Succotash Epi51: Clippin' N' Sippin' With Bill Haywatt

This episode we return to our roots. Clips, clips and more clips. Also, a return to Studio P ("The Home of The Hit!"), engineer-producer Joe Paulino, and another long-awaited installment of Boozin' With Bill featuring our booth announcer Bill Haywatt.

Bill's concoctions are usually something he picked up during one of the many radio gigs he's had over the past 70 years. Often scrounged from either a hard-drinking co-worker or from one of the numerous dive bars that could be found in the neighborhoods that usually spring up around radio stations and recording studios.

This time around he presents us with the very first alcoholic mixture he can first remember making while still a lad at the tender age of 14. During the show he dubbed it "The Beer Float" but given the beer required for this one, I call it "The Floating Heinie". Either way it's a twist on that soda fountain favorite, the root beer float.

THE COUNTDOWN

Once again, very little movement in the Top 10 of Stitcher's Comedy Podcast chart this last week. In fact, this week, other than the fact two shows switched places in the Top 10, nothing’s gone on.

10. Doug Loves Movies
9. DeathSquad
8. Real Time with Bill Maher
7. Mohr Stories
6. SModcast
5. The Nerdist
4. NPR: Car Talk Podcast
3. WTF with Marc Maron
2. The Adam Carolla Show
1. The Joe Rogan Experience

I think for the next episode, I may add the bottom 10 (from #90-100) just to have some new show names in the mix.

REVIEW

In "This Week In Comedy Podcasts" on Splitsider.com I reviewed Penn's Sunday School with Penn Jillette and guest Peter "Herman's Hermits" Noone! It went a little something - no, exactly - like this:

Ah, Penn Jillette. Magician, conman, truth-sayer, provocateur and atheist. It’s the last of those that drives many of the discussions around Penn’s Sunday School, although in the latest installment, none of that comes around until after the first hour, during which time Peter Noone (of Herman’s Hermits fame) is Jillette’s guest. And Noone turns out to be a treasure trove of fantastic stories from the early days of the British Invasion and beyond. The child TV star (from BBC’s Coronation) had turned to music and was playing at the age of 16 while hanging around the Beatles before they took off. He tells of John Lennon knocking out five blokes in a working man’s bar and of meeting and hanging out with Elvis in Hawaii a few years later. Jillette punctuates Noone’s tales with his trademark hoarse guffaw. Later in the show, after Noone has left, the host shares how his own atheist beliefs have been picked up by his young daughter and how that causes a bit of a problem with a god-fearing boy in her school, about which Jillette is a little leery about dealing with. Jillette’s shows tend to run over an hour, and each extra minute is well worth the listen.

So you can get the complete flavor of it, I clip that show in this very episode.

DURST

This week our on-call Raging Moderate Will Durst turns his acerbic funny beam on the Civil Ware brewing in the Republican't party for our Burst O' Durst.

CLIPS

OVERVIEW

Our first clip is from new podcast, Overview, by a friend of Succotash and a good buddy of mine: Rick Overton! (He was one of our earliest guests – you can find my interview with him in Epi 6 AND I also released a bonus Epi 6.5, which was my interview with Rick in its entirety.) Now he’s got his own show going. And he’s already had some great guests from the world of comedy. Recently he spoke with comedy legend Jonathan Winters – what a score! It struck me that some of what Jonathan is talking about in our clip, where he’s talking about starting out as a comic, relates directly across to podcasting in many ways.

MAN SCHOOL
Although this IS a new podcast, the host will be familiar to some of you Succotashians. It’s Caleb Bacon who, until a couple of months ago, was the host of The Gentlemen’s Club podcast. With this new show, Bacon gets pretty heavy in the first show, as his guest is “Bald Bryan” Bishop, who is a producer and sidekick on the Adam Carolla Show as well as the co-host of his own podcast called The Film Vault. Four years ago, at the age of 30, Bryan was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. He’s still around, so not only has he survived it, but it’s given him some perspectives on life a 30 year old doesn’t often have.

PENN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL
Penn Jillette, best know for being one-half of Penn & Teller, does a number of things as well, including this podcast. Jillette has become somewhat well know for being an atheist – he doesn’t believe in god – and he often goes into the topic on his podcast. But he also has guests come through and the subject of religion never comes up. Recently he had Peter Noone on the show, the founding member of Herman’s Hermits.

NOBODIES PODCAST

From the show’s intro I know that host Nick Dressel is a student at MSU in East Lansing, Michigan, and the premise for Nobodies is that he and all of his guest are “nobodies” – they are actors and comedians and other flavors of performance who have not “arrived” yet but hope to someday, so Nick sees his show as being the first place you will have heard his guests, but not the last. In Epi35 of Nobodies, his guests Spencer Perrenoud and Jason Carlen gather ‘round a rendering of “McConaughey”.

SNITCH & LINS
Here’s one of the only clips from a show we’ve heard from before – it’s Snitch & Lins from Australia! I like the fact that this is a sketch more than anything. I think if I have to hear more people going off on a pop culture riff on their podcasts, I’ll throw up. So thanks, Stitch & Lins!

3 PLEASANT GENTLEMEN
When I heard from Cam of the 3 Pleasant Gentlemen podcast, I was informed that there  are only TWO Gentlemen in the cast - Cam and Remo. The third Gentleman is a woman, who goes by the name Savy. I also discovered that I’m not alone in finding out that a car makes for a suitable substitute podcasting facility. (While we often have luxurious Studio P, The Home of The Hit!, at our disposal, some episodes of Succotash come to you via Studio F, my Fiat.) 3 Pleasant Gentlemen orginates from the roomy interior of a Chevy Tahoe.

DRUNKEN TAOIST

I think I’m going to be enjoying the Drunken Taoist, a bi-monthly podcast hosted by Daniele Bolelli. He’s got quite a colorful collection of stuff next to his name. He’s a writer, a martial artist, and a college professor. His teaching style’s described as “half standup comedian and half Zen master.” Bolelli’s guest from the episode we clipped is New York Times Best Selling author Christopher Ryan, who co-wrote Sex At Dawn and has his own podcast called Tangentially Speaking.

DIRTY KONG PODCAST
Unlike The Drunken Taoist, our next podcast has precious little on about the podcast or the people on it, even though they have a half dozen places on the web where you grab their episodes. I can’t even find names for the voices you’re hearing in this clip from the Dirty Kong Podcast.

OK HYPOTHETICAL
We have a clip from another new podcast – only 6 epis in – called OK Hypothetical and it was submitted by Garin, one of the two hosts. The other fellow is Connor. I like these guys. Here’s the text from their email: “Good morning, The attached clip is actually the full first episode of our show. Run time is 4 minutes 33. Thank you for your consideration. Garin and Connor”. Straight to the point. No nonsense. Get in, get out, no one gets hurt. I love that their show’s title is most of what you need to know about how the show goes.

So there you go - back to a clips royale with this episode! If you're a comedy podcaster, remember that you are welcome to submit a 3-5 minute MP3 clip from your show, via email, to clips@SuccotashShow.com. (While we may well get around to your podcast, there are THOUSANDS of shows out there on the comedy side of podcasting, so you stand a better chance of having us feature you if you are proactive and shoot us a clip yourself!

Until next time, won't you please pass the Succotash?

— Marc Hershon

Succotash Epi32: Co-hostin' With Phil Leirness

With Epi32 we're back at Studio P with Engineer/Producer Joe Paulino and all is right with the world. (BTW, be sure to check out Joe and Tim White's CD Inhale Slowly - it's not only great meditation and relaxation music, but it's kicking ass on the mellow music charts!) This episode of Succotash is positively brimming with podcastly goodness — a scintillating guest co-host, a new Henderson's Pants ad, an installment of Boozin' With Bill, a Burst O' Durst, sci-fi comedy music from John Anealio and a passle of podcast clips.

Our guest co-host is no stranger to Succotash listeners — it's Phil Leirness, he of Chillpak Hollywood Hour podcast fame. Phil was in Northern California and the timing worked out that he was able to get to Studio P and help me serve up this latest portion of Succotash. We talk a little about his work and he gives us a few tantalizing glimpses into what is going on with the TWO follow up films to The Truth Is Out There, the conspiracy theory based documentary Phil directed. (Both CHH and TTIOT are produced in collaboration with TV's Dean "X-Files" Haglund, who our listeners also know from his audio visits to the show.) Phil's a great conversationalist and has well-expressed commentary on the clips in this episode.

Speaking of clips, here's what in store in Epi32…

Chillpak Hollywood Hour
Our guest co-host and his heterosexual life partner Dean Haglund discuss some of the Comedy nominations for the upcoming Emmy Awards.

Combat Radio

I've been wanting to play something from Combat Radio so reached out to the show's ringmaster, Ethan Dettenmaier, via Twitter. He shot me a link to a clip featuring Phil Leirness without even knowing he was with me this show. It all boils down to a scheme to break into Area 51…

After Hours with Mark Pitta
Friend of Succotash Mark Pitta has a rare treat in his latest After Hours podcast episode: An interview he did back in 2001 where he interviewd comic legend George Carlin in front of a theater full of people. In this clip, Carlin remembers the transition point between his straight-laced, necktie-wearing persona and the counter-culture icon he was to become.

The Dana Gould Hour

Dana Gould and his guests Steve Agee & Matt Weinhold get into it about Comicon, which recently wrapped its latest incarnation in San Diego.

Ham Radio
Not being a huge fan of the "shootin' the shit" brand of groupchat podcasting, I got a laugh out of Ham Radio host Brett Hamil's ad for Crosstalk Comedy.

Professor Blastoff
Epi64 of Professor Blastoff starts off with a very sobering note by co-host TIg Notaro, as she reveals that she has been diagnosed with double breast cancer. Her co-hosts Kyle Dunnigan and David Huntsberger, are not only sympathetic but help to make the experience a pretty safe one for Tig to be so forthcoming. Click over to their homesite to leave her a message of support.

Pissed Off Man Show
We’ve featured a few clips from the deeply Irish brogued Gee & Jay Show from Belfast. Well, Gavin – who put the G in Gee & Jay – sometimes has to wait around for Jay to show up and that rage is what gives us a few tender moments of the Pissed Off Man Show.

What Duvet Said
Rob Celli, one half of What Duvet Said, was a previous guest co-host of Succotash. Now he’s moved to New York but he and Jason Duplissey – who is in LA – still pull off the show. (Coincidentally, I originally found out about these guys from Phil Leirness.)

Booth announcer Bill Haywatt is back in the studio with another Boozin' With Bill segment. This time he serves up a concoction called "The Red C", which he picked up in his travels as a journeyman radio announcer in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. This libation was actually surprisingly good and we were sorry that after the first round was gone, there was no more to be had. See the recipe right over there on the left had side of the page…

Off the air and in the reading world, in This Week In Comedy Podcasts, I’m reviewing The Thrilling Adventure Hour #83: Cactoid Jim, King Of The Martian Frontier with guest stars Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Zachary Levy. Just go to Splitsider.com to lay your eyes on that review.

That's going to do it for this week's installment. There should be plenty to keep you busy until Epi33, where I will spend the show chatting with comedy sci-fi musician John Anealio and playing some of his very funny and nerdy music.

Until then, please have fun passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon