I often get asked, who my dream guests would be, and obviously there’s the unattainable, out of reach names like Springsteen, Keith Richards, Dylan, The Gallaghers, but when I started the pod I did have a top 5 list of guests who I’d love to chat to who are, with all due respect, a lot more attainable than those legendary names.
In no particular order:
1. Luke Concannon (Nizlopi)
2. Fin Greenall (Fink)
3. Scott Matthews
4. Frank Turner
5. Baxter Dury
50 episodes in and I’m 2/5, Pretty good going I reckon, Scott Mathews initially said yes but I’ve followed up numerous times without response so I’m going to let that one go. Frank Turner and Baxter Dury I will be making a concerted effort to get on before Episode 100.
For clarity and for anyone who doesn’t know me personally, I have ZERO background in broadcasting, podcasting, interviewing people or anything else in that zone. I am very much faking it until I make it, I have to be honest, in the last 10 Eps or so, I have felt there’s been slightly more making than faking. I’ve got by on passion and enthusiasm thus far. I’ve been sat there on numerous occasions chatting to people, absolute LEGENDS, ICONS and just thought to myself,
“Mate, how in the hell have you managed to pull this off?”
Bruce Foxton, bass player from The Jam co-wrote some of the most influential punk/new wave tracks of the 70’s and 80’s. Donita Sparks and L7 blazed a trail for women in Heavy Rock/Grunge. Walter Trout replaced Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Peter Green in John Mayalls Bluesbreakers. Clint Boon and Inspiral Carpets wrote absolute ANTHEMS of the 90’s Britpop scene, I had a poster of Rowetta on my bedroom for Christ sake, and now here I am chatting away to these people like it’s no biggie.
That’s the key though, even if the imposter syndrome is banging round your head filling you with self-doubt, as it does to me a lot of the time, you HAVE TO act like you’re meant to be there, like you belong, like you’ve been doing it for years. I’m a firm believer that imposter syndrome is a sign of growth and of progress. It’s healthy, and if you are feeling comfortable then you need to start pushing yourself outside your comfort zone again.
I have learned quite a few lessons along the way, not just technical but content wise, and etiquette. One example of this occurred during one of the early interviews, I used have a quick fire five question section, literally one or two word answers, and I’d tailor it to the person, so for Manchester’s very own Clint Boon, I asked
“City or United”
“Fred Perry or Ben Sherman”
And knowing that he’s close friends with the Gallagher brothers
“Liam or Noel”
His facial expression changed and straight away I thought I’d fucked up.
“Can we come back to that one”
I was going to leave it, but I thought it’d be weird if we didn’t come back to it, and his reply, when it came, was perfectly diplomatic, but at the same time 100% honest. He followed it up with:
“I have to be careful what I say otherwise it could go viral”
And I was utterly mortified, that he would think that I had tried to get him to badmouth one of the Gallagher brothers for 5 mins of viral fame. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. My questions always come from a place of the fan, not the presenter/podcaster, when I wrote those questions, I was literally thinking, right what do I want to know about Clint Boon.
We joked about it, but It was an early lesson that I won’t forget in a hurry. He was totally cool afterwards and even invited me backstage at their gig. Click the picture to hear the episode
Another fairly large balls up was while I was interviewing Walter Trout, things were going well, and early in the interview I was talking to him about the first time I was introduced to his music on the live album “No More Fish Jokes” I said as soon as I heard it I was hooked, completely accidentally, I didn’t even realise I’d said it until he pulled me up,
“Hey! You just made a fish joke!”
He thought it was hilarious and straight away I thought to myself, there’s the promo clip. Walter was a really genuinely warm friendly guy and we got on great, so great, after we stopped recording, he invited me to meet up with him in Freo, which I was so excited about, I blurted out
“Yes!, lets meet up for a beer”
And then half a second later remembered that Walter has had well documented addiction issues with alcohol, and although clean and sober for a number of years, he needed a lifesaving liver transplant.
“So sorry Walter, lets have a coffee instead”
I cut that bit out…….
He was incredibly cool about it, and although I was worried I’d blown my chance to meet one of my musical hero’s, I needn’t have been.
When we met, we chatted about addiction, and my own struggles with that, it was an enlightening, inspiring meeting that I’ll never forget, I gave him a podcast T shirt (Didn’t bother with the stubby holder) and he he signed my CD copy of No More Fish Jokes, and gave me his guitar pick he’d used during the show.
Cracking the marketing side of podcasting is the toughest thing about this whole business, and a constant uphill struggle, at the time of writing, I’ve been putting out podcasts for a little over a year, my Instagram account has less than 300 followers, 120 on FB, I have 350 YouTube subscribers and 89 Spotify Followers. Everything I read about Podcasting when I was researching and setting things up, said that there are no short cuts, unless you get incredibly lucky, building your podcast up to the point where you can make money will take years and years of hard slog for no financial reward whatsoever. In fact, with all the subscriptions, website hosting and everything else, putting out The Mixtape Podcast costs me around $200 a month, and that’s absolutely fine, the joy I get from doing it is enough for me right now.
I’m a single Dad and I have a full time day job, I don’t have the capacity to put anymore into it than I currently do. To save money, I do everything, I book guests, I record, edit and produce the video and the audio, I upload the podcast to the various platforms, I clip together the promo’s I post them on social media, I do it all.
It’s often difficult to keep it going, but consistent output was another key to success I’d read in those early days too, there is some ridiculous stat where something like 90% of podcasters give up in the first year, they don’t get the viral fame and rewards they think they will. I’m passionate about music, always have been and always will be, so talking about it, will always be a joy to me.
I had never considered YouTube as a podcast platform, but apparently, as I have recently discovered, it’s the biggest. I always thought, somewhat arrogantly that because I consumed my podcasts on Spotify, then so did everyone else. Either way video editing is INCREDIBLY time consuming, and I just did not have the capacity for it. Until I discovered Descript.
Descript is an AI driven software package. I probably only use about 20% of its capacity. When I record on Zoom, I get Audio and Video files, but I never used the video as I just didn’t have time to edit both, and believe me, I NEED the edit. What Descript does is allows me to drop the video file into the software, which it transcribes to a text file, I can then edit that text like a word doc, and if I delete a word or sentence from the text, it removes it from the video also. I can also cut and paste whole sections and move them around the timeline. Better than that, before I even start editing, I click on the very first “Uhh” or “Err” (usually the first line!) and click “remove all” and in two mouse clicks, every Err, and Uhm are edited out of the video. You can also run filters to improve the audio, which is incredibly helpful sometimes.
It takes me about an hour to edit a 30 min podcast into the video you see on YouTube, the Audio you hear on Spotify, and the promo Clips you see on the socials. It’s about $25 a month, but the time it saves me is worth every penny. So I switched my focus to YouTube and things have started to progress a little faster than the other platforms. On the down side, after years of telling both my kids that, whilst if its what they really wanted to do I’d support them, being a YouTuber is a much tougher career choice than Mr Beast, KSI and all those Geeza’s make it look, now I am one.
It’s a thankless task though, because you do not know exasperation and frustration my friends, until you have poured all your time, effort, talent and love in to a 30 min podcast that gets a few hundred views, and you see a clip of some kid from Arkansas wearing a comedy wig and glasses making animal noises for 90 seconds that has 23 million views…………
Stay tuned for the next instalment.
