You know how people, particularly musicians, get drunk in bars and start talking about how cool it would be if they had a band? I think the new iteration of that conversational trope is about podcasts. I know this because I’ve heard both other people at bars and myself express this earnest desire to hear ourselves talk. I assume it’s driven by a person listening to Marc Maron’s WTF or My Favorite Murder, or Serial or whatever and then developing an intricate fantasy about hosting his own, where he books compelling guests, engages them in conversation that is both scintillating and enduringly popular, and then ditches his day job in favor of a lucrative career as a new media luminary.
Most of those aspirations die before last call, but you can’t fault people for not following through. I’ve often sunk my own talk show ship with the mechanics of it all – having a studio to record in is not an absolute requirement by any means, but it certainly helps. Like lots of other folks, I do not have a studio, but producer Britt Robisheaux (Pinkish Black, B.J. Thomas) does, which is why he’s launching Cloudland Podcast.
“I wanted to make a podcast for a few years and always put it on the back burner,” Robisheaux told me. “Then about a month ago, I just said, ‘Fuck it. If I’m going to do it, I have to just do it right now, or it’ll never get done.’ ”
Robisheaux said he interviewed two of the most interesting people he knows, comic Shane Torres and local ’60s psych-rocker Johndavid Bartlett. (See: Music above.)
Robisheaux works out of Cloudland Recording Studio, so it’s kind of a no-brainer to use it for recorded interviews, and he said he has a long list of guests he plans on talking to, many of them musicians. And like any good podcaster, he has dream guests, including legendary producer Steve Albini, whose Electrical Audio Studio in Chicago Robisheaux will be using to record North Texas punk-rockers the Hoaries.
In terms of inspiration and format, Robisheaux namechecks Kreative Kontrol with Vish Khanna and Live from the Barrage, and he said he plans on going with a mostly conversational but topic-focused approach.
“I can’t stand when podcast hosts just shoot into left field and talk who their ‘lawn guy’ is or their favorite video games,” he said. “If I don’t stay on topic, I’ll at least make sure it’s interesting.”
As both a musician and a producer, Robisheaux has always gone for a DIY approach, and his podcast is no different. He’ll be both running the board and curating the programming. And since recording is already his career, he plans on drawing upon that experience for upcoming episodes –– the podcast is named for his studio, after all, so it stands to reason that he’d use it in some kind of promotional capacity.
“I also want the podcast to create a rapport with people who might want to make a record with me,” he said. “Some bands have never been in a studio, and [they] get nervous. Maybe if they’ve heard me having these conversations, they might get to know me a little before they come into the studio to make a record.”
Barring any technological hiccups, Cloudland Podcast is tentatively set to launch on Mon, April 23, on dreamyliferecords.com, and it will eventually appear on iTunes and Stitcher.
