Bryan White Heard Himself on the Radio for the First Time, Then Called the Station

Bryan White, who has co-written hit songs for the likes of Diamond Rio ("Imagine That") and Sawyer Brown ("I Don't Believe in Goodbye"), has also charted 17 singles himself, including six No. 1 hits ("Someone Else's Star," "Rebecca Lynn" and others). Below, White shares with The Boot what he remembers about hearing himself on the radio for the first time.

This would have been, I'm guessing, '95 ... and I was maybe all of 20 [years old] at the time. I was on an independent label, and we were on a real extensive radio tour on the West Coast.

We were on our way to Tucson, [Ariz.], to visit a radio station. On the way, I heard my single, which was a song called "Eugene, You Genius;" it was an uptempo, fun kind of thing -- a tongue-in-cheek kind of song. I heard it on the radio, and I freaked out so much so that I made the label rep find a convenience store to pull over, because we didn't have cell phones then. We pulled over, and I got the number from my rep and went in and called the station from the pay phone, and they put me on the air.

I was so jazzed, because that was literally the first time I had heard my voice on the airwaves. I thanked them and just told them how much I appreciated that. I made sure that they knew that was the literally the first time I heard myself, just driving down the road!

I wish I still had a copy of that audio of me calling in; that would be so special to have. I can visually see it: I can still see where I'm at, what the gas station looked like and the rep who was with me was smiling.

Honestly ... it never gets old. I don't care how many hit records you have, when you hear your song on the radio or in the mall or in the grocery store, part of you is so excited, you want to go tap everybody on the shoulder [and say], "Do you know who that is?" [Laughs]

This story was originally written by Pat Gallagher, and revised by Angela Stefano.