Podcasting - A New Direction

An Epiphany... Podcast!

Thanksgiving

I haven't written a blog post for WA in a very long time. In fact, I haven't been very active on the community at all until very recently. However; I have been quietly trying out a few different projects with mixed results. Then, shortly after Thanksgiving of this year (2018), I had an epiphany.

It was a small Thanksgiving dinner. My sister and her husband, her daughter, two friends from out of town and me. During the dinner conversation, I asked my sister how her new podcast was going. She's a psychologist and, along with another psychologist friend of hers, had started a podcast about psychology and social justice. She told me it was going okay and we talked a little bit about my interview (yes, I did an episode about the gig economy). I think it airs on December 18th. Her podcast is called "Shrinks on Third" in case you're interested.

Anyway, then she told me her daughter is doing a podcast, too, with her friends - and they have abouty 5000 followers. Wait... What?? Oh, yes - podcasts abound, and they can be about pretty much anything.

After dinner, we all just watched some TV and talked some more before going our seperate ways. But that whole podcast thing. That got stuck in my head like peanut butter does, to the roof of your mouth. Over the next few days, it began to marinate.

I mean, here I am, an internet guy, building websites since before my sister new the difference between a browser and her desktop. Her daughter wasn't even born yet. And I'M the one without a podcast???!!

So, if I was to have a podcast, what would I talk about? What do I know about more than anyone else. What could I contribute to the world that would be relevant and helpful? And then it dawned on me.

Tales of the Road Warriors

Tales of the Road Warriors is a section of my very first website "Li'l Hank's Guide for Songwriters". I basically had built the site just to learn HTML duing the early days of the internet. It went on to become a very popular resource at the time, but it's pretty outdated now, having been replaced by sites run by the larger songwriter organizations such as ASCAP and BMI, or TAXI.

But Tales of the Road Warriors is a niche that is all about what I know and who I know. After all, "a road warrior" is basically anyone who is or has ever been (to quote my own site), "...on the road, in hotels, motels, performing in venues of any size, toured with a band, travel the country doing house concerts, play local gigs from tribute bands, cover bands, back up bands, one-man-bands…" Over the course of many years as a working musician, I have been a part of so many great stories, met so many interesting people and fellow road warriors with stories of their own. And so it hit me. I'm going to get those stories and use my podcast to share them with the world.

A New Direction

As of this writing, I have recorded conversations with four people. I plan to debut the first on in mid January. There is so much to do and I still have an awful lot to learn, but one thing I do know, it's not that diffrent from blogging and in fact is a great way to bring more traffic to the blog. A podcast website basically IS a blog, but instead of calling it a blog, we call them show notes. So, I secured the domain and have already built a partial site. Thing is, I started the site just before Wordpress 5 became officially released, so know I'll have to save what I have done so far, install WP 5 and be ready for the new year.

Because this Road Warrior is just getting started. A new direction, A new road!