Country Connection: Station holds singing contest

Encountering the unexpected happens everyday, but recently it was fun for me to watch it from the other side.

Here’s a little background first: we recently held a contest to award one listener a free trip to CMT Camp Nashville, a multi-artist country music fantasy camp to be held May 21-25, 2009 in Nashville.

Camp attendees experience five days of red carpet treatment in the role of a country star, complete with a stay at the trendy Hotel Indigo, a full entourage of roadies, stylists, tour managers, access to top rehearsal halls, private recording studio sessions, songwriting classes, vocal coaching and private performances by John Rich and Ronnie Milsap.

The experience culminates with a final showdown where campers perform as the opening act for Phil Vassar and Lady Antebellum at the world-famous Wildhorse Saloon.

How to give away a trip so coolm, a prize so valuable? We didn’t want to just broadcast, “Hey! Be the 10th caller and win an $8,500 trip!” The solution our promotions director and Child Boss came up with: Set up a public address system in a Wawa parking lot at 5 a.m. on a Thursday and let listeners come “audition” their talents.

So, that’s what we did. There we were on Va. 610 in North Stafford on a cold morning.

A ton of folks showed up. In fact, when I got there about 4:45 a.m. there were already people signed up and ready to play.

Each contestant performed a song, which we aired on Thunder 104.5 and blasted out across the parking lot.

Talk about talent! Just about all of the contestants deserved to win the trip to CMT Camp Nashville.

Now here’s the unexpected part. Put yourself in the position of some unsuspecting guy who is just swinging into the Wawa parking lot to fill up his car and grab a hot coffee. I saw some of the most stunned looks I’ve ever seen. As much as I loved all the music, the looks on the faces of the innocent bystanders was hilarious. They were sort of like the looks we observed back in March at Spotsylvania Towne Centre when we hosted the wedding we gave away.

The moral of the story — all stories need a moral — you just never know where we at Thunder 104.5 might show up and start your morning out ready for anything.

By the way; congratulations to Josh Knight of Fredericksburg, our winner of the trip to CMT Camp Nashville, as voted on by Thunder 104.5 listeners. He’s off to Nashville.

Denny More hosts “More in the Morning” weekdays from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Thunder 104.5, Everything Country and More.