“These Things Matter” host Taylor Gonda, left, speaks on stage with co-host Kevin O’Brien at the Sidewinder Tavern for their second anniversary show last year. (Photo by Karl Uschold, provided by Taylor Gonda)
For the third anniversary of their Denver-based podcast hosts Taylor Gonda and Kevin O’Brien assembled a team of musicians and former guests to dive into the topic of musical supergroups.
“We do live podcasts because we want to see the people who listen to the show,” said Gonda, 33, who works as event coordinator for the . “And for this one we want to celebrate and just have fun with guests from past shows, because without them it wouldn’t be sustainable.”
Those guests — who will be playing tunes from storied supergroups like Cream, Aja and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — include Denver musicians Fez Garcia (Tjutjuna, Fingers of the Sun), Nathan Wright (Gauntlet Hair), Justin Couch (Quantum Creep), Leighton Peterson (Safe Boating Is No Accident), Chella Negro (Chella & The Charm), Nathan Brazil (Fingers of the Sun) and Randy Washington (Total Ghost, Pxlman). They’ll be joined on stage by stand-up Jordan Doll, Westword music editor Kiernan Maletsky and Colorado Public Radio’s Jessi Whitten as guests.
The performance and live recording, which takes place at the on April 30, stands in contrast to most podcasts, which are intimate affairs recorded in kitchens, dining rooms and (occasionally) professional studios. (Full disclosure: This reporter has been a guest on a handful of Denver podcasts, including “These Things Matter.”)
It helps that “These Things Matter,” which stand-up comic O’Brien records with Gonda in her Capitol Hill apartment, mines a particular vein of pop culture that treats obsession as a virtue. The name comes from a line in the 2000 John Cusack movie “High Fidelity”: “I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films — these things matter.”
Thanks to the rising popularity of stand-up and like The Moth and Denver’s The Narrators, live podcast events have become a common sight at theaters, rock clubs and comedy festivals in recent years.
Comic Adam Cayton-Holland drew a capacity crowd to a recording of his at The Underground Music Showcase in 2014, while the supernatural-themed “Werewolf Radar” holds live events at El Charrito restaurant in the Ballpark neighborhood.
“When we started asking people to help out for the anniversary show, all the musicians, former guests, even (cartoonist and poster artist) , were totally on board,” Gonda said. “Itap a friendship generator.”
“These Things Matter,” which released its 150th episode this week, has more longevity and a wider audience that most Denver podcasts. But even with an average of 6,000 downloads per week, “Matter” still looks tiny next to national favorites like “Radiolab,” “The Adam Carolla Show” and “Freakonomics Radio,” which count their fans by the millions.
Listeners have downloaded episodes from the first season of the “This American Life” true-crime spinoff “Serial,” for example, . That popularity is helping grow the general audience for podcasts, who find and devour them on smartphones that make listening painless. More than 40 million Americans now say they regularly listen to podcasts — or roughly 15 percent of the population, up from 9 percent in 2008, according to .
Similarly, Denver’s podcast scene has blossomed in recent years to include dozens of programs that cover music, comedy, sports, politics, technology and more.
“I like subjects that come out of organic conversations with people, but that you aren’t necessarily hearing anywhere else,” said Westword writer , 34, who recently launched the music-centric podcast with writer Isa Jones. “We try to harness our journalistic obsession with the goings-on of the industry into something interesting.”
Jon Ekstrom, who has recorded more than 50 episodes of his since March 2014, interviews different professionals about the particulars of their jobs, including Wall Street traders, hair stylists and a reproductive endocrinologist.
After being laid off from his corporate communications job at Noble Energy two weeks ago ( on that one, eh?) he even interviewed a couple guests about what it was like to lose their jobs.
“My show shines a light on things people are familiar with but don’t understand with a great deal of depth,” said Ekstrom, 33. “On a good show I’ll get a couple of thousand downloads, but itap also been hard to find a niche. You could drive yourself crazy looking at competition because there’s so many podcasts out there.”
With low entry costs, which include basic recording and editing equipment, the do-it-yourself appeal of podcasts is strong. And while finding an audience may be as unpredictable and thankless as in any other art form, podcasters remain committed to turning their personal passions into public, universal ones.
“Our guests reveal something of themselves and connect the dots between their experiences and the world. The audience really seems to respond to that,” Gonda said. “Itap a great way to learn about things I never would have been exposed to otherwise.”
