Join me as I chat with Twin Cities radio icon, Brian Oake. We cover a lot of topics including the ups and downs of the radio industry, the band that changed his life, the greatest concert he's ever seen and the joys and occasional downsides of interviewing musicians. Great chat!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You are listening to the Figure Eights podcast. I'm your host,
Nick Leek from the band High On Stress out of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
and today we have a Twin Cities radio h column
Brian Oak on the show. He's been on many of
favorite radio stations in the Twin Cities for a number
of years.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Is very well known to this area.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Has quite possibly the greatest radio voice of all time.
We talked about where things sit in the world of
radio fans, that changed his live shows, that changed his life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Good music heard conversation which I think you're going to appreciate. Also,
catch him on the Brian Oak Show. I've had the
pleasure of appearing on that show as well as High
Trust drummer Mark has been on there a couple of
times as well. In fact, he's got three hundred and
eighty one episodes of The Brian Oak Show, which is
(01:05):
pretty remarkable. Before we get to that, we do have
some High End Stress dates. We've got let's see a
swell solo show just me finished Bistro on April tenth
in Saint Paul with Scott Oldbridge and what else do
we have here? We've got April twenty sixth in Dubuke, Iowa.
(01:26):
April twenty seventh at the Montrose Saloon International Pop Overthrow
Festival in Chicago, Next night April twenty eighth at Cole's
Bar in Chicago, and Matt Dirt in the High Walks.
May eighteenth, solo with Just Meet the Solo Taco Jed, Rochester, Minnesota.
And Friday June seventh at.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Four Her Brewery in Rochester, Milisola.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well please, some more dates to follow.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've been hard at work on the follow up to
our album Holding In, and I can't wait to get
that out whenever that happens. We've got quite a few
tracks started on that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
These things go again to go a little pokey.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But it's been been a few years since told me
and came out, so really excited about bringing out just
the new albums.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Proud of the song.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And thank you for listening to the Figure Its podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So without further ado, from a Studio.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Twenty four in the Twin Cities, Hi, bring you raining.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Ryt Well, thank you for coming on here.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
My pleasure man, I am you know, I'm I'm in
a weird transitional place for my life right now. You know,
recently divorced, recently unemployed. In fact, I'm sitting out here
in deep, deep western suburbia of the tw In Cities.
A friend of mine, it dovetailed nicely my new unemployment
with him going away for three weeks and he needed
(03:07):
a dog sitter. I'm a cat guy, not a dog guy.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
I'm trying to deal with these two nerds and my buddy.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
So it's just it's it's it's a weird, untethered time
where it feels like just about anything as possible. And
I don't know if it's the comfort of getting older
or having done what I've done for so long and
having been down this road before.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I'm not. I'm not I should be more spooked than
I am.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, well, I feel all right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Years ago, I was in a job where the company
decided to eliminate this position through all of their hundreds
of stores, and I happened to be in that position.
Right around that time. I had just gotten dumped and
my band that I moved to Minneapolis with back then
(04:01):
we I had left that band, so it was all
like right there. And I had a coworker that came
up to me one day and she's like, I'm so
jealous of you, and I'm like, uh, what, things could
not possibly be worse and she's like, you get to
rewrite the whole thing. I'm like, and at the time
I was like, you're nuts, And now, as an older gentleman,
(04:23):
I'm like, what awesome advice she gave me, even though
at the time I was like, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Like it's all wrong.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
I mean, you get to set the template, right, You
get to decide what you are going to include and
not include, and that's one of the only real benefits
about getting older. I mean, you know, my body feels
like I was hit by a train, but but I
get to decide what the next act of Brian Oak
looks like. And I don't know yet. I'm not really
(04:51):
I'm not a man of great ambitions, but I am
a man who likes to explore things and likes to
learn new things. And we're going to see what happens,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I mean, just like you have a podcast.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
I have a podcast that I've done pretty well with,
but there's more out there, and now I just need
to take a few days of hanging out with dogs and.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Seeing what that looks like. You know.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I'm just I'm thinking about the future again. I always
said when I was younger that my dream at the
end of the road, not right now, at the end
of the road, was to retire to the Oregon coasts,
work at some little five thousand watt am Oldies station
and listen to the relentless pounding of the waves. And
(05:36):
it dawned on me the other morning. I'm like, fuck,
I could go do that right now? Oh sorry, can
we swear?
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Swear?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Yeah? All that again? I use it.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
I'm not like a shock jot guy, but I do
like to swear for punctuation now and again. I actually
have the freedom to do that right now. Now do
I have the resources to go out there and live
out till the end of my days?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Now?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
And then I got to become one of those guys
who collects every morning and mix little sculptures and sells
them by a roadside stand with googly eyes on them.
But it is to your ultimate point there you do
get to You get to decide largely. We never all
get to decide completely, but you get to largely decide
what the next chapter looks like exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Can I can I go.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Outside with you as we do this mobile? Because the
dogs are showing I'm still trying to learn dog language here.
They're both standing by the door like they really want
to go out, and these.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Are West side dogs.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So well, Scraps, are you coming? Where'd you go? Scraps?
Come on?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Where did you grow up? Where did it all start?
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I was born in Portland, Oregon, but my parents moved
here when I was a year and a half two
years old, so I have no real recollection of that,
although that's where we went every year for family vacation.
So I've been to Oregon thirty to forty times in
my entire life. I still go out there every year.
I got so then we went to the northern suburbs.
(07:03):
I am. I wasn't born there, yea, And I showed
up as like a one and a half year old.
But everything I know about growing up happened in Coon Rapids,
Northern Suburbs. Coon Rapids, Cardinals, all that nonsense. I always
called Coon Rapids the biggest small town I've ever been
to in my life, you know, because there's tens and
tens and tens of thousands of people by this time,
(07:25):
probably more than one hundred thousand people now, But back
then it was square and hickesh and white as hell,
and it wasn't you know, people make fun of coon rapids.
It's not like it's a white trash hell. It's another suburb,
like we have so many of them. And I liked
my suburban upbringing.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
You know. We weren't rich, we weren't poor.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
We were right in the heart of the middle class,
you know, like I didn't get a car on my
sixteenth birthday or anything like that. But also we didn't
really go with about, you know, and we lived on
a nice street.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
And I actually really liked it.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
And even though I got called the F word on
the regular every day at school, I you know, just
because I had a weird haircut. So like I started
to get into weird music. Probably I grew I graduated
in eighty six, so probably you know, eighty one eighty two.
I started hearing this music that you didn't hear on
the radio, and I'm like, well, where the hell is
(08:19):
this coming from? And music became But you know, when
you're a little bit of an outsider, a little bit
of a weirdo, a little bit of a nerd, maybe
a lot of some of those things in various combinations,
you you know, you look for your tribe, and I
found a good tribe. I found a really great tribe.
But music became a thing early on. So grew up.
(08:39):
I went to in Coon Rapids, went to you know,
middle school at Northdale, went to Coon Rapids Senior High,
and then I went to one year of college, dropped
out and moved to downtown Indnieapolis when I was nineteen
years old, and I've lived in Minneapolis ever since.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Then.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Nice, what kind of what kind of music were you
into back then?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Well?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Growing up? You know, I mean, like, and I don't
have any shame in this game. In fact, I still
love a ton of it. Classic rock is.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
What I grew up on.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Right, my parents' record collection which ranged for all over
the map, right, I mean they had the Beatles, but
my mom had Trinny Lopez and my dad had Cream
so all kinds of this great classic rock.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
And growing up, KQ was the thing, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
I mean, even if you liked a little more pop
oriented rock or that sort of thing, KQRS to.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Me was cool, man.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
I loved it, Like, you know, here in a deep
Hendrix's cut that wasn't a hit, and KQ I know,
to listen to it. In the modern day and age,
it's a nightmare of light rock. Don Henley and John
Mellencamp hits, But even those guys have cool songs that
used to get played on there. It used to be
a great song. So I grew up listening to classic rock.
And I'll never forget the day that everything changed for me.
(09:52):
I was not a very athletically gifted child, but I
did love swimming. I always loved swimming since I was
very very little, and so so I swam competitively, which
was again in coon rapids. Unless you were playing football
or baseball or hockey, you weren't really regarded as an athlete,
and so I was. I was on the swim team
and there was a guy named Aaron Starr who I
(10:12):
still am friends with to this day. Not friends, friends,
He lives far away, but we know each other still
and we stay in touch on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
He gave me a cassette by the B fifty two is.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Called wild Planet Iconic Red cover them all in their
fancy get up, and I went home and listened to
it and a it was amazing and freaky and weird,
and I'm like, this is cool, But then you know,
I was just sitting there. This was like one of
my great AHA moments as a young person, as a teenager.
I looked on the back and there's the Warner Brothers
(10:43):
logo and I'm like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait wait.
I know there's cool hip indie bands and people do
by the you know, DIY all that stuff. I'm like,
this is a major label band that I've never heard
on the radio. And it was it was sort of
this light bulb aha moment. I'm like, well, that must
mean there are dreds, if not thousands of bands out
there I've never heard of before.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Then the floodgates sprung wide. Man, I would you know?
We would?
Speaker 5 (11:07):
We would go down once a month to Northern Lights
right downtown on the old Block E. We drive down
there and we felt so cool driving a half hour
from Coon Rapids in our trench coat and our Converse
high tops and our peg jeans and our asymmetrical new
wave haircuts. And we would go in there. And so,
you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you're
in uncharted territory, you don't really ever know. But growing up,
(11:31):
defining bands for me became R E M probably first
and foremost uh Hooskerdo literally changed my life. The replacement
sol asylum, like I couldn't pick a favorite. About the
same time that those bands were all hitting, Prince was
suddenly an international force, and so I felt really proud
to be here. I felt like I lived in this
rich territory. But you know, then bands like swing Set
(11:54):
and Rifle Sport and so it was.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
It was a wild time.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I went to every all age show I could go to,
So I ended up seeing the suburbs and the wallet's.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
A ton, and I just it was.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
It was part of my identity, you know, Like I mean,
if you're gonna have little buttons on your goofy ass,
you know, secondhand trench coat, they better be cool, you know.
And so there was there was that was sort of
a badge. Vonnor for me is music growing up, and
I guess, I wow, suddenly I'm having like a therapist
come to Jesus moment. But I suppose, I suppose it
still is, man, you know, I mean, the stuff that
(12:26):
we share on social media and the stuff that we
choose to listen to, whether we're feeling joyous or modeling,
it's still you know, it's a it's a touchstone. It's
is it is a point of pride.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, and it matters. That's the that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
It does matter.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
You talk to so many people that I love music,
and there are so many people that love dinner party music.
And some of that dinner party music's pretty good. But yeah,
I think there's a difference between people who like music
and devour music.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
To me.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Here's the other thing too, Like when you talk about
dinner party music, like I collect so working at a
record store and being a lifelong record collector and never
sold the collection. You know, it obviously had a downturn
for a while there, but now it's enjoying this almost
impossible renaissance and it's still continued. The bubble is gonna
pop at some point, but it is not popped yet.
But I mean, like I collect Martin Denny and Walter
(13:18):
Wanderley and like these things that you would think of
as elevator music or dinner music.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Do I want to listen to it all day every day?
Absolutely not.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
But you know, like if Wanda Jackson comes on or
a hip hop band, I don't even like that much.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I like the rich tapestry that it evokes, you.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Know, And again, It's one thing to be really into
a certain type of music and to have your specialty,
and I think we probably all do that to a degree.
But I don't think there's a bad type of music
out there. When I hear people say I hate country,
I hate rap, to me, all that says is you're
lazy and you're not really trying, because I don't think.
I don't think there's an expression of any form of
music out there that wouldn't command someone's attention. That doesn't
(13:59):
mean you have to life the song I like, but
it does mean you have to You have to let
it be its own thing, and then you see what
you got there. And again, if it's not your favorite,
well maybe you don't favorite it on your playlist.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Right, And you're right, because there's great hip hop music.
You just got to look for it. If you're not
in the road you live on, if you dig deepen up,
you're going to find something. Same with country music, like
there's so much bad, bad country music.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
But oh terrible, dude. I worked at City's ninety seven,
which was next door.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Literally the next studio over was K one O two
and I worked there for twenty years, and.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
The and so on the overhead.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
There's six stations there, so they keep flipping back and
forth around the stations. The only thing worse than today's
bro country is when the conservative talk station would come on.
You know, you finally get a few free minutes to
sit down and go to the bathroom, and on the
overhead is just the most hateful, stupid, backwards, right wing
rhetoric you've ever heard. You're like, ah, but the bro Country.
(14:58):
It's the reason I hate it is not because it's
poorly produced. Like I like some pop music. Today's modern
country is definitely pop music.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
It's a machine.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Nashville is as much a machine as anything that ever
was in La or anywhere else. What I hate about
it is it generates this false nostalgia for a life
that most of the people who are enjoying it never lived.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Like I know, a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Grew up driving their pickup truck down that dirt road
on their way to see their favorite goal, maybe kick
up their heels for the night, or just think about
the way things are and go sit out there with
the dog and look at the stars.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Some people live that way, but it's.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
In a way I love that they're creating this narrative
and maintaining the narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
But it's just so fucking hokey all the time. I
want a different story, man.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
I want to go back to like like old school
Johnny Cash murder ballads like throw one of theirs, one
of them, give me a long. I will listen to
your bro song if the following song is a long
black veil song, right like, I want to know that
there was skullduggery and e and somebody got put in
the ground that wasn't supposed to be and then we
can go back to.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Are you familiar with the loop Bryan song? Rain? I
am not.
Speaker 5 (16:09):
No, I'm gonna share four lines with you and then
I'm gonna stop railing about bro country. It goes like this,
It goes Rain makes corn, Corn makes whiskey. Whiskey makes
my girl feel a little frisky.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Bob Dylan, he is not.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
No, no, he is not.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
However, he is a multi gajillionaire and one of the
most successful stars in country music in the last twenty years.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I just it's so corny.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
But like you said, there is, you know, whether you
want to call it country or rockabilly. Like Wanda Jackson,
I've been on a kind of a Wanda Jackson kick. Lately,
she is the cool imagine Brenda Lee, except with a
crazy rockabilly party vibe. Now, there's so much good stuff
out there, man, people just need to work a little harder.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, somebody like Zach Bryan too. I don't know if
you've listened to him much. He's not to be confused
with Zach Brown and Luke Bryan, which is an unfortunate
name to be in the style of music he is in.
Or it's a perfect name, which way every way you
look at it. The guy's a great writer. Like you
listen to that, he's not singing those lyrics.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
He's got you no no, and And there are a
lot of the of the modern generation. That's what's been
fun to watch over the last five or six years.
Of this modern generation. There are some truly brilliant inspired
young singer songwriters that for whatever reason Nashville is letting happen.
You know, like Chris Chris Stapleton is a good example.
I mean, you know, like when they when they have
this machine in place, you don't want to risk. You
(17:36):
can't go backwards in terms of making money. You can't
go backwards and in the last year. In particular, country
has enjoyed greater crossover, you know, with who's the guy
who covered Fast Cars?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Was that? Was that Luke Bryan? I think he?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
No, they did anyway?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
That right there is an example beyond announcing she's doing
a country album. Country is super super hot right now,
and there are some great tropes in country, but fuck me,
man to listen to Merle Haggard. Don't listen to fucking
Tennessee Georgia line or Florida Georgia line or whatever the shit.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So when you were when you were a kid, did
you play instruments or were you just an appreciator of music?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I played.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
I was so excited to learn to play an instrument.
I could have waited till sixth grade to play a
band instrument, which I probably should have done, but instead
of fifth grade, you could join the orchestra. And there
were a whole four of us at Hoover Elementary School.
And I played the viola for up until eighth grade,
and then I was always last chair because I didn't
(18:48):
practice and I never really took to it. And the
person who Judy Blogren, the woman who taught orchestra. Also
taught choir, and she's like, Brian, this is clearly not
something you're interested in. But I had a deep voice
even back then, and they were desperate for baritones, and
she said, why do you at least come and try choir?
(19:08):
And I stayed in choir the rest of my school career.
I'd loved choir. I got into a select coreal ensemble.
I went to All State Choir, so singing was more
of my jam. Not that I was operatic or particularly gifted,
but again, I think with All State Choir, they were
so desperate for baritones. They're like, he can hold the tune,
we'll take them.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Let's go.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
And then off for Luther College with West and Noble,
one of the most celebrated choir directors of the twentieth century.
And yeah, so there was singing. I wasn't much of
an instrumentalist. I didn't, you know. I picked up a
guitar a handful of times, and I'm like, oh, this.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Seems like real ass work.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
And it is, though, I mean, if you want to
be good at something, if you want to be distinctive,
if you want to stand out, and or I just
so I realized fairly early on that I was never
going to have the willpower or the discipline to be
a proper musician. But my love of music predated my
(20:08):
experiment there and has continued to this day. And so
I think what I did I crafted a life that
allowed me to be adjacent to music, allowed me to
see a ton of music, allowed me to meet musicians and,
you know, kind of like you do with your podcast,
dig into their heads a little bit, find that connective
tissue and what makes them tick? What kind of songwriters
(20:28):
are they, what's their process?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
You know who.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
I love asking those same kind of questions, but I also, like,
ultimately love hearing the music. Yesterday I laid on this
carpet with these dogs for an hour and a half
and we listened to This is the Sea by the
water Boys. I was thinking about Carl Wallins, who just
died and he was still very very much a part
of the water Boys at that point. In fact, he
(20:54):
produced that record. And there are just certain records and
certain songs that things in you. You know this, I'm
going to say something that's gonna sound a little bit
too much like Live Laugh, Love, But I've always I've
got I've only got a couple of personal strong beliefs,
and one of them is that we don't get to
pick what we love. And we could be talking about music,
(21:15):
we could be talking about food. Some people like Mayonnai's
I think it should all be thrown in the ocean
and vice versa, right, Like we all like different things,
but with music, you don't get to pick which song
taps that button in your lizard brain, like I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
I don't give a shit about Rush the Who.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Mah, but so many other bands that are adjacent to
them do it for me, you know. And so you
just you don't get to pick what you love, but
when you find it.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So that's what I ended up doing.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
I didn't I didn't play instruments really, but I found
music and it's the bat. And I've done drugs back
when I was much younger, but I've done the drugs
and I've done all the exploring, not all of it,
but a lot of it. And there's never been a
better drug than music. Man, If I need to feel
something or get somewhere, having spent as much time being
(22:04):
a student of music as I have, I know where
to find it. And so I wish I could play it,
but then I also see the frustrations that musicians and
producers and people go through, you know, like and how
do you know when you're done?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And that's not what I wanted.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
And so I'm not unhappy with my relationship with music.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I like it a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh yeah, no, music is playing music is really kind
of a journey. Some days it's the top of the world.
The next day you're doing the old compared despair business,
and it's you.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Know, that's the point though.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
It's kind of like kids in the sense that someday
you have to let them out into the world. That's
part of the natural process. And you, like, you're a
creative type, you make music. At some point you have
to be like, this is a good song. It's not
my responsibility anymore. Now you may still play it at
future gigs, and you may still reinterpret it or come
back and look at it from different angles, but at
(22:58):
some point you had to be comfortab enough to let
it out into the world. And what did you call it?
Compare and despair?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, compare in despair like what other people have and
then freak out about it.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
But you know, I mean, you've made music long enough
and you've seen enough fans and stuff you know that
what you do is good. But it would be hard
for me to sit there and be like, yeah, you
know what we got there, No, I got a whole
album of them, let's go. Even if you're sitting on
fifty songs. I feel like I have enough imposter syndrome
that I'd be like, this is all shit.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
I can't release any of this as garbage.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Well, i'll tell you what. The funny.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The funny thing about that is you had high on
stress drummer Mark on your podcast just the other day.
I'm bringing him up in the fact that, if it
were up to me, an album would probably be done
and released in about ten minutes, because I'm like, go,
go go, we're done, let's go and market old type,
(23:56):
old type noe.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
We need to think about this. And he's outs fucking
right me nuts.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
But those people, man, Yeah, well, because he's smart and
he's an attorney and he's he's just so fucking chill
in every situation. I like that dude a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, No, absolutely, and he's he's always.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
So You're not You're not a studio rat, is what
you're telling me, Like you you want to get in.
I know the song, we're going to do songs. Great,
let's lay it down. That sounded like a great take.
Let's get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And then when Mark tells me to chill the fuck out,
it takes extra time. When it's done, it's ten times
better than it was when I said we should have
gone with it.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So yeah, well, don't tell him.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No, no, no, this will be our little secret. This
will be our little secret. Your secrets are safe with meaning.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
That's funny. So I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So when growing up in North Dakota, and I think
I've mentioned this to you before. I played in bands.
I loved music, played in the punk band. My goal
in life was to be a radio DJ. That's what
I wanted to do. That was the thing. And there
was a program director at a station in town in
North Dakota and he was giving me advice. I'm like,
(25:06):
I'm gonna move to Minnesota. I'm gonna go to Brown Institute,
I'm gonna do all this stuff. And he's like no,
I'm not, like all right, He's like, you don't need Brown,
you don't need all that stuff. Just get into it
and get going and then I moved here and life happened,
but so it never happened for me. But I'll tell
you what that was. Right at the moment I moved here,
popped on the radio and there you were so definitely
(25:30):
hearing the real deal, like you've got the you know,
god given radio voice. For sure, it's pretty damn great.
So that was my introduction to big city radio coming here.
And I always enjoyed listening to you in the morning.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
So one, you know, there's a funny adage there that
you added about that. Like, so the old adage when
I started the people he's told me is all radio
DJs are frustrated musicians, Like they wanted to do music.
They wanted to be the thing that they're now just playing,
you know, they wanted that life. And then I was
(26:04):
about two years into it and some guy in a
bands like now, man, you got that backwards. All musicians
want to be radio DJs waysier, you know, Like I'm like, oh,
and so I got there's a little of that grass
is greener on the other side thing.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I think to all this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of that with
musicians and comedians too.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, And and actors, you know.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Gauging by how many bands can ruin a set by
talking too much between songs now, and you know exactly
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
A little fun.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
Banter or a cool little insight to a song is great,
but like, and again, I don't even really like like
I've seen the White Stripes a few times where they
broke up. That's sort of almost ice cold machine like
proficiency in their show.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Boom, no talking nothing. That's a little too cold for me.
But also like when someone as soon as someone sets
their arm up on the part of their guitar and
holds it over here and starts looking around, I'm like, oh, fuck,
here we go.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Here, here's the waxing poetic.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
And I mean, unless you're unless you are Merle Haggard
or Dolly Parton, just tell me the name of the
next song. It was inspired by your dog one, two,
three go, And you know, like, yeah, the between songs banters.
So the comedian thing, well, I mean there's an innate
need for musicians or I guess any kind of performer
(27:29):
to do that.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
You know, I don't buy the I don't buy the.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Bit that they're all looking for approval but there's there's
something about that. I mean, like, I've gone up in
front of one hundred thousand people before it introduced a band,
and it's terrifying. I've never said no. And there's there's
something about that moment. I think, whether you're playing a
great song, whether you're hitting a note that you knew
you're gonna hit, whether you're fucking shredding, there's something about
(27:57):
that moment that is I think the universe seeks a balance.
Another one of my live laft Love quotes that I
like to use, there's something about the teeth and the
sharpness and the reality of that moment.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
You don't ever feel more alive than that, right, right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
No, you lose yourself in that.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
That is when you say music is a drug, especially
when you're playing it. If everything is going right, there's
nobody standing out there watching you. Yeah, you're thinking of it,
You're just doesn't matter. Yeah, that's the beautiful moment when
that happens. Then there's the shows where you're like, some's
a little off, but when it's clicking, there's no one
else in that room, you're just.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
And then you know, I mean like and I can
only imagine because I haven't ever been up there for
a full length performance, But I mean that biofeedback loop
on the nights where you're clearly winning and you got
them right, and then they start feeling good about things
and you're feeling good about things. That biofeedback loop between
performer and audience. It's crucial for everybody. And you know,
(28:59):
you and I we're riffing on the nonsense of zoom
oriented meetings earlier.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I think that we lost a lot of that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And so now when you go out to a show
or I mean, like the myths of the world being
over are largely exaggerated. People are going out in profusion
these days. Shows are selling out. It's people are desperate
to get back out there and get some semblance of
normal life back.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right well, and to the point about when it's clicking,
you know it's clicking usually within fifteen seconds to the
first song, really the part.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That's yeah, there's been so many times we've.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Gotten to the chorus on the first song and I
spin around to Mark and you get the little grin
very forth like oh it's happening tonight, like you just know.
And there's other nights where it's just off and you're like,
this is gonna be all right, We're gonna be fine.
We're well rehearsed, or we know the songs well enough,
but the magic nights you know right out of the.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Gate well, and I'm sure you do it.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
So again, I don't mean to turn your podcast into
my podcast, but this is the kind of stuff that
I love to talk about. So on the nights where
you don't feel it right away, or maybe you're two
or three songs in and there's just sort of a
in the room, do you chase it? Do you try
to play harder? Do you try to pull out certain
bullseye songs? What do you do as an artist? Do
(30:21):
you chase it or just accept the fact immediately that
this is just gonna be an okay night.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, I think, and part of this is just playing
with the same people for as long as we have,
like twenty years. Early on, there was more of that
where you're chasing it and trying to get it after
a while, like you've got that chemistry, you've got the
hours in. I never feel like we have horrible shows,
Like you know, it's more like ah that we've had
(30:49):
the last one was better but that was good.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I guess all right.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Okay, so there's not a lot of changing. We usually
stick to the set list.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You might, you know, drop a song or out a
song on the fly, depending on the on the but
for the most.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Part, like you just kind of accept it and get
through it. You can't.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
You got to try not to get in your head
too much, because a minute you get in your head
too much, that's where well miss that chorus. Suddenly I'm
still playing the verse. Everybody's moved on without me. So
it's better to try not to think about it and
just let it happen.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
So understood.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, So how did you get into radio?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Then?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
So you're you're listening to a ton of music. You
come to Minneapolis, you're going to see a ton of bands.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
How does radio come the very first time?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Well, I mean, if we go all the way back,
and I'll try to make this as not long winded
as possible. My voice dropped when I was about ten
years old, and so my entire young adult into adult life,
people are like, man, you got that.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Voice, you should do radio.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
I was like, so, I don't know if I wanted
to do radio or if I was indoctrinated. I don't
honestly know, but I loved music, and I'm like, this
seems like a good way to be close to music.
So I told you. I went to college for one
year before I dropped out. I went to Winona State
University down in lovely Winona, which, by the way, they
just announced the lineup for the Midwest Music Fest this year.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
It looks good. I'm going down anyway.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
I went down there and I went to apply to
work at the radio station a freshman. Most freshmen don't
get slots. You've got to put your time in. But
I talked to the program director at the time and
Paul Marshalek, who would go on to work for MTV,
which is odd, but he was like, okay, and about
a few weeks in he's like, we need a music director.
(32:31):
You're going to the music director. I'm like, I'm only
a freshman. He's like, yeah, I know, I believe in you.
Let's do it. And so for a year there I
was you have to so before you get one of
the cool afternoon or evening slots where you're playing alternative
eighties college rock, which really was the bedrock that was
laid down for the alternative explosion of the nineties, so
I felt very in retrospect, very proud to even have
(32:53):
any part in this. You had to either do an
early morning classical shift or a midday jazz shift before.
So for my very first semester there, I was doing
a jazz show from nine to noon every Tuesday and Thursday.
Growing up, there was not one jazz record in my house.
I knew nothing about jazz. This was pre internet, and
(33:13):
so I literally would walk up to the huge wall
of albums that they had that were under the jazz
heading and literally grab things at random, and I was
then quit.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
They didn't like it. It wasn't good.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
They quickly moved me on to an alternative shift, which
I was much more.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Capable of doing. And you know, you're learning the ropes, man.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
I'm sure I sounded like every college idiot here on
radio k or anything. They love music, they have no
idea what they're doing, but you know, you have to
start somewhere. And then I moved to Minneapolis, did not
do any radio, worked at a nonprofit fundraising organization for
the Clean Water Action Alliance, and then went back to
school part time because I was sure my parents were
(33:52):
disappointed in me, started doing extension courses through the u
of M, and then signed up to work at Prior
to it being Radio K, it was wmm ARM and
I didn't want to go back to school, but you
had to be a student in order to work at
the student radio station, so.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
That I was in coffin union.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
At WMMR, I had a Sunday morning shift from six
untill ten, and they were only broadcasting on cable FM,
and which who the hell has cable FM? And to
the dorms. So I would do giveaways on Sunday morning,
like hey, right now, we're taking callers seven and blah
blah blah blah blah blah to get a copy of this.
And the phone didn't ring once, and I wish I
(34:30):
was joking, man, but you know, but even then I
had the humility to be like, like, this is practice this
and against I didn't really have any real Like I
told you, I'm not a very ambitious guy. I didn't
have any real dreams I was gonna make it in radio.
I just liked doing it. It came naturally to me,
you know, that play to your strengths or staying your
lane kind of thing, and it was uh, it was good,
(34:52):
and then they But then at one point I decided, nah, man,
I don't want to keep taking these extension courses and
I you know, and the program director at the time,
Jim Mussel, told me to He's like, no, man, hang on,
hang on, We're gonna get our AM thing. We're gonna
go on AM, We're gonna have a ton more listeners,
we're doing a whole rebrand, blah blah blah. So I
kept sticking around. It was like a year later and
(35:14):
he's like, I want you to audition for the morning show.
So I did so. On the day Radio k launched
October first, nineteen ninety three, me and a young woman
named Sharon were the hosts of the first ever morning
show on Radio KA, which got now is more than
thirty years ago.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
That's wild thing. But yeah, so we started there.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
About nine months in, I got a call from Kevin
Cole who was starting up and he was at this
point was one of the most popular DJs in town,
doing a lot of his rave nights things like that.
But he, along with Brian Turner, had gotten together put
this idea together for a new independent, cool alternative station
as a like Juggernauts like the Edge, and they got
funding from Jim Cargill and they called and said, you
(35:53):
want to come do our morning show? And I was like, like, really, like,
actually do a morning show. And at the time, I
was working at Clean Water Action and I didn't know
anything about negotiation or what these sorts of positions paid,
nothing like that. They offered me eight thousand dollars less
than I was making in a nonprofit fundraising organization, and
without hesitation, I said yes, I'll be there, and I did,
(36:16):
and I was the morning show host there for the
entire three years, and Reven uh five was on the
air it Jim Cargill sold it from there, I made
the jump over the Edge and then that got turned
into Zone one oh five and I spent the next
four years there, including a year with our dear friend
Mary Lucia. Then they flip formats there, and once they
(36:37):
do that, they pretend like you don't exist. You just
walk out of the studio one day and they bring
in They're like, we're moving in a new direction, okay.
And so that was the only time I was ever
really unemployed in radio up to that point. But a
couple months later I got to talking with the good
people at Cities ninety seven, and in spring of two
thousand and one started there, worked there till twenty fifteen,
(36:59):
then went to the Current for a few years. Things
there ended in a bit of a kerfuffle, and then
about after about a year just working at the record
store and doing my podcast, Cities called back again, and
so I went back and I was there for about
two and a half years, And it was two weeks
ago almost to the day, that they're like, we're moving
in a new direction, so you know, and you got
(37:21):
to ride the wave. You gotta ride, just stay afloat.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Right, And is it a music change? Did they give
you any insight into what that means?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
They do nothing now.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Literally told me I was going in a new they
were going in a different direction. And I'm like, well,
and so I've watched this sort of thing happen. I mean,
like print media, you know, radio, almost all the non
now internet forms of traditional broadcasting or information are contracting,
and some of them more rapidly than others. So every
year there's always been a slicing, regardless of people's performance.
(37:53):
But I asked them, I'm like, well, did I not
do something well enough, did I do something I shouldn't
have done? They're like, nope, We're literally just moving in
a new direction. So I could guess, you know that
maybe I aged out. I don't want a fifty five
year old dude pitching Taylor Swift anymore. But I honestly,
I honestly don't know. They just wouldn't say, And it was.
It was sort of the most most faceless sort of
(38:14):
corporate firing, just standing there smiling and nodding, and then
you know, trying to still be pals with you, like
my old program director saying, come on, Brian, you know
how this business is.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
I'm like, what did I do wrong? Man?
Speaker 5 (38:25):
He's like nothing. I'm like, so why is this happening?
Because I wasn't making any real money there. I was
making a lot less than I used to make there.
So I wish I had a better answer for you.
I don't know, except I can tell you that City's
donety seven point one uniquely Twin Cities is apparently moving
in a new direction.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, that's That's one of those things that that program
director told me back years ago, is that it's and
it's like you can go to Brown they'll stick. They'll
give you a job. You don't know where it's going
to be. It could be anywhere in the US. It
could be exactly, probably a small station no one's listening to.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Well, that's usually how you start out in this business.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, and it's cutthroat.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
He's like, it could end like that, and then you
got to go find your next thing because it's constantly
formats changed and everything else and there.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
And then suddenly you're living in Wichita and working at
RB's and you're like, this.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Is not what I signed up for. Yeah, exactly exactly,
Well it is.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
It is cutthroat, but it's also I mean, I don't know, man,
I liked it and somehow, Actually, that's the one atypical
thing about my career is that I have been able
to do thirty years of radio in the same market.
And you know, that's how the way you talked about it,
that's how it works. You know, suddenly you're in Chattanooga,
(39:37):
or in Wichita, or you know, in I can't even
think of a place small enough, in Phoenix, whatever the
pet you know, and then you bounce around, you work
your way up through markets.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Again.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Never having been an ambitious guy, people all in my
career were like, why don't you want to go?
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Well, you should go to Chicago, you should go to
New York. I'm like, that sounds awful.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I don't want to. I like doing what I do.
I don't want to live with the daily stress of that.
I'm just I work hard. I'm not afraid of showing
up and getting the work done. But I'm not a
highly ambitious individual.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, gotcha. Well, then, so you started working at one
of my favorite record stores, Mill City, and ironically, for
how often I go there, I've yet to run into you,
and I don't know how that happens.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
But well, there was a period of about a year
where I was working there four days a week, so
that part is odd. Right now, when I left to
go back to Cities, they hired other people because so
I'm only there one day a week. Now I'm back
there every Monday, with hopes of expanding that depending on
what's going to happen. But you should absolutely come in
some Monday and we'll run through.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
The stacks, manage it. Here's the deal.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
We live in a market that is almost too successful
for record stores. Like you know, you look at an
LA or New York or a Dallas or whatever. They
have great record stores, but perk Happita for the size
of the market that we're in, the number of robust
and legacy record stores we have here is mind boggling.
(41:05):
Whether we're talking about you know, Old Faithful, the Electric
Fetus or a Cheapo or Down in the Valley or
you know, I mean it's already been ten years now,
but Mill City came back and you got places like
a Garda and Barely Brothers. I mean we have and
soul staff that we have some really genuinely incredible record
stores here for people who are into it. But I
(41:25):
will say this with no disrespect intended to the old
schoolers who were there first. You're down in the valley's
your Electric Fetus. You talked about how it's one of
your favorites. Mill City sound Rob who is the proprietor
there and buys all the records. He pays a super
fair price for records, and the words gotten out, so
all these incredible collections start coming through, and you know
(41:46):
he's not buying everything, but he pays real money for
good records, and so it's almost gotten kind of fancy there.
Like it's expensive to shop there now because he's got
so many good records. But I do I think they
do a fantastic job there. But I think for anybody
who is a vinyl enthusiast, we are sort of enjoying
a golden age right now, a renaissance, whether you're looking
(42:07):
because people are aging out of their collections they don't
want to have all that bulk around anymore, or people
are passing on or whatever, so so many records are
coming through. So it's this amazing opportunity for younger vinyl enthusiasts.
And I count myself in that. Even though I'm moving on,
I still am young enough to be able to appreciate
a sweet Riah Heat record when it lands in my hand.
(42:27):
But then also with new vinyl, it's stunning to me
the kids that'll come in and drop forty bucks on
Tyler the Creator record without thinking about it, you know.
And so it's just it's a very very fun time
to work around vinyl at all right now, because it's
very much happening. Record Store Day is still a huge event,
and it's I thought it was a fad when it
(42:50):
first started happening, and it seems to have real legs
right now.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
It really does. Yeah, in the it's funny.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
In the early two thousands, I loved about five minutes
from the Uptown Cheapo.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Which is gone now it's moved to a different location
with that, you remember the.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
One and do I'd go over there, you know, nine
o'clock at night or whatever. The hours where hours longer
than they are now too, because now versus COVID, everything
closes early.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
But I would go over there.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I'd buy a five record set of Motown hits for
five bucks.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
And I'm like, exactly, I'm.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Very excited that that vinyl is as popular as it
is today and how it's major resurchs. I do miss
the five dollars Motown set, that's for sure.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
I agree with you, and I think your point is
incredibly salient. When I go through my record collection, I
will see that, Oh I picked this up for twenty
five cents back in nineteen ninety seven, and now a
copy of it is nine dollars ninety nine cents, so
or whatever. So no, the what's kind of like housing
or anything else? Right, Like, I mean, it's popular enough
that the market has gone up considerably, and then you
(43:54):
find some of these weird unicorns like, you know, this
ultra rare edition of this particularly saw After album, and
because the market demands it, it's a thousand. I mean,
we have a couple of different thousand dollars albums hanging
on the wall at Mill City right now. I'm like
and so, I like I collect things, but not like
so that they're non fungible tokens. I don't put them
in a hermetically sealed chamber and just stare at them
(44:18):
in awe. If I buy a record, I want to
be able to play it. That said, I spent a
few bucks on records myself.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, no, I get that. So what the podcast? What
year did your podcast start? Was it?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
My podcast started twenty nineteen December, right before the pandemic.
My business partner, Sean, he approached me and said, hey,
you want to do a podcast. And at that point
I had literally listened to two podcasts ever, and I
thought they were both dumb and boring, and I'm like, nobody,
Nobody's going to want to sit and listen to us
(44:52):
blather on for an hour.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Nobody. And we tried it. We gave it a shot,
We experimented with some shared workspace. Is that we're not good.
Speaker 5 (45:01):
We got our Patreon account going, and it got us
enough initial capital to be able to rent our own studio,
which is still where it is now in South Manyea,
so early in twenty twenty we had our own place,
so over four years ago now in forty eighth in Chicago,
in South Minneapolis, and it was it's still where we
(45:22):
call home now. You know, we've got good equipment in there.
It's very modest. It's about twelve by twelve or ten
by ten, just a little tiny office space, but it
served our needs for more than four years. And yeah,
we just recorded episode three hundred and seventy nine, So
still going. Man, I would have never guessed that in
a million years, but you know, we've got a couple
(45:44):
of sponsors. Believe it at Our podcast actually makes money,
not speedboat money, but it makes money, and you know
it's and it's enjoyable.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
You know, there are days I know that you.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
Probably have the same feeling and you're like, oh, I
got so much other shit to get done today, I
want to But then as soon as you start having
a conversation with someone, this is the thing I love,
you know, Like in doing radio for so long on
the air, you get about two minutes with an artist
or a guest, and then it's all music and commercials.
This is the flip side of that, where it's almost
all talking, and you know, if you get the right
(46:17):
people who have the right stories to tell. I find
that endlessly fascinating. Good conversation. Man, there's nothing is nourishing
to me.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Well, I've been listening to Mark Merritt's podcast for ages.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I absolutely love that.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yep, he's and some people will fast forward his fifteen
minute interests. It's my favorite part of the show. Like
he's he's got such an interesting mind that I like
hearing what he has to talk about and.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
Then the whole bit. Yeah, and again, the interviews are great.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
He gets high quality guests, and he's he's obviously just
super smart and sardonic, and that's there's a reason that
he was sort of when it comes to podcasting, he
was sort of the first kingpin because he's good at
it and he's only gotten better with his experience, and
so no, yeah, he was when he first started. To me,
(47:07):
he was like some sort of somewhat known comic. But
he'd been around long enough and was popular enough and
people were into it. And then suddenly here we are,
what does he have like eight million subscribers or something
crazy like that.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, no, So I would listen to that, and then
you started doing yours, and then I was on yours.
I don't if it was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one,
but it was still we were still wearing masks when
I was in the old Smart Start studios exactly.
Speaker 5 (47:36):
We tried to keep that going as long as possible,
and because we were doing so many of them in person,
the amount of chlorine windecks that I pose that place
down with every day, because I mean, did you ever
end up getting COVID?
Speaker 1 (47:51):
I did, yeah, early early twenty twenty one one time.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
Yep, only one time here as well, and it sucked.
And I was like, yeah, so now I got through
like what I felt like was the beef of it,
and so I might have gotten a little lax. And
then one day I felt like shit, I took the
little tome test.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
I'm like, damn it.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Although being able to send a picture of that to
your boss and be like see you in five days,
you know that that part did that part didn't break
my heart, But it was a different time. Man had
it really been that long since you've been on the podcast, it.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, because it was
definitely in the you know, probably later.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Twenty twenty early twenty one. Yeah, I don't think it's
been a bit.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But then so I don't know what I was on
if I had started this podcast or not.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
But my point is between the mayor and thing and
being on your podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
And my deepen grained desire to be a radio DJ,
that's kind of what brought this on. And and to
your point, you know, you kind of get into a code.
What am I getting into? But it was during COVID
I had nothing to do, and you know, within two
or three episodes, I had Jody Stevens from a big
star on and I'm like, well, this is fun as hell,
(49:01):
so I'm gonna continue to do this. So I was
doing them weekly for probably two years. Then I stopped it.
Much as you were saying, it got to that point
where I'm just like, there's just I got too much
going on. It's hard to maintain this, and so I
stepped away from it for probably a couple of years
at this point. And then I was tentative because I'm like,
(49:22):
I know how I am when I go in, I'm
all in and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know.
It's not like I'm like, yeah, just just gonna have
a little bit of that, you know. It's now so
knowing myself, I was a little worried about getting wrapped
up into it too much, but I had I reached
out to Dan Murphy from formerly a Soul Asylum, and
I had him on and of course once you, like
(49:44):
you said, once you're in that conversation, you're like, oh, yeah,
this is why I love doing it. It was fun nerding
out over music, hearing people's stories, the connection and really
the the hour you talk is the easy part. Usually
it's u the editing and getting everything going. That's the uh,
that's where all the time goes well.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
And the ones, the ones that I hate, are the
ones that are so good and that you really feel like.
I keep, you know, I keep doing a little side
looking over at the clock to see where we're supposed
to be. All leading research indicates that after forty five minutes,
even if they like the guests, even if they like you,
most people have sort of reached their saturation point and
I look over and I'm like, oh shit, we're in
(50:26):
an hour and ten, but I feel like the conversations
just getting started. So the number of my podcasts that
are like where I end by saying, please promise you'll
come back, because I mean, you know, sometimes it's hot
out the gate, and other times it takes a little
while to warm up, or other times you finally find
that juicy nugget you were trying to find towards the
(50:47):
end and you're like, no, no.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
No, there's more, there's more, and then it's.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, well, I had Kevin my the longest one I
had this hilarious. It was Kevin Salem from Dump Truck
and he played with Yola Tango for a while and
he had great solo records and has done everything.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Great guy.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
He's a producer. He actually introduced me to Mike Doty.
So when I had Dody on, it was from Kevin.
He's like, yeah, you want to talk to Dody and
I'm like sure. He's like, let me email him, and
then he emailed me back and he had copy Doty
on it and he's like, yeah, he's in and I'm
like all right, and Doty actually I don't know if
you listen to that one.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
But he talked about Rev on there.
Speaker 5 (51:23):
Soul Coughing was essentially our house band at REV one,
Like we had a couple bands that came by on
the regular. Everclear was another one, but Soul Coughing, I
mean we did multiple events with them. There's the support
that REV gave that band here, more copies of Ruby
Vroom and Irresistible Bliss here than they did in their
(51:46):
own native New York And so, you know, I mean
like it speaks to the fact that if somebody puts
their weight behind something, it can work.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Did you know that Greg Ecklyn, to the former drum
of Everclear, lives here.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yeah, he's here, so that might be a good guess
for you. I had him on a couple of years ago.
He's an interesting guy. He had some funny stories about,
you know, coming up with the ever Clear drum beat,
you know the one, and he's like, heart would be like,
all right, I got a new song, and he's like,
I'd be playing something different.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
He's like, no, do that drum beat you did on
the other thing, and he goes.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
I found myself playing festivals playing the same drum beat
on five songs in a row doom.
Speaker 4 (52:27):
Yeah, if it's working, If it's working, you know, I mean,
he's a riot, but that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, Kevin Salem though, I first time meeting the guy,
and it was over you know, the podcast. I think
it ran. We started at nine pm. I think we
ended around two or three am.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Just kept going. We were just hitting it off. So
that one's a two parter.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
I was just like, I like, I liked all the
whole conversation.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
Well, if there's enough meat on the bone, then do it.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
I just you know, And so I I just I'm
always trying to an hour to me is supposed to
be the cap, but.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Of course there are tons. We went well over an hour.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Oh yeah, And so I had to even with the
two parter, I had to do some pretty massive chopping
because there was just so much there. But so now,
like like you said, because I know of the work
that's going to come on the back end of this thing,
usually I'm like.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Oh Jesus, thing's going a little long. It's the back end,
damn it. But I you know, if it's really good,
I keep them going so well.
Speaker 5 (53:30):
I mean it's also good content though, Like I mean,
you know, you want to have it to work with,
and yeah, I in order to avoid as much of
that as possible because good editing. I don't know if
you know Tommy Mishki at all.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Oh, I've been on his show one hundred years ago,
back when.
Speaker 5 (53:46):
Okay saying, but that guy puts more effort into editing
and post production than anyone I've ever met. We Sean
and I in an effort to keep that to a
relative man, we do everything in our power to make
it feel like a radio show, right, I mean, and
so like unless something truly terrible happens, or something somebody
(54:10):
didn't want or whatever, we don't. I mean, we'll you know,
top and tails, but we don't really do a ton
of editing.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Well, I'll tell you what, The production would be a
lot better if Mark was involved in this, because, like
I said, I'm gonna spit this thing out. He's going
to be like, you know, get that tone a little
better on that. So what's what's the plan then for
the podcast? You're keeping that thing rolling for the time being,
you still enjoy doing it after three hundred plus episodes.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
I do enjoy doing it. Yeah, No, three ages getting
recorded tomorrow. As it stands right now, being recently unemployed,
it's my only current source of income other than the
one day of the week at the record store. So
we'll definitely keep it going. You know, there's been some
talk about expanding it, like you on your podcast get
some truly noteworthy national quality guests.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Ours.
Speaker 5 (55:04):
You know, when people when it first started, people like,
what's your podcast about, I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
Music and stuff. I didn't know.
Speaker 5 (55:10):
I didn't have a clear mission statement. And over time,
you know, whether we're talking to musicians, which is the
bulk of the guests, or we're talking to a local
author or entrepreneur or whatever the case may be. We
decided to make the podcast sort of hyper local. I mean,
we've had some national quality stars on, but we you know,
(55:33):
Sean and I both being denizens of South Minneapolis and
longtime supporters of the area and this place, and you know,
the state that we call home, the city that we
call home, whatever the case is, and so that's kind
of become the focus. Doesn't mean we've turned down a
sweet national level guest if we get one, but that's
(55:54):
that's never really been the priority. So We're going to
keep doing what we do right now, and we're going
to kind of keep trying tell the stories of the
place that we live, because again, it's like hearing the
story of how a great album was recorded, or you know,
like asking someone where they came from or how they
got into music or what their process is like.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
To me, that's become the fascinating stuff. Man. I call
it the connective tissue. I love it.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
So yeah, absolutely, the podcast is going to continue. It
is The Brian Oak Show. You can find it on Spotify,
Apple and Idea and yeah, we just we have it's
largely musicians, but there's there's a little bit of other
stuff on there as well.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
It's fun because, like I have specifically it's musicians. I
had Weezer's tour manager. He didn't say anything bad about Weezer. Yeah,
I was hoping for some good River stories, but he
wouldn't go there. Because I've known many people who've met
the man and there are some interesting stories about.
Speaker 5 (56:54):
Oh, I've got some great Weezer stories including I don't
know if it's the same guy you talked to, but
Weezer's road manager. I once watched possibly the greatest backstage
fight between an organizer and a manager than I've ever
seen when they played at Basilica one year, and wow,
it gave the impression that Weezer might be a little
(57:16):
pampered and are used.
Speaker 4 (57:18):
To getting exactly what they want. I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 5 (57:23):
As diplomatically as possible, because that manager, it wasn't like
making a reasonable argument. He immediately went to Defcon one
and we're gonna shut this whole thing down, and this
is gonna happen. It's like, okay, okay, okay, we'll figure
it out. Settle down, settle down. So yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Know how many years ago is that.
Speaker 4 (57:45):
Oh you gotta think for a second here, when did
Weezer headline the Basilica.
Speaker 5 (57:52):
I'm gonna have to look it up. I don't remember.
I mean minimum of ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (57:56):
So this wasn't the new guy because he's been doing
it for eight Okay.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
Yeah, So this guy used to be the road manager
for a Whiskey town so he had to deal with
Ryan Adams on a daily basis.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
I've got a great Ryan Adams story, actually Ryan Adams.
So Ryan Adams reputation preceded him obviously, you know, getting
called Brian Adams and leaping foot first into the audience
and kicking the shit.
Speaker 4 (58:28):
Out of somebody. And he was kind of a pretty
standard story of problems with drugs and alcohol. And so
then I found out he was coming into studio see
it said, he's ninety seven, this wonderful institution of quietude,
normally filled with the likes of indigo girls or freelance
(58:49):
whales or whoever. I was like, I was so ethic scared.
Oh my god, I was scared.
Speaker 5 (58:56):
I'm like, say, say one wrong thing and this guy
is going to jack you up.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
And so I'm like, all right.
Speaker 5 (59:03):
So I was did extra prep, got all my questions ready,
all kind of respectful, none leading, none weird, nothing controversial.
And apparently he had recently sobered up and I didn't
know that though, And he could not have been more
charming and funny and excellent. He was fucking great. But
(59:23):
I have I have heard people tell stories about thank
you very diplomatically, put, very diplomatically. Put two more.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Questions before we wrap. And you've interviewed a lot of people.
I have over the years of listening quite a few
of them. Who was what was your favorite interview that
you've had.
Speaker 5 (59:46):
Wow, that's tough, man, because sometimes they are incredible insights
from bands that you love, like rim or U two
and I've interviewed both those bands or at least members
of both those bands, Nice and so and so you're
at level where you're like, this is I mean, this
is like the kind of stuff you read in books
or in Rolling Stone magazine, right, like rock history. But
(01:00:09):
then there are other times where someone tells a great
story or drops a performance on you and then goes
into a great story. Man, one favorite one, I don't
know if I can narrow it down to one, but
I'm gonna tell you that Brandy Carlisle is one of
the coolest people I've ever been in the same room with.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
In my entire life. She was brilliant.
Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
Matt Nathan said, you know what's weird, So you've interviewed
people before, lots of them as well. Much like you
don't get to pick what you love, there's never a
count you can't really ever account even if you're a
decent person an affable fellow like you are, every once
in a while you're just gonna hit it off with
someone and they're gonna feel like old friends. The first
(01:00:54):
time you meet them. Singer songwriter Matt Nathanson and I
the very first time he sat down with me. Within
five minutes we were like old friends. And then he
came back to Cities. He became our house guy for
a while. He was there for lots of events and
lots of performances. Love love, love that dude.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Friend of mine's producing his new record by the way.
Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
Really yeah, Nathanson is one of the coolest dudes I've
ever met in my whole life, you know, and for
I'm sure a lot of people are like boring white
American singer songwriter. That dude, Oh my god, I would
go on vacation with that dude right there.
Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
You know.
Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
Another great interview I had, and I interviewed her twice,
and this is going to be something of an upsetter,
something of a shocker. Yoko ono ah. Now, both were phoners,
so I never sat down with her in person.
Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
She was cool as hell, man. She was she was quiet, she.
Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
Was extremely sharp, very intelligent, she was clever. I remember
the whole time thinking like, how why does she care
who's but she was completely engaged to me. That's the
whole bit, right, Like a lot of people come in
to do press or promo and they're just not in
the fucking mood.
Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Oh, who's that, dickhead.
Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
La Montaigne, Yes, I heard that one. I felt very
bad for you that day.
Speaker 5 (01:02:27):
He was he was one and again like, I understand
you don't feel like doing press or promo. He was
literally like a fully grown three year old in the
middle of a tantrum at fucking kmart during the entire thing,
And I'm like, I'm asking the safest, most innocuous questions
you could imagine. And at one point he jumps up
on the chair with his feet and he puts his
(01:02:47):
hands over his ears.
Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
And just goes la la la la L.
Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
So I guess my point is, you know, like, no,
you don't want to do press, but you're doing it
for a reason. You're either on the way up, you're
on the way down, and the labels on you. So
give us your ten best minutes. You're not going to
be here all day. We're not trying to be pals.
You don't have to sing the Friday morning fart song.
Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
Just give us, give us ten good minutes, because you're
not doing yourself any favors by being a dickhead. Just
give me a few minutes.
Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
You know, tell the story, play the song, all smile
and nod, We'll all clap and everyone gets to go home.
So I like it when when artists are engaged. The
Irish band the script. They were brilliant. All three of
them were way into it. There have been so many
good ones.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Over the years.
Speaker 5 (01:03:36):
Oh sweet Dolores o'reard and may she rest in peace.
The Cranberries were fucking exceptional. Johnny Marr was coming through
on a solo thing and he popped by this like
that was my first one I ever did at Cities.
Yet I can't pick a favorite man because there's too
many of them. I've probably forgotten a great number of them,
(01:03:58):
and they all have their different charms. They're different things
that I guess still occupy a place in my mind.
Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
All right, and one more question before we wrap, And
I asked a similar question to the Uh to Thomas,
the Weezer tour manager, because I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
Go on, so.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
You're a music guy.
Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
Obviously I like music.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
You like music, Go into a show one moment, first
thing that comes to your mind, best show you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Oh no, I know exactly what it is.
Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Back in the late nineties, when I was working at
Zone one oh five Miller Beer, which was spending a
tremendous amount of money and basically keeping the entire fucking
industry afloat at that point with all their various brands,
they started something called the Miller Blind Date, where the
premise was people would all go to this location, nobody
would know who the band was, and boom, big surprise,
(01:04:55):
and you know, of course they ply you with free
Miller Lite and all that kind of stuff, and it
was it's a radio guy. I got to go to
a couple of them, and I even got to go
to one in Ireland, which was just okay.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
The best show of.
Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
My life was a Miller blind date in Chicago at
the VIC Theater. The VIC Theater is about two thirds
the size, maybe half the size of First Avenue somewhere
right around there, big prominence that comes off the front
of the stage, so you've got kind of people on
the floor and there is an upper level, but it's
not huge, and nobody knew who it was, and people
kept saying, well, you're.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
The radio guy, you know who it is. I mean,
it's not like that. I'm like, nobody's saying a fucking word.
I have no idea who it is.
Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
And the next night in Chicago, the Rolling Stones are
going to be playing live, and someone said they saw
Ron Wood or somebody upstairs, and we're like, holy fuck,
what if the Rolling Stones played here? Well it turned
out to be even better than the Rolling Stones playing there.
So the opening act was Chemical Brothers, and I like
Chemical Brothers a lot, but watching Techno live it's basically
(01:05:56):
just two dudes doing this behind a huge bank of equipment.
While the dat tape role, you're not playing anything bros.
Although it was high energy and it was fun. Then
there's a little transition time. All the free beer is
coming out. I don't even like beer, but someone's pouring
free beer down your throat. You drink free beer, and
you get in the space and so this yeah again Chicago,
And there are balloons or these weird little balloon shaped
(01:06:19):
objects all the way up and down this promenade that
sticks off the stage and all the way around, and
all of a sudden, these weird distorted faces are being
projected on it, and the music starts. Guitar player walks out,
and if at that time I'd been paying closer attention.
Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
I would have recognized the guitar player, didn't know who
it was.
Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
And then this young female, out youngish female, black bass
player comes out, and she's bald headed, and she's just
walking up, comfortable as can be, strutting on the bass,
and I'm like, I know who that is. And of
course now I can't think of her name, but I'm like,
I and so again, semi drunk, turned around to my wife,
(01:06:56):
I'm like, and also in my eyes went wide as
I remembered who was and I turned around because my
wife was pointing at the stage that I was looking
at her, and outwalks.
Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
David Bowie.
Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
In a fucking white linen suit with this most impossible
smile on his face because he's at a gig where
there's nothing at stake. He's a beloved superstar, and I
can only imagine the size of the check that Miller
wrote him to show up and play ninety minutes of music.
Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
And so he was cool, he was confident, he was
telling stories. I was literally at the base of that
presidium or I.
Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
Don't even know what you call the thing that sticks
out from the stage. I'm ten feet away from David
fucking Bowie, my all time favorite, and then he starts
diving into songs. He played some hits, but he started
diving into songs. I never thought i'd hear live in
my life like he did. Be my wife. He did
five years. I still can't believe it acts happened. I've
(01:08:00):
seen Bowie a half dozen times prior to his death,
but this one, because it was so close, so intimate
and entirely unexpected, I've never seen anything like it, and
so I'll never ever forget it. By far, the best
show I ever saw. This is gonna be ninety eight
(01:08:20):
or ninety nine David Bowie at the VIC Theater in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Beautiful, beautiful, Oh.
Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
Honest to god, man, I mean you know those moments.
You mean it's also great.
Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
Like if I had known it was Bowie, I would
have gone in with very high hopes, and that still
would have been great. But that feeling when having seen
as much live music as you have, and as I have,
that feeling when you go in not knowing who someone
is and getting your fucking socks rocked off. You You
went in't expecting nothing, and even if it's just pretty good,
(01:08:51):
it's still great, you know, I mean I think about,
like like Gully Boys, Midwest music festivals coming up in
a month or a month and a half. And the
very first time I went to the Midwest Music Festival, I'm.
Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
Like Gully Boys.
Speaker 5 (01:09:05):
I heard a couple of people talk about him, didn't
know anything about him, and they were fucking spectacularly good,
and so like, I went in knowing nothing and they
blew my mind. So what about you, what's the best
show you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Geez, you know, feed not so easy now, No, no,
this is you know I'm supposed to do that to you.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Well, I'm obviously a prince guy, so I've.
Speaker 4 (01:09:25):
Got a no shame in that game, prince.
Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
You know, first time I saw him, I was weeping
at Purple Rain, Like it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Was like, I'm never going to see him.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
He played the Fargo Dome the only time he ever
played in North Dakota ever, which is hilarious because he's
three hours away from the border. This was ninety seven
or ninety eight, Yeah, and incredible. And then when I
moved here three weeks later, it was the Mill City
Music Festival, downtown, people hanging off the fire escapes and
everything you remember probably there for that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(01:09:58):
so definitely Prince and then the Replacements that it riot
fested Chicago was mind blowing like they were.
Speaker 4 (01:10:08):
They were.
Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
There are some goofy moments, but they were there to rock.
In the minute they kicked into taking a ride, you
blew backwards about twenty feet, So.
Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
Holy sorry, Ma, Sorry Ma.
Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
Is one of the great punk rock missives of all time,
not just because I'm Minnesota, not because I'm a homer.
Speaker 4 (01:10:26):
You put on sorry Ma forgot to take out the trash.
Speaker 5 (01:10:29):
It's blistering and intense and intelligent and clever in a
way that almost no other band of the time was.
And no so taking a ride, Oh my god, customer
going downtown trouble.
Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Oh I'm in trouble. It's hilarious and it rocks.
Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
That's what I meant about intelligent, like these are. These
are beautiful punk rock. Vince told in this shambolic, dangerous,
about to lose the rails kind of way that I
think that that's what made them what they are. That
you know, I never saw them back in the day.
I missed it by that much. But I did go
(01:11:06):
to Coachella one year because Pixies were playing Queens of
the Stone Age was playing and replacements were playing, and
about three songs in, they were all dressed in matching
suits except for Paul, and about three songs in, wearing
a matching suit came out Billy Joe Armstrong from Green
and the aw.
Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Those clips Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
And Billy Joe Armstrong looked like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 4 (01:11:28):
He was he was levitating.
Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
He was so excited that he was up on stage
playing with the replacements in front of one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
It was that was a nuts night.
Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Brian Oak from The Brian Oaks Show, Iconic Twin Cities
radio DJ legends, music lover, great guy, really fun.
Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
It was really a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
To turn the tables a bit. As I mentioned, I
appeared on his podcast, The Brian Oak Show, which you
should really check out.
Speaker 6 (01:12:01):
And uh and uh.
Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
I got to turn the tables and and ask him
some questions which ended up being a really fun time
learning about his his journey through radio and the ups
and downs of being in that industry and the guy's
intense love of music and enjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
We'll see you next time at the Figure Eights podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Signing off Studio twenty four. Spend leet have a great.
Speaker 6 (01:12:33):
We are will stop you've been going. Listen, stop that
(01:13:01):
you've been going and all.
Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
So long you would take it to keep father wasted him.
Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
It's hardy stay. She doesn't help go class, she doesn't
(01:13:32):
need much. Hell, let you tell anything you have to cap.
Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
She likes a man.
Speaker 6 (01:13:38):
I can yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
I've been chasing the knife all the rest of the life.
Speaker 6 (01:13:47):
I don't have must choice of the man. You too,
go glose man.
Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Stop that there.
Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
You been going from the days.
Speaker 6 (01:13:59):
I mean, listen, so rises stop like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
You can't call it. No, so no, you just don't take.
Speaker 6 (01:14:13):
Call list it's all.
Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
You can't calling calling me. You can calling calling me,
you just talking.
Speaker 6 (01:15:07):
You can take you just ta t blave me. You
can to do lad me. You can come t me.
Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
You be probably
You are listening to the Figure Eights podcast. I'm your host,
Nick Leek from the band High On Stress out of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
and today we have a Twin Cities radio h column
Brian Oak on the show. He's been on many of
favorite radio stations in the Twin Cities for a number
of years.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Is very well known to this area.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Has quite possibly the greatest radio voice of all time.
We talked about where things sit in the world of
radio fans, that changed his live shows, that changed his life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Good music heard conversation which I think you're going to appreciate. Also,
catch him on the Brian Oak Show. I've had the
pleasure of appearing on that show as well as High
Trust drummer Mark has been on there a couple of
times as well. In fact, he's got three hundred and
eighty one episodes of The Brian Oak Show, which is
(01:05):
pretty remarkable. Before we get to that, we do have
some High End Stress dates. We've got let's see a
swell solo show just me finished Bistro on April tenth
in Saint Paul with Scott Oldbridge and what else do
we have here? We've got April twenty sixth in Dubuke, Iowa.
(01:26):
April twenty seventh at the Montrose Saloon International Pop Overthrow
Festival in Chicago, Next night April twenty eighth at Cole's
Bar in Chicago, and Matt Dirt in the High Walks.
May eighteenth, solo with Just Meet the Solo Taco Jed, Rochester, Minnesota.
And Friday June seventh at.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Four Her Brewery in Rochester, Milisola.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well please, some more dates to follow.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've been hard at work on the follow up to
our album Holding In, and I can't wait to get
that out whenever that happens. We've got quite a few
tracks started on that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
These things go again to go a little pokey.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But it's been been a few years since told me
and came out, so really excited about bringing out just
the new albums.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Proud of the song.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And thank you for listening to the Figure Its podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So without further ado, from a Studio.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Twenty four in the Twin Cities, Hi, bring you raining.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Ryt Well, thank you for coming on here.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
My pleasure man, I am you know, I'm I'm in
a weird transitional place for my life right now. You know,
recently divorced, recently unemployed. In fact, I'm sitting out here
in deep, deep western suburbia of the tw In Cities.
A friend of mine, it dovetailed nicely my new unemployment
with him going away for three weeks and he needed
(03:07):
a dog sitter. I'm a cat guy, not a dog guy.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
I'm trying to deal with these two nerds and my buddy.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
So it's just it's it's it's a weird, untethered time
where it feels like just about anything as possible. And
I don't know if it's the comfort of getting older
or having done what I've done for so long and
having been down this road before.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I'm not. I'm not I should be more spooked than
I am.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, well, I feel all right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Years ago, I was in a job where the company
decided to eliminate this position through all of their hundreds
of stores, and I happened to be in that position.
Right around that time. I had just gotten dumped and
my band that I moved to Minneapolis with back then
(04:01):
we I had left that band, so it was all
like right there. And I had a coworker that came
up to me one day and she's like, I'm so
jealous of you, and I'm like, uh, what, things could
not possibly be worse and she's like, you get to
rewrite the whole thing. I'm like, and at the time
I was like, you're nuts, And now, as an older gentleman,
(04:23):
I'm like, what awesome advice she gave me, even though
at the time I was like, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Like it's all wrong.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
I mean, you get to set the template, right, You
get to decide what you are going to include and
not include, and that's one of the only real benefits
about getting older. I mean, you know, my body feels
like I was hit by a train, but but I
get to decide what the next act of Brian Oak
looks like. And I don't know yet. I'm not really
(04:51):
I'm not a man of great ambitions, but I am
a man who likes to explore things and likes to
learn new things. And we're going to see what happens,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I mean, just like you have a podcast.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
I have a podcast that I've done pretty well with,
but there's more out there, and now I just need
to take a few days of hanging out with dogs and.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Seeing what that looks like. You know.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I'm just I'm thinking about the future again. I always
said when I was younger that my dream at the
end of the road, not right now, at the end
of the road, was to retire to the Oregon coasts,
work at some little five thousand watt am Oldies station
and listen to the relentless pounding of the waves. And
(05:36):
it dawned on me the other morning. I'm like, fuck,
I could go do that right now? Oh sorry, can
we swear?
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Swear?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Yeah? All that again? I use it.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
I'm not like a shock jot guy, but I do
like to swear for punctuation now and again. I actually
have the freedom to do that right now. Now do
I have the resources to go out there and live
out till the end of my days?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Now?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
And then I got to become one of those guys
who collects every morning and mix little sculptures and sells
them by a roadside stand with googly eyes on them.
But it is to your ultimate point there you do
get to You get to decide largely. We never all
get to decide completely, but you get to largely decide
what the next chapter looks like exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Can I can I go.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Outside with you as we do this mobile? Because the
dogs are showing I'm still trying to learn dog language here.
They're both standing by the door like they really want
to go out, and these.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Are West side dogs.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So well, Scraps, are you coming? Where'd you go? Scraps?
Come on?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Where did you grow up? Where did it all start?
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I was born in Portland, Oregon, but my parents moved
here when I was a year and a half two
years old, so I have no real recollection of that,
although that's where we went every year for family vacation.
So I've been to Oregon thirty to forty times in
my entire life. I still go out there every year.
I got so then we went to the northern suburbs.
(07:03):
I am. I wasn't born there, yea, And I showed
up as like a one and a half year old.
But everything I know about growing up happened in Coon Rapids,
Northern Suburbs. Coon Rapids, Cardinals, all that nonsense. I always
called Coon Rapids the biggest small town I've ever been
to in my life, you know, because there's tens and
tens and tens of thousands of people by this time,
(07:25):
probably more than one hundred thousand people now, But back
then it was square and hickesh and white as hell,
and it wasn't you know, people make fun of coon rapids.
It's not like it's a white trash hell. It's another suburb,
like we have so many of them. And I liked
my suburban upbringing.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
You know. We weren't rich, we weren't poor.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
We were right in the heart of the middle class,
you know, like I didn't get a car on my
sixteenth birthday or anything like that. But also we didn't
really go with about, you know, and we lived on
a nice street.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
And I actually really liked it.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
And even though I got called the F word on
the regular every day at school, I you know, just
because I had a weird haircut. So like I started
to get into weird music. Probably I grew I graduated
in eighty six, so probably you know, eighty one eighty two.
I started hearing this music that you didn't hear on
the radio, and I'm like, well, where the hell is
(08:19):
this coming from? And music became But you know, when
you're a little bit of an outsider, a little bit
of a weirdo, a little bit of a nerd, maybe
a lot of some of those things in various combinations,
you you know, you look for your tribe, and I
found a good tribe. I found a really great tribe.
But music became a thing early on. So grew up.
(08:39):
I went to in Coon Rapids, went to you know,
middle school at Northdale, went to Coon Rapids Senior High,
and then I went to one year of college, dropped
out and moved to downtown Indnieapolis when I was nineteen
years old, and I've lived in Minneapolis ever since.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Then.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Nice, what kind of what kind of music were you
into back then?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Well?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Growing up? You know, I mean, like, and I don't
have any shame in this game. In fact, I still
love a ton of it. Classic rock is.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
What I grew up on.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Right, my parents' record collection which ranged for all over
the map, right, I mean they had the Beatles, but
my mom had Trinny Lopez and my dad had Cream
so all kinds of this great classic rock.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
And growing up, KQ was the thing, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
I mean, even if you liked a little more pop
oriented rock or that sort of thing, KQRS to.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Me was cool, man.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
I loved it, Like, you know, here in a deep
Hendrix's cut that wasn't a hit, and KQ I know,
to listen to it. In the modern day and age,
it's a nightmare of light rock. Don Henley and John
Mellencamp hits, But even those guys have cool songs that
used to get played on there. It used to be
a great song. So I grew up listening to classic rock.
And I'll never forget the day that everything changed for me.
(09:52):
I was not a very athletically gifted child, but I
did love swimming. I always loved swimming since I was
very very little, and so so I swam competitively, which
was again in coon rapids. Unless you were playing football
or baseball or hockey, you weren't really regarded as an athlete,
and so I was. I was on the swim team
and there was a guy named Aaron Starr who I
(10:12):
still am friends with to this day. Not friends, friends,
He lives far away, but we know each other still
and we stay in touch on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
He gave me a cassette by the B fifty two is.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Called wild Planet Iconic Red cover them all in their
fancy get up, and I went home and listened to
it and a it was amazing and freaky and weird,
and I'm like, this is cool, But then you know,
I was just sitting there. This was like one of
my great AHA moments as a young person, as a teenager.
I looked on the back and there's the Warner Brothers
(10:43):
logo and I'm like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait wait.
I know there's cool hip indie bands and people do
by the you know, DIY all that stuff. I'm like,
this is a major label band that I've never heard
on the radio. And it was it was sort of
this light bulb aha moment. I'm like, well, that must
mean there are dreds, if not thousands of bands out
there I've never heard of before.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Then the floodgates sprung wide. Man, I would you know?
We would?
Speaker 5 (11:07):
We would go down once a month to Northern Lights
right downtown on the old Block E. We drive down
there and we felt so cool driving a half hour
from Coon Rapids in our trench coat and our Converse
high tops and our peg jeans and our asymmetrical new
wave haircuts. And we would go in there. And so,
you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you're
in uncharted territory, you don't really ever know. But growing up,
(11:31):
defining bands for me became R E M probably first
and foremost uh Hooskerdo literally changed my life. The replacement
sol asylum, like I couldn't pick a favorite. About the
same time that those bands were all hitting, Prince was
suddenly an international force, and so I felt really proud
to be here. I felt like I lived in this
rich territory. But you know, then bands like swing Set
(11:54):
and Rifle Sport and so it was.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
It was a wild time.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I went to every all age show I could go to,
So I ended up seeing the suburbs and the wallet's.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
A ton, and I just it was.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
It was part of my identity, you know, Like I mean,
if you're gonna have little buttons on your goofy ass,
you know, secondhand trench coat, they better be cool, you know.
And so there was there was that was sort of
a badge. Vonnor for me is music growing up, and
I guess, I wow, suddenly I'm having like a therapist
come to Jesus moment. But I suppose, I suppose it
still is, man, you know, I mean, the stuff that
(12:26):
we share on social media and the stuff that we
choose to listen to, whether we're feeling joyous or modeling,
it's still you know, it's a it's a touchstone. It's
is it is a point of pride.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, and it matters. That's the that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
It does matter.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
You talk to so many people that I love music,
and there are so many people that love dinner party music.
And some of that dinner party music's pretty good. But yeah,
I think there's a difference between people who like music
and devour music.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
To me.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Here's the other thing too, Like when you talk about
dinner party music, like I collect so working at a
record store and being a lifelong record collector and never
sold the collection. You know, it obviously had a downturn
for a while there, but now it's enjoying this almost
impossible renaissance and it's still continued. The bubble is gonna
pop at some point, but it is not popped yet.
But I mean, like I collect Martin Denny and Walter
(13:18):
Wanderley and like these things that you would think of
as elevator music or dinner music.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Do I want to listen to it all day every day?
Absolutely not.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
But you know, like if Wanda Jackson comes on or
a hip hop band, I don't even like that much.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I like the rich tapestry that it evokes, you.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Know, And again, It's one thing to be really into
a certain type of music and to have your specialty,
and I think we probably all do that to a degree.
But I don't think there's a bad type of music
out there. When I hear people say I hate country,
I hate rap, to me, all that says is you're
lazy and you're not really trying, because I don't think.
I don't think there's an expression of any form of
music out there that wouldn't command someone's attention. That doesn't
(13:59):
mean you have to life the song I like, but
it does mean you have to You have to let
it be its own thing, and then you see what
you got there. And again, if it's not your favorite,
well maybe you don't favorite it on your playlist.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Right, And you're right, because there's great hip hop music.
You just got to look for it. If you're not
in the road you live on, if you dig deepen up,
you're going to find something. Same with country music, like
there's so much bad, bad country music.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
But oh terrible, dude. I worked at City's ninety seven,
which was next door.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Literally the next studio over was K one O two
and I worked there for twenty years, and.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
The and so on the overhead.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
There's six stations there, so they keep flipping back and
forth around the stations. The only thing worse than today's
bro country is when the conservative talk station would come on.
You know, you finally get a few free minutes to
sit down and go to the bathroom, and on the
overhead is just the most hateful, stupid, backwards, right wing
rhetoric you've ever heard. You're like, ah, but the bro Country.
(14:58):
It's the reason I hate it is not because it's
poorly produced. Like I like some pop music. Today's modern
country is definitely pop music.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
It's a machine.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Nashville is as much a machine as anything that ever
was in La or anywhere else. What I hate about
it is it generates this false nostalgia for a life
that most of the people who are enjoying it never lived.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Like I know, a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Grew up driving their pickup truck down that dirt road
on their way to see their favorite goal, maybe kick
up their heels for the night, or just think about
the way things are and go sit out there with
the dog and look at the stars.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Some people live that way, but it's.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
In a way I love that they're creating this narrative
and maintaining the narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
But it's just so fucking hokey all the time. I
want a different story, man.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
I want to go back to like like old school
Johnny Cash murder ballads like throw one of theirs, one
of them, give me a long. I will listen to
your bro song if the following song is a long
black veil song, right like, I want to know that
there was skullduggery and e and somebody got put in
the ground that wasn't supposed to be and then we
can go back to.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Are you familiar with the loop Bryan song? Rain? I
am not.
Speaker 5 (16:09):
No, I'm gonna share four lines with you and then
I'm gonna stop railing about bro country. It goes like this,
It goes Rain makes corn, Corn makes whiskey. Whiskey makes
my girl feel a little frisky.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Bob Dylan, he is not.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
No, no, he is not.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
However, he is a multi gajillionaire and one of the
most successful stars in country music in the last twenty years.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I just it's so corny.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
But like you said, there is, you know, whether you
want to call it country or rockabilly. Like Wanda Jackson,
I've been on a kind of a Wanda Jackson kick. Lately,
she is the cool imagine Brenda Lee, except with a
crazy rockabilly party vibe. Now, there's so much good stuff
out there, man, people just need to work a little harder.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, somebody like Zach Bryan too. I don't know if
you've listened to him much. He's not to be confused
with Zach Brown and Luke Bryan, which is an unfortunate
name to be in the style of music he is in.
Or it's a perfect name, which way every way you
look at it. The guy's a great writer. Like you
listen to that, he's not singing those lyrics.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
He's got you no no, and And there are a
lot of the of the modern generation. That's what's been
fun to watch over the last five or six years.
Of this modern generation. There are some truly brilliant inspired
young singer songwriters that for whatever reason Nashville is letting happen.
You know, like Chris Chris Stapleton is a good example.
I mean, you know, like when they when they have
this machine in place, you don't want to risk. You
(17:36):
can't go backwards in terms of making money. You can't
go backwards and in the last year. In particular, country
has enjoyed greater crossover, you know, with who's the guy
who covered Fast Cars?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Was that? Was that Luke Bryan? I think he?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
No, they did anyway?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
That right there is an example beyond announcing she's doing
a country album. Country is super super hot right now,
and there are some great tropes in country, but fuck me,
man to listen to Merle Haggard. Don't listen to fucking
Tennessee Georgia line or Florida Georgia line or whatever the shit.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So when you were when you were a kid, did
you play instruments or were you just an appreciator of music?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I played.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
I was so excited to learn to play an instrument.
I could have waited till sixth grade to play a
band instrument, which I probably should have done, but instead
of fifth grade, you could join the orchestra. And there
were a whole four of us at Hoover Elementary School.
And I played the viola for up until eighth grade,
and then I was always last chair because I didn't
(18:48):
practice and I never really took to it. And the
person who Judy Blogren, the woman who taught orchestra. Also
taught choir, and she's like, Brian, this is clearly not
something you're interested in. But I had a deep voice
even back then, and they were desperate for baritones, and
she said, why do you at least come and try choir?
(19:08):
And I stayed in choir the rest of my school career.
I'd loved choir. I got into a select coreal ensemble.
I went to All State Choir, so singing was more
of my jam. Not that I was operatic or particularly gifted,
but again, I think with All State Choir, they were
so desperate for baritones. They're like, he can hold the tune,
we'll take them.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Let's go.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
And then off for Luther College with West and Noble,
one of the most celebrated choir directors of the twentieth century.
And yeah, so there was singing. I wasn't much of
an instrumentalist. I didn't, you know. I picked up a
guitar a handful of times, and I'm like, oh, this.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Seems like real ass work.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
And it is, though, I mean, if you want to
be good at something, if you want to be distinctive,
if you want to stand out, and or I just
so I realized fairly early on that I was never
going to have the willpower or the discipline to be
a proper musician. But my love of music predated my
(20:08):
experiment there and has continued to this day. And so
I think what I did I crafted a life that
allowed me to be adjacent to music, allowed me to
see a ton of music, allowed me to meet musicians and,
you know, kind of like you do with your podcast,
dig into their heads a little bit, find that connective
tissue and what makes them tick? What kind of songwriters
(20:28):
are they, what's their process?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
You know who.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
I love asking those same kind of questions, but I also, like,
ultimately love hearing the music. Yesterday I laid on this
carpet with these dogs for an hour and a half
and we listened to This is the Sea by the
water Boys. I was thinking about Carl Wallins, who just
died and he was still very very much a part
of the water Boys at that point. In fact, he
(20:54):
produced that record. And there are just certain records and
certain songs that things in you. You know this, I'm
going to say something that's gonna sound a little bit
too much like Live Laugh, Love, But I've always I've
got I've only got a couple of personal strong beliefs,
and one of them is that we don't get to
pick what we love. And we could be talking about music,
(21:15):
we could be talking about food. Some people like Mayonnai's
I think it should all be thrown in the ocean
and vice versa, right, Like we all like different things,
but with music, you don't get to pick which song
taps that button in your lizard brain, like I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
I don't give a shit about Rush the Who.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Mah, but so many other bands that are adjacent to
them do it for me, you know. And so you
just you don't get to pick what you love, but
when you find it.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So that's what I ended up doing.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
I didn't I didn't play instruments really, but I found
music and it's the bat. And I've done drugs back
when I was much younger, but I've done the drugs
and I've done all the exploring, not all of it,
but a lot of it. And there's never been a
better drug than music. Man, If I need to feel
something or get somewhere, having spent as much time being
(22:04):
a student of music as I have, I know where
to find it. And so I wish I could play it,
but then I also see the frustrations that musicians and
producers and people go through, you know, like and how
do you know when you're done?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And that's not what I wanted.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
And so I'm not unhappy with my relationship with music.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I like it a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh yeah, no, music is playing music is really kind
of a journey. Some days it's the top of the world.
The next day you're doing the old compared despair business,
and it's you.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Know, that's the point though.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
It's kind of like kids in the sense that someday
you have to let them out into the world. That's
part of the natural process. And you, like, you're a
creative type, you make music. At some point you have
to be like, this is a good song. It's not
my responsibility anymore. Now you may still play it at
future gigs, and you may still reinterpret it or come
back and look at it from different angles, but at
(22:58):
some point you had to be comfortab enough to let
it out into the world. And what did you call it?
Compare and despair?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, compare in despair like what other people have and
then freak out about it.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
But you know, I mean, you've made music long enough
and you've seen enough fans and stuff you know that
what you do is good. But it would be hard
for me to sit there and be like, yeah, you
know what we got there, No, I got a whole
album of them, let's go. Even if you're sitting on
fifty songs. I feel like I have enough imposter syndrome
that I'd be like, this is all shit.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
I can't release any of this as garbage.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Well, i'll tell you what. The funny.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The funny thing about that is you had high on
stress drummer Mark on your podcast just the other day.
I'm bringing him up in the fact that, if it
were up to me, an album would probably be done
and released in about ten minutes, because I'm like, go,
go go, we're done, let's go and market old type,
(23:56):
old type noe.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
We need to think about this. And he's outs fucking
right me nuts.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
But those people, man, Yeah, well, because he's smart and
he's an attorney and he's he's just so fucking chill
in every situation. I like that dude a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, No, absolutely, and he's he's always.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
So You're not You're not a studio rat, is what
you're telling me, Like you you want to get in.
I know the song, we're going to do songs. Great,
let's lay it down. That sounded like a great take.
Let's get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And then when Mark tells me to chill the fuck out,
it takes extra time. When it's done, it's ten times
better than it was when I said we should have
gone with it.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So yeah, well, don't tell him.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No, no, no, this will be our little secret. This
will be our little secret. Your secrets are safe with meaning.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
That's funny. So I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So when growing up in North Dakota, and I think
I've mentioned this to you before. I played in bands.
I loved music, played in the punk band. My goal
in life was to be a radio DJ. That's what
I wanted to do. That was the thing. And there
was a program director at a station in town in
North Dakota and he was giving me advice. I'm like,
(25:06):
I'm gonna move to Minnesota. I'm gonna go to Brown Institute,
I'm gonna do all this stuff. And he's like no,
I'm not, like all right, He's like, you don't need Brown,
you don't need all that stuff. Just get into it
and get going and then I moved here and life happened,
but so it never happened for me. But I'll tell
you what that was. Right at the moment I moved here,
popped on the radio and there you were so definitely
(25:30):
hearing the real deal, like you've got the you know,
god given radio voice. For sure, it's pretty damn great.
So that was my introduction to big city radio coming here.
And I always enjoyed listening to you in the morning.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
So one, you know, there's a funny adage there that
you added about that. Like, so the old adage when
I started the people he's told me is all radio
DJs are frustrated musicians, Like they wanted to do music.
They wanted to be the thing that they're now just playing,
you know, they wanted that life. And then I was
(26:04):
about two years into it and some guy in a
bands like now, man, you got that backwards. All musicians
want to be radio DJs waysier, you know, Like I'm like, oh,
and so I got there's a little of that grass
is greener on the other side thing.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I think to all this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of that with
musicians and comedians too.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, And and actors, you know.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Gauging by how many bands can ruin a set by
talking too much between songs now, and you know exactly
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
A little fun.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
Banter or a cool little insight to a song is great,
but like, and again, I don't even really like like
I've seen the White Stripes a few times where they
broke up. That's sort of almost ice cold machine like
proficiency in their show.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Boom, no talking nothing. That's a little too cold for me.
But also like when someone as soon as someone sets
their arm up on the part of their guitar and
holds it over here and starts looking around, I'm like, oh, fuck,
here we go.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Here, here's the waxing poetic.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
And I mean, unless you're unless you are Merle Haggard
or Dolly Parton, just tell me the name of the
next song. It was inspired by your dog one, two,
three go, And you know, like, yeah, the between songs banters.
So the comedian thing, well, I mean there's an innate
need for musicians or I guess any kind of performer
(27:29):
to do that.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
You know, I don't buy the I don't buy the.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Bit that they're all looking for approval but there's there's
something about that. I mean, like, I've gone up in
front of one hundred thousand people before it introduced a band,
and it's terrifying. I've never said no. And there's there's
something about that moment. I think, whether you're playing a
great song, whether you're hitting a note that you knew
you're gonna hit, whether you're fucking shredding, there's something about
(27:57):
that moment that is I think the universe seeks a balance.
Another one of my live laft Love quotes that I
like to use, there's something about the teeth and the
sharpness and the reality of that moment.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
You don't ever feel more alive than that, right, right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
No, you lose yourself in that.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
That is when you say music is a drug, especially
when you're playing it. If everything is going right, there's
nobody standing out there watching you. Yeah, you're thinking of it,
You're just doesn't matter. Yeah, that's the beautiful moment when
that happens. Then there's the shows where you're like, some's
a little off, but when it's clicking, there's no one
else in that room, you're just.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
And then you know, I mean like and I can
only imagine because I haven't ever been up there for
a full length performance, But I mean that biofeedback loop
on the nights where you're clearly winning and you got
them right, and then they start feeling good about things
and you're feeling good about things. That biofeedback loop between
performer and audience. It's crucial for everybody. And you know,
(28:59):
you and I we're riffing on the nonsense of zoom
oriented meetings earlier.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I think that we lost a lot of that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And so now when you go out to a show
or I mean, like the myths of the world being
over are largely exaggerated. People are going out in profusion
these days. Shows are selling out. It's people are desperate
to get back out there and get some semblance of
normal life back.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right well, and to the point about when it's clicking,
you know it's clicking usually within fifteen seconds to the
first song, really the part.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That's yeah, there's been so many times we've.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Gotten to the chorus on the first song and I
spin around to Mark and you get the little grin
very forth like oh it's happening tonight, like you just know.
And there's other nights where it's just off and you're like,
this is gonna be all right, We're gonna be fine.
We're well rehearsed, or we know the songs well enough,
but the magic nights you know right out of the.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Gate well, and I'm sure you do it.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
So again, I don't mean to turn your podcast into
my podcast, but this is the kind of stuff that
I love to talk about. So on the nights where
you don't feel it right away, or maybe you're two
or three songs in and there's just sort of a
in the room, do you chase it? Do you try
to play harder? Do you try to pull out certain
bullseye songs? What do you do as an artist? Do
(30:21):
you chase it or just accept the fact immediately that
this is just gonna be an okay night.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, I think, and part of this is just playing
with the same people for as long as we have,
like twenty years. Early on, there was more of that
where you're chasing it and trying to get it after
a while, like you've got that chemistry, you've got the
hours in. I never feel like we have horrible shows,
Like you know, it's more like ah that we've had
(30:49):
the last one was better but that was good.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I guess all right.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Okay, so there's not a lot of changing. We usually
stick to the set list.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You might, you know, drop a song or out a
song on the fly, depending on the on the but
for the most.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Part, like you just kind of accept it and get
through it. You can't.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
You got to try not to get in your head
too much, because a minute you get in your head
too much, that's where well miss that chorus. Suddenly I'm
still playing the verse. Everybody's moved on without me. So
it's better to try not to think about it and
just let it happen.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
So understood.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, So how did you get into radio?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Then?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
So you're you're listening to a ton of music. You
come to Minneapolis, you're going to see a ton of bands.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
How does radio come the very first time?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Well, I mean, if we go all the way back,
and I'll try to make this as not long winded
as possible. My voice dropped when I was about ten
years old, and so my entire young adult into adult life,
people are like, man, you got that.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Voice, you should do radio.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
I was like, so, I don't know if I wanted
to do radio or if I was indoctrinated. I don't
honestly know, but I loved music, and I'm like, this
seems like a good way to be close to music.
So I told you. I went to college for one
year before I dropped out. I went to Winona State
University down in lovely Winona, which, by the way, they
just announced the lineup for the Midwest Music Fest this year.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
It looks good. I'm going down anyway.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
I went down there and I went to apply to
work at the radio station a freshman. Most freshmen don't
get slots. You've got to put your time in. But
I talked to the program director at the time and
Paul Marshalek, who would go on to work for MTV,
which is odd, but he was like, okay, and about
a few weeks in he's like, we need a music director.
(32:31):
You're going to the music director. I'm like, I'm only
a freshman. He's like, yeah, I know, I believe in you.
Let's do it. And so for a year there I
was you have to so before you get one of
the cool afternoon or evening slots where you're playing alternative
eighties college rock, which really was the bedrock that was
laid down for the alternative explosion of the nineties, so
I felt very in retrospect, very proud to even have
(32:53):
any part in this. You had to either do an
early morning classical shift or a midday jazz shift before.
So for my very first semester there, I was doing
a jazz show from nine to noon every Tuesday and Thursday.
Growing up, there was not one jazz record in my house.
I knew nothing about jazz. This was pre internet, and
(33:13):
so I literally would walk up to the huge wall
of albums that they had that were under the jazz
heading and literally grab things at random, and I was
then quit.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
They didn't like it. It wasn't good.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
They quickly moved me on to an alternative shift, which
I was much more.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Capable of doing. And you know, you're learning the ropes, man.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
I'm sure I sounded like every college idiot here on
radio k or anything. They love music, they have no
idea what they're doing, but you know, you have to
start somewhere. And then I moved to Minneapolis, did not
do any radio, worked at a nonprofit fundraising organization for
the Clean Water Action Alliance, and then went back to
school part time because I was sure my parents were
(33:52):
disappointed in me, started doing extension courses through the u
of M, and then signed up to work at Prior
to it being Radio K, it was wmm ARM and
I didn't want to go back to school, but you
had to be a student in order to work at
the student radio station, so.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
That I was in coffin union.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
At WMMR, I had a Sunday morning shift from six
untill ten, and they were only broadcasting on cable FM,
and which who the hell has cable FM? And to
the dorms. So I would do giveaways on Sunday morning,
like hey, right now, we're taking callers seven and blah
blah blah blah blah blah to get a copy of this.
And the phone didn't ring once, and I wish I
(34:30):
was joking, man, but you know, but even then I
had the humility to be like, like, this is practice this
and against I didn't really have any real Like I
told you, I'm not a very ambitious guy. I didn't
have any real dreams I was gonna make it in radio.
I just liked doing it. It came naturally to me,
you know, that play to your strengths or staying your
lane kind of thing, and it was uh, it was good,
(34:52):
and then they But then at one point I decided, nah, man,
I don't want to keep taking these extension courses and
I you know, and the program director at the time,
Jim Mussel, told me to He's like, no, man, hang on,
hang on, We're gonna get our AM thing. We're gonna
go on AM, We're gonna have a ton more listeners,
we're doing a whole rebrand, blah blah blah. So I
kept sticking around. It was like a year later and
(35:14):
he's like, I want you to audition for the morning show.
So I did so. On the day Radio k launched
October first, nineteen ninety three, me and a young woman
named Sharon were the hosts of the first ever morning
show on Radio KA, which got now is more than
thirty years ago.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
That's wild thing. But yeah, so we started there.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
About nine months in, I got a call from Kevin
Cole who was starting up and he was at this
point was one of the most popular DJs in town,
doing a lot of his rave nights things like that.
But he, along with Brian Turner, had gotten together put
this idea together for a new independent, cool alternative station
as a like Juggernauts like the Edge, and they got
funding from Jim Cargill and they called and said, you
(35:53):
want to come do our morning show? And I was like, like, really, like,
actually do a morning show. And at the time, I
was working at Clean Water Action and I didn't know
anything about negotiation or what these sorts of positions paid,
nothing like that. They offered me eight thousand dollars less
than I was making in a nonprofit fundraising organization, and
without hesitation, I said yes, I'll be there, and I did,
(36:16):
and I was the morning show host there for the
entire three years, and Reven uh five was on the
air it Jim Cargill sold it from there, I made
the jump over the Edge and then that got turned
into Zone one oh five and I spent the next
four years there, including a year with our dear friend
Mary Lucia. Then they flip formats there, and once they
(36:37):
do that, they pretend like you don't exist. You just
walk out of the studio one day and they bring
in They're like, we're moving in a new direction, okay.
And so that was the only time I was ever
really unemployed in radio up to that point. But a
couple months later I got to talking with the good
people at Cities ninety seven, and in spring of two
thousand and one started there, worked there till twenty fifteen,
(36:59):
then went to the Current for a few years. Things
there ended in a bit of a kerfuffle, and then
about after about a year just working at the record
store and doing my podcast, Cities called back again, and
so I went back and I was there for about
two and a half years, And it was two weeks
ago almost to the day, that they're like, we're moving
in a new direction, so you know, and you got
(37:21):
to ride the wave. You gotta ride, just stay afloat.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Right, And is it a music change? Did they give
you any insight into what that means?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
They do nothing now.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Literally told me I was going in a new they
were going in a different direction. And I'm like, well,
and so I've watched this sort of thing happen. I mean,
like print media, you know, radio, almost all the non
now internet forms of traditional broadcasting or information are contracting,
and some of them more rapidly than others. So every
year there's always been a slicing, regardless of people's performance.
(37:53):
But I asked them, I'm like, well, did I not
do something well enough, did I do something I shouldn't
have done? They're like, nope, We're literally just moving in
a new direction. So I could guess, you know that
maybe I aged out. I don't want a fifty five
year old dude pitching Taylor Swift anymore. But I honestly,
I honestly don't know. They just wouldn't say, And it was.
It was sort of the most most faceless sort of
(38:14):
corporate firing, just standing there smiling and nodding, and then
you know, trying to still be pals with you, like
my old program director saying, come on, Brian, you know
how this business is.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
I'm like, what did I do wrong? Man?
Speaker 5 (38:25):
He's like nothing. I'm like, so why is this happening?
Because I wasn't making any real money there. I was
making a lot less than I used to make there.
So I wish I had a better answer for you.
I don't know, except I can tell you that City's
donety seven point one uniquely Twin Cities is apparently moving
in a new direction.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, that's That's one of those things that that program
director told me back years ago, is that it's and
it's like you can go to Brown they'll stick. They'll
give you a job. You don't know where it's going
to be. It could be anywhere in the US. It
could be exactly, probably a small station no one's listening to.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Well, that's usually how you start out in this business.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, and it's cutthroat.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
He's like, it could end like that, and then you
got to go find your next thing because it's constantly
formats changed and everything else and there.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
And then suddenly you're living in Wichita and working at
RB's and you're like, this.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Is not what I signed up for. Yeah, exactly exactly,
Well it is.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
It is cutthroat, but it's also I mean, I don't know, man,
I liked it and somehow, Actually, that's the one atypical
thing about my career is that I have been able
to do thirty years of radio in the same market.
And you know, that's how the way you talked about it,
that's how it works. You know, suddenly you're in Chattanooga,
(39:37):
or in Wichita, or you know, in I can't even
think of a place small enough, in Phoenix, whatever the
pet you know, and then you bounce around, you work
your way up through markets.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Again.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Never having been an ambitious guy, people all in my
career were like, why don't you want to go?
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Well, you should go to Chicago, you should go to
New York. I'm like, that sounds awful.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I don't want to. I like doing what I do.
I don't want to live with the daily stress of that.
I'm just I work hard. I'm not afraid of showing
up and getting the work done. But I'm not a
highly ambitious individual.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, gotcha. Well, then, so you started working at one
of my favorite record stores, Mill City, and ironically, for
how often I go there, I've yet to run into you,
and I don't know how that happens.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
But well, there was a period of about a year
where I was working there four days a week, so
that part is odd. Right now, when I left to
go back to Cities, they hired other people because so
I'm only there one day a week. Now I'm back
there every Monday, with hopes of expanding that depending on
what's going to happen. But you should absolutely come in
some Monday and we'll run through.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
The stacks, manage it. Here's the deal.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
We live in a market that is almost too successful
for record stores. Like you know, you look at an
LA or New York or a Dallas or whatever. They
have great record stores, but perk Happita for the size
of the market that we're in, the number of robust
and legacy record stores we have here is mind boggling.
(41:05):
Whether we're talking about you know, Old Faithful, the Electric
Fetus or a Cheapo or Down in the Valley or
you know, I mean it's already been ten years now,
but Mill City came back and you got places like
a Garda and Barely Brothers. I mean we have and
soul staff that we have some really genuinely incredible record
stores here for people who are into it. But I
(41:25):
will say this with no disrespect intended to the old
schoolers who were there first. You're down in the valley's
your Electric Fetus. You talked about how it's one of
your favorites. Mill City sound Rob who is the proprietor
there and buys all the records. He pays a super
fair price for records, and the words gotten out, so
all these incredible collections start coming through, and you know
(41:46):
he's not buying everything, but he pays real money for
good records, and so it's almost gotten kind of fancy there.
Like it's expensive to shop there now because he's got
so many good records. But I do I think they
do a fantastic job there. But I think for anybody
who is a vinyl enthusiast, we are sort of enjoying
a golden age right now, a renaissance, whether you're looking
(42:07):
because people are aging out of their collections they don't
want to have all that bulk around anymore, or people
are passing on or whatever, so so many records are
coming through. So it's this amazing opportunity for younger vinyl enthusiasts.
And I count myself in that. Even though I'm moving on,
I still am young enough to be able to appreciate
a sweet Riah Heat record when it lands in my hand.
(42:27):
But then also with new vinyl, it's stunning to me
the kids that'll come in and drop forty bucks on
Tyler the Creator record without thinking about it, you know.
And so it's just it's a very very fun time
to work around vinyl at all right now, because it's
very much happening. Record Store Day is still a huge event,
and it's I thought it was a fad when it
(42:50):
first started happening, and it seems to have real legs
right now.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
It really does. Yeah, in the it's funny.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
In the early two thousands, I loved about five minutes
from the Uptown Cheapo.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Which is gone now it's moved to a different location
with that, you remember the.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
One and do I'd go over there, you know, nine
o'clock at night or whatever. The hours where hours longer
than they are now too, because now versus COVID, everything
closes early.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
But I would go over there.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I'd buy a five record set of Motown hits for
five bucks.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
And I'm like, exactly, I'm.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Very excited that that vinyl is as popular as it
is today and how it's major resurchs. I do miss
the five dollars Motown set, that's for sure.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
I agree with you, and I think your point is
incredibly salient. When I go through my record collection, I
will see that, Oh I picked this up for twenty
five cents back in nineteen ninety seven, and now a
copy of it is nine dollars ninety nine cents, so
or whatever. So no, the what's kind of like housing
or anything else? Right, Like, I mean, it's popular enough
that the market has gone up considerably, and then you
(43:54):
find some of these weird unicorns like, you know, this
ultra rare edition of this particularly saw After album, and
because the market demands it, it's a thousand. I mean,
we have a couple of different thousand dollars albums hanging
on the wall at Mill City right now. I'm like
and so, I like I collect things, but not like
so that they're non fungible tokens. I don't put them
in a hermetically sealed chamber and just stare at them
(44:18):
in awe. If I buy a record, I want to
be able to play it. That said, I spent a
few bucks on records myself.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, no, I get that. So what the podcast? What
year did your podcast start? Was it?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
My podcast started twenty nineteen December, right before the pandemic.
My business partner, Sean, he approached me and said, hey,
you want to do a podcast. And at that point
I had literally listened to two podcasts ever, and I
thought they were both dumb and boring, and I'm like, nobody,
Nobody's going to want to sit and listen to us
(44:52):
blather on for an hour.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Nobody. And we tried it. We gave it a shot,
We experimented with some shared workspace. Is that we're not good.
Speaker 5 (45:01):
We got our Patreon account going, and it got us
enough initial capital to be able to rent our own studio,
which is still where it is now in South Manyea,
so early in twenty twenty we had our own place,
so over four years ago now in forty eighth in Chicago,
in South Minneapolis, and it was it's still where we
(45:22):
call home now. You know, we've got good equipment in there.
It's very modest. It's about twelve by twelve or ten
by ten, just a little tiny office space, but it
served our needs for more than four years. And yeah,
we just recorded episode three hundred and seventy nine, So
still going. Man, I would have never guessed that in
a million years, but you know, we've got a couple
(45:44):
of sponsors. Believe it at Our podcast actually makes money,
not speedboat money, but it makes money, and you know
it's and it's enjoyable.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
You know, there are days I know that you.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
Probably have the same feeling and you're like, oh, I
got so much other shit to get done today, I
want to But then as soon as you start having
a conversation with someone, this is the thing I love,
you know, Like in doing radio for so long on
the air, you get about two minutes with an artist
or a guest, and then it's all music and commercials.
This is the flip side of that, where it's almost
all talking, and you know, if you get the right
(46:17):
people who have the right stories to tell. I find
that endlessly fascinating. Good conversation. Man, there's nothing is nourishing
to me.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Well, I've been listening to Mark Merritt's podcast for ages.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I absolutely love that.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yep, he's and some people will fast forward his fifteen
minute interests. It's my favorite part of the show. Like
he's he's got such an interesting mind that I like
hearing what he has to talk about and.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
Then the whole bit. Yeah, and again, the interviews are great.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
He gets high quality guests, and he's he's obviously just
super smart and sardonic, and that's there's a reason that
he was sort of when it comes to podcasting, he
was sort of the first kingpin because he's good at
it and he's only gotten better with his experience, and
so no, yeah, he was when he first started. To me,
(47:07):
he was like some sort of somewhat known comic. But
he'd been around long enough and was popular enough and
people were into it. And then suddenly here we are,
what does he have like eight million subscribers or something
crazy like that.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, no, So I would listen to that, and then
you started doing yours, and then I was on yours.
I don't if it was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one,
but it was still we were still wearing masks when
I was in the old Smart Start studios exactly.
Speaker 5 (47:36):
We tried to keep that going as long as possible,
and because we were doing so many of them in person,
the amount of chlorine windecks that I pose that place
down with every day, because I mean, did you ever
end up getting COVID?
Speaker 1 (47:51):
I did, yeah, early early twenty twenty one one time.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
Yep, only one time here as well, and it sucked.
And I was like, yeah, so now I got through
like what I felt like was the beef of it,
and so I might have gotten a little lax. And
then one day I felt like shit, I took the
little tome test.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
I'm like, damn it.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Although being able to send a picture of that to
your boss and be like see you in five days,
you know that that part did that part didn't break
my heart, But it was a different time. Man had
it really been that long since you've been on the podcast, it.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, because it was
definitely in the you know, probably later.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Twenty twenty early twenty one. Yeah, I don't think it's
been a bit.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But then so I don't know what I was on
if I had started this podcast or not.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
But my point is between the mayor and thing and
being on your podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
And my deepen grained desire to be a radio DJ,
that's kind of what brought this on. And and to
your point, you know, you kind of get into a code.
What am I getting into? But it was during COVID
I had nothing to do, and you know, within two
or three episodes, I had Jody Stevens from a big
star on and I'm like, well, this is fun as hell,
(49:01):
so I'm gonna continue to do this. So I was
doing them weekly for probably two years. Then I stopped it.
Much as you were saying, it got to that point
where I'm just like, there's just I got too much
going on. It's hard to maintain this, and so I
stepped away from it for probably a couple of years
at this point. And then I was tentative because I'm like,
(49:22):
I know how I am when I go in, I'm
all in and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know.
It's not like I'm like, yeah, just just gonna have
a little bit of that, you know. It's now so
knowing myself, I was a little worried about getting wrapped
up into it too much, but I had I reached
out to Dan Murphy from formerly a Soul Asylum, and
I had him on and of course once you, like
(49:44):
you said, once you're in that conversation, you're like, oh, yeah,
this is why I love doing it. It was fun nerding
out over music, hearing people's stories, the connection and really
the the hour you talk is the easy part. Usually
it's u the editing and getting everything going. That's the uh,
that's where all the time goes well.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
And the ones, the ones that I hate, are the
ones that are so good and that you really feel like.
I keep, you know, I keep doing a little side
looking over at the clock to see where we're supposed
to be. All leading research indicates that after forty five minutes,
even if they like the guests, even if they like you,
most people have sort of reached their saturation point and
I look over and I'm like, oh shit, we're in
(50:26):
an hour and ten, but I feel like the conversations
just getting started. So the number of my podcasts that
are like where I end by saying, please promise you'll
come back, because I mean, you know, sometimes it's hot
out the gate, and other times it takes a little
while to warm up, or other times you finally find
that juicy nugget you were trying to find towards the
(50:47):
end and you're like, no, no.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
No, there's more, there's more, and then it's.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, well, I had Kevin my the longest one I
had this hilarious. It was Kevin Salem from Dump Truck
and he played with Yola Tango for a while and
he had great solo records and has done everything.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Great guy.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
He's a producer. He actually introduced me to Mike Doty.
So when I had Dody on, it was from Kevin.
He's like, yeah, you want to talk to Dody and
I'm like sure. He's like, let me email him, and
then he emailed me back and he had copy Doty
on it and he's like, yeah, he's in and I'm
like all right, and Doty actually I don't know if
you listen to that one.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
But he talked about Rev on there.
Speaker 5 (51:23):
Soul Coughing was essentially our house band at REV one,
Like we had a couple bands that came by on
the regular. Everclear was another one, but Soul Coughing, I
mean we did multiple events with them. There's the support
that REV gave that band here, more copies of Ruby
Vroom and Irresistible Bliss here than they did in their
(51:46):
own native New York And so, you know, I mean
like it speaks to the fact that if somebody puts
their weight behind something, it can work.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Did you know that Greg Ecklyn, to the former drum
of Everclear, lives here.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yeah, he's here, so that might be a good guess
for you. I had him on a couple of years ago.
He's an interesting guy. He had some funny stories about,
you know, coming up with the ever Clear drum beat,
you know the one, and he's like, heart would be like,
all right, I got a new song, and he's like,
I'd be playing something different.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
He's like, no, do that drum beat you did on
the other thing, and he goes.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
I found myself playing festivals playing the same drum beat
on five songs in a row doom.
Speaker 4 (52:27):
Yeah, if it's working, If it's working, you know, I mean,
he's a riot, but that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, Kevin Salem though, I first time meeting the guy,
and it was over you know, the podcast. I think
it ran. We started at nine pm. I think we
ended around two or three am.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Just kept going. We were just hitting it off. So
that one's a two parter.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
I was just like, I like, I liked all the
whole conversation.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
Well, if there's enough meat on the bone, then do it.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
I just you know, And so I I just I'm
always trying to an hour to me is supposed to
be the cap, but.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Of course there are tons. We went well over an hour.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Oh yeah, And so I had to even with the
two parter, I had to do some pretty massive chopping
because there was just so much there. But so now,
like like you said, because I know of the work
that's going to come on the back end of this thing,
usually I'm like.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Oh Jesus, thing's going a little long. It's the back end,
damn it. But I you know, if it's really good,
I keep them going so well.
Speaker 5 (53:30):
I mean it's also good content though, Like I mean,
you know, you want to have it to work with,
and yeah, I in order to avoid as much of
that as possible because good editing. I don't know if
you know Tommy Mishki at all.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Oh, I've been on his show one hundred years ago,
back when.
Speaker 5 (53:46):
Okay saying, but that guy puts more effort into editing
and post production than anyone I've ever met. We Sean
and I in an effort to keep that to a
relative man, we do everything in our power to make
it feel like a radio show, right, I mean, and
so like unless something truly terrible happens, or something somebody
(54:10):
didn't want or whatever, we don't. I mean, we'll you know,
top and tails, but we don't really do a ton
of editing.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Well, I'll tell you what, The production would be a
lot better if Mark was involved in this, because, like
I said, I'm gonna spit this thing out. He's going
to be like, you know, get that tone a little
better on that. So what's what's the plan then for
the podcast? You're keeping that thing rolling for the time being,
you still enjoy doing it after three hundred plus episodes.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
I do enjoy doing it. Yeah, No, three ages getting
recorded tomorrow. As it stands right now, being recently unemployed,
it's my only current source of income other than the
one day of the week at the record store. So
we'll definitely keep it going. You know, there's been some
talk about expanding it, like you on your podcast get
some truly noteworthy national quality guests.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Ours.
Speaker 5 (55:04):
You know, when people when it first started, people like,
what's your podcast about, I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
Music and stuff. I didn't know.
Speaker 5 (55:10):
I didn't have a clear mission statement. And over time,
you know, whether we're talking to musicians, which is the
bulk of the guests, or we're talking to a local
author or entrepreneur or whatever the case may be. We
decided to make the podcast sort of hyper local. I mean,
we've had some national quality stars on, but we you know,
(55:33):
Sean and I both being denizens of South Minneapolis and
longtime supporters of the area and this place, and you know,
the state that we call home, the city that we
call home, whatever the case is, and so that's kind
of become the focus. Doesn't mean we've turned down a
sweet national level guest if we get one, but that's
(55:54):
that's never really been the priority. So We're going to
keep doing what we do right now, and we're going
to kind of keep trying tell the stories of the
place that we live, because again, it's like hearing the
story of how a great album was recorded, or you know,
like asking someone where they came from or how they
got into music or what their process is like.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
To me, that's become the fascinating stuff. Man. I call
it the connective tissue. I love it.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
So yeah, absolutely, the podcast is going to continue. It
is The Brian Oak Show. You can find it on Spotify,
Apple and Idea and yeah, we just we have it's
largely musicians, but there's there's a little bit of other
stuff on there as well.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
It's fun because, like I have specifically it's musicians. I
had Weezer's tour manager. He didn't say anything bad about Weezer. Yeah,
I was hoping for some good River stories, but he
wouldn't go there. Because I've known many people who've met
the man and there are some interesting stories about.
Speaker 5 (56:54):
Oh, I've got some great Weezer stories including I don't
know if it's the same guy you talked to, but
Weezer's road manager. I once watched possibly the greatest backstage
fight between an organizer and a manager than I've ever
seen when they played at Basilica one year, and wow,
it gave the impression that Weezer might be a little
(57:16):
pampered and are used.
Speaker 4 (57:18):
To getting exactly what they want. I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 5 (57:23):
As diplomatically as possible, because that manager, it wasn't like
making a reasonable argument. He immediately went to Defcon one
and we're gonna shut this whole thing down, and this
is gonna happen. It's like, okay, okay, okay, we'll figure
it out. Settle down, settle down. So yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Know how many years ago is that.
Speaker 4 (57:45):
Oh you gotta think for a second here, when did
Weezer headline the Basilica.
Speaker 5 (57:52):
I'm gonna have to look it up. I don't remember.
I mean minimum of ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (57:56):
So this wasn't the new guy because he's been doing
it for eight Okay.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
Yeah, So this guy used to be the road manager
for a Whiskey town so he had to deal with
Ryan Adams on a daily basis.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
I've got a great Ryan Adams story, actually Ryan Adams.
So Ryan Adams reputation preceded him obviously, you know, getting
called Brian Adams and leaping foot first into the audience
and kicking the shit.
Speaker 4 (58:28):
Out of somebody. And he was kind of a pretty
standard story of problems with drugs and alcohol. And so
then I found out he was coming into studio see
it said, he's ninety seven, this wonderful institution of quietude,
normally filled with the likes of indigo girls or freelance
(58:49):
whales or whoever. I was like, I was so ethic scared.
Oh my god, I was scared.
Speaker 5 (58:56):
I'm like, say, say one wrong thing and this guy
is going to jack you up.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
And so I'm like, all right.
Speaker 5 (59:03):
So I was did extra prep, got all my questions ready,
all kind of respectful, none leading, none weird, nothing controversial.
And apparently he had recently sobered up and I didn't
know that though, And he could not have been more
charming and funny and excellent. He was fucking great. But
(59:23):
I have I have heard people tell stories about thank
you very diplomatically, put, very diplomatically. Put two more.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Questions before we wrap. And you've interviewed a lot of people.
I have over the years of listening quite a few
of them. Who was what was your favorite interview that
you've had.
Speaker 5 (59:46):
Wow, that's tough, man, because sometimes they are incredible insights
from bands that you love, like rim or U two
and I've interviewed both those bands or at least members
of both those bands, Nice and so and so you're
at level where you're like, this is I mean, this
is like the kind of stuff you read in books
or in Rolling Stone magazine, right, like rock history. But
(01:00:09):
then there are other times where someone tells a great
story or drops a performance on you and then goes
into a great story. Man, one favorite one, I don't
know if I can narrow it down to one, but
I'm gonna tell you that Brandy Carlisle is one of
the coolest people I've ever been in the same room with.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
In my entire life. She was brilliant.
Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
Matt Nathan said, you know what's weird, So you've interviewed
people before, lots of them as well. Much like you
don't get to pick what you love, there's never a
count you can't really ever account even if you're a
decent person an affable fellow like you are, every once
in a while you're just gonna hit it off with
someone and they're gonna feel like old friends. The first
(01:00:54):
time you meet them. Singer songwriter Matt Nathanson and I
the very first time he sat down with me. Within
five minutes we were like old friends. And then he
came back to Cities. He became our house guy for
a while. He was there for lots of events and
lots of performances. Love love, love that dude.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Friend of mine's producing his new record by the way.
Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
Really yeah, Nathanson is one of the coolest dudes I've
ever met in my whole life, you know, and for
I'm sure a lot of people are like boring white
American singer songwriter. That dude, Oh my god, I would
go on vacation with that dude right there.
Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
You know.
Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
Another great interview I had, and I interviewed her twice,
and this is going to be something of an upsetter,
something of a shocker. Yoko ono ah. Now, both were phoners,
so I never sat down with her in person.
Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
She was cool as hell, man. She was she was quiet, she.
Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
Was extremely sharp, very intelligent, she was clever. I remember
the whole time thinking like, how why does she care
who's but she was completely engaged to me. That's the
whole bit, right, Like a lot of people come in
to do press or promo and they're just not in
the fucking mood.
Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Oh, who's that, dickhead.
Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
La Montaigne, Yes, I heard that one. I felt very
bad for you that day.
Speaker 5 (01:02:27):
He was he was one and again like, I understand
you don't feel like doing press or promo. He was
literally like a fully grown three year old in the
middle of a tantrum at fucking kmart during the entire thing,
And I'm like, I'm asking the safest, most innocuous questions
you could imagine. And at one point he jumps up
on the chair with his feet and he puts his
(01:02:47):
hands over his ears.
Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
And just goes la la la la L.
Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
So I guess my point is, you know, like, no,
you don't want to do press, but you're doing it
for a reason. You're either on the way up, you're
on the way down, and the labels on you. So
give us your ten best minutes. You're not going to
be here all day. We're not trying to be pals.
You don't have to sing the Friday morning fart song.
Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
Just give us, give us ten good minutes, because you're
not doing yourself any favors by being a dickhead. Just
give me a few minutes.
Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
You know, tell the story, play the song, all smile
and nod, We'll all clap and everyone gets to go home.
So I like it when when artists are engaged. The
Irish band the script. They were brilliant. All three of
them were way into it. There have been so many
good ones.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Over the years.
Speaker 5 (01:03:36):
Oh sweet Dolores o'reard and may she rest in peace.
The Cranberries were fucking exceptional. Johnny Marr was coming through
on a solo thing and he popped by this like
that was my first one I ever did at Cities.
Yet I can't pick a favorite man because there's too
many of them. I've probably forgotten a great number of them,
(01:03:58):
and they all have their different charms. They're different things
that I guess still occupy a place in my mind.
Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
All right, and one more question before we wrap, And
I asked a similar question to the Uh to Thomas,
the Weezer tour manager, because I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
Go on, so.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
You're a music guy.
Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
Obviously I like music.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
You like music, Go into a show one moment, first
thing that comes to your mind, best show you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Oh no, I know exactly what it is.
Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Back in the late nineties, when I was working at
Zone one oh five Miller Beer, which was spending a
tremendous amount of money and basically keeping the entire fucking
industry afloat at that point with all their various brands,
they started something called the Miller Blind Date, where the
premise was people would all go to this location, nobody
would know who the band was, and boom, big surprise,
(01:04:55):
and you know, of course they ply you with free
Miller Lite and all that kind of stuff, and it
was it's a radio guy. I got to go to
a couple of them, and I even got to go
to one in Ireland, which was just okay.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
The best show of.
Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
My life was a Miller blind date in Chicago at
the VIC Theater. The VIC Theater is about two thirds
the size, maybe half the size of First Avenue somewhere
right around there, big prominence that comes off the front
of the stage, so you've got kind of people on
the floor and there is an upper level, but it's
not huge, and nobody knew who it was, and people
kept saying, well, you're.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
The radio guy, you know who it is. I mean,
it's not like that. I'm like, nobody's saying a fucking word.
I have no idea who it is.
Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
And the next night in Chicago, the Rolling Stones are
going to be playing live, and someone said they saw
Ron Wood or somebody upstairs, and we're like, holy fuck,
what if the Rolling Stones played here? Well it turned
out to be even better than the Rolling Stones playing there.
So the opening act was Chemical Brothers, and I like
Chemical Brothers a lot, but watching Techno live it's basically
(01:05:56):
just two dudes doing this behind a huge bank of equipment.
While the dat tape role, you're not playing anything bros.
Although it was high energy and it was fun. Then
there's a little transition time. All the free beer is
coming out. I don't even like beer, but someone's pouring
free beer down your throat. You drink free beer, and
you get in the space and so this yeah again Chicago,
And there are balloons or these weird little balloon shaped
(01:06:19):
objects all the way up and down this promenade that
sticks off the stage and all the way around, and
all of a sudden, these weird distorted faces are being
projected on it, and the music starts. Guitar player walks out,
and if at that time I'd been paying closer attention.
Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
I would have recognized the guitar player, didn't know who
it was.
Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
And then this young female, out youngish female, black bass
player comes out, and she's bald headed, and she's just
walking up, comfortable as can be, strutting on the bass,
and I'm like, I know who that is. And of
course now I can't think of her name, but I'm like,
I and so again, semi drunk, turned around to my wife,
(01:06:56):
I'm like, and also in my eyes went wide as
I remembered who was and I turned around because my
wife was pointing at the stage that I was looking
at her, and outwalks.
Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
David Bowie.
Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
In a fucking white linen suit with this most impossible
smile on his face because he's at a gig where
there's nothing at stake. He's a beloved superstar, and I
can only imagine the size of the check that Miller
wrote him to show up and play ninety minutes of music.
Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
And so he was cool, he was confident, he was
telling stories. I was literally at the base of that
presidium or I.
Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
Don't even know what you call the thing that sticks
out from the stage. I'm ten feet away from David
fucking Bowie, my all time favorite, and then he starts
diving into songs. He played some hits, but he started
diving into songs. I never thought i'd hear live in
my life like he did. Be my wife. He did
five years. I still can't believe it acts happened. I've
(01:08:00):
seen Bowie a half dozen times prior to his death,
but this one, because it was so close, so intimate
and entirely unexpected, I've never seen anything like it, and
so I'll never ever forget it. By far, the best
show I ever saw. This is gonna be ninety eight
(01:08:20):
or ninety nine David Bowie at the VIC Theater in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Beautiful, beautiful, Oh.
Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
Honest to god, man, I mean you know those moments.
You mean it's also great.
Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
Like if I had known it was Bowie, I would
have gone in with very high hopes, and that still
would have been great. But that feeling when having seen
as much live music as you have, and as I have,
that feeling when you go in not knowing who someone
is and getting your fucking socks rocked off. You You
went in't expecting nothing, and even if it's just pretty good,
(01:08:51):
it's still great, you know, I mean I think about,
like like Gully Boys, Midwest music festivals coming up in
a month or a month and a half. And the
very first time I went to the Midwest Music Festival, I'm.
Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
Like Gully Boys.
Speaker 5 (01:09:05):
I heard a couple of people talk about him, didn't
know anything about him, and they were fucking spectacularly good,
and so like, I went in knowing nothing and they
blew my mind. So what about you, what's the best
show you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Geez, you know, feed not so easy now, No, no,
this is you know I'm supposed to do that to you.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Well, I'm obviously a prince guy, so I've.
Speaker 4 (01:09:25):
Got a no shame in that game, prince.
Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
You know, first time I saw him, I was weeping
at Purple Rain, Like it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Was like, I'm never going to see him.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
He played the Fargo Dome the only time he ever
played in North Dakota ever, which is hilarious because he's
three hours away from the border. This was ninety seven
or ninety eight, Yeah, and incredible. And then when I
moved here three weeks later, it was the Mill City
Music Festival, downtown, people hanging off the fire escapes and
everything you remember probably there for that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(01:09:58):
so definitely Prince and then the Replacements that it riot
fested Chicago was mind blowing like they were.
Speaker 4 (01:10:08):
They were.
Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
There are some goofy moments, but they were there to rock.
In the minute they kicked into taking a ride, you
blew backwards about twenty feet, So.
Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
Holy sorry, Ma, Sorry Ma.
Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
Is one of the great punk rock missives of all time,
not just because I'm Minnesota, not because I'm a homer.
Speaker 4 (01:10:26):
You put on sorry Ma forgot to take out the trash.
Speaker 5 (01:10:29):
It's blistering and intense and intelligent and clever in a
way that almost no other band of the time was.
And no so taking a ride, Oh my god, customer
going downtown trouble.
Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Oh I'm in trouble. It's hilarious and it rocks.
Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
That's what I meant about intelligent, like these are. These
are beautiful punk rock. Vince told in this shambolic, dangerous,
about to lose the rails kind of way that I
think that that's what made them what they are. That
you know, I never saw them back in the day.
I missed it by that much. But I did go
(01:11:06):
to Coachella one year because Pixies were playing Queens of
the Stone Age was playing and replacements were playing, and
about three songs in, they were all dressed in matching
suits except for Paul, and about three songs in, wearing
a matching suit came out Billy Joe Armstrong from Green
and the aw.
Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Those clips Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
And Billy Joe Armstrong looked like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 4 (01:11:28):
He was he was levitating.
Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
He was so excited that he was up on stage
playing with the replacements in front of one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
It was that was a nuts night.
Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Brian Oak from The Brian Oaks Show, Iconic Twin Cities
radio DJ legends, music lover, great guy, really fun.
Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
It was really a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
To turn the tables a bit. As I mentioned, I
appeared on his podcast, The Brian Oak Show, which you
should really check out.
Speaker 6 (01:12:01):
And uh and uh.
Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
I got to turn the tables and and ask him
some questions which ended up being a really fun time
learning about his his journey through radio and the ups
and downs of being in that industry and the guy's
intense love of music and enjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
We'll see you next time at the Figure Eights podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Signing off Studio twenty four. Spend leet have a great.
Speaker 6 (01:12:33):
We are will stop you've been going. Listen, stop that
(01:13:01):
you've been going and all.
Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
So long you would take it to keep father wasted him.
Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
It's hardy stay. She doesn't help go class, she doesn't
(01:13:32):
need much. Hell, let you tell anything you have to cap.
Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
She likes a man.
Speaker 6 (01:13:38):
I can yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
I've been chasing the knife all the rest of the life.
Speaker 6 (01:13:47):
I don't have must choice of the man. You too,
go glose man.
Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Stop that there.
Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
You been going from the days.
Speaker 6 (01:13:59):
I mean, listen, so rises stop like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
You can't call it. No, so no, you just don't take.
Speaker 6 (01:14:13):
Call list it's all.
Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
You can't calling calling me. You can calling calling me,
you just talking.
Speaker 6 (01:15:07):
You can take you just ta t blave me. You
can to do lad me. You can come t me.
Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
You be probably
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!