"Dancing With the Stars" fans unfamiliar with Season 12 underdog Mike Catherwood won't be in the dark for much longer. With the Mar. 21 premiere, Catherwood gets his first big dose of primetime television exposure. Since we're already fans -- the campaign for him to replace Regis is still on -- Zap2it caught up with the radio personality to get his perspective on how this all came to be. And it starts with Tenacious D. "My dream when I was kid, when I really wanted to get into music, was to be like Tenacious D," Catherwood tells Zap2it of comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass. "Those were the guys I wanted to be like more than anything. The debut album in 2001 is one of the reasons I had a long talk with my parents that I was going to give up on a traditional career and go into entertainment. I wanted to combine music and comedy the way they did." That was around the time Catherwood left the East Coast for his hometown of Los Angeles, where he landed a job at KROQ -- though not as an on-air personality. "I got started in radio kind of by accident," he says. "I needed a job a straight gig, so I got a job at KROQ, the flagship station I still work for here in LA. I figured if I was going to be doing manual labor, it'd be better to work there, lifting boxes, than hanging drywall somewhere else. Through a series of weird, unexplainable experiences I ended up being a broadcaster." Catherwood stuck it out as a promotions assistant for about a year and half before eventually becoming an assistant producer for "The Kevin & Bean Show." His sense of humor soon provided a forum for his voice. "I started developing character voices, doing prank phone calls and stupid stuff like that," he says. "It unfolded into a really weird, very cool career that I'm incredibly grateful for." In 2010, he parlayed his work on "Kevin & Bean" into a co-hosting spot for Dr. Drew Pinsky's nationally syndicated radio show "Loveline." It's a bit far off from the musical career he originally envisioned, but Catherwood seems happy with where things are headed. "The things you plan on doing when you're 19, that's not the way they end up being when you're 30," he says. "And that's fine. I'm laser-focused on being the best I can be as a broadcaster and in a hosting capacity both on the radio and, hopefully, television too." If TV is what he wants, he's clearly taking a step in the right direction. Catherwood sounds off on the "DWTS" courting process, partner Lacey Schwimmer and the most challenging part of the whole experience in the second part of our interview, right after after this gratuitous photo from a recent rehearsal...
