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The story is here. I focused on program director/disc jockey Jay Prater and his father, Bart Prater -- who was program director/disc jockey at the old WROV-AM. But I spent some time with Steve “Cannon” Curtiss and J.D. Sutphin, and I wanted to write a bit about them, too.

Curtiss was a standup comic when he took a gig at the old AM station. He said he learned everything he knows from "the best voices ever," including Bart Prater, Larry Bly and Rob O'Brady.

These days, he is Webmaster for all the Clear Channel stations in the Roanoke-Lynchburg market. Taking the radio gig made life more stable, he said, "a lot easier than packing up and sleeping in a rest area" between gigs.

He said he still likes to do a bit of standup. He does material about computers, cell phones and other gadgets that screw up our everyday lives -- and how people are similar to those electronic devices.

Curtiss, who goes by Steve Cannon on the air, showed me the window from the old station, at Cleveland Avenue and 13th Street. They keep it at the station because of the bullet holes, he said. About 2:15 a.m. one day many years ago, someone unloaded a full clip of 9 bullets from a semiautomatic weapon. A couple of those bullets hit the window separating the studio from the production booth.

"Some reel-to-reel [tape machine] miraculously stopped it," Curtiss said.

It hangs from a wall near the DJ booth at the station's studio, on Brandon Ave. Everyone I asked about it said that they think about it whenever someone calls in asking for a Lynyrd Skynyrd or Outlaws song. "Don't ever turn down that request, or this might happen," Curtiss said, joking.

Or was he?

You might know J.D. Sutphin simply as J.D. on the FM airwaves, but he also leads the band Madrone, which is opening a show for Hoobastank on Wednesday at Toad's Place, Richmond. On March 7, Madrone will be at 220 Southside, in Boones Mill, celebrating the release of its new EP, "The Glass Man."

Sutphin began about seven years ago as an intern -- a job he got after meeting Curtiss. He said when he first heard a recording of himself on the air, he hated it. "I felt like I'd never talked before," he said. But he kept at it, learning as he went along.

"My college was here," said Sutphin, who now is also the station's marketing and promotions guy.

"I was raised on radio," he said. "I was raised on 'ROV. ... I learned how to play guitar by playing along to the songs on 'ROV ... So to be part of it all was awesome. Still is."

Keep up with the station at wrov.cc