On The Road Again: Revisiting Our Podcasting Roots!

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Listen to the Sean Sean Geek Sean Geeking podcast. Yeah, you got it, folks. It's me again with a little aptitude for all you out here in white bread land.

Let's see, we're on 92fm and it feels like a nice clean little band so far. No one else is using it. The price is right. Don't you find it crusty Dave?

Speaker B: 00:00:26

This is bigger than friendship.

Speaker A: 00:00:28

This is what you call cosm and the Buddhists call it, let me see.

Speaker B: 00:00:35

Reincarnation.

Speaker A: 00:00:37

Mushy, mushy. Hey, wait a minute. Since when is Pismo beach inside a cave, I wonder.

Speaker B: 00:00:49

You know, I just think we should have turned left at Albuquerque and then maybe a right turn at La Jolla.

Speaker A: 00:01:08

Shush. Hush, please.

Speaker B: 00:01:10

All right, There was requests for this, so I'm going to do this right now. Going through the old episode catalog as we prepare to relaunch.

Not relaunch, but basically we're taking a little holiday just to get some business in order. Lots of behind the scenes stuff.

One of the things that popped up during my homework phase in between episode recordings is that OTR was a very popular segment on this show. Very incredibly popular segment on this show. I decided I'm going to start revisiting these. But here's the thing.

When we were doing these OTR episodes or on the road episodes, they were purposely done with the intent that the technology that was out at the time when we were doing this, keep in mind, this is like, you know, 10 years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago, something like that, when we were doing these. And the technology we had at the time is nowhere near the technology we have nowadays to record. So I was recording in my vehicle into my phone.

This is how it was back in the old days, folks. This is how we did things. And at a certain point, as Todd and I were.

As Todd became the official co host of the show, I would do these call ins from the road to Todd. Todd would be in studio, I would be on the road and I would call in and I would record these.

Now I will say there was something great about doing that. It was negatives, it was positives. The positives, the positives were Todd and I always had time for each other.

You know, he, you know, I think he was at home, he'd done eating dinner. And then I would call on my way home from work because he got home way earlier than I did and I could just call him.

And we had the time for the phone call. It didn't really get in the way of anything. And honestly, I probably could have put two episodes out a week back then. Editing was not really a thing.

You know, we recorded what we had. I would insert a theme song.

One of our previous theme songs previously was Flying was the one of the theme songs and another one a composition I had done. Two separate compositions I had done, which we use as the intro to the show.

I might have tagged beginning of the show with one of our own in house ads for our own show with myself doing myself, Todd and Cora geek doing impersonations of celebrities promoting our show. So the editing was minimal. The content was a lot. We were able to do a lot of content. The turnover time was very, very quick, which was pretty good.

And another pro of this was being current with things. Sometimes we release episodes that were recorded two, three, four weeks ago. So there is something about being current. Sometimes it doesn't matter.

Sometimes it does matter. So that was an advantage. But the biggest thing that people said they liked about the show at that time was that it was very raw, it was very live.

So anyway, the, the nature of it was that shit is gonna happen, motherfucker. You know, while I'm driving, if somebody cuts me off. Random thought. The thing is, when you're driving, your brain is in a different mind space.

You're concentrating on the road, you're concentrating on the people around you, and random thoughts will pop into your head that wouldn't pop into your head if you're in front of a monitor screen. Whatever.

You're not having the same sorts of thoughts pop into your head now to equate that into other things, into other worldly things not related to podcasting. I generally come up with my best songwriting ideas when I'm driving. You know, you're. You're hearing the, the rhythm of the road, if you will.

The, the. The imperfections of the road create a beat. The.

The motorcycle in front of you that has a really shitty muffler that drowns out every other sound around you.

That sound, you know, that rhythm of that sound could be a guitar riff, you know, so there's a lot of squirrel things that are happening and you can hear them and they influence what you're going to talk about as a podcast, as it would. Writing ideas in terms of music, writing ideas in terms of, you know, just fiction writing.

All my best ideas have always come when I'm driving, so it really impacts the content live while we're recording the podcast on the road. So I'm going to release this in a different way because I think the other thing to keep in mind is the.

So those are all the pros, the on the Road episodes. The cons were, were always the sound quality. Always a con, always a problem. One person's louder than the other.

For example, it was recording back then. Because of the technology, it was recording out to a single audio file. So if two of us were talking initially, there was one audio file.

And if Todd was louder than me, well, then Todd was louder than me. If I was too quiet, while I was too quiet, if the ambient noise was too much, well, the ambient noise of the car was too much.

Later, we adapted to that mode of recording the podcast in that Todd was in the studio, and Todd would have two separate tracks. He'd record. One track would be his, one track would be mine. And on my end, I could isolate my track. So if I needed to turn myself up, I could.

So, guys, this is gorilla podcasting at its best because we were learning on the fly how to do things. There was no instruction manuals on how to do a podcast. There's so many queries on threads or Facebook or Reddit on, you know, how do I do this?

How do I do that? There's so many resources on how to podcast.

If we were starting a podcast, now would be so much easier, but we would be going into a market that is flooded with content, so it'd be very easy to lose your. Your moment. It'd be hard to build any momentum with the Enough.

There's so many negative, Negative teddies out there that say, well, you, you know, oh, there's too many. Too many podcasts in the marketplace. You know, do we really need another podcast?

And then on the podcaster side, the thing that you're inundated with nowadays that we weren't inundated with back then was, I bet you I can make your podcast better. First, $500 an hour. I will edit your podcast. We'll do your social media for you. I will produce your podcast. I will edit your podcast.

I will create images for your podcast. I will transcribe your podcast. All this bullshit stuff that comes out that is incredibly overpriced.

Now, I'm not saying the value of these people and the work they do is not worth the money, but that's like the equivalent in my brain of this is, look, you've got this great idea. You're going to help kids sharpen their pencils for them, right? You're going to do their photocopying for them. So you go to a school, right?

You go to school and you go to student look, you need some help with the administrative side of your homework and that sort of stuff.

How about you pay me and I will hole punch for you, I will put your stuff in a binder for you, I will make photocopies for you, I will do scans for you, and I'm gonna charge you $20 an hour for it. Well, look, you're asking a kid who's, you know, 8 years old to do the work for them. Do you think this child has an income? No, they don't.

So you're going after the wrong market. Same thing with podcasters. The people who think that podcasters make money and have money are. No, they don't.

But here is the thing, and this is the thought I wanted to put out there. See, this is. So this was not my plan when I recorded this. Again, just like I said, look, I'm on the road. I'm seeing things.

My brain is working on a different level. I'm getting different ideas as I'm driving. So here's.

Here's the thing that popped up, and I might have already lost my train of thought because I'm looking at the weather patterns in the sky ahead of me, and there is. Look, I ran the map to get home because of all this construction. I have no idea which way I'm supposed to go home every day.

It's different every day based on traffic patterns and everything else. And when I ran the map to go home today, it took me on an alternate route.

And there was a comment in there that said something along the lines of rerouting due to weather conditions. There's tornado warnings here in Winnipeg right now. Like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Okay, yeah. So what I was going to say was, so this.

So the podcasting. So all these people out there asking for money from podcasters to do their marketing, to do their Instagram page, to.

Speaker A: 00:12:37

Do their Facebook page, to do their editing, to do their video editing, to take care of this, take care of that. The prices they're charging is expensive. And I'm not saying their time is not worth it. Not at all.

But in this market that we're in, I've noticed there is a particular thing going on, not just in our market, but in every sort of market.

There is this fantasy that there is tons of disposable income, that if you are doing a hobby like podcasting or a hobby like making music, playing your music live and that sort of thing, there's this weird thing that the market believes that everyone is wealthy right now. It not a big deal. To drop $800 for a concert ticket, not a big deal.

To go fly to New York to go see a band play, to, to have a 200% increase in the price of your streaming service or your gaming service like an Xbox or PlayStation. There's, we all have tons of money and the market can totally bear 200% increases on things or in terms of concert tickets, way more than 200%.

You know, to be able to be able to go see a concert for 50 bucks. And now the starting price is 250. The lowest starting price, at least in Canada is 250 for a concert ticket.

Unless you're going to, not a secondary venue, not a third level venue, but a fourth or fifth level venue. Unless you're seeing them in that environment.

If you're seeing people in a concert hall or a theater or whatever, the pricing on that stuff is ridonkulous. It's super high and I'm trying to mercury this is not easy.

So there's this fantasy that there's tons of money in disposable income for people who do artistic pursuits. They think. Now here's the logic is flawed.

So it's the people that are marketing towards podcasters are the same people marketing to the general consumer that wants to go see a concert. So they're targeting the opposite market for the same price value. So if I am touring, people are not paying for the general artist.

People are only paying to see the highest level artist, the 200, 300, 400, $2,000 concert tickets.

There's this strange crazy assumption that these artists that are getting paid, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to tour just those artists that podcasters are in the same boat. There's podcasters of all levels. There's the fake podcasters, I like to call them.

Those are the celebrities that pay an editor, pay a marketer, pay a social media influencer. You know, these, these high level, like I'm looking at you, Dax Shepard, fucking dish rag. Fucking hate you.

You know, you've got your, you're floating on your wife's money and putting a podcast together and hiring the highest level people to put your show together instead of doing the work yourself. Want to do a podcast, but I want to put any of the work. And I'm just gonna hire a team around me, dude, and they're gonna do all the work for me.

Like that's what's happening right now. That's the, that's the market that these fucking horrible people that are chasing us podcasters hey, well, this is the going price, man.

Now this isn't the fucking going price. And here's the thing is they're saying, they're saying, well, this is my price. It's $50 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, whatever the heck it is.

Saying this is my price for the service I provide for you to edit your podcast or whatever, right? They're saying this is the going price.

But that is the going price for fucking celebrities who have too much money and can afford to drop 100k year to make their podcast. Right? That's the going price for that. But it's not a realistic price.

It's going to the, to the classroom, asking an 8 year old to shell out $100 an hour to do, to hole punch for them. It is the same equivalent. There's no money in podcasting. And there's this thing that's going on.

We talked about this before and I can't remember if we talked about it or maybe I heard it somewhere, I can't remember. This is possibly Pot of Thunder or one of those shows where, you know.

No, it's Cobras and Fire where they're talking about nepotism in the music industry. So we've got Stanley Simmons, which is the sons of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. They've got a project called Stanley Simmons.

They're making all these music videos, they're putting an album out. Like they're spending the money on getting their brand. They're doing the things you need to, they're spending lots of money to promote their band.

And hey, Stanley Simmons is getting talked about in headlines here. Like they've got, they get their daddy's money. And nowadays to succeed as an artist, you need to have money behind you to promote what you're doing.

And if you are just an artist that doesn't have any of those backings, that doesn't have any of those gifts, financial status, if you don't have any of that money behind you, you're not going to make it in the music industry.

You can't do the old look, we got a band, we wrote some, we have gear, you know, we have enough money to buy gear and we're gigging and we're playing and people are coming to see us and we play enough shows and we, we play the larger crowds, larger crowds. And we're touring, we're actually making money, we're making kind of a living. We're able, you know, quit our day jobs. We could do that now.

Now we're getting noticed. Hey, a Label just noticed us and signed us. That doesn't happen anymore. No, it's prepackaged stuff. Unless you're Stanley Simmons and you have money.

If you're Stanley Simmons, you have money. You can put money behind your product. You can use the money to open the doors that you need to open. Unless you're Nepo baby is the term.

But it is the only way the music industry is allowed to succeed.

They got behind Youngblood, the industry, they decided, hey, we're going to take this Youngblood kid and we're going to push him and we're going to put money. They decided that that's the product they want to endorse. But Youngblood would never made it on its own without. Without sponsorship.

It's sponsorship in terms of money, sponsorship in terms of pausing. I'm gonna put my name behind this guy. You know, that's the only way to make it now. You can't have talent and fucking grind.

You can't go out there and grind because you can't make any money touring, you are going to lose your shirt touring, you're going to have to take time off from your day job, which you need to have because you don't have an option. You need to have a day job.

So you're going to have to take holiday time unpaid, likely, because if you want to tour enough to get your name out there, you're going to have to take unpaid time to go tour and tour and lose money to get your name out there, you're going to go grind at a loss. You're going to have to either quit your day job and get another job when you come back from your tour, you're not going to.

If you're lucky, you break even on the tour. And by break even, I mean the driving expenses, the gas. Hey, gas is expensive. Now, folks, did you notice that?

Gas is really expensive and some of these venues are pay to play. That's right. Well, you have to guarantee us you're going to sell a thousand tickets at this 500 capacity venue.

So you're going to have to pay up front for some of these shows. It's a losing proposition. You need to have money to succeed.

And I think these people that are coming after our podcast asking for our money for marketing, for editing, for video editing, for Instagram likes, they are viewing it as. Look, if you're a pot, if you're. So here's the thing.

If you are, quote unquote, a serious podcaster that is a Nepo baby, or someone that has money that is willing to spend thousands of dollars on your podcast, hoping it takes off. That's who they're targeting. And if I'm not willing to play that game, I can't afford their rates. And I'm not a serious podcaster.

That's kind of the assumption. Just like, look, if you, if you truly, truly like music and you want to see your favorite bands, plural, hey, you need to come from money.

The only people that can afford the arts are millionaires. People that make six figure plus salaries per year are the only ones that can afford to go take in entertainment at a higher level.

That's not who music's fucking for.

Music's for the blue collar person, you know, the guy who works in a factory and makes, you know, maybe $10 above minimum wage or even makes only minimum wage. Music was for the blue collar people and it has now become music is only for the rich. Only the rich can afford to go see the music.

That's why I say support local bands and local venues. But unfortunately, you know, I can go to a venue and see five bands for 10 bucks, five bands for 20 bucks. Who's making money here? Nobody.

Nobody's making fucking money. You got to move tickets, but you can't move tickets unless people know who you fucking are. You got to grind. You got it.

You got to tour at a loss for several years. You got to support your, your band by having a day job and taking a loss for several years until you can maybe break even.

But if you're breaking even, who's making fucking money? How do you get to the next level? Oh, well, you take a loan. Take a hundred thousand dollar loan and, and, and pump money into your bed.

Who can afford to fucking do that? It's not. The market has to fucking break. And it's not just in podcasting, it's in, it's in everything we have. We don't need another Olivia Rodrigo.

We don't need another fucking Taylor Swift. We don't need another the Red Headed Irishman guy, whatever, Ed Sheeran. We don't need another Ed Sheeran. We don't need a bit, another Billie Eilish.

We need a hundred more Billie Eilishes that came from YouTube and made their career and did the grind and people took notice. We need a hundred more of those. We don't need another five fucking Maroon Fives. We don't need more. We don't need. I'm getting pissed off.

We don't need another fucking record label going. We need. We need another Taylor Swift. Let's Put some money behind this Olivia Rodrigo girl.

I know you write your own songs, but trust us, our instincts are better. You need to change your sound. What they fucking did to Katy Perry. She wrote songs on an acoustic guitar. She was a little folky, right?

She was doing her own music. Well, she gets noticed by a record producer. Hey, you know what? Your songs are pretty good, but there's too much guitar in them.

We need to add a fucking. Fucking dance beat. We need to get rid of your real drummer and use a fucking drum machine. Let's put some loops here. No, no, no, no, no.

You don't need to sing the chorus four times because the chorus is four times. We'll just loop shit through. We don't need to have music that sounds like music anymore.

They take someone who has something, and because it doesn't have something that came before, it's not any good if it's original. Well, where did fucking original ideas come from? Taylor Swift didn't come out of the, you know, out of nowhere.

But now everybody sounds like Taylor Swift. Let there be one Taylor Swift. Let there be one.

Olivia Rodrigo when she started, you know, find an artist that sounds great and let them be that fucking artist. Instead of trying to transform them to sound like everything else on the radio that's fucking disposable, let's put more onus on music.

I've noticed that a lot of the music on the radio today, I couldn't tell you what the music sounded like. I can tell you what the vocals sounded like. The music is a rehash of something else. I'm fucking stuck in traffic. This is pissing me off even more.

What the fuck is going on here? Look, I got rerouted because of the fucking storm and the traffic's not even fucking moving. The speed limit here is 80 kilometers a fucking hour.

I am going five, and then I stop for three minutes. Oh, I went 20. Oh, I went 20, and now I'm back down to zero. This is fucking ridiculous. So that's my rant.

Look, corporations that know nothing about fucking art. Oh, it's a fucking zipper merge. Where's the fucking sign for zipper merge? Fucking hell, Winnipeg. You know what? Eat my fucking ass.

This is fucking stupid. Fucking stupid zipper merge on a fucking highway. And you know what? There's no construction going on. There's guys walking around with signs.

I don't see anybody doing any fucking work. Un fucking believable. You know, in the old days, I would have been home 20 minutes ago. I'm not even halfway home. Un fucking Believable.

I hope it's Tony Greg sending me messages because I could use some cheering up. And that guy cheers me up. He's the shit. He's the guy. He's, you know, he's the man. He's the, you know, fucking chairman.

He needs to be the chairman of the Sean Geek and Fast Friend. Fast Friend podcast. The guy's aces, man. Cases. So hopefully this shit's recording. Hopefully my phone is not letting me down.

Hopefully this is happening, so I don't even know where it's going. Anyway, so these on the road episodes, I don't know if I should release these as actual episodes or not. The sound quality is going to be shit.

It's in my car, it's using an earbud. You're hearing ambient sound. It's not great. Maybe I'll put a poll out there and see what people want.

I mean, I was building up to a 597, 598, 599 to our 600th episode. I had some plans, but scheduling with the kids and stuff has been tough.

Abby's soccer season is heavy in June and I'm out doing soccer games multiple times a week. Lining up my only free nights with Todd or any of the other co hosts of the show has been difficult. So I don't know, I'm gonna put a poll.

Maybe I will release this as an episode. In other news, by the time this episode drops, those fuckers at Trailer behind the Metal Shop are making.

They're making moves on the Sean Geek podcast network. Yes, that's right. We have a podcast network, sort of. We decided that we gave those two guys over at Trailer behind the Metal Shop.

We gave them an opportunity, said, look, certain times, certain weeks that Todd and I can't seem to schedule an episode in, so if you would be so kind, these guys offered to say, hey, look, we can, we can, you know, we can fill in your holes in your schedule. And you know, they say, you know, we can record an episode.

We have this podcast idea, you know, running the podcast live, kind of live from, from their workplace, which I don't know how they get away with recording episodes while episodes of their show while they're at work. They shouldn't they be working? I don't know how they that shit off. But anyway, these two guys made it seem really enticing.

You know, says, well, you know, you guys don't seem to go into the heavy stuff too often. There's a market there and if they work off of our backs, me and Todd's backs, they can rest Court episodes of Trailer behind the Metal Shop. Okay.

They used to call themselves Metal Shop, and then they changed the name of the why. But, you know, they. Now they get a really long title. It sounds like, you know, like a Fiona Apple album title.

So anyway, so somehow they've been angled their own channel. So it's like, we help these fuckers get going, right? You know, here's what we can do for you. You know, like, you don't have to pay hosting fees.

You know, we'll just. We'll just. We'll just insert it as extra episodes. Then the next thing I know, they've got their own podcast channel.

I'm like, whoa, I thought you guys were gonna be filler episodes to give me and Todd a break. They said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're good. Thanks a lot.

So now they get their own fucking podcast channel, and now we don't have someone to fill in the holes. Well, that was the whole point. You guys were. You know, I don't know if the show is any good. I don't really want to listen to it.

I mean, like, fucking like Beavis and Butthead or something. But anyway, so apparently I got word through the grapevine. I got.

Rory messaged me, and he said, hey, just to give you guys a heads up, you know, we're gonna start having guests on our show. Guests on your show? Why are you having guests on your show? I thought it was just you guys in the shop. They were.

They're bringing on a big guest tonight, apparently. So when this episode here drops, Metal Shop will have released an episode already. And I don't know how they're turning.

Like, are they not editing their show? Like, I don't understand what's going on there, but apparently they're not editing their show. They just fucking put episodes out.

And they're on our fucking patreon, too. Like, I think nomenclature, the gnomen over there is like a bit of a hacker or something, you know? I guess when you're.

When you're using an old Windows 95 computer, there's special ways to hack I guess you can use or something, but I don't know. Holy fuck. It looks like this tornado is going to hit, man. The last time we had these exact weather conditions in F5 dropped.

And I don't mean fucking wrestling, whatever, wrestling, whatever the fuck that is. No, an F5 tornado dropped in a place called Eli. I think that's where it was.

The conditions were perfect for an F5 to drop whatever it was five years ago. Well, apparently the conditions are identical, so I was told not to take the perimeter highway on the way home, so.

Fuck, who is fucking messaging me like crazy here? I don't understand. Okay. Anyway, so, yeah, so I'm almost home. I'm probably gonna stop recording here. I'm gonna release this as an episode.

I don't know if it's long enough, but Todd and I are trying to plan our next episode. And like I said, Abby's soccer season is crazy. Maybe you get a couple of solo episodes, but we've got stuff planned. We got some big stuff planned.

We have some returning guests.

I'd like to do the returning guest after episode 600, ideally, so we could, you know, focus on Todd and I, because, I mean, you know, the show is me and Todd, right? So I'd like to make sure that Todd and I have a few episodes out before we bring people back.

I do want to bring up, though, for sure that you need to join our Patreon. We have a new patron on our patreon. That's Danny Pabst from Mixtapes from Hell. He's a long standing friend of the. Of the and the podcast rock show.

He and Dwayne, they are both phenomenal individuals and they get approached by Corey Morissette to do mixtapes from Hell. And I'm like, well, that's kind of a good idea, you know, even though the idea came from me and Todd, Ha ha ha.

We did a Cinderella episode and Cory said, I gotta do a Cinderella podcast. But then he came up with an alternate idea for a podcast to do Mixtapes from Hell.

So every season we'll be making a mixtape based on a particular band's output. How do you pick 16 songs, 17 songs for the ultimate mixtape. So they're doing Cinderella and he brought in Danny Pabst and Dwayne and fuck.

This show is quickly becoming a top three show for me. I love this show. I love the. I love how excited they are. They're just so excited to be recording a podcast. People out there in podcast lines.

Should I start a podcast? Yes, start a podcast if you're passionate. These two guys love. They can't believe they're recording a podcast every week. They're loving it.

They're having fun and joining a seasoned veteran like Corey, it's fucking. It's great. You know, you get one person who's been around the block a few times, and then you get two newbies that are just in love with the process.

I want to See more mentorships like this, you know, Corey Morissette giving these. Teaching these guys the ropes. Bring them in. Look, you co host the show with me.

I'll do the editing and whatnot, and I'll host it and all this sort of stuff, you know, and just let them have fun. Because you know what? If you infect people with that energy to make a podcast and do a podcast they love, it's not about the numbers.

It's not about that. It's not about being the number one podcast. It's not about that. It's about creating something.

Creating a show around a band that you absolutely love and love doing what you're doing. And trust me, when you enjoy what you're doing, people will hear it. People will enjoy it. Don't look for algorithm. Don't look for this.

The algorithm is if you enjoy doing what you do, people will come, people will show up, and I'm showing up. So thank you, Dwayne, newest patron on our Patreon.

I love how you use the simple recipe of enjoying what you love, loving your spouse and talking about your spouse endlessly on the show, and just honoring everything about what you love. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So thank you, Dwayne. Thanks to all our other patrons. That would be Sam. Let's see if I remember them all here.

Sam Thompson, Corey Morrissette, Kevin from Saskatoon, or Zeke from Speedy Creek. Ruby Ronald. George Moore, Tony Griggs. I probably missed somebody. Anyway, peace out. I am home. And just like the old on the road days, we're done.

See you guys on the flip side.

Speaker B: 00:37:36

Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week, and bye.

Speaker A: 00:37:42

Have a good day.