Pat Monahan Of Train Says Local Radio Show In This Southern City Helped Launch Band’s Career

“It was definitely a very pivotal moment for the song and the band for sure.”

The multi Grammy award-winning band Train’s song catalog is full of hits. From “Meet Virginia” to “Drops of Jupiter,” to “Hey Soul Sister,” and “AM Gold,” Train has cemented their place as a fixture of American popular culture over the last few decades. But the band with San Francisco roots actually has another region of the country to thank for their success.

In the middle of a show on a recent stop of the band’s Summer Road Trip tour at Oak Mountain Amphitheater, just outside of the Birmingham city limits, lead singer Pat Monahan paused the music to tell the crowd just how much the Magic City means to him.

Monahan told the roaring crowd all about how an appearance on a local radio show, Reg’s Coffee House, changed everything for the band. It was what he called a “pivotal moment,” and this Birmingham based editor who happened to be in the audience that night wanted to know more.

For the last 27 years, Scott Register, or “Reg” as he’s known to listeners, has been hosting a weekly radio show called Reg’s Coffee House. First, the show aired on the X, a station that no longer exists, and now it airs on Birmingham Mountain Radio, 107.3. Every Sunday, Register fills several hours with tunes you likely won’t hear on mainstream stations, introducing his audience to new musicians, or to new music by already established musicians that he just thinks you should know about. As his tag line says, “helping you build your music library, one song at a time.”

As Monahan further explained to Southern Living in a phone call, in 1998 that the new music Register was sharing with his fans happened to be from Train. Register had shared several of the band’s early songs on air and shortly after, they headed to Alabama to perform.

“We played Birmingham on a Saturday and we were supposed to be in New Orleans on Sunday,” Monahan recalled. Their plans changed and they were able to stay overnight. This meant they were in Birmingham on Sunday and able to head to the studio and be guests on Reg’s Coffee House.

“So the sad part was the reason we couldn’t go to New Orleans and we had the opportunity to go to Reg’s Coffee House is because of Hurricane Georges. That was devastating to New Orleans but that was the opportunity that we got… to go into Reg’s show that we weren’t going to be able to do otherwise.”

As he tells it, Monahan said that Register ran into some technical issues and called in a higher up at the station, Dave Rossi. Initially, Monahan said that Rossi wasn’t a fan of Train but after he helped get the gear working, Rossi stuck around for the show.

“We played some Zeppelin and some original songs from the record. We played ‘Meet Virginia’ and that’s when Dave switched from, ‘I’m not really into it’ to ‘This is great and I love these guys.’ So that was a big deal.”

Train’s “Meet Virginia” then became a part of the regular rotation of tunes the X was playing and eventually other markets across the country caught on and began playing it as well. “It was definitely a very pivotal moment for the song and the band for sure,” Monahan said.

Southern Living also spoke to Register who said “Oh I can go back further than that. I had just started doing Reg’s Coffee House a couple of years earlier,” he began. Register said he went to visit his friend, and a major player in the Birmingham music scene at the time, Don Van Cleave at his office.

“I grabbed a CD that was in a box of CDs that Don Van Cleave had and he said ‘oh that’s Jay Wilson’s band. He’s managing.’ So I knew Jay from when he worked for Kudzu Records and he was also a promoter here in town. I threw it in the car and put it in one night. I heard ‘Meet Virginia’ and was like, that’s a hit. That’s a hit in Birmingham, Alabama. I know it.”

He began playing it on air and people noticed. That is when he said he went to see them play at Zydeco and met the band. That was the night before they came into the studio. Register said the rest played out pretty much as Monahan had said it did. And he said that Rossi “saw the same thing that I saw… Everything just kind of fell into place and Birmingham and San Francisco, their home market, were the two markets that were really blowing them up.”

Register added, “At one point in time, if I remember correctly, 10,000 of their first 100,000 records were sold in Birmingham.” Register also credits now closed record store Magic Platter for carrying Train albums and another local media personality, Dennis Leonard from Fox 6 for having the band on his show one morning for helping build the buzz around this now world-famous band.

“For a long time, there were radio stations that would influence listeners. They came up with a list of songs. Then there was iTunes and iTunes had to start making playlists so that they could turn people on to new music and then we’d have the charts to look at. And now Spotify, they come up with playlists and that’s how, basically they break bands because they put them on playlists… People like Reg started trends a long time ago,” Monahan said.

He added, “It seemed a little bit more human back then. Instead of algorithms, it was humans’ ears and they were going like this is really special. You should check it out.”

As for hearing that the band paused the show to pay tribute to the impact he made on their career, Register humbly replied, “I’d like to think that I’ve been able to help a lot of artists out over the years. It's not why I do what I do. You know, I’m just lucky to get to do what I do and to still be doing it. Every time I go to the studio and the key works, I’m thankful.”

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