What Am I Making Podcast

For a certain sect of folks, live music is a religion. Most of the best nights of my life involved seeing a show. I have never had the high that I hear runners talk about, or the connection with God that some parishioners feel on Sundays, but I have felt the spirit move through me in a darkened room as music pumped through my veins. There is something truly magical about sharing a room with a bunc...

By the time spring of 2021 hit, I was reeling. I’d lost my Dad the summer prior out of nowhere. My mental health was in a tailspin, my grief was overwhelming and the reality and paranoia of life during lockdown was taking a serious toll. One of the few highlights in my life was a weekly hangout with a handful of people who listened to the same daily podcast I listened to, Stand Up with Pete Domini...

I just recently discovered Dan Pal and his PalCinema substack. A mutual friend had shared a piece Dan had written that was a musical memoir of 1987. I found the essay really interesting and as I bounced around reading several of the film reviews on Dan’s page, I figured that he and I would have much to discuss. It turns out I was absolutely correct on that score. We jumped right into the discussio...

Ryan Allen’s first loves were basketball and skating. It wasn’t until he heard Nirvana’s Nevermind at age eleven that his first musical awakening occurred. Regardless of what folks were calling it, to Ryan Allen, Nirvana was punk. And he loved everything about it.  Nirvana paved the way for Ryan to other grunge acts like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Almost immediately upon hearing this new music, Ry...

Jared Yates Sexton was one of the very first guests here at the WAIM pod. He appeared way back on episode #004 back in March of 2023. When I saw him again, a full year later, at Pod Jam in Las Vegas this March , he remembered me right away and was eager to talk again on the record.  I was excited to chat with Jared as well. In addition to all of the political changes in the world that we might be...

I first got to know Brad Kyle when friend of WAIM, Kevin Alexander took part in a game called Tune Tag . The game was hosted by Brad at his Front Row & Backstage substack . The game involves linking songs through the artists that played on them, places where they were recorded, who produced and various other factors. It’s nerdery at a very high level and I immediately fell in love with the concept...

As soon as I got home from my trip to Central America with my mother, I was dying to talk to Kevin Alexander. Every time I fly, especially internationally, I find myself amazed at the soulless nature of air travel. The security checks are an unpleasant invasion of privacy with ever-changing rules. Communication is often lacking and signage is poor, or non-existent. Like so many travelers, I just w...

I was thrilled to be invited to record a live episode of WAIM at the first ever PodJam in Las Vegas. The invite came to be on the docket a bit later than I would normally like to prepare, but when the chance came up, I knew just the man to interview; Gareth Sever. Gareth has become a friend through the Stand Up With Pete Dominick Community, the group at the heart of the PodJam event. You can learn...

In the winter of 2016, I bought a brand new Chevy Equinox. The car came with all sorts of appointments and accessories I’d never had in a vehicle, including a three month trial subscription for Sirius XM Radio. I was very excited about this perk. As someone who drove 40,000 miles a year, I was thrilled at the idea of always being able to get a Tiger game or NPR on the radio no matter how remote my...

John Tallman didn’t plan to be in a band. It happened as organically as it could have. After having been bathed in the holy water of rock and roll by his older brother, John has spent a life gravitating towards interesting sounds.  Describing music as a “window to a new world”, rock and roll opened a new door of thinking for young John. He was immediately drawn to the fact that this was not someth...

Jena McShane spent three years getting her website together . As a photographer of more than two decades, she sought to catalog her very best images for an online portfolio. Scrolling through her vast archives often brought her anxiety as she wondered how to best present her extensive body of work. Going back to her days at Lansing Community College, Jena has eschewed the photographer’s maxim of p...

J Virus is someone I have admired and thought of as a friend for thirty years. J and I were in a band called Third Uncle back in our very early twenties. It was a formative time for both of us, but after the band split up, we saw very little of each other in the intervening years. Over the last couple of years we have reconnected. J’s archive work and my work here have found us once at merging pat...

Pete Dominick was an inspiration for me when I began What Am I Making. Before I started publishing, I reached out to Pete and asked for his advice. He encouraged me to begin the work and figure out what it all meant afterward. Pete encouraged me to stay in the moment and to enjoy the process. I took his advice and I ran with it.  It was hard not to take Pete’s sage wisdom seriously. After all, thi...

I was nervous to interview Don Dixon. When I first booked the interview I was filled with excitement, but that soon turned to anxiety when I realized that I’d have to play it cool when talking with the man who produced the first two albums by R.E.M.. I’d gotten the hookup from my friend and podcast guest, Jon Carroll who tours with Dixon in Mary Chapin Carpenter’s live band. When I reached out to...

My Mom and I just got home from a two week adventure in Central America. It was a trip that came to be after VISA issues derailed our journey to Southeast Asia last Fall. This sojourn, borne of heartbreak in a Chicago airport, blossomed into an immersive look at a shared colonial past in a trio of breathtaking countries.  With a cocktail in hand - you can hear the ice cubes clink from time to time...

It’s no wonder Tom Heyman wound up becoming a songwriter. Just minutes into our chat it was clear I was in the presence of a born storyteller, and someone who could feel at ease holding court or chatting effortlessly about anything from politics to prose. Right out the gate we began talking about Heyman’s brilliant new album, 24th Street Blues, and the genesis of the songs. Tom talks about how he...

Rolling Stone once declared Peter Bruntnell to be, “one of England’s best kept musical secrets”. England has successfully managed to keep Peter Bruntnell a secret for all this time, even from itself.  It took someone else to show Peter Bruntnell his own true talent. He began by playing Neil Young and Nick Drake songs in local pubs when a producer noticed his voice and struck up a conversation. Bru...

My friend Mark Neese is not only an avid reader, but his gig as a cataloguer at Lansing’s Capital Area District Library expands his literary universe far beyond what a regular appetite for reading would normally allow for. Much like my chats with Kevin Alexander and my daughter Maddie recounting their best music of 2023, Mark lets me cheat off of his homework to share his favorite books of the yea...

Remember The Lightning is a love letter to guitar pop. Its author, S.W. Lauden has been firmly in the grasp of rock and roll since he can remember. Steve’s truly lived a life in rock trenches and lived to tell the tale. He’s not only spent a life writing about rock and roll, he played drums in one time major label darlings, Tsar , as well as in his current band The Brothers Steve .  Lauden’s writi...

My daughter Maddie mentioned that she wanted to talk to me about the new music she had discovered in 2023, and wondered if we could record it for the pod. For years now, she and her sister have talked about starting a podcast and I so badly wish they would stop dilly dallying and just get to recording. They are hilarious, smart and interesting. Plus, even if they’re the only ones who listen to it,...

The federal minimum wage in the United States of America is just $7.25 an hour. By July of 2024, that figure of $7.25 will have been frozen in place for fifteen years. While $7.25 was a paltry sum of money when that figure went into effect in July of 2009, 15 years later it is worth even less. Even if folks making minimum wage were not allowed the privilege of a raise in the interim, that 2009 amo...

Chris Dalla Riva is an independent musician with a small, but engaged audience that is continuously growing. As much as his musical ambitions are headed in the right direction, Chris also has a day job as a data analyst for the digital music streamer AudioMack. This gives him a wholly unique perspective on the digital streaming industry.  Not only does Dalla Riva have access to the data of both th...

The Detroit Lions won their division, the NFC North, for the first time in 30 years this season. It marked a true high point in a remarkable run of poor form, for a team that is a noted laughing stock of the National Football League. When the Lions last won a division title, I was a young man of just twenty one years, and followed every snap with anxious enthusiasm. My knowledge of the team, the d...

From the moment that my parents bought a small print shop in the summer of 1989, I have been transfixed by the machinations of graphic design. What began as simply learning how to use as an X-Acto knife, a light table, and a darkroom, has gradually become an understanding of the ins and outs of layering and editing within Photoshop, as well as the glorious joy of clipping masks. My brief life lead...

Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah recently sent a holiday email to his employees to end the calendar year. The memo was nothing more than an uninspired screed of personal validation from another in a long line of overpaid emotional infants running major firms who have no grasp of actual life, or apparently any shred of self-awareness. To begin his year end email, Shah doesn't bother to thank his staff or com...