes with what frequency,” Brentlinger said of the hourly station identification mandate.
The Arkansas Rocks crew already taps into a potent library of music to broadcast. Spanning half a century, their tune collection draws from 28,628 audio tracks gathered from more than 2,000 albums from the classic rock era.
The ongoing, herculean effort to sort and catalog more songs from that mountain of source material remains a work in progress.
It’s undoubtedly cool to serve up sweet tunes from rock’s treasure chest of riches. But at the end of the day, the name of the game is turning patinaed music into gold.
But the money needed to operate Arkansas Rocks is modest thanks to modern technology and a staff populated by semi-retired DJs.
Did the veteran DJs see themselves doing what they’re doing at the age they’re now doing it?
“We hoped,” said Tom Wood, program director. “If you can get to a microphone, you can do it.”
The sentiment is echoed by Bob Terrell while considering the alternative: “What are you retiring to, taking pain pills and watching ‘Price Is Right’?”
In the short run, the Arkansas Rockers consider the future of their format and beloved tunes a matter of mortality.
“As long as we can keep doing it, right, Clyde?” Brentlinger said.
“Amen,” Clifford said.
Minority Radio Bucking the Trend
We asked the Arkansas Rocks crew to pick an album that was overlooked or underappreciated back in the day. Here’s five of the selected albums:
► Captain Beyond, 1972 by Captain Beyond
A high point of ’70s hard rock, this supergroup album features former members of Johnny Winter, Iron Butterfly and lead singer Rod Evans, Deep Purple’s original front man. – Barry Mac
► Caravanserai, 1972 by Santana
Their first three albums exploded in popularity, but after some band member changes and lots of jazz fusion influence, this album really never found its place in album rock radio. It’s got lots of instrumentals on it, and we occasionally play a 10-minute-long one called “Every Step of the Way.” – Tom Wood
► Deep Purple in Rock, 1970 by Deep Purple
This album is very heavy and complex, with the average song length at about seven minutes, but the marquee song on the album, “Child In Time,” was even longer at 10 1/2 minutes! We still play it regularly on Arkansas Rocks. – Uncle Marcus
► Demons and Wizards, 1972 by Uriah Heep
The album featured the hit “Easy Livin’,” but our playlist also includes “The Wizard,” “Rainbow Demon” and the 12-minute closing track, “Paradise/The Spell.” – Jay Elliott
► Turn of a Friendly Card, 1980 by the Alan Parsons Project
This is, in my opinion, one of the best albums ever recorded. It is one of the cleanest, best-mixed albums I’ve ever heard with a wide range of song styles blending seamlessly from one to another. Arkansas Rocks likes to play “Time” or “Games People Play” from this LP. – Bob Terrell
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