Behind the 20th Anniversary Podcast
Turning an Ambient Podcast into Sort of a Talkie Podcast
Mark Rushton’s Perseverance in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
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This week’s topics:
Behind the 20th Anniversary Podcast
Damien Jurado - “QACHINA”
Behind the 20th Anniversary Podcast
Around November 2004, I published my first “podcast”. It was self-hosted and I crafted the XML file for the RSS feed. Somehow I got all this added into iTunes. The entire process was not easy to do back in those days.
Originally, I called the podcast “Hooray for Vouvray” - but that didn’t last long. By early or mid 2005, I think I was calling it the Mark Rushton Podcast and eventually the Ambient Rushton Podcast. It was a way to promote my music.
I got an early plug from Adam Curry, the former MTV VJ, who was also a podcast enthusiast.
Over time, I grew to dislike self-hosting the podcast. Apple kept changing various rules and requirements for the XML file so the podcast would continue to be on iTunes, which was necessary to have any audience back in the day. At some point, Apple started letting certain podcasts pay for better placement, so my podcast quit showing up in general search results.
Having a podcast as a promotional vehicle for my music made sense at the time. I could put extra sounds in the podcast - live recordings or alternate takes.
Around 2013, I switched to managed hosting at Libsyn. They made RSS feed management easy. These days, Apple no longer has major control over the podcast world. And even though the big tech companies tried to kill off RSS, it has thankfully made a comeback. A lot of standalone aggregator apps are out there (I like PodKicker Pro for Android), and podcasts can be streamed through the various music streaming apps or even on YouTube.
But as the streaming music era rolled along, it didn’t make sense for me to keep a “mostly music” podcast going, and I’d go through long stretches of not publishing anything new, or producing “all instrumental” podcasts. I seriously thought about quitting it many times.
In late 2023, I moved the Boundoff literary podcast from where it was hosted over to Substack and was impressed with the ease of the process. Boundoff ceased in 2015, but we wanted to keep stories alive.
Since moving Boundoff was a snap, I figured I’d move what I could of the Ambient Rushton Podcast to Substack, and that was easy, too.
After moving the podcast, the problem again became about what I would be presenting.
I made a lot of attempts at what I call a “talky” podcast. I tried it scripted. Unscripted. In the car. Everything seemed forced or had major sound quality issues. I knew I didn’t want to do an “interview style” podcast with others.
So this past week I was looking at Substack Notes and saw that the musician Damien Jurado had written this:
That really struck me and I accepted it as a challenge.
I don’t own many pairs of shoes. They all have a purpose. I have mismatched large feet, so when I find new shoes that feel good I immediately buy them and tend to occasionally talk about them.
I wasn’t going to write a script or anything. I thought I could get away with leaving myself voicemails and then edit the audio files later.
I’ve been a user of Google Voice since it showed up about 15 years ago. I leave voicemails using it as a way to purposefully talk asynchronously with others, but there’s a time limit of three minutes before you have to initiate a new call and voicemail. So that’s what I did.
As a test, I left some voicemails on Monday after I got my hair cut and walked back through the Des Moines Skywalk. The quality is pretty bad when I was walking through 801 Grand because it’s all glass and marble and high ceilings, And when I was outside, it was very cold and windy so I was talking louder. Otherwise, it’s acceptable quality, I guess.
I wanted it to be like you’re walking with me and I’m doing all the talking. And I’m playing music between voicemails and maybe some music underneath at a lower volume. The audience gets to the know the artist on topics other than the music.
I’m happy with how the podcast turned out. Even the low-fi portions. I’m going to keep doing this - but the next podcast won’t be about shoes.
Damien Jurado - “QACHINA”
This song is from 2016. I happened on his music about a decade ago, starting with “Silver Timothy”. Jurado’s early style is folky and minimal, but when he started working with producer Richard Swift the style became more “pop-psychedelic-ish”, although he’s had some dance remixes done, too. In recent years, he’s moved back into a more minimal, acoustic style.
“QACHINA” - the link is to Qobuz, a high quality streaming site that actually pays artists.
“QACHINA” can also be heard and downloaded on Bandcamp.
Wear good headphones. I like Grados.
And I just bought a turntable, the first one I’ve had in over 30 years. I’ll open that up in a few weeks.