Clyde Bynum, on Episode 186 doesn’t waste time on negatives.

Some men are always motivated, Clyde Bynum, the godfather of rock-bouncing shares his best advice on Episode 186. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

9:17 – the truth is, I enjoy work

13:45 – we focused on mini-trucks until about 10 years ago             

17:59 – climbing hills is something I’ve done since the days of the three-wheeler 

24:52 – if it went bad, you were going to cartwheel multiple times back to the bottom

35:03 – Timmie Cameron has been probably the biggest name

43:17 – Bobby Tanner gave my son CJ the chance to drive

49:36 – I studied for 24 hours and became a national satellite installer so that I can cross this bridge at my first event

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:04.720] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future Legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land-use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call Offroad. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and rebutes. We dive into what drives them to stay active in Offroad. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call Offroad.

[00:00:46.460] - 

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[00:01:13.010] - 

Have you seen 4-Low magazine yet? 4-low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4low is the magazine for you. 4low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4lowmagazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:39.460] - Big Rich Klein

On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich is Clyde Bynum. Clyde is the owner of Spyder Off Road, promoter of the National Rock Racing Association, which is the home of The Bouncers, and a one-time mini truck enthusiast. We'll find out more about all that, but Clyde, thank you for coming on board and spending some time with us and talking about your life.

[00:02:03.520] - Clyde Bynum

I appreciate it, Rich. I feel honored to be a part of the show.

[00:02:08.090] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, well, let's get to the first question, which is always pretty much the easiest for most people. Where were you born and raised?

[00:02:16.220] - Clyde Bynum

I was born and raised in North Mississippi, actually born in Memphis, Tennessee, which is right on the border, and grew up in North Mississippi on the same two and a half acres that I'm still on.

[00:02:27.830] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow! Okay. What were those early years like? Were you playing as a kid, hanging out in the garage? What was going on?

[00:02:41.270] - Clyde Bynum

In my early days, I grew up on a junkyard of pretty much any car you could imagine. My dad was self-employed with a shop, and I would just go out there and tinker with stuff. In my early teen years, I would bolt things together and make things run and use them as toys. I was always an offroader since the day I was born, I believe.

[00:03:07.300] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. That junkyard shop, is that still in the family?

[00:03:14.860] - Clyde Bynum

It went away when I was still very young, probably a young teenager. My dad had stepped out and became a truck driver for, I'd say, five, six, seven years. I really don't remember the time frame. Then I went to work for a dealership, a Mercedes dealership. No, it hasn't been around in, I guess, 35 years.

[00:03:38.990] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. I've always wanted a junkyard or I wanted to be able to collect vehicles at least. Okay.

[00:03:45.070] - Clyde Bynum

Well, ironically, that's now back to where it's at. Later, Life opened up his own Mercedes repair place, and there's hundreds of Mercedes sitting around my shop at all times, which to me, are in the way. But he collects old cars and they're piled up everywhere around the shop.

[00:04:08.540] - Big Rich Klein

School years, were you a good student.

[00:04:12.810] - Clyde Bynum

Or.

[00:04:14.020] - Big Rich Klein

Were you indifferent?

[00:04:16.110] - Clyde Bynum

I would say I was a good student. I was one of those kids that stuck to myself, didn't care what other people thought of me, just like today. I just enjoyed having a good time. I didn't... I didn't really like school, but I didn't hate school. It was just part of the process, I guess you say. But I was able to get through it without a lot of studying. It was easy for me.

[00:04:42.020] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Did you participate in any school activities, band or sports or anything like that?

[00:04:50.880] - Clyde Bynum

I actually did band for six years, from sixth grade all the way to graduation. I played the trumpet. Most people probably never knew that. It's probably one of the reasons I ended up disliking football or most sports, to be honest with you, because I was stuck going to them and didn't want to be there later in life.

[00:05:10.320] - Big Rich Klein

Did you play with band? Your marching band at the games, did you participate in any... Did they have, your school have any jazz band or anything like that that you participated in?

[00:05:26.730] - Clyde Bynum

No, it was just strictly marching band. Then, of course, we had the normal band competitions throughout the year. I was decent at it. I was never going to become a professional instrument player, but I was decent at it, and it passed the time.

[00:05:47.520] - Big Rich Klein

Back then, what activities did the family do? Any camping or anything like that? Or was it just pretty much the grind?

[00:05:59.070] - Clyde Bynum

It was pretty much the grind. I would still do things, and we would do our annual vacation somewhere in the world, usually somewhere within a couple of hours, three or four hours at home. My dad wasn't a big traveler. Honestly, we didn't have the funds to be a big traveler back in those days. My dad, just like me, he started from scratch and got to those points later in life. But to this day, he's still not a big traveler. We mainly just did the grand and had fun close to home.

[00:06:38.730] - Big Rich Klein

If you're still on the same property, does that mean friends that you had back in the day, I know you said you were more of a hang to yourself, but any friends that's still in your life from back then?

[00:06:53.150] - Clyde Bynum

Oh, yeah. I did hang to myself, but I did have my few friends, and I'm still friends with those people. One of them, a guy named Pat Hardison, I was friends with back then, but not close friends. Then we later in life became really good friends four or five years ago. Most people that pay attention to the national news would know him as the only human that ever had a face transplant. I've got a few childhood friends that still do what we do. We'll get together every now and then, go do an off-road trail or whatever.

[00:07:28.900] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Back then, you said you tinkered with things and put things together to drive them or ride them or whatever. What were some of the things that you built?

[00:07:40.770] - Clyde Bynum

Probably the first thing that I was able to accomplish, I'd say I was probably 12 years old, 13 years old. I had found the Volkswagen out there in the junkyard and pulled the top off of it. Most people know that they're just a flat pan and everything's bolted to that flat pan. I took one of those old Volkswagen and pulled the top off and mount of the steering wheel and never could find a good starter for it. I'd always had to push it off or have some friends that would help me push it off. We'd go out and go play in the mud until we got stuck and push it again until we could get it running again and do it again.

[00:08:15.550] - Big Rich Klein

That's awesome. After that, did you build your first car or did you find something else?

[00:08:24.950] - Clyde Bynum

I did not build my first car. My parents gave me, I guess it was probably like a 1972 240-D Mercedes. Obviously, it wasn't anything nice, even though it was a Mercedes. It was worth 500 bucks, probably. That was my first car. The diesel wasn't even a turbo and slow as Christmas and the same color as a penny. About as ugly a car as you could imagine. That was my first car. Then when I got a little older and was able to pay for things myself, which I was able to do around 15 or 16, I ended up with an 88 Toyota pickup truck. That began my years into the mini truck and low rider industry.

[00:09:06.060] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about how you were able to afford that vehicle on your own. Did you have jobs that you worked or what things were you doing?

[00:09:17.060] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah, I was pretty motivated early on. It's hard for a lot of people to keep up with me as far as those kinds of things. But the truth is, I enjoy work. When I was 13, 14 years old, I had business cards, and I was doing my own installs for alarms and car stereo in my parents' driveway. That was my first start of making money back when I was 11 is when I started working a fireworks stand, which was twice a year. But the truth is you make really good money those two times. Then the day I turned 15, I started my first real job at a grocery store called Piggly-Wiggly, and was there for four years.

[00:09:58.680] - Big Rich Klein

A good old Piggly Wiggly.

[00:10:01.630] - Clyde Bynum

Good old Piggly Wiggly. Excellent. Even in the summers, I would work at a factory with my granddaddy called Altaformers, which, of course, also owned, to this day, is known as Memphis Audio, which was probably another part of the car stereo world.

[00:10:18.490] - Big Rich Klein

That just came naturally then, is being around the stereo systems.

[00:10:23.380] - Clyde Bynum

It was stuff that interests me. I had my own stereo, and I was building old boxes with just six by nine and the little stuff. It grew into rigs that were 16, 15s or 16, 12s and 4-18s. It grew into the really big competitor side of things and then show car side of things. That just kept developing until it was in the full-blown custom mini trucks.

[00:10:46.620] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. That Toyota that you talked about, that was a two-wheel drive?

[00:10:51.810] - Clyde Bynum

It was a two-wheel drive. Yeah. Lowered it in the driveway, just learning the hard way.

[00:10:58.480] - Big Rich Klein

Cutting springs and...

[00:11:00.840] - Clyde Bynum

Well, the Toyotas luckily were torsion bars. You just turned the torsion bars down on the front and put lower blocks in the back because they were naturally spring under in those days.

[00:11:08.920] - Big Rich Klein

How much time did you spend on that particular truck?

[00:11:19.070] - Clyde Bynum

I don't remember the details, but I think I had that truck for a couple of years before it got wrecked. Then I bought a Mazda extended cab, and I probably went through three trucks in my teenage years. The second one, I'd actually bought a Mazda, and it lasted like a month before somebody hit me head-on and totaled dead. That truck used a short life or was a short life. But anything I've ever bought, I've usually hung on to for a long time unless something else took it away from me.

[00:11:51.910] - Big Rich Klein

The craze or the passion to build, modify, fix up, that sounds like something that's always been there.

[00:12:05.180] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah, it's been there since the beginning. Like I said, I would go out there and tinker with stuff in the junkyard and try to have fun. I've always been a person that's self-taught, everything I've ever done. It's always a joke of Jack of all trades, Master of none type thing.

[00:12:22.750] - Big Rich Klein

Right. There's quite a few of us that are that way, especially on the promoter side of it. I don't know why, but it just seems like we gravitate toward that.

[00:12:35.140] - Clyde Bynum

During.

[00:12:36.750] - Big Rich Klein

The mini truck phase, you were competing in car stereo, the stereotype wars, or what was the whole thing with the mini-trucks?

[00:12:48.770] - Clyde Bynum

In the early days, it was more of the car stereo thing. It just happened to be I had a truck when I started. Then as the industry grew, which the truth is, most of the industries, especially in those days, seemed to always start in the West Coast and work its way back. I was one of the few that never stuck to the trends, was always out doing my own thing and trying something different that nobody else was messing with. In the beginning, it was more of the car stereo side of things. Then it slowly became into body modifications, shaving door handles. By the end, my shop in the beginning was called Silver Star Audio, and it transformed into Silver Star Audio and Customs, and then it became Silver Star Customs, which is where most of the industry or most of the world knew me as was Silver Star Customs building mini-trucks.

[00:13:38.750] - Big Rich Klein

You building mini-trucks for others with Silver Star Customs?

[00:13:45.760] - Clyde Bynum

Yes, it was actually my main business for... And the truth is, it's still the same business. But we focused on mini-trucks until about 10 years ago. Honestly, it was me and a couple of friends from high school that I'd hired, and that was what we did. There were some years we would make it to 45-plus shows a year from New York to California. It was all passion-driven. It was never something that was going to make good money, to be honest with you, but it took me a long time in life to learn that the hard way.

[00:14:25.380] - Big Rich Klein

The mini-trucks, did you promote any of your own events or any local shows or anything like that?

[00:14:35.020] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah. Just coincidentally, again, I was never really into sports at all my whole life, but coincidentally, I became good friends with a local professional hockey team, and we started doing a local show annually called The Shootout because that was a part of hockey. It was to help raise money for a charity that one of my good friends had called Parswas played. We would do an annual show. We did that for like three or four or five years. I don't remember the details, but we would do that to help raise money for a charity. That was probably the extent of doing my own promotion of shows. To be honest with you, I've never considered myself a promoter. I'm more of a fabricator and like to tinker with things.

[00:15:20.330] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Then Silver Star, there was a transition or a morph. I guess it still stands on its own two legs, but became Spider?

[00:15:32.040] - Clyde Bynum

That's a funny story. It was always both, and it wasn't both on purpose. The reason the Spider name was used, it was nothing to do with me caring about spiders. When I built Silverstar Customs, back in those days, every custom shop in the world used flames of some sort as their trademark or logo or whatever. I didn't want to be like that. I wanted something totally different that would fit across the board, but I like to look at things as bigger pictures, five, 10 years down the road. In SpiderWebs, I knew I could always use as gussets on things or any lay into anything that I was building in the stereo world or whatever. But there were companies, for instance, like Buyer Compressors, which fit both sides. They're in the mini truck world and they're in the off-road world. But they required me to have two different websites to sell both sides of their products. One example is the tanks and things like that, we weren't allowed to sell to the mini truckers for the simple fact that they were going to abuse it and overpressure the tanks and put people in jeopardy. I wasn't allowed to sell the tanks and things to the SilverStar Customs customers, but I needed to be able to sell on-board air compressors and kits like that to the Offroad side.

[00:16:52.210] - Clyde Bynum

The truth is, that's the only reason that I had both. I had a Spotter Offroad website and the SilverStar Customs website strictly for that reason. As I mentioned before, SilverStar and build mini-trucks, the truth is it was never big money. It was 120-plus hours of weeks working till you fell asleep. Then you woke up the next morning in the same spot and you just kept working. Spotter Offroad became more dominant just out of necessity for that reason when I started doing the series. In the custom world, it's not something that you can really teach people. It was becoming more of Boltone products, which was more of the offroad side of things, the Spotter Offroad side of things, so that I could focus on the series a little more. It's how it developed and formed.

[00:17:44.710] - Big Rich Klein

How did you get involved with the bouncing world? I know it's a different style of off-road, hillclimbers, I mean, bounceers, whatever you want to call them.

[00:17:59.830] - Clyde Bynum

Climbing hills is something I've done since the days of the three-wheeler, which these days, I don't know how many people realize that's where it all started back then. But I had a three-wheeler back in the day, and hill-killing and hill-climbing was just something that I've always done through everything I've ever built. I went from three-wheelers to four-wheelers to rail buggies to Jeeps to UTVs. I've done it all in this. Hill climb has always been what I enjoy. It was always something that I was good at. When we would just go out and ride, it was usually me or maybe one other buddy that would conquer the hill that we were trying to conquer. It was just always what I enjoyed doing, pushing my boundaries on Hill climb. The series started, to be honest with you, to support Offroad Parks. At that point in time, I would go to a lot of Offroad Parks just to ride. The truth was it was also... The Offroad industry was where I got away from the hustle and bustle because it got to a point when I was at car shows, everybody wanted to talk to me. I've never put myself on a pedestal.

[00:19:11.390] - Clyde Bynum

I've never felt like I was any different than anybody else. I didn't enjoy that. The truth is that's one of the reasons I've always done everything I could to stay off camera because it wasn't like I felt like I belong there. Hillclimbs just was what I love. Offroad parks, I would see the struggle that they would have to survive. It's like the same struggle the West Coast has with public lands. Over here, we have private property parks, but they struggle to survive, insurance costs and all that stuff that makes it hard. At the same time, I've seen the rock bounce in the industry starting to become a thing. At the time, I'd say there were less than only seven or eight rock dancers that truly existed at that time. Bobby Turner, Randall Key, Richie Keith, a few of those guys were the guys that were always on Madrim 11 or Busted Knuckle—and I would see them responding to their fan base about there was nowhere to watch it. It was private property, no public watch available or whatever. In the back of my mind for a year or two, I kept thinking I could kill two birds with one stone.

[00:20:21.770] - Clyde Bynum

If I could figure out to get these rock bouts into an environment that would bring them to Hot Springs Off Road Park, which was my favorite park at the time, we would bring them there, and that would help keep this park open. In my mind, I'm like, Okay, if I create a series that draws them in close to their home, then we build the finals at Hot Springs. That would get them across the river, get them to travel. It would create some safety and some organization to a sport that I seen was coming, whether I was involved or not. That's how it started. It was literally just to try to bring traffic and attention to Offroad Park so that they could continue to grow and stay there.

[00:21:04.000] - Big Rich Klein

Your first series was the Southern Rock racing, correct?

[00:21:08.090] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah, Southern Rock racing was... When I first started, I bought all the domain names and I had a vision on where it was going to go. But the truth is the SRS logo in the Southern Rock race in the region blew up way faster than I anticipated, and to this day still blows on mind how fast it grew. It became the the logo that everybody knew, the name that everybody knew. I'm like, Okay. In my mind, I thought it was going to go down as the people in the south were going to race in the south. The people in the central would race in the central. People in the north were racing the north. Then at some point, we were going to have this Super Bowl style event where the winners of those regions would come together into one big event. But it didn't go that way. All of them are racing all the events. I'm like, Okay. I started to adapt and focus more on the name National Rock Race because that's just the way the drivers and the fans were seeing it. It just took time to get that to be noticed because the SRS logo just exploded in the sport exploded so fast.

[00:22:16.590] - Big Rich Klein

Were you the first to organize bouncer competitions?

[00:22:20.810] - Clyde Bynum

Yes. I had started putting it together late 2010, early 2011. I was tinkering with... The truth is, I still wasn't sure how to do it. To this day, I don't know how to do it.

[00:22:34.110] - Clyde Bynum

I had seen a guy put together this on Hardline, and I was on Pirate and all that back in the day, too. But there's a forum called Hardline. You may be familiar with it. But there was a guy on there that had done this challenge for UTVs to climb a hill down in Alabama at Chaka-Laka. I knew UTVs were also starting to become a thing. I was like, Well, I'll probably have two classes, one for the rock dancers and one for the UTVs because they're starting to get there. At the time, they were just 800s. I seen this challenge. He was looking for people to put up money to make it happen. I sent him a message and said, Hey, I'd like to throw some money at it. I don't want any recognition. I don't want anything. It was, in my mind, was like a test dummy thing to see if the market was really there to go for building the series. So I did. Then a lot of people showed up. Dozens of UTV showed up to climb this hill to this day. It doesn't make sense at all. It went great. Big crowd showed up.

[00:23:41.000] - Clyde Bynum

I'm like, Okay, I've been tinker with this for a while. It's time to pull the trigger. I start putting together the plans. I start contacting Parks. At that time, we were getting really close to announce. Then out of nowhere, an event called Gorilla Run pops up. I'm like, good. Somebody else is going to do it. I don't have to worry about it. I'd offered, and then I seen where they were going to run bounces on a trail called Greg's Rocks, which is more of a rock crawl trail. I'd like shot them a message. I didn't know any of them. I shot a message and offered to give them some ideas on the Hill Clowns a lot of things. Anyway, rest is history. It was the first organized series, and it's been here for, finished up 13 years in the next few weeks.

[00:24:29.800] - Big Rich Klein

Very good. The first event that you did that was yours, not the one at Chocolate... Well, first of all, what Hill at Chaka-Laka did they use? Why do you say it was crazy?

[00:24:46.350] - Clyde Bynum

I should be able to tell you that Hill, but I picture it, but I cannot think of the name of it.

[00:24:51.120] - Big Rich Klein

It's okay.

[00:24:52.850] - Clyde Bynum

Next to it was called Showtime, and I cannot remember the name of that hill. But the reason it was gnarly was because of how long it was. It was a situation where if it went bad, you were going to cartwheel multiple times back to the bottom. Back in those days, a Razor 800 was a stock cage, wasn't known to take those tumbles. Back in those days, I was also building and fabricating razor cages and things like that. That was where the Razor craze, Rock Buzzer craze started as well. I built my son out of a 900. We went down to an event at Grayrock, which is where Cable Hill is that the whole rock bison world knows of. It's just the most popular hill people want to run. We went down there and CJ, my son, ended up doing some crazy things in his UTV 900 with a crazy-looking rock buster, spider, web cage. It became known pretty quick and became a genre of its own thing, like you're saying. It's rock buster look, which everybody does totally different. Instead of a uniform vehicle, it's still that way. It's not like a uniform spec that has ever been followed.

[00:26:09.520] - Clyde Bynum

It's always been about, I guess, like Monster Jam. It's always been about the name of the buggy and looking totally different than everything else.

[00:26:16.530] - Big Rich Klein

True. Very true. What was the first event that you did as Southern or the National Rock racing Association? Where was that held?

[00:26:33.080] - Clyde Bynum

It was held at Chaka-Laka in Alabama. In the first year, the UTVs weren't involved in the bancer race or the bancer event. They were totally separate events. We had four bowser events and four UTV events throughout that year, which was a total of eight events. That was in 2012. Like I mentioned before, there was only, in my mind, seven or eight true rock bancers that existed. But we ended up with, I think, 18, and I still got a picture on my phone, we ended up with 18 people showed up to compete. Bremolair and her dad had showed up just to film it and do it as far as the four-by-four nation that they were doing back then. Of course, Tripp was part of it back then, Tripp pulling that a lot of people know. He was with us back then and used to travel all the events with me. He ends up talking her in a race and, of course, he became stuck in it and kept with it and to this day, it's still helping us. But yeah, it was a Chaka-Laka, ended up with three times as many rigs as I expected. We just kept trying to figure out to keep it going and honestly figure out how to grow with it and find support to make it work.

[00:27:48.730] - Clyde Bynum

It's been mind-boggling how fast it's grown.

[00:27:51.340] - Big Rich Klein

One of the things that I was amazed at is the spectator turnout. A little different with rock crawling or even with the Ultra Four events or K-O-H, where everything takes place in one area, and it's not spread out, and it's one at a time. As long as you get the recovery is going fast enough, which when you're hill-killing, everything rolls to the bottom, hopefully anyway. Most of the time. Most of the time?

[00:28:34.550] - Clyde Bynum

Trees create some situations that are pretty tough to deal with every now and then. Right. But we've learned over the last decade.

[00:28:41.470] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I was weighing that spectator show that you're trying to put on, which is you got the Hill, you got a bunch of crazy guys with high horsepower that you know are just going to send it, and keeping the crowd. Everybody always wants to get close. You see that in Mexico, you see that at K-O-H, you see that at the rock crawls. Balancing that and safety for all of us has always been an issue. What was it like in those early years trying to keep people where they were supposed to be?

[00:29:32.540] - Clyde Bynum

In the beginning, I'd say the first few years, most times we would show up at a park, we would cut these new hills, and I was always drawn to keeping the hill natural and not any dirt work, and cut a new path. Whether it was a bound hill or race hill, we'd cut a new path, and we would keep the spectators back on each side of the hill, but they would be in the woods. For the most part, you had to have a UTV or an off-road vehicle to get to where we were going to race at. The horsepower, the biggest thing that kept changing was the ability of these rigs and the horsepower that they were going to. In the beginning, we didn't have gigantic 1,000-plus-horstpower engines, so it was a lot different than what it is now. But around year five, four, or five, six, in my mind, I seen where it was going and my vision of where I was trying to take it. I started developing at the parks that I knew would be interested to create an environment that was more like a stadium, natural stadium. Where I'm sitting now, I'm at the bottom of the hill that no matter where you're sitting, you're going to see everything really good.

[00:30:44.850] - Clyde Bynum

Bikini Bottom is one of those. I think we started doing this event here in 14. We started creating natural valleys where the spectators would be on one side of the valley, the buggies and the pits would be in the bottom or to the side of the bottom, and then the hill climb would be on the opposite side. It also made recoveries a lot easier because at that point, when you're less trees and not in the forest, they're like you said, they go back to the bottom, which makes recoveries easy. Sometimes when you're in the forest, the recoveries can become very difficult and time-consuming because they'll land in the trees in weird ways. But the spectator thing and the safety thing was something that I seen had to change as the buggy started horsepower of 1,000-plus. At that point, you can sling a rock a pretty long ways. It went from our fan base and our spectators being all up and down the sides of the hills to the bottom. The flip side of that was I knew to grow past the point of being off-road-only fan base. I had to get to what we call Pavement Princesses to show up and be able to come watch the event without having an off-road vehicle.

[00:31:59.570] - Clyde Bynum

Itry to put it as your NASCAR-type fan base that just likes to show up, enjoy the day sitting under a canopy in a chair and watching how horsepower do stupid things. I feel like NASCAR is probably biggest growth was because of the crashes for a lot of people. It wasn't something I followed, so I didn't know. But that was what was fortunate about this sport and not really anything that was planned or whatever. It was a group of guys that were going to do it anyway, and we wanted to bring in organization safety and a way for people to come watch it and create income for off-road parks to keep them alive. Over the years, we slowly tried to develop and adapt over to a bigger fan base like that. We have been fortunate that it is a spectator sport. It's very spectator-friendly. And it's rare that somebody comes along and finds the sport and doesn't start following it. True. I think our reach, some of our years, I think the last time I went through and put it all together, we were at, I think 2020 is the last time I've even done it because again, I'm not a promoter.

[00:33:09.530] - Clyde Bynum

Two hundred and ninth million people, unique viewers watched three or four hundred million views or minutes viewed, which to me is huge numbers.

[00:33:21.590] - Big Rich Klein

Very true. So expanding and trying to do the three series and with everybody going to all three series, is it still broken up into three series or are you... Is it more just like now you have a 12 race or however many races?

[00:33:41.540] - Clyde Bynum

This is the first year, but as of this year, we just made it a 10-race season under the National Rock racing. We do still use the three regional logos just because they're recognizable, but it's just a National Rock races series at this point that's all 10 races together. We've been at a 10-race format for, I think, five years, maybe six years, or even longer. The beginning was four, then it was five, then it was seven, and then it grew into 10 after that. So it's probably been seven or eight years, maybe nine years since we've been at a 10-race season.

[00:34:21.720] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:34:22.830] - Clyde Bynum

And- It's a lot of five.

[00:34:24.100] - Big Rich Klein

And is it for somebody to win a championship? Do they have to go to all 10 events, or is it the best eight out of 10?

[00:34:30.360] - Clyde Bynum

Or how is it the best four? As of three years ago, it's the highest points for all 10 races. The first year we went to we dropped the worst two for everybody. The next year we dropped the worst one. This just gave drivers time to develop and be able to expand their programs into making 10 races. The last several years, it's been all 10, whoever's got the most points for all 10 races.

[00:34:59.490] - Big Rich Klein

Who have been some of the biggest names over the years?

[00:35:03.910] - Clyde Bynum

As far as the beginning, Bobby Tanner and Peter Basler were always neck and neck. Matter of fact, Bobby had it won two years in a row, but refused to be a racer and still wanted to put on the show for the crowd and was able to give it away. Peter Basler started in the beginning in an Ultra 4 car and done very well with it. Then Tim Cameron has been probably the biggest name that a lot of people know as the guy that was a winner. He's always been a guy that had the ability, the opportunity, and the dedication to put together a program to win year after year after year. In my mind, the biggest ones out there are probably Bobby Taylor, Tim Cameron. The thing is, the cool thing about it is they're also the guys that started it. I think Randall Key, this may be his last event. He's been there since day one as well. But a lot of these guys are getting older just like I am, and it's tough. But as far as the biggest winner, Tim Cranman, I think, won eight years in a row, if I'm not mistaken.

[00:36:17.450] - Big Rich Klein

Wow! Tim, he seems to be quite the wheel man. He puts his mind to it. He could probably race just about anything.

[00:36:28.770] - Clyde Bynum

Yes, but the truth is, rock bouncing is his passion, and he's very good at it. There's people that can beat Tim Cameron. He's not unbeatable, but there's been very few people that's been able to beat him consistently. Last year, I think, Wade Goode won 6 of the 10. I guess one of the things that comes along with that is Tim has always had the ability to stay calm towards the end of the year. I watched a lot of these other drivers, if they're in the lead towards the end of the year or really neck and neck with Timmy, they would start making mistakes or start pulling back and quit doing the things that they were doing to get to that point just from the pressure. For a lot of these guys, the pressure is tough by the time you get down to the last two, three races. I've seen a lot of guys just give it away at the end.

[00:37:20.520] - Big Rich Klein

Kind of nuke theirselves.

[00:37:22.770] - Clyde Bynum

They get to where they're holding back because they're afraid they're going to crash and cost everything. Timmy's always been very good about working well under pressure. I've seen Timmy on some of our longer courses. I've seen Timmy make a mistake early on. From that moment on, he pushes so hard that he looks like he's out of control. But that's where he actually does very well is under pressure like that.

[00:37:49.090] - Big Rich Klein

The technology that we've seen, it seemed like to me, as an outsider looking in and having actually never been to an event, is that everybody thought, Well, we just throw as much horsepower as we can at it and try to make it up the hills?

[00:38:16.380] - Clyde Bynum

The way it has developed and changed and started it, here's how it really went in my perspective. These guys came from a rock crawler background. A lot of these guys actually started with cab trucks and just didn't care. They were just going to go after it and whatever happened to happen. That's where the driving mentality came from, or rail buggies. But as far as the buggies themselves and the technology, a lot of them started as and the fabricators that were building them were rock crawlers that had very little up travel and a lot of down travel. Early on, these rock boulders didn't have a lot of up travel, which gave them the name rock bowsers because they were built like rock crawlers. But they were getting faster and faster and getting more competitive over how fast can we do it, or can we make it up that ledge or over that rock or whatever. Then over time, the horsepower started growing. But then they also started finding ways to build race cars. In the beginning, these guys didn't build those rock bousers to compete. They were built to go out and play on the hill.

[00:39:26.870] - Clyde Bynum

Then the series kept growing and people started building faster and faster rock bancers. It started developing, and Timmy was one of the first ones to start developing more of a race car. It didn't matter what it looked like. It was built to perform. Everything about it was to get it lighter, to get it faster, to get more suspension, and it started developing really fast in that direction. The crazy thing about that is people thought that our heels got easier, but it didn't. It actually got really more difficult for me to find that fine of a hill that was difficult but not impossible, that still put on a show but not impossible. For example, the hill called Showtime in Hot Springs. Timmy was the only one to climb that hill for probably two, three years if I remember. Just probably four or five years ago, we ran a UTV event on it, maybe four years ago, we ran a UTV event on it, and they climbed it in 15 seconds. It's fine. But even new UTV drivers that had never been there that come along like Paul Wolf, they looked at it and thought they were going to have a hard day that day.

[00:40:39.290] - Clyde Bynum

Then after the fact, they shot up it and we're like, Wow, that really blew me away. It surprised me that it donethat. Same with the rock boutsers. Rock boutsers climb Showtime Hill in a matter of 10 seconds. That hill called Nasty Girl at Disney. If you look at that, it looks totally impossible from a normal perspective. I think Brandon Davis ran it in, I don't know, 17 seconds or something last time we were there last year. Before, nobody would have made it. It's not because the Hills got easy. It's because these drivers and these machines have advanced so fast and so far, it's just changed the sport.

[00:41:23.490] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about how you integrated with Dave Cole and the K-O-H events.

[00:41:37.230] - Clyde Bynum

Hot Springs is, again, where my brain decided, Hey, let's build a way to support this park. Ironically, Dave Cole ended up coming to Hot Springs. I didn't know Dave Cole was, but I knew Knox. Knox calls me up, which was the guy that managed the park at the time. He calls me up and he's like, Hey, I got a guy here who wants to talk to you. He takes me named Dave Cole. Call. Dave gets on the phone and tells me, Hi, I'm Dave Cole. I have King of the Hammars out in California. He asked me, was I interested in bringing some rock banners out and doing a race to compete with them and do a little shootout? I knew immediately what the goal was to bring a crowd. But the funny thing was I'd never heard of Dave Cole. I'd never heard of King of the Hammars. I told him, I said, Look, I'll do a little research and I'll get back with you. Looking back, that was probably a slap in the face to him because he's probably, What? You don't know King of the Embers and you're in the offroad world. The truth was I've always been in my old world.

[00:42:37.850] - Clyde Bynum

The rock bouncing thing didn't happen because of somebody else doing something. It was because in my little mind, I thought this would be cool, and that's just how I've always been in it. But we make it happen. It goes very well. Me and Dave become friends. Later that night, after the race was over and everything went great and people seemed to enjoy it and have a good time, Dave looks at me like, Man, you think... You think we can get some of these guys out to California? I said, I don't know. We can try. That's how it all happened.

[00:43:10.370] - Big Rich Klein

What was it like that first time going out to K-O-H and seeing in the crowds and everything?

[00:43:17.830] - Clyde Bynum

It was awesome to see. I'll be honest with you, I missed the days of Bobby Turner and all of those big names being out there and putting on the show. One of the coolest things about the first event that most people probably don't realize is we didn't have a whole lot of rock dancers come, but we wanted to make our presence known as a group. Bobby Turner had agreed to let a couple of people drive his rock bancer just so it would be more than just Bobby competing with that buggy. One of the guys that was supposed to race backed out. Cj, my son, who at the time was 14 years old, Bobby gives him a chance to drive it. He does. That was the coolest part about the first event for me was watching my son get into a full-blown rock bancer and give it a go in front of all those people. He almost backed out himself because he was scared to death. He's like, Dad, there's a lot of people here. I don't know if I can do this. I'm like, Don't worry about it, C. Just get out there, ignore that anybody's out there, and do what you normally do, and hit the hill.

[00:44:25.170] - Clyde Bynum

He couldn't even reach the pedal because he was probably five feet tall at the time. Tripp rode with him, and they got to the first waterfall, jumped right up it, got to the second waterfall, and got hung up on the back axle. Tripp had to shift for him back and forth. He would literally slide down on the seat so he could push the gas pedal all the way down. That's how he done it. He couldn't even see over the steering wheel. But that was really cool. I thought it was a really good thing of bringing attention from the West Coast to our little sport. Excellent.

[00:45:01.320] - Big Rich Klein

You've really done a great job at your media and live show and stuff. Talk about the development of that.

[00:45:14.010] - Clyde Bynum

Back, I guess it was 14 or 15, Discovery channel hit me up, and it was the same company that was doing American Chopper and all those guys. They were really knocking my door down, wanting to do a reality show. But I refused to let them come in and just take over. Looking back, it probably would have made a big difference in the sport. But what I was afraid of was, at that time, we were already seeing American Chopper and stuff implode and kill the industry of the motorcycle in the Chopper world. I knew the sport wasn't old enough to survive any implosure like that. I refused to let them just come in and create drama. They wanted to script it, and so I refused it. I refuseded. I went back and forth for probably eight, nine months. During that process, more production companies figured out what was going on. What I did is I went to the drivers and tried to take it all of us in as a group to be fair. Looking back, probably wasn't the best idea because what happened was some drivers didn't like to do it one way or felt like they should have got more, and I probably should have looked at it a little different.

[00:46:26.570] - Clyde Bynum

But anyway, after the fact, I gave up on that idea, I was done with it. I'm not going down this road. But you know what? It's important that we get our own television show. I told myself I was going to figure out a way to go live. At the time, YouTube and Facebook were starting to allow live feeds, but mainly I was focusing on YouTube. I already had Madrim 11 and Busted Knuckle who came to all the events. I bought three HughesNet satellites. Pretty naive, to be honest with you. But what I did, I don't know. I googled a CMI, a wireless transmitter, found some for two, three hundred dollars. I'm like, Okay, let me see if I can get a video from a park in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service to the world live. Then I'll figure out how I can deal with the rest of it if I can just get this video from here to there. I bought three HUSE NET satellites, and in my mind at the time, I was going to use one satellite for each channel, Matter M11, Bust a Knuckle on my own. As Itry to start developing some of that stuff, I start learning about a technology called bonding.

[00:47:36.120] - Clyde Bynum

At the time, it wasn't really happening anywhere, but there were a couple of companies playing with it. One of them was called Live View. At the time and even now, I looked at it as, Okay, I'm not going to be somebody that these people know. The truth is it's going to be a nobody for them. But I hit them up and everybody I kept calling told me that you can't bond satellites because it doesn't work. The latency is too far off, yada, out of nerd stuff. Liveview says, You know what? I think we can do it. I'll send you a box. You see if it'll work. This box is like 12 grand. We'll send you a box and I'm headed to Hammers and I decide I'm going to take it to Hammers. I'm going to take the three satellites to Hammers with me and we're going to give it a shot and try to be live at Hammers. I drive out to Hammers and I sit out there and I've got these three satellites and I don't know if you've ever tried to dial in a satellite or install a satellite. You move in the 16th of an inch and up there it's moving 10 miles.

[00:48:34.920] - Clyde Bynum

I'm trying to dial in the satellite to point at the one in space and I'm getting aggravated. I can't make a phone call from Hammers to talk to anybody. I go back and forth all week. I finally give up, frustrated. All week, I would go out to the cell phone bush, make a phone call, wait for that company to call the HughesNet and come back to me. Long story short, on the way home, we were ready to leave, I called him up and I said, Man, I never think these things will work. He goes, Well, you could probably be mad at me, but I know why. I said, Why? He said, Well, I didn't realize you were going to be that far west with the satellite, so Texas was about as far west as they were going to show you receiving. I was like, Oh. That was a little slap in the face. He says, Look, the best thing to do is you need to study to become a satellite installer. That way you can call into the tech line. We'll just give you a company ID number here. You won't be an employee, but they'll think you're an employee.

[00:49:36.230] - Clyde Bynum

My buddy Jack that's still with me at the Spider Off Road, he drives all the way home. I study for 24 hours, and I take these tests, and I become a national satellite installer so that I can cross this bridge better at my first event in February. That's how it went. We get it up and going. The bonding works great. At this point, I'm like, Okay, I can do a little more. The bonding service also offered a cloud service that would let me point it wherever I wanted to point it once I got it in the cloud. That's how Rockration TV was born, which we still do a lot of today. We still do live feeds for Ultra Four, Mid-America, and things like that. We've become a big part of that side of it for those guys. But that's why I was born. I got something in my mind, and I'm bad about not letting go until I figure it out. Most of my friends, that big money had never happened.

[00:50:31.690] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:50:32.750] - Clyde Bynum

But I don't quit easy.

[00:50:35.640] - Big Rich Klein

So your plans, the National Rock racing is going to continue on for whenever?

[00:50:49.820] - Clyde Bynum

We're finishing up our 13th year now. I'll be honest with you, the series at this point is bigger than me. It's bigger than what I can probably go any bigger than what it is on my own. I'm at a point I would love to figure out how to get it to the next step. I feel like some people say short course is the biggest secret in off-road, but I don't believe that. As you just mentioned, this sport is very spectator-friendly. It brings eyeballs. And if I could ever find a way to get to that next step of televised, eyeballs, and support, I think that's when this sport will truly take off to the next level. But as you know, as a promoter, it's tough to do it all. I don't have a full-blown team of staff to get social media done and handle the logistics on the back end and handle setting up agreements with parts and scheduling calendar and making sponsorship agreements because the truth is, I was terrible at that job. I still am. I'm still going to try to do everything I can do to keep it going. But I'm hoping we can find the right team to get it there.

[00:52:09.230] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I think that's one of the things like looking at the successes in off-road, at least from the events side of it, when you look at everything that's done, I think from score or desert racing to the rock bouncing to rock racing to the Ultra Four to the rock crawling, the organization that seems to be volatile but always seems to be growing is Ultra Four or is K-O-H. Now it's expanded into Ultra Four with Mid-America and the Robinets. I think that it's... Finally, that there's the financing behind it. I think that one of the things that we've all dealt with over the years is limited resources to make happen what we wanted to make happen. We all had really grand ideas and plans, but we were always facing that proverbial brick wall of the financing and being able to afford what we wanted to do. Okay.

[00:53:30.860] - Clyde Bynum

Well, and the truth is, I've had a tremendous amount of support from the off-road industry and the companies in that industry. But the truth of the picture is those companies don't have the budgets or the ability to get it to where it really needs to be to build the next platform. I guess the biggest advantage that this sport has over all the rest is it is spectator-friendly. You can sit in one place and watch it live just like you can drag racing. That was one of the battles that I've always fought is being over here on the East Coast. Most of the West Coast companies, which is where a lot of the off-road industry is located, never really seen us as a real sport or as something that was interesting to them. One of the biggest things I learned, even in the sponsorship world, the fact is it doesn't matter what your numbers are for most of those people. It doesn't matter about any of that. It's about who you know, plain and simple. It's because the guy that owns this off-road industry business, his grandson or his sons involved in this sport, and that's why he focuses on it.

[00:54:50.030] - Clyde Bynum

There are some sports that are televised that gets zero eyeballs, but yet they're sponsored by Red Bull or any of those other brands, and it's usually because there's a personal connection there. But being on the East Coast and being from Mississippi or whatever on the side of the river, I think, has probably been one of the hardest obstacles to conquer for our sport.

[00:55:14.120] - Big Rich Klein

Are you working with Mid-America?

[00:55:18.440] - Clyde Bynum

Yes. I've been at Mid-America since one of his very first events. The truth is, I feel like rock bouncing is probably one of the sports that got him noticed and put him on the map. But yes, I still work with those guys doing production. I was just at Disney last weekend doing production for Culture 4. The weekend before that, I was at the park at Mid-America doing the Mid-America short course production. I still work really close with them as far as the production side. Our finals are there in a couple of weeks coming up for my series.

[00:55:55.040] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. Let's talk about family. Okay. You've got some kids. You've mentioned CJ, wife, and the rest of your life.

[00:56:11.310] - Clyde Bynum

I've got three kids. My youngest daughter is Zaley. She's 15 years old. She'll be here this weekend. It's close to home, but she's still at school, so she doesn't have the ability to travel with me all the time. My oldest daughter, Garian, is married to Taylor. Taylor is now... When I first started doing the live feed, I had to build it where I could do all of it myself. I was in the trailer trying to do this live feed, running the event from a radio, running scoring from the trailer, and doing actual production myself, producing myself. Well, Taylor and my daughter, Taylor now does the production. My daughter runs the pits, my oldest daughter, Gary, and she runs the pits and keeps people organized and in place and ready to go with the line. My son also had a baby, I guess, five years ago. Before that, he was racing. But once he had a baby, he faded away and focused on that for a while. He does miss it. But the truth is he's very competitive and he doesn't want to do it unless he can build a competitive rig and I wasn't at a point where I could afford to put him in one.

[00:57:20.120] - Clyde Bynum

He's focused on his little girl, but he'll be there this weekend since we're only a couple of hours from home. The sport has always been a family adventure. A fiancé, Crystal, she's one of the camera people out there on the course running the camera. I've got a couple of other people, ironically enough, from the road park, Hot Springs, that put me in touch with Dave is also a guy that comes and helps for these events. Then just really good people like Bill, we consider him part of the family. I took him to Egypt with me when I had the opportunity to take my mom over there to Israel, Egypt. It's all family. I guess my son's 25 years old. My oldest daughter is 21 or 22. I'm terrible at those type of numbers. We do it as a family, and family is very important to me. We try to... We try to travel as much as we can together. We usually try to take one big family trip a year somewhere cool. Excellent.

[00:58:28.410] - Big Rich Klein

Well, is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven't discussed? Anything that you want to let people know about?

[00:58:39.870] - Clyde Bynum

I think we've pretty much covered my life. The truth is, it's nothing fancy, nothing that I find out of the ordinary. It's just what I've always done and enjoy doing. I guess that's where I'm blessed and fortunate is I've always found a way to create opportunities to make a living in something I enjoy. I've never been the guy that went out and chased a million-dollar job. To me, my freedom and doing what I enjoy is the most valuable thing to me.

[00:59:17.640] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I get that completely. I feel like you do. Before I found the rock crawling and promoting events, I never had a career, whether it was my own doing or somebody else that I worked for that I did for more than five years.

[00:59:35.050] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah. Well, like I said before, I had that job at Piggly William for four years. Ever since I was 19 years old, I've never had a real job. Pretty much my entire life, I've never had a real job. I've always been self-employed, and I just go after it. If I fail, I try again a different way, but I do whatever I can to go after it and enjoy life. Most days are, I'd say for me, all days are positive. I don't waste all a lot of time on negative in life. I find the good in everything.

[01:00:11.350] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. That's awesome. I was going to ask you for a quote or a motto or something like that, but I think that was a pretty good segue right there.

[01:00:21.250] - Clyde Bynum

I guess, yeah. Cool. I'm just a country boy from Mississippi trying to figure out how to make it in this world.

[01:00:28.800] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. That could be a song. I think it might be a song.

[01:00:33.810] - Clyde Bynum

It won't be me singing it.

[01:00:35.010] - Big Rich Klein

You're going to spare us that, huh?

[01:00:38.780] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah.

[01:00:40.000] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Clyde, thank you so much for spending the time. I know you're putting together an event right now. It got in a little rain, but I appreciate you taking the time and talking to me today.

[01:00:50.980] - Clyde Bynum

Well, man, I appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully, I'll get out there to see some trail hero stuff one of these years.

[01:00:59.000] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, that's my son's event. You're talking about how old kids are. He's 40 now, or will be 40 here shortly.

[01:01:07.840] - Clyde Bynum

I'm technically 50.

[01:01:09.600] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and that just amazes me in itself. I can remember when he got his nickname Little Rich, running through the shop and my guys that were working for me as a landscape contractor were calling me and, Hey, Rich, and he'd come running. They said, Oh, no, no. If we call Little Rich, we're calling you.

[01:01:29.090] - Clyde Bynum

Yeah, I stopped by and had lunch with your son, I guess it was about four months ago.

[01:01:34.370] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent.

[01:01:35.650] - Clyde Bynum

Cool.

[01:01:37.630] - Big Rich Klein

Well, Clyde, thank you so much, and I'll let you know when this airs, and we'll see each other again here shortly. Thank you, man. All right, you take care. Have a good day. Bye. Bye. Bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gust of you can. Thank you.