Thomas Duane Wood

LITTLE ROCK — Some people you know by name. Some you know by face.

If you grew up within broadcasting distance of Little Rock from 1980 onward, you probably know Tom Wood by voice.

From the founding of album-rock station Magic 105 through being the name and voice behind today’s 94.9 Tom-FM, Wood has been a fixture in the Little Rock radio market for more than 30 years.

Thomas Duane Wood was born at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Ill., on Jan. 26, 1953, to Richard and Mary Wood. His father is retired from the U.S. Navy and American Airlines and lives in Sherwood. Mary has passed away. Tom Wood also has a younger sister, Kathy.

The family moved several times, as Richard Wood was stationed in California, Kansas, Hawaii, and on Whidbey Island in Washington state.

“We really had two very exotic places to live,” he said. “We lived in Hawaii even before it was a state ... and living on the island in Puget Sound was fantastic.”

After his father retired from the Navy, the family returned to Illinois and Wood attended junior high and high school in the Chicago suburb of Addison. Then it was on to Northern Illinois University, where he anticipated becoming a sportswriter before fate intervened.

“I won some trivia contest on a radio station in DeKalb and won an album,” Wood said. “When I went to the station to pick it up, I thought, ‘’Oh my gosh, this is a magical place! Maybe I want to do this!’”

He transferred to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, which had a renowned radio program, and had a job on the campus station within the week. That eventually evolved into the management of the station, then a job at a commercial station in Herrin, Ill. After graduating in 1975, he got a job at a little family-owned station in Columbus, Ind., a town of about 25,000 people south of Indianapolis.

It was while he was working there that he met a Battle Creek, Mich., native named Wendy Norman, who moved into his apartment building. They started dating and a year later were walking down the aisle. Thirtysix years later, they live in North Little Rock’s Lakewood neighborhood and have two grown sons: Michael, who is pop music editor for the Los Angeles Times and lives in Los Angeles with wife Sally and sons Henry and Zachary; and Matthew, who lives in New York with girlfriend Emily and is the e-commerce director for Murray’s Cheese.

From Columbus, the Woods went to Danville, Ill., where he took over as program director and morning show host. Less than a year later they moved to Peoria, where he held down the morning shift and was assistant program director in “a much bigger market and more sophisticated radio opportunity.”

“We loved Peoria. We were there for two years,” Wood said. “The guy I was working for, Dick Booth, told me one day that he wanted to have lunch with me. He said that he and a friend of his had bought a radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas, and wanted to know if I was interested in coming down and helping put it on the air.”

LITTLE ROCK ’N’ ROLL

So the Woods paid a visit to Little Rock and liked what they saw. Tom said yes to the offer. They moved down in 1979 and Magic 105 was on the air the next year. But there was a lot of work to be done before they went live.

“There was just Dick and me, our sales manager Gordon Heiges, and Bill McKinney — he was our engineer,” Wood said. “We were going to work every day like contractors, hanging Sheetrock and laying carpet and doing all kinds of stuff.

“The really cool thing that happened in that eight months, I was working right alongside all the real contractors and these were guys who lived in Conway and Little Rock and Mayflower,” he said. “I got to talk to them, have lunch with them, find out what was important to them, what music they liked. ... That really helped get Magic 105 on the air in a way that almost sounded like people who were running it had lived here for a while rather than a bunch of interlopers.”

One of the station’s earliest hires was Sandy O’Connor, who had a long history in Little Rock radio, to be its music director. He had contacts and a familiarity with the audience that Wood and the others lacked.

“You can’t overestimate the impact of that, the regional flavor of a radio station,” Wood said.

It was O’Connor who told him that Billy Thorpe’s “Children of the Sun” had a special place in the hearts of Little Rock listeners. And when Kim Mitchell — front man for a band called Max Webster, which had opened for Rush in Little Rock in the 1970s — came out with a solo album, O’Connor knew he had local fans. Thus it was that “Go for a Soda” became an airplay staple.

Wood’s Magic 105 tenure was probably best known for his Brown Bagger Request Hour, a noontime show where listeners got to pick the song set.

“People loved that. Boy, they’re creative! It was just so much fun to put together an hour every single day,” Wood said. “I made a lot of friends on the phone. I’ve had people I’ve talked to on the phone for 20 years and never met.”

Magic 105’s run ended in 2008; for its final week the station played nothing but the Beatles, Wood’s favorite band. With the format changing to country, Wood worried he might be out of a job, but general manager Kim Pyle had a different idea: Put him in charge of a new station that explores a wide variety of musical styles, all in one place. It will bear the name Tom FM, a nod to his 30 years of work in the market.

“R&B, new rock, classic rock, reggae… weave it all together into a format presentation with — and this was the other daring idea — no DJs,” Wood said. “No personalities would have shifts. Instead, it would be me and what we call the voice guy, Glen Noble of Oregon, and the two of us kind of putting together a presentation that’s a little bit low-key, 100 percent focused on music, and listener input maybe to a higher degree than most stations have.”

TOM, MAGIC AND THE WOLF

Tom-FM went on the air the week that Magic 105 became The Wolf. It started at 106.7 FM, but was moved to its current home at 94.9 FM in 2009.

“Those were the basic tenets of the format” for Tom-FM said Wood — no host, few popular music prohibitions — who noted this cross-genre style of broadcasting wasn’t a new idea.

“We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we put it all together. We started off with a few thousand titles in the computer and started shuffling the deck. We kind of liked what it sounded like.”

As for having the station named after him, Wood says he doesn’t underestimate the honor, or the weight it put on his shoulders.

“It made me kind of nervous,” he said. “Simultaneously, though, it really made me concentrate on every little aspect because it did have my name on it. I’m sure anybody who has something named after them feels that way.”

He soon realized the genius of Pyle’s idea. In radio, name recognition is just about everything.

“Every single call starts with ‘Tom!’” Wood said. “In the crowded world of media today, you have to keep reminding people what you’re listening to. This is a perfect, unobtrusive way to do that. Three seconds between songs, where they say ‘Tom, I love your radio station, and boom!”

Ron Collar and Wood were both in radio in Little Rock in the ’80s. Collar was at KSSN, but they never actually met back then. They ended up working together when Collar returned to Little Rock in 2009 to become the Little Rock market manager for Clear Channel, the parent company of Tom-FM. Even though their old stations had been competitors, Collar said there was no friction.

“Tom has always had a lot of respect in the market. He has a lot of knowledge, knows where all the bones are buried,” Collar said. “He built that rock station from the ground up. We’re fortunate to have Tom.”

Collar praised Wood’s vast experience and knowledge of the market, noting that “he knows the listeners in Little Rock as well as anyone.” He also called Wood an “ultimate team player” who brings an upbeat attitude with him every day.

“He motivates other people as well. He’s just got that can-do attitude. You never present him with anything he says we can’t accomplish,” Collar said. “He’s the kind of employee you like to have.”

GROWIN’ OLD WITH ROCK

Wood doesn’t spin the platters in the DJ booth anymore, and not just because the radio station LP has gone the way of the dodo. His title these days with Tom-FM is producer, and with it comes the responsibility for building a playlist that must not merely lump together music of different styles, but find some harmony in the process.

“I remember at the very beginning of this format, when we used to have those potential train wrecks musically,” he said. “Like going from ‘I Got You’ by James Brown to some wonderful Bonnie Raitt tune, ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me.’ Two completely different styles, two completely different tempos. One ends with the biggest exclamation point soul music has; the other begins with tinkling keyboards.

That’s where the producer’s ability is needed to see what’s coming and pick the exactly right segue in between.

“Those are the minute details I love to get involved in,” Wood said, “yet on the radio they last half of one second.”

Of course, this role means he’s not actually on the air very often any more.

“The thing I miss the most is the whole request hour thing, the Brown Bagger Request Hour. I do miss doing that,” Wood said. But “when I walk out the door at the end of any given day, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going to sound until I get into the studio the next day. And that’s replaced some of the on-air kick I used to get.”

So what does Wood do when he walks out the door and into the weekend? He plays as much golf as possible.

“That’s my No. 1 outside passion,” Wood said. “I’m down in Hot Springs Village with the old dudes almost every weekend.”

In fact, one of his playing partners is Collar, who described Wood as “a pretty salty golfer.”

He and Wendy are also big movie and theater fans who have been season ticket holders at The Rep for three decades. They’re also big foodies, thanks in part to son Matthew’s profession, and enjoy going to restaurants. In fact, Wood confides, “We spend way too much money on meals out.”

They also travel, both to visit their grandsons — “Anything you’ve ever heard about grandchildren is so true. It’s an amazing reflection of your life” — and to be in one of their favorite cities: Las Vegas.

Having watched 40 years pass by from his seat behind the mic, how much more of this work does Wood see himself doing? A whole lot, if he has any say over it.

“You know, I still have a lot of fun every day,” he said. “I love coming in here. Being surrounded by music as the central theme of what you do every day. That’s just like a dream.”

Even with the drastic changes in technology, especially in recent years, Wood says he just enjoys having “guys half my age teach me something every day.” And even though he just turned 60, he still feels right at home in the world of music.

“I can’t envision a time when I’m not doing radio as my job,” he said. “At my age, it used to be pretty laughable in the 1970s to say, ‘This guy’s doing some kind of rock-and-roll radio.’ But anymore, heck, the artists are older than I am.” SELF PORTRAIT

Tom Wood

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Jan. 26, 1953, in Great Lakes, Ill.

THE FIRST SONG I CAN REMEMBER IS Probably a Martin Denny song. He did this kind of jazzy, Hawaiian stuff.

MY FAVORITE MUSIC The Beatles.

THE NAME OF MY BAND No. I’ve always known the lyrics to songs and once I tried to sing in a band in college — I couldn't do it. If I’m not singing to the radio, it’s hopeless.

A KIND OF MUSIC I DO NOT ENJOY I really don't understand how people enjoy opera. It always sounds to me like female opera singers are singing in a range that’s so unnatural that it hurts me to hear it.

FAVORITE SPECIAL-OCCASION RESTAURANT: Ristorante Capeo in North Little Rock

FAVORITE CASUAL RESTAURANT: Gadwall’s Grill in North Little Rock

THE BEST LIVE MUSIC I’VE EVER SEEN I would say that it was Bob Dylan and The Band in St. Louis. I was in college so it would have to have been ’74, something like that.

MY FIRST CAR WAS A Mustang, would've been probably a 1967. Yellow with black vinyl top. I bought it from my parents. After I drove it for about a year I sold it back to my parents. I think that was their plan all along.

IF I WASN’T IN RADIO I'd be a golfer, a professional golfer. What a life! Harder than it looks, I'm sure, and not nearly as fun as it looks, but what a life!

MY FIRST PET WAS A cocker spaniel named McDuff when I was a kid.

ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME Happy.