The Storyteller: Dr. Gavin Montgomery's 36 Years Behind the DMV Microphone

By Rodriquez Wright II

Ask Dr. Gavin Montgomery what he does, and he will not hand you a resume. He will give you a word.

"I introduce myself as being a storyteller," he says. "The name Gavin Montgomery, it may not ring to everybody. But I introduce myself as Dr. Gavin Montgomery, and they say, well, what do you do? I take information and transform it into inspiration, through visual and audio means. And I've done that for the last almost 40 years."

Thirty-six of those years, to be exact, and nearly all of them spent in the DMV. Montgomery is Laurel-based and regional to his core, a broadcaster who chased stations up and down the Eastern Seaboard as a young man, worked a stretch at Dollywood, and kept coming home. "The DMV was really my home," he says. "It's where I felt most comfortable behind the microphone, and where I felt most useful. You can go to other markets that are bigger and busier, but there's nothing like the DMV. Nothing."

A ticket line, a reel-to-reel, and a voice

The career almost did not happen. In 1992, Montgomery was a new teacher in the DMV who had won tickets to a Patti LaBelle contest. When he called the station to claim them, the program director happened to be answering the phone.

"The guy said, you know, you really have a voice for radio. Have you thought about that? And I was like, look, bro, I'm a teacher, I'm changing the world, where the tickets at?" Montgomery laughs at the memory. The program director would not let it go. The following week, he put the teacher in a production booth with the big reel-to-reel machines, a wax pencil, and a weekend to himself.

"I came out with this whole reel of commercial production I had done, stuff I made up off the top of my head," he says. The program director called him that same day. "He said, I've got a shift for you, I want you to start next week. And that was it. Once I hit that microphone, it just changed me. I've never worked in any other medium since."

What each room taught him

Over the decades, Montgomery built a career that reads like a map of Black media in the region and beyond: Radio One, WMAR-TV, iHeartMedia, SiriusXM, and a five-year run at BET Soundstage. Each stop, he says, taught him something the others could not.

Radio One taught him that a voice has weight. He tells a story about being stopped in a grocery store, still wearing the station jacket, by a woman who had been a faithful caller. "She said, you played the song every time I asked, and you never once asked why it mattered. What you didn't realize was that at the time, the man I was with was beating the mess out of me. And it was that song, and your inspiration behind it, that gave me the wherewithal to get out." Montgomery pauses on that one. "That's what we go for. I've never been a jock. I've always been a personality. The goal is to impart and inspire."

WMAR-TV taught him to stay ready. "TV is different from radio. It's live performance. When that light goes red, you've got to make it do what it do." iHeartMedia, where he spent close to ten years, taught him the opposite of comfort. "You can get comfortable in the regular rat race of this is what we do to make it happen. I learned there never to be caught comfortable. Always be on your A game." When the layoff came, he says, it came out of nowhere, and the lesson stuck: be ready at all times.

BET Soundstage taught him to stay open. The five-year deal, he says, began with a stranger repeatedly stepping on his suede shoe in a crowded restaurant foyer on a cold opening night he had almost skipped. The woman turned out to be a producer. "Three hours later, I had a five-year deal with the same lady who kept stepping on my shoe. It taught me to be ready, but to be open as a vessel, because you never know where the opportunity is going to come from." The soundstage years put him across the table from Cicely Tyson and, in his favorite interview of all, Tyra Banks. "She was so authentic, so transparent. Every time she was in town, she'd come back and we'd go one-on-one."

From "Baby Bishop" to Dr. G

For years on the air, Montgomery was known as the "Baby Bishop," the youngest program director on the East Coast. The nickname fit a young man. It did not fit the person he was becoming.

So he went back to school, seasoned and older, and came out the other side with a dual program behind him: an MBA and a doctorate in education. "I come from a family of theologians, a family of people who are naturally smart," he says. "It was important for me, especially being older, to show my kids that you're never too old to learn." The degree was not for show. "It's one thing to articulate it and do it, but you need to know the concepts. I wanted the people to know I'm not just out here spouting stuff off the top of my head. I've done the research, and I've earned the right to call myself Dr. G."

A camera, and a responsibility

These days, some of Montgomery's most important work happens in the afternoon, in front of middle schoolers. He teaches videography and digital media studies to students at Thomas Stone in Charles County and Margaret Brent in Prince George's County, and the lesson he returns to is not technical.

"You've got a camera in your hand, and there's a digital responsibility, ethics and morals, when you hit that record button," he says. "I'm tired of seeing videos of us recording each other fighting. That's not who we are as a people. That device in your hand can change the trajectory of how people are seen." He reaches for scripture to land it. "There's a verse that says there is power of life and death in the tongue. I believe that. But it's also in your hand. You can kill a person's dream, or you can ignite a fuel in them, all based on how you present the information."

He is bullish on the region that raised his career, and clear-eyed about why it matters. "Politics starts here in the DMV. We set the tone for the rest of the nation. The nation moves based on how we move." He has a soft spot for Virginia, "a smoother, softer version of us," and a working theory that the DMV sets the heartbeat for American media, "whether it's politically, socially, economically. We set the standard for whatever media is going to be."

Still telling the story

This fall, Montgomery landed in the Top 10 of the America's Next Top Host competition, a national search for on-camera talent. After nearly four decades in front of the camera and behind the mic, he treats the recognition as a kind of signature. "It means I'm listening, I'm doing something right," he says. "It's the signature on the final document that says this guy knows what he's doing. We've been watching, and he's bringing something credible to the table."

What he wants out of it is simple and a little stubborn: a bigger platform, and a voice that speaks directly to his community. He would also love to teach at the collegiate level, ideally at an HBCU, and has already written two full curriculums, one in digital media studies and one in vocal technique for voice actors. The rejections so far have carried the same word, "overqualified," which he turns over with a mix of humor and disbelief. "My belief is you'd want someone who is tenured, who is seasoned, in the classroom. That's my hope. I really, really want to teach."

If the business has taught him anything across thirty-six years, it is how to bounce back. "When you take off the makeup and all the bells and whistles, I'm still a real dude, just trying to get from point A to point B," he says. "I've learned in this journey to be resilient. It doesn't always feel good or look good, but I'm making it. I'm not drowning, and I'm not giving up." He has a prayer he says every morning for exactly that: "Give me manna for the day. Let me navigate this." Then he picks the microphone back up and keeps telling the story.

Follow Dr. Gavin Montgomery on Instagram and Threads at @gmontgomery4317, on Facebook at facebook.com/gavin.montgomery1, on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/gavinmontgomery92370, and at gavinmontgomery1.com.