The DJ Rollie D Story

I was exposed to country music at a young age.  My late father would turn it on in the truck and there we'd be, listening to 99.9 Radio USA, hearing the voices of radio personalities such as Scott Hanson, Jessie B Hawkins, and Justin "The Big Deal" depending on what time of the day we were listening.  The music was always so new and fresh to me back then, about 2005-06, and there seemed to be a lot less artists and bands on the country radio spectrum than there are today.  Perhaps we were in a period of transition at that time? One of the bands that spoke to me a lot back then was the country group Rascal Flatts .  My mother always found them to be whiny, but through their songs such as "Mayberry", "Prayin For Daylight", and of course "Life Is A Highway" from the 2006 Disney smash hit Cars , they could turn their vocals into something amazing in my mind through the use of harmony and amazing syncopation and instrumenation.  In 2004 ...

When I was younger, I just wanted to be a "car driver" when I grew up.  No, not a cabbie or a limousine driver, just a guy who drives cars.  I guess perhaps I was ready for the road at age 4, despite what my parents told me, up to the fact that they'd go to jail if either my sister or I drove the car, even just to Virginia.  Still though, my aspirations held on through most of my childhood.   If I can recall correctly, my dream career went through several changes as I got older.  After car driver, it was something along the lines of firefighter or doctor, also known as those professions every child wants to be around the time they hit Kindergarten.   Then it went to meteorologist, voice actor, and finally to news anchor/comedian/radio host, which is where I'm at now.  I also touched on a few other fields in high school, including urban engineer (too much math), and school principal/superintendent (too much schooling to get a license)....

I was six when one morning at home my family was called to be informed that my aunt had passed away.  All of a sudden, we were heading to Kansas City for about a week to attend her funeral.  The experience was different. I barely knew her even though she had lived with us for about two years.  I guess I just didn't have the firmest grasp on "not coming back" just yet. It was either the day before the funeral or a little before the funeral when we were attending a visitation.  It was my first time seeing an open casket.  My aunt looked so peaceful, almost as if she didn't collapse just a few days prior.  Of course I now know that morticians will dress a body up and put some makeup on before that day, even using a scent sometimes to cover the smell of no longer being present on Earth, but that day was different. I never cried that entire week.  While I was sad that my aunt had passed away, I still felt as if I would see her again someday, and t...

There's just something magical about waking up on some random morning in October or November and looking out your window to see that snow flew for the first time overnight, and your town or yard is now covered in a blanket of the fluffy white stuff.  If you're like me, you feel like a little kid again, and remember the times when you drug your little sister through the yard on a sled, tripping and falling down the whole way, or you remember that time you wiped out on the sliding hill in the nearby town and ended up with a bloody chin.  Or maybe even you remember the time you and your family built snowmen out in the front yard and you would roll up a ball that was way too big for whatever else you were working on, so you'd stop at the first ball. Winter is by no means my favorite season, especially now in the Fargo-Moorhead Area.  Basically, November and December are the fun parts of it, when Christmas lights start to go up around the town and your family goes on a ...

This week, millions of small children and children at heart will take to the streets in celebration of Halloween.  They'll dress up in lots of different costumes and say "trick or treat" for candy bars ranging from Twix to Almond Joy, and maybe even get a popcorn ball laced with lead (I'm only kidding).  It's a lot of fun, and a small part of me longs for the days when my family would walk around the Thunderbird Mall in Virginia and get candy from the store employees.  Of course this was back before about half of that mall shut down. But there is one thing about Halloween that I don't like, and it technically applies to the rest of the year too.  It's the part that the little kids don't see because their parents would rather they not be exposed to it, and some adults and older children don't even spend time watching it either. If you haven't guessed already, I'm talking about the art of scaring people and watching horror movies,...

It was a few weeks ago that a friend of mine turned to me and said "Rollie, you're an old soul."  Realizing that he was probably right but still in denial myself, I asked some of my closer friends this question, and the answer they gave was also "Yes".  Now that I feel older than I really am (21), I start to realize some things, and I'd like to point those out while also doing some internet research on this ideal, because even little things like this are things I feel should be fact based, and not just solely on my opinions.  The first thing I wanted to find out was what it actually meant to be an old soul, so I turned to the internet, which I know you can't believe everything you read on there, but I feel  this article  from the website Psychic Today at least gets us a basic description of what it means to be an old soul.   Per the article, "Most old souls feel a certain disconnect from the Earth, and most are inherently aware that they a...

Being a radio personality and a DJ, it's more or less an imperative that I listen to music on a daily basis to continue exploring and curating new music for the various things I use it for.  Some of the songs I find get listened to on an almost daily basis by me, and others may only be checked out every so often.  Others are used solely for my drumming practice and not much else, if anything past that.  And then there's that collection that I hear once or twice and decide never to listen to again.  It's a wide mix. But the problem I always have is trying to describe what my favorite type of music to listen to is to my friends and co-workers.  Listening across a wide variety of genres gives me this issue and I don't really have a favorite genre, though I do have a mixture of favorite sounds that make me ten times more likely to put a song on repeat for my personal collection.  It's a strange criteria for me, but after I describe it a little bit you may ...