Continuing the goal of being friends with our favorite musicians

by Ryan Buynak

I can't believe we are here. Season 4! 2024! Almost 200 episodes! Holy hell! What started as a drunk idea to somehow bother (and befriend) our favorite musicians has evolved into a sobering mission of DIY doing-what-you-love.

Track 1:

Adventure. Excitement. A podcaster craves not these things.

Why do we do this? I get asked this question in a roundabout way all the time.

The only answer: It’s fun.

The audio sucks. The guests are all over the place. But we are happy so shut up.

It’s fun for the musicians, too.

Most bands and/or musicians have done the same interviews a million times, so if we can talk about shapes of pasta for two minutes, segue into Bridget Fonda flicks, and then organically move into a funny talk about mental health…we feel like people are pumped to talk about weird stuff, because it breaks down walls. Our goal with the dumb questions is to talk about something they’ve hopefully never talked about before or at least bring some new nuance to it.

Track 2:

Not monetizing it!

Every day, one of my wayward friends will approach me with some social media scheme to boost the pod, get more followers, yada yada yada (take a drink for every Seinfeld reference you hear on the podcast). But that stuff makes it a job and jobs are no fun. This is a passion project of the purest kind.

Track 3:

A podcast for music junkies by music junkies.

Our voice is as if Jordan Peele and Tina Fey had a baby and that baby only gave a shit about music, but our target audience is 13 year old punk girls in 1996. And just like a 13 year old punk girl in the 90s, our only real goal is to be friends with our favorite bands and musicians.

In short, our target audience is us.

Track 4:

Canadians and Comedians!

From iconic comedians like Fred Armisen and David Cross to the crossover Canadians Barenaked Ladies (shoutout Kevin Hearn!), we have run the gamut of unique guests. Our only requirement is playing and/or living music.

Track 5:

Always think, what would David Bowie do?

When we started this thing, I remember telling a friend (who shall remain nameless) that I was starting a music podcast and he said “Why? There are so many podcasts!”

What a terrible response, right? Now, he isn’t a dream killer, he is just afraid that more is possible. It’s vulnerable to make something you care about public. It’s even more vulnerable to do something just for the sake of doing it. Sure we would love Spotify to give us some Joe Rogan money (we’d rather laugh it up with Conan O’Brien), but as you are pursuing something worthwhile, don’t let anyone or anything suppress you.

In the grand scheme of podcasts, barely anyone listens to ours, but we do it every fucking week because Abby and I (shout to Enid, too) love it. And it is still fun, so we are going to keep going (we are in our ‘fuck it, let’s keep going’ era), hopefully snag a big fish (*cough* Taylor *cough*) or even a medium fish (*cough* Adam Duritz *cough*).

And one day it will organically come to the end, but just like this week’s guest Adam Green has written in his guide about becoming an artist, you have to think a certain way…

In the arena of achievement, consistency is the undisputed champion, the thing that separates the contenders from the pretenders.