When I was young a dog food company ran a promotion to win a large amount of money if you found a recording on (an otherwise blank) cassette tape that they had included in a thin plastic shield within the dog food bag. Now, as an adult, I think of what an odd promotion that really was, but the 6 year old me thought it was nothing short of amazing. My brother and I would frantically tear open the dog food bags to retrieve the tapes - our dog loving the scattered chaos we left behind...
Needless to say, none of the tapes we retrieved had the insta-rich message on it, but for us it contained something more valuable - blank space to create.
We recorded everything. My brother set up a portable studio in the bathroom so he could record himself singing in the shower for better acoustics and a second boom box so he could cut over and record the hits from top 90's at 9:00, and his blooming love of punk music like The Clash. I preferred a more NPR approach, giving hard-hitting interviews to my Cabbage Patch dolls and putting Ken in the hot seat to see if he was really ready to settle down with Barbie before I invested my birthday money in buying her dream house. I was Ira Glass, and this was my American life.
So it was indeed full-circle to sit down again in front of the microphone, he and I, almost 25 years later. He has his own radio show now. One that actually can be heard outside of our house. He's still stringing his far-flung musical tastes together in the way that only he can, mixing the old with the new. I'm still pursuing story and the ways that it matters to us as a community at large.
It was an treat to sit down and introduce one of the Storycatchers Live stories for our on-air premiere segment.
Thank you to my brother Cory for giving us space on his show 'Soul of the Song' and 91.1 The Avenue.
Listen in live tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 10:00cst on the radio or stream it HERE.
