Radio personalities Matt “Casio” Mitchell, left, and Jimbo Wood. (Courtesy Matt Mitchell and Jimbo Wood/Pixel Joe’s Photography)

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Tango and Cash. Simon and Garfunkel. Mac and cheese. Some duos are just special. For example, Huntsville radio morning show personalities Jimbo Wood and Matt “Casio” Mitchell.

In August, their “The Jimbo & Casio Show” - airing 5 to 10 a.m. weekdays on The Rocket 95.1 FM. - will celebrate its 10th anniversary. A mix of rock tracks, interviews and the host’s Southern charm and comedy helps listeners endure morning commutes. And just weekday mornings in general.

The show’s signature “Would You Rather” segments posits hypotheticals like: “Would you rather your car’s gas gauge never work, or your phone never show its charge percentage?”; “Would you rather know how to win any argument or always tell when someone’s lying?”; and “Would you rather buy all used underwear or all used toothbrushes?”

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Before their 2012 team-up, Wood and Mitchell had each lived a few lives. Wood, who’s also The Rocket’s program director, worked at radio stations in cities across the Southeast. During the ‘90s Wood took a hiatus to move to the Bahamas and teach scuba diving. Mitchell was a correspondent for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Mitchell also studied with The Groundlings comedy troupe in Los Angeles and began a stand-up comedy career.

Not long ago, I caught up with Wood and Mitchell for separate phone interview. Edited excerpts are below.

Jimbo, in 2012 when you and Casio first went on the radio together, you gave it a trial period for a week or so, to see if things clicked before committing to a regularly scheduled show. What was the moment where you knew you should keep doing this?

Day one was difficult because nobody knew each other. And it’s funny and interesting that we’d never met before, but we’re both from Birmingham. We both did radio. We knew the same people. When we became Facebook friends, we found out we had like 300 mutual friends each and we never knew each other. [Laughs]

So the first the first day was kind of, Who is this guy? What kind of sense of humor is he? It’s really important in radio morning shows to know your role. It’s just chaos if there’s not an order to things, and he immediately fell into the proper role. He filled in. After I did the radio announcer crap, he came in with the comedy really quick. And it’s sort of been a running thing with us, without us even talking about it, really. We just fell into it.

And it was about Wednesday of that week probably when I when it clicked in my head. I can remember driving home and going, well, this is the most perfect cohost I’ve ever even could imagine. And it’s been that way ever since. And then we offered him the job that Friday before he even left the building.

What year did you start in radio? And what’s the biggest single technological leap you’ve seen in radio since then?

I started in the summer of 1979 as an intern in the sales department. And before that summer was over, the sales manager came to me and he goes, “Yeah, I think you’re gonna fit in better on the other side of the building, in programming.” And so on the Christmas holiday of ‘89, almost ‘80, I went on the air for the first time.

And now the technology is lightyears different. We were just talking about this the other day. At the first radio console I ever sat down at, we played albums, records, vinyl. And you had to learn how to slip cue these records to get them tight, to sound good on the air, to make good segues and good mixes.

And every one of the 45 (rpm, singles) records was what we call cue-burned, which means while this other song was playing, you listen to this next song and bump it up to where the music would start. And then you back it up about half a half a rotation. And then you slip-cue it. You’re holding on to the disk while the turntable is turning underneath it, and the second you’re ready for it, you just let go of the 45 and it starts spinning and bam you’ve got a tight segue.

Of course, now we’re on computers and without a doubt the PC is the single biggest advanced in radio, in my time anyway. I went from playing vinyl, like we all did back in the day, to now I play waves (WAV digital audio files) of songs.

Social media has changed a lot about the world, including traditional media. How has social media changed what you do in radio?

A lot. It forces you to interact with listeners. Before social media, you’d see listeners and of course, you’d be interested in meeting the people that listen to your station. But you only did it at functions, at remotes or at appearances. But now, social media you’re never not interacting with listeners. And the way a keyboard makes you disappear, you can say anything to us. And a lot of hate comes through. But a lot of love comes through too. I never shut my Facebook down. I interact with listeners every day on Facebook Messenger and whatever they try to contact me on - Instagram, whatever it is. I always answer them. I just think it’s important that we in this business, in this time, interact with the people that give us our jobs. I mean, without listeners listening, I certainly wouldn’t have a job, so I appreciate them very much.

As your station’s programming director, how do you decide which new songs to add, which songs to push?

When we first when we first went on the air in 2000, our mission statement was: let’s ride the fence between classic rock and this new thing called active rock. There was a new rock format at the time called active rock. It started about the time The Rocket did and it started with bands like Shinedown and Godsmack and the like.

I remember sitting down with our operations manager, and there was a consultant there, I think, and I said, “Guys, we can’t be too classic and we can’t be too new. We want to attract every listener we can in every age and demo.” Eventually you have to drill down and focus at one of them, but at the time we just wanted ears on the thing.

We can’t play any top 40 stuff. We’ve got to stick with rock. It’s got to be classic maybe even some blues-rock things, but we’ve got to embrace this new thing called active rock. And nobody had heard of it.

I hate to be unclear about it, but I just somehow get what The Rocket needs to be playing and what it doesn’t. And on Mondays when we do music, I have our consultant on the phone and we’re going over the playlist and the charts. The charts come into play too, because that’s just how the industry is now. We look at the songs that are that are wanting to be added and I just listen to them all. Sometimes I even take them home and listen to them in my car or pull them up on Spotify at random times, see how it hits me. And I just ended up picking from that.

What’s a rock song you’ve played on the radio a lot but never got tired of?

That’s 100 percent “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin. It was the first song I picked to play, the very first song that The Rocket ever played, when we started on Valentine’s Day of 2000. It was out of the box, the very first song we played solely because it’s been a favorite of mine for years and I just picked it. I alpha male-ed the room on that one and said, “We’re playing ‘Rock and Roll’ first. I know nothing about music. I just like to listen to it. And it just kills me every time I hear that (opening) drumbeat.

Radio personalities Matt “Casio” Mitchell, left, and Jimbo Wood. (Courtesy Matt Mitchell and Jimbo Wood/Pixel Joe’s Photography)

Casio, you and Jimbo have a flow and sound natural on-air. Besides the experience all the years working together now, how do you guys pull that off?

Just like you when you chat it up with your best friends, you kind of know their cues and their mannerisms. We purposely stay away from politics as much as possible. We stay away from religion as much as possible. We stay away from anything divisive, because I think like a lot of other forms of entertainment it’s an escapism. Look, if you want to hear the news, that’s your prerogative and you can go flip to other channels. That’s why there’s so many radio stations. But we’re there for people to tune us in and hear a couple songs and hopefully have fun while we’re on the mic and everybody get to work on time.

Back when you were doing comedy segments for “The Tonight Show,” what’s something interesting you learned from Jay Leno, who was hosting the show back then?

He said one time that he only spends his stand-up (comedy) money and just lives off that. That he had never spent one dime of his “Tonight Show” money. And I thought, what a great goal to set. And then quickly, when I got more into my career of stand-up, I realized that was impossible for me. But he was super-easy to work with. He was very supportive of my time on there. Very down to earth.

How’s your Leno imitation?

You just kind of stutter a bit in a high pitch.

You’re an avid collector of music on vinyl. If you had to get rid of all your records except one, which do you keep?

So you’re telling me to pick my favorite baby? I think it would be “At Fillmore East” by the Allman Brothers. It’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest live album. I think the cover is cool. I think that (cover photo of the band) picture tells you who the Allman Brothers are. And then of course, you know, when you think about how young they were, when they made that album and how it sounds, gritty and raw. So yeah, Allman Brothers “Fillmore East,” because it looks cool and sounds cool.

From your time as public address announcer for the old Huntsville Stars minor-league team’s home games, what’s something funny you saw from your view up in the press box?

I was in charge of the music as well. And so I would have to start the national anthem, whether somebody was singing it, or I was playing (a recording of) it myself. And then during that time, I would also have to get together starting lineups, the music for the batters that game as they walk up, their walk-up music. I have to get that ready, because right after that (national anthem), we’re starting (the game).

And one afternoon game, I intro the national anthem and then start getting the starting lineups ready, and instead of drag-and-drop (to move the audio file), I accidentally click the play button for “Jump Around” by (rap group) House of Pain. In the middle of the national anthem, we’re telling everybody to jump around. Being in the press box, I couldn’t really hear it … Until I saw all the teams start looking back up at the press box. I was like, why are they looking at me during the national anthem? That’s disrespectful. [Laughs] And then, wait do I hear House of Pain playing?

When you’re doing stand-up comedy, how do you handle a heckler?

A lot of lot of comics don’t want to engage with the crowd at all. And so there’s different tolerance levels for every comic on how comfortable they are there. I like to politely laugh at ‘em. “OK, thank you.” Or jokingly, “Alright, we’re all just gonna yell out random thoughts now.” Get the crowd on my side. But that’s very rare to actually have somebody hate your set and be popping back to you.  Even more than hecklers, I think what messes with comedians most is, we want you to drink because that makes us funnier, but the more you drink the louder we all tend to get. And so if somebody’s had too much sauce and they’re chatting with their table, that ruins the entire show for all the tables around them, because they can’t hear the punchlines.

Now that we’ve got an amphitheater in Huntsville, what’s something else entertainment-wise you’d love to either see added or changed here?

Huntsville is a very “walk-up” town. You can have a concert or comedy show or anything, and there’s not a lot of tickets sold until the day of the show. A lot of walk-up tickets. That’s a little scary as a business. Just from me talking with a lot of people in different venues, I wish Huntsville would pre-buy tickets more.

What’s the origin story behind your nickname, Casio?

I started in radio as an intern with the nationally syndicated “Rick & Bubba Show” that everybody knows. And that actually started before I was even in radio. I was 15 and Rick (Burgess) and Bubba (Bussey) at the time had a Friday night high school football scoreboard show, like a bunch of radio stations used to do. They were hilarious. They did it out of the box, like they’ve done their entire career. So instead of reading a lot of scores they would give out the Golden Plunger Award for who had the best bathroom at the football field. They would give out concession stand awards. Just to make it goofy, which I always found fascinating.

So I was at a buddy’s house on a Friday night, and we’re listening to the high school football scoreboard show and (Rick and Bubba) did this famous cheerleading chant called “Rock Steady.” And they would just breakout into it every now and then.

And so to be funny, I got my buddy’s keyboard, and it’s a keyboard where if you push one button it’ll just play a pre-programmed beat. And so I called in and did the programmed beat and did the “Rock Steady” chant. They were dying laughing. And they were like, “Hey, before you hang up, what’s your name?”

And like in a split second. My I thought, well, if you tell everybody you’re at home listening to the radio on a Friday you’re not as cool as you are acting like you are. Which is just total terrible, teenage thinking. And I was like, “I can’t tell you my name.” And they’re like, “Oh, you’re mysterious.” And I was like, “Yeah, y’all just make up a name.” And they said, “Well, you’re the mysterious Casio Kid.” [Casio is the name of a brand of budget keyboards.]

I would go to their remotes because in Gadsden, Alabama where they started, they were radio gods already. And that’s how I would introduce myself, The Casio Kid. And then, fast forward four years later, college, I was going for a computer science degree and not doing very well at it. And a buddy of mine said, “You should be an intern at the radio station.”

I was like with Rick and Bubba? No way, they’re huge. And he said, “Yeah, I know a guy who can get you at least to talk to them? So I went in and said, “Hey, it’s me. I’ve met you a bunch of times, Casio Kid.” They give all their interns nicknames but I already had a built-in one and so it stuck. And now instead of Casio Kid it’s just Casio. Or sometimes people jokingly call me Casio Man, which is weird.

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