Ep. #5 - Dawn Davis - Host of DesertLadyDiaries

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, so we have Dawn Davis with us on on the show today and the first question for you

(00:05):
Dawn is who is Dawn Davis? Dawn Davis is a desert dweller a
podcaster a voiceover a book and bourbon lover
What is a desert dweller and you know, how did you wind up in the desert?
How did I wind up in the desert you make it sound so bad?
I think those who need to be here are called I I believe that totally

(00:31):
I was living in LA for about seven years and
Came out randomly on a trip with friends for the very first time to Joshua Tree, California
And as soon as I hit what we call the yucca grade
there's a town called Yucca Valley where you come up from the 10 down where you would go to Palm Springs and
As soon as I hit the top of that grade, I felt something physically shift inside me

(00:54):
if I call it my stand-up and pay attention moment and
From the moment we got here everywhere. We went went everywhere
We went to eat in the Joshua Tree National Park everywhere. I just had this sense of I need to be here and
That was in April of 2016 by the end of July. I was here in an apartment living

(01:15):
and the weird thing is that ever since I moved out of my parents house a long long time ago as a
late teenager
I have decorated every place I've ever lived as if I were in the desert
I had Native American prints cactus kind of stuff Adobe kind of stuff and
So when I got here, it was almost like

(01:37):
This is very familiar and now it was not only in my house. It was outside my house. Got you
So what were you what were you doing at the time before you started podcasting? I am a voiceover by trade
So I have a studio in my house and I do a lot of e-learning
I've done some audiobooks, but my most of my work is regional commercials for radio and

(02:00):
E-learning and training corporate narration. Gotcha. Very nice. So you have a radio background. I
Was on the radio a very long time ago at a very small station in New Jersey called WCNJ
I don't even think it exists anymore. Yeah, and we actually had a window that looked out on the street
So when people were at the stoplight, they would look over and could wave at us. Nice. Very nice

(02:21):
Yeah, so how did you get into podcasting? Well it started off when I was in LA. I was considering starting a blog
You know blogging is another thing that kind of has come along as something you can do at home and potentially make an income from
so I was trying to think about what I would offer as my content in a blog and

(02:42):
After some thinking about it. It occurred to me that as a woman of a certain age
I would have some information to offer younger women relative to
Finances and relationships and things like that. So I went out and I pulled up this WordPress site. I put it all together
I solicited my 16 year old niece for questions. Like what would you want to ask?

(03:04):
About life in general that you might not want to ask your mom about what would you want to ask me?
So she sent me like ten or so questions and I started down the path of putting those together in blogs
And I never pressed the button
It's still sitting there to this day
Not launched the website and I got right. Yeah, so

(03:24):
Then I you know went on with myself and just kept doing my voiceover and then came out here to the desert
And then I started meeting all these really amazing women that were either here for you
Know they were born and raised here or they had moved here from some other place like me called here
Had some kind of maybe spiritual experience or whatever

(03:45):
and
I thought wow, maybe instead of having the blog that I had maybe I could do a podcast because that would also get
My voice as a voiceover out there
In addition to all these great stories about all these women. So that's how the podcast was born
So you decide you're gonna do a podcast. What do you go out and buy?

(04:05):
I
Didn't buy anything. I
I am a library lover and I went into my local library website and pulled out a couple
Podcasting books that once I got them. I realized how dated they were based on technology
But some of the concepts, you know, we're still good and then I bought I did buy a book and I can't remember who wrote it

(04:26):
But it was a very small like ebook
that I downloaded on my iPad and was reading that being a voiceover the
Technology wasn't so much an issue as it might be for somebody who doesn't have that background because I know how to record audio
I'm not an experienced audio engineer per se but I can get the job done
So that hurdle that wasn't a hurdle for me. Um, and then I just went really to kind of

(04:52):
Went through all these materials and I said, okay
Well, I need to have a concept and I need to decide how long it's gonna be and I need to decide where it's gonna live
And all that stuff and went about the business of doing those awesome lips and tutorials
and
Just started asking a couple of friends like like hey
I'm thinking of doing this podcast and I would love to do a podcast

(05:13):
I'm thinking of doing this podcast and I would love to have you come on and be an interview
So I started with my friends locally and then sort of branched out
Getting introduced to people or as people would come and be interviewed
They would say you need to talk to this person and this person and this person. So that's how I got to
67 episodes as of today. So you decided to go with lips in you you

(05:38):
Bought a microphone or had a microphone already because you were doing voiceover
Uh, you didn't launch the website. So you kept it pretty low budget to start
Right. I actually have a totally separate website for the podcast
And it's a totally different name than the other road that I was going down with that blog. Gotcha
So you did a wordpress website, which is this is relatively inexpensive

(06:00):
Did you have to put any more money into it or this is really that's how you started
That's really how I started and I didn't even go wordpress this time because I have a website
Uh website, I have websites through wix using the like the premium channel if you will
Okay, I have a website for my voiceover. I have a website for my acting because I was also doing acting in la

(06:21):
um, and I still do that out here at local theater and
So I just went with wix because it was what I knew
So they have theaters in the desert. They do we actually have
there's actually three or four of them and I was the co-founder this year and
And uh co-producer of the high desert fringe festival. Very nice. Very nice

(06:41):
So, um, how did the first one go? Gosh, it went great. Um, my guest was sarah witt. She is
Great. She moved here about the same time. I did
She's a chef that goes out and forages in the desert as the native americans would have done when they were here in this area
and uh creates dinner experiences around those things and she's

(07:03):
Really animated and very thoughtful. Uh, so it went really really well
Hmm forages in the desert exactly. What does that mean?
Well, there are certain plants
um that either
bear fruit or have you know twigs that are associated with say
I don't want to use this term because the i've learned that it's a derogatory term

(07:26):
But i'm going to use it because I can't remember the name of the stuff
Uh, it makes something called mormon tea and it's a plant here in the desert that if you pull some of those twigs off
And boil them up. It makes a medicinal tea
So she uh prickly pear bears fruit and you can take the fruits off and boil them down
And to a juice and they are delicious either as a juice on their own or just add vodka and you have a really nice tail

(07:53):
so you said
The word mormon is now offensive man. I jeez everything is
Actually sarah wit if you look her up online, I think it's sarah wit.com or net
s a r a h w i t t
I know that she has a part on her website where uh, she learned

(08:13):
About that term and that it's inappropriate because the mormons I guess didn't technically discover it
It was being used by native americans all this time and then the mormons came to town and said
Oh, it's mormon tea now. So okay that that gives you a little bit of the gist of that. Yeah. Got it. All right, so
How how did you come up with this idea?

(08:34):
And is it catching on did it catch on when did it catch on to do what you're doing here?
Well, um, I live in joshua tree is a pretty rural area to begin with so I find myself educating
In addition to doing the podcast because a lot of people as I discovered at podcast movement
From was it tom?

(08:56):
uh from edison
He had that was a great presentation. He did on all the facts and figures about why people aren't listening to podcasts
They don't know what they are. They don't know where to find them. They don't know how to choose them
So i've had some education on that part
Um, but my first month I had to 280
Uh downloads or listens and now i'm up to about 1500 and it's all very organic

(09:19):
It's I haven't done. I don't have any sponsors or advertisers. I haven't done any real
Promotion instagram. I started an instagram for it before I even launched an episode and that got a
That generated a lot of traffic. I mean, you know people look at 280 and go that's not a lot. Well, whatever
um

(09:40):
To not have anything up. It was getting some traction shall we say?
um
So that was that was my best friend. So it's just driving. Uh, the traffic is coming very organically
I leave cards, you know
This is a town where if you have a band and it's playing somewhere you go put a poster up in front of our local
Uh restaurant called crossroads out on the board, you know

(10:03):
And the poster game in this town is pretty rough if somebody come along and put their poster up in front of yours
And stuff like that, but I put cards in there
I put them in the restrooms of some of the local things because we get a lot of tourists here
We've got about three million people coming to the park now annually
Which is a little out of hand because uh, the rangers will tell you we're loving the park to death and it's um,

(10:25):
People are coming up here that don't aren't really educated about the ways of the desert and they're hanging their hammocks on joshua trees
Which are protected tree and you can't do that. It's illegal. Um
Um, so but because we get a lot of tourists, I will go in these places and drop off
You know cards and just leave them there and the next time I go back
They're all gone and you know, whether they threw them away or whether someone actually took them which I prefer to believe the latter

(10:50):
Sure, uh, you know and listen and i've got people listening from people who come here and discover it and they're like
Oh my gosh, I would love to move there, but I can't right now
But having your podcast really gives me a sense of how I would go about that or what it's like to live there
So I hear a lot of feedback from some of the people who do listen like from kansas or um,

(11:11):
alaska
So did you say you're up to 1500?
Downloads and listens per episode. Yes. Okay. No per month per month per month and you're doing how many a week or how many a month?
I do four so I do one a week. It's a 30 minute weekly
Conversation with women who live in the mojave desert. Do you try and do it at the same time every week?

(11:32):
So it's posted at a consistent day and time. I absolutely do
That was one of the things even though those library books were a little dated
That was definitely one of the things that I picked up from there was that consistency is king
And if you don't have that you're gonna lose people so every monday night i'm uploading so it's there
On tuesday, you know or goes right to their subscription via, you know apple podcasts or whoever they listen through

(11:57):
Gotcha, and how much editing are you doing? And if you are doing it, what are you using?
I don't do a ton of editing and I do a really I use a really um kind of unknown program to a number of people
Called sound studio. I think it was something that was used to come as baked into your mac when you got your
Laptop or whatever
So I use that and I don't do a lot of editing at all. We sit down at the table

(12:21):
We start talking and I make sure you know, I keep an eye on time
But when I go back in to edit, I don't add any music
It's really like bare bones and simple
I take out a lot of the maybe false start sentences the ums the ahs the things that go and um
And um sure I take those out

(12:42):
So it looks clean and we both I say we both sound smart
So you invite these guests into your living room and you do the do the do the show right at the kitchen table
I do
How do you know you're not inviting?
Uh strangers or weird people over. I mean, I mean, are you sure you're safe?
I'm sure i'm safe and I think that's part of um

(13:04):
Being in a community like this we that word community means so much to us here because we are
A community of people and you really have to have a love for this place to be here
Um, and we go out a lot. I mean a lot of people will say to me
What do you do out there and i'm like, okay
Well, there's about four theaters that are either running a philharmonic or a play at any given time

(13:28):
Uh, there's music venues and open mics galore. There's a ton of musicians out here
So essentially on every any given night you could be out every night of the week doing something
Being somewhere with the people that live in your area and you know
I don't know what the population of joshua tree is right now, but the sign on the highway says like

(13:48):
8900 I would venture to say it's probably around
10,000
So what is the you know, tell us what the content of the of the show is about every week. What are you trying to get across?
Well, usually what I do is i'm trying to find out either why people came here or why people stay here
And I shouldn't say people I say women it's really focused on the women that come here because

(14:12):
Back in the 40s. There was something called or even before that maybe there was something called the homestead act
Where the government was trying to essentially give away this land for quote-unquote agricultural purposes. So if you came out and
um
Worked the land and built a structure that was like 10 by 12
They would just give you the land and you would live on it

(14:35):
so
Met but many of the people that came out in the say the 40s
Were men who had mustard gas poisoning or other breathing?
Difficulties from the war and there was a doctor in
Pasadena that would recommend that they come out here to live
So if you imagine these men who have breathing problems, they're coming out here to get well, but they're not completely well

(14:56):
So their wives are the ones who are doing all the work and figuring out how to drip
You know dig the wells and all that kind of stuff
So that's a bit why I focused it on women and there's a bit of it seems like a phenomenon that so many women do
Come out here and it was one of the first places that women could buy property as a single woman in the in those times
You couldn't do that in other places

(15:18):
so
Essentially we sit down and the first question I always ask is
What was your first experience with the desert in general?
Like it doesn't have to be this desert any desert and then how did they end up moving here?
Was it a family vacation and they had you know this feeling like I feel like I need to move here
And we go through that then we talk about how did they know anyone when they moved here?

(15:40):
And if they didn't how did they go about finding their community?
We talked a little bit then about more individually what they do either for a living or in the community
I think I sent you a list
I have people who were running for Congress recently who are political activists working with the local immigrant prison
We have an amputee shop owner

(16:03):
So their backgrounds are varied musicians artists activists moms
They do everything so we talk a little bit about that
And then usually I rap with if someone were to ask you or to tell you that they were thinking about moving to the desert
What are some things that you would tell them to be ready for or?
You know what advice would you give them and that's usually how we wrap it and what kind of feedback?

(16:25):
Are you getting from your listeners?
I run into people often that have never met me before and they'll go oh my gosh
You're the one who does that podcast. I love that. You know, yeah, so it's pretty cool
That people are enjoying it and I get emails or Instagram messages from people either talking about you know

(16:46):
I was out there and I really love it and I'm trying to find a way to move there. This is
Been really helpful or I was visiting there and happened to stumble upon the podcast and I know I can't come there now
But I love listening to all these stories about these women and how they got there and what they do there and yeah, so
Why do you why do you like doing a podcast? What is it about?

(17:09):
Podcasting that brings you back to the kitchen table every week
Well, it's now I've got you know some people that are listening and kind of counting on it being there
I would say it's definitely a labor of love and a passion
Just because I do love the work of voiceover
So there's that part of it and then for me

(17:29):
What's been happening is a lot of times when we as a community are out at some functions. We see people that we know
Or we think we know but this has given me an opportunity to sit down with people either that I do am
Acquainted with or even I'm not acquainted with that were recommended to me to be interviewed and it gives me that 30 minutes or 45

(17:51):
Minutes by the time we do all the you know, chit chat and everything
It gives me that one-on-one time with them to really get to know who they are as a person
In a deeper way and then the next time that I see them
I feel like I know a little bit more about them than just hey, how are you doing?
How's that thing? Oh great. Okay. See you next time sort of interaction. Do you know?
Yeah, so my my my thought was um, you're sitting at the kitchen table and it sounds like it's mostly a one-on-one

(18:18):
Interview that you're having
Right. I've only done one that had two. Well, I've done two different things. I've had one interview that was a mom and a daughter
Okay, which was cool
And then I did another thing where I go out into the community when there are like these craft fairs and stuff like that
And they're like rent a table for ten dollars
So I will go out and rent a table for ten dollars
But I bring all my podcast stuff nice so it's not only an opportunity for me to get the word out about the podcast

(18:43):
And get some potential guests because I have a sign-up sheet for email to get the weekly episode email to you every week
And I also have a sign-up sheet for do you want to be interviewed or do you recommend someone that I should interview?
And it gives me an opportunity also to educate about the podcast
Well, I don't have a lot of people here don't have a podcast

(19:04):
Well, I don't have a lot of people here don't have a smartphone. They still have a you know flip phone
So how are they going to get the podcast? I said, do you have internet access at home? Yeah, I have a computer
I said, okay, we'll go online and go to YouTube. It's a static photo, but you can hear the audio go to SoundCloud
You can hear it there. So I have it in places
I not only have it in places where it's accessible to more people

(19:25):
But these opportunities give me the chance to have more people listen and be interested
So my question about when you're doing it at your kitchen table
Is there a specific reason why you don't do it on Facebook too?
Well, I have a lot of women who come and say the first thing they say when I answer the door is I'm so nervous

(19:46):
And I've had a couple people email me before the interview and say is this on camera
Do I have to dress a certain way?
And I think that it lends itself to being a lot more relaxed and especially at the kitchen table
I mean, like I said, I have the voiceover studio, but it's a walk-in closet
I can't set up a table and chairs in there in the whole nine yards. There's no room for that

(20:09):
So I just do it at the kitchen table and that itself
Lends a bit of comfort because it's just like two friends talking, you know
So do you plan to try and make some money at it?
Well, I have a donation button on the website and I have gotten donations
I have a couple people who have a donation subscription if you will

(20:33):
So once a month they send a certain amount of money
I'm looking at patreon. It's taking me a long time because I find I'm not good with that
Platform there's just something about it that is kind of difficult and I don't know if it's difficult for me
Will it be difficult for people? I have to kind of sort that out
but what I've been thinking of doing in order to add value to get people to go to patreon is

(20:56):
Doing a kind of a postscript
10 minute segment after the initial interview and capture a couple of more personal questions
from each person and then have that be the you know
Private link that the patreon subscribers get so they get that little extra at the after the interview

(21:17):
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. It's really a you know, we have a patreon account too for ours
It you do have to babysit a little bit
I think and you do have to push it out for people to I didn't even know what it was until another
Podcaster told me so it's gonna be hard for people that don't even podcast I think to catch right
Let's you know unless you're in that, you know in that in that kind of space there

(21:38):
So I wanted to ask you what advice you had for other podcasters or people that are thinking about getting into it
Well, like Dave Jackson says just launch it
But I would recommend either reaching out to somebody who you're familiar with that may be doing a podcast
Go on Facebook and get on that podcast movement group

(21:59):
There is so much information just use the search box on the left for any questions that you have or just put your question
In there and someone will answer it
There are so many people doing it now with so many levels of experience
You can really find a lot of information just by searching on the internet
But and I would say don't be afraid

(22:19):
To do it just because you know, you may have a challenge you think with to technology or something
I think for most people that's probably the biggest thing is the recording
Those that would be my advice just start yeah
Now we're running out of time here. So where can people reach you listen to you get in touch with you and donate?

(22:41):
Okay. Well everything is available at the website
desertladydiaries.com
And you can email me at desertladydiaries at gmail.com and we're also on Facebook
Instagram and Twitter on Facebook and Instagram. It's at desertladydiaries
And Twitter wasn't long enough. So I had to go with at desertladydiary

(23:04):
singular
Well, that's a great name I love the name it was very catchy when you sent an email over and which
Of course, you know when you see that the subject line or you see that name it grabs you and so you want to make sure you
You reach back. So it's a great name and it sounds like you're having a
Great time and a lot of fun out there in the desert

(23:26):
I am it's a really amazing place if anyone gets a chance to come out and visit any desert
It's a really different kind of landscape and who knows you might find it really interesting