Dale Earnhardt Jr. records a podcast for Fast Lane Family with sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, N.C.(Photo: Jeremy Brevard, For USA TODAY Sports)
It’s been a revelatory year for Kelley Earnhardt Miller.
The oldest daughter of the late Dale Earnhardt shared a soul-baring conversation about the seven-time NASCAR champion with her grandmother, who advised, “I hope you never lose a child. It’s like losing part of yourself.”
She nearly was brought to tears by her half-brother, Kerry, who recounted being a jumble of nerves on the day he turned 16 and drove to their father’s house to meet Kelley for the first time.
She dished with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s girlfriend about the nocturnal habits and living arrangements of NASCAR’s 11-time most popular driver.
All of these discussions, which move from topics intensely personal to borderline embarrassing, are available for public consumption and dissection via the click of a website on Fast Lane Family. The newest addition to Earnhardt Jr.’s burgeoning Dirty Mo Radio podcast lineup is hosted by his older sister.
USATODAY
Dale Earnhardt’s mother keeps his legacy strong
“The hard part of the candor is just knowing that not everyone is going to agree with you or respect your position, and that’s something as an Earnhardt we’ve dealt with all our lives,” Earnhardt Miller told USA TODAY Sports. “And the older you get, the more comfortable you get with that. We can just be real, and there’s no need to sugar coat or fancy it up.
“Through his personality and the person he was, my dad really laid the groundwork for connecting with people, and we paid attention (and) are carrying that on through. He really set the stage for being real.”
Earnhardt’s legacy was a theme during the 24th episode of Fast Lane Family, which went live Wednesday on DaleJr.com and iTunes and marked the debut of Earnhardt Jr. on his older sister’s show. “I’d love to know what he thinks about my racing,” Earnhardt Jr. said on the heels of Sunday’s win at Pocono Raceway.
USATODAY
Frustration another sign of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s success
His father certainly would be impressed by the Internet savvy of his children, who co-own the JR Motorsports team where the podcast originates.
Dirty Mo Radio expanded to five days a week this year and has enjoyed a 926% increase in downloads (which exceed 100,000 per month). The Dale Jr. Download, the flagship podcast that features weekly updates from Earnhardt Jr. and amusing fan reactions that range from poignant to unhinged, is up more than 218% over the total downloads from the entire first season last year.
“I feel like I’m tooting my own horn a little bit, but I think JR Motorsports does a lot of things better and a little different and smarter than what I see a lot of other companies do,” Earnhardt Jr. told USA TODAY Sports. “We’ve got a lot of smart people who are creative and like to have fun. I think we’re doing a lot of neat stuff.”
This year’s breakout star has been his older sister, 41, who also manages his business affairs in addition to being the general manager of JRM.
With a lineup of guests varying from Earnhardt family members to NASCAR wives such as DeLana Harvick, Krissie Newman and Erin Evernham, Fast Lane Family already had doubled the downloads for Dale Jr. Download’s inaugural year through half of its slated episodes.
USATODAY
Dale Earnhardt Jr. reveals his four ‘simple joys’
Earnhardt Jr. credits much of the success to his sister, who has revealed an affable and engaging side as an interviewer deftly handling serious subject matter (particularly in an episode with former driver Shawna Robinson discussing her battle with cancer).
“She has been able to come out of her shell,” said Earnhardt, 39. “It doesn’t seem like that’s her forte or where she feels most comfortable, but she’s become a different person through doing the podcast. She’s already pretty badass being the businesswoman she is, but I think it’s given her confidence and empowered her.”
It also has been a financial boon for JRM, which has picked up several sponsors for Dirty Mo Radio (adding Charlie’s Soap last month as the title sponsor for Fast Lane Family).
“My ultimate goal for it is to propel JRM in some manner,” Earnhardt Miller said. “This kind of content is being very well received and it’s engaging for people.
“It’s not your everyday conversations.”
Little off-limits
Naturally, the most downloaded episode so far has featured Amy Reimann, Earnhardt Jr.’s girlfriend for five years.
“Amy and I were equally nervous,” Earnhardt Miller said. “You have to get personal. I didn’t want it to feel like I was acting. I wanted it to be a dialogue, like sitting down for lunch together but without crossing the line of getting too in-depth. I don’t want to ask her about marriage and babies and stuff like that.”
Reimann has grown comfortable on Twitter this year but had granted few interviews about her relationship with Earnhardt Jr., who encouraged her to appear on the show in part because his sister “has almost been like my mother raising me through high school.
“Amy was real reluctant because she’s real nervous about how people perceive her,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Kelley and I have a really, really, really tight relationship, and her and Amy are learning how to be around each other. I said, ‘You need to go do this show because I think you and Kelley will get a better understanding for each other.’ I thought it would be awesome, and I think Amy really enjoyed it.”
PHOTOS: NASCAR’S Earnhardt siblings
Post to Facebook
Posted!
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
Last SlideNext Slide
Few topics are off limits for Earnhardt Miller, who jokes often during the show that the Earnhardt brood is as dysfunctional as any American family.
Much of her episode with Kerry Earnhardt, 44, was devoted to how their relationship grew from being nonexistent because Kerry was raised by Earnhardt’s first wife. Until the podcast, they hadn’t talked about meeting for the first time (on the day Kerry got his driver’s license), because Earnhardt Miller said it was a taboo subject at home.
“That was just my dad and (stepmother) Teresa’s way of dealing with it,” she said. “We knew Kerry existed, but we had never met him. A lot of these are new things that you feel safe talking about being older. There’s nobody telling you, ‘That’s not OK.’
“There’s joy in learning and being able to have those open conversations, and nobody’s getting hurt. I think Kerry’s story in particular is very endearing and interesting. I wanted people to know he wasn’t part of our family for a long time. My dad let him be adopted by someone else. If people didn’t know that, they’d be like, ‘Dale Earnhardt never would have done that.’ We’re all human. That was a 21-year-old Dale Earnhardt, before he was the one that they know.”
USATODAY
Dale Earnhardt Jr. flourishing in crew chief’s last season
Kerry Earnhardt said he and his sister have grown close as adults, regularly having dinner together with their spouses and children.
“With Kelley, you never know what’s going to get thrown at you,” Kerry Earnhardt told USA TODAY Sports. “She’s always full of surprises. She’s a wonderful person in general. I think people can feel comfortable talking to her, but she’s also full of fun, and we have a lot of good times.”
He believes the appeal of her podcast stems from the stories that are relatable to families less famous than his.
“I’m not mad or holding a grudge for anything that happened in life,” Earnhardt said. “It’s made me a better person to understand what everyone goes through, not just people in racing. It’s people in cotton mills, fire departments, police departments, lawyers and judges. You have challenges in life, and you just have to face them. From the Royal Family to the guys digging ditches, everybody’s the same. I’m blessed with what I went through helped me be the person I am today.”
But there’s also a focus on what differentiates the Earnhardt family, too. In the “Happy Birthday Dad” episode that was taped on what would have been Dale Earnhardt’s 63rd birthday, Martha Earnhardt recalled stories of watching her husband Ralph, son Dale, daughter Cathy and son-in-law David race in the same night in different series on the same track (“I didn’t have any nerve pills to take,” she said) as well as raising Dale Earnhardt, who quit school in eighth grade to race.
Earnhardt Miller said the show seemed therapeutic for her grandmother, who lost a son to cancer last year after her oldest son died in a last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500.
“She hurts,” Earnhardt Miller said. “I mean I miss my dad terribly, but when I listen to her, she hurts. The sadness is just so real in her. It doesn’t go away.”
The podcast’s tone is a delicate balance to strike for Earnhardt Miller, who grew comfortable with radio interviews while making weekly appearances on SiriusXM’s NASCAR channel and spends about a day preparing for each show.
“You can actually lose sight of it almost being too personal,” she said. “Sometimes you have to remind yourself, ‘OK, this is going out nationally, and thousands of people are going to listen, and it’s not just me and a friend sitting across from each other at lunch gabbing.’ “
Future of Dirty Mo Radio
Until being convinced to start Dirty Mo Radio by JRM director of communications Mike Davis, Earnhardt Jr. hadn’t listened to a podcast before.
“I didn’t quite understand what the appeal was, who the audience was and where the demographic was,” he said. “I didn’t have the vision like Mike did. I knew if we did something, our fans would try it.”
Besides adding Fast Lane Family and JRM 360 (an irreverent show hosted by Davis and other team employees), there have been other major technical upgrades in its second year. Amanda Trautman, a veteran of the Motor Racing Network that carries most NASCAR events on radio, was hired as JRM’s media manger to handle production.
Inside the JR Nation retail store at the team’s headquarters in Mooresville, N.C., a small studio has been constructed (and designed by Reimann using leftover furniture from her boyfriend’s house with photos of his nearby property) so the podcasts can be taped in view of fans.
STATS: Earnhardt Jr.’s career by the numbers
“I want to do a lot more to give Dirty Mo Radio more of an identity and footprint in the business,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’s been real successful. Sustaining that and trying to grow it is really what’s important.”
Davis said the goal of Dirty Mo Radio was to create an online radio station that might be programmed by Earnhardt, a technophile with an eclectic taste in music. Davis has explored the idea of starting a non-racing show hosted by college students with a goal of trying to expose a younger audience indirectly to NASCAR.
“I feel we’re all responsible to help the well-being of the sport,” Davis said. “If we’re capable of forming ideas to bring in new race fans and being intriguing to existing race fans, why not try it? It’s a clean slate.”
With Fast Lane Family branching out as a lifestyle program (a recent episode focused on Kara Olsen, wife of Carolina Panthers tight end Greg Olsen, and having a child born with a heart defect), Earnhardt Miller believes there is “a lot of merit” to that concept.
“This is something that could go past racing,” she said. “We’ve used the racing and the Earnhardt family personality to bring it out. But if cultivated in the right way, I think it can go above and beyond that.”
Follow Ryan on Twitter @nateryan
PHOTOS: Dale Earnhardt Jr. through the years
Post to Facebook
Posted!
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
Last SlideNext Slide
Article source: Article Source
The post Podcast explores once-taboo Earnhardt tales appeared first on .