Podcaster Brian Ibbott
I first became aware of Arvada, Colorado-based pioneering podcaster Brian Ibbott when his show Coverville was mentioned by USA Today’s Whitney Matheson in her Pop Candy blog. After several months of enjoying the show, which focuses on covers (succinctly and aptly defined by Ibbott as “a new rendition of a previously recorded song”) and features a variety of musical genres and artists, I contacted Ibbott for an interview. Ibbott also produces other podcasts, including Lyrics Undercover, Today in Music History and The Wii Show. While the majority of the interview focuses on Coverville, we also discuss his other podcasts.
Tim O’Shea: As you quickly approach your 400th episode (as of today [January 7, 2008] he’s up to podcast 408), from your perspective, in what ways has the show drastically changed and have any parts remained (other than the show’s core premise) essentially the same?
Brian Ibbott: I think the overall feel of the show has stayed consistent, but I’ve become so much more comfortable with the microphone. It’s only taken me 400 shows to get there!
O’Shea: In listening to this 2005 Podcast Solutions interview you mentioned at that time, you had around 3,500 CDs. Has the collection grown that much (in the old buy a CD traditional sense) or do you mostly download music now?
Ibbott: It’s grown in both ways. I still buy a lot of CDs, and have a lot mailed to me from bands and labels. But when I can, I like the buy-by-thesong services, like iTunes and eMusic, and Amazon’s excellent new mp3 store. As on May 9, 2005, when I did that interview, I had about 2,000 cover songs in my library. As of right now, I have 10,710.
O’Shea: I’ve only been listening to podcasts for a little over a year, but in that time (where I’ve listened to relatively mainstream media sources, such as Disney/ESPN, VH1/Viacom and NPR, as well as independent folks like yourself) you are the only podcast who has created an infrastructure that makes it convenient to go back and forth to exact points in the show. What does it require on the front end for you (special software, time spent formatting) to make this possible?
Ibbott: It actually adds about an hour to the show creation time, although I can see that amount of time getting shorter as I get better. I record the show live to WireTap Pro, and then I open the AIFF file in GarageBand. I can then go through the show and add markers to the beginning and end of each song, and each intro.
O’Shea: There are moments when I’m listening to the show and my jaw just drops with shock and awe (the non-military kind of shock and awe). Most recent case in point, I’m listening to Coverville 393, and you have Death Cab for Cutie’s cover of Julian Cope’s World Shut Your Mouth.
A) I had no idea that Death Cab for Cutie had covered the tune
B) Until now I had no idea that anyone other than me had ever liked that Julian Cope tune.
How often does a request come in that appeals to you on a personal level and, to a certain extent, you feel validation that “OK someone else liked that song as much as I do”.?
Ibbott: All the time - I’m a big music geek, so there is a lot of potential for me to hear a song that I hadn’t heard in a long time in cover form! But for every handful of those, there are quite a few where I’d never heard the original OR the cover before!
O’Shea: You do a lot of extra steps to give your listeners greater involvement in the show. For example, while you’ll take requests via email, it seems pretty clear that you much more prefer when folks call in requests, so that you can play them actually making the request. What motivates you to go that extra, seemingly more time-consuming route?
Ibbott: It actually takes the same amount of time for each, and I could do it a lot better if I were better organized! For example, I keep all the requests in a single playlist, along with the call-in audio files, so it’s very easy for them to get lost if they’ve been in there for a while.
O’Shea: Do you come up with the catchy names for the specific shows (for example “Coverville 390: Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Will I play cover requests?”) or do you brainstorm with your wife, Tina, sometimes?
Ibbott: I come up with those - and it’s kind of funny how I do it. As I’m recording the show, I’m writing the shownotes, making the Amazon links, etc. As soon as I finish that part, I try to come up with a name for the show (if it isn’t a Cover Story, Interview or theme which would have a consistent title). Whatever song is playing when I finish, I try to find a good lyric in the song to “transform” to include “cover” and/or “request”.
O’Shea: Speaking of Tina, how do you strike a balance between show demands (you produce and host two other shows) and staying happily married?
Ibbott: It was a lot harder to balance this before I started doing the shows during the day! She’s off working, and I’m podcasting, and then we’re both usually done by the time the 5:00 bell rings.
O’Shea: Final Tina-related question on this round–when did she first start appearing on the show?
Ibbott: Another example of where I could be better organized! I think it was 106 - that was the first Musically Challenged trivia segment.
O’Shea: You fully admit on some podcast request shows that you play some stuff that, were it left up to you, would never make the podcast. What was the worst (or least entertaining) song you ever had to play on a request episode? In that same vein, what request came in that, upon initial suggestion, you were not looking forward to hearing, but once you heard the cover, the version quickly won you over?
Ibbott: There’s a grey area there. There are actually covers that are requested that I won’t even play. If it sounds too much like the pap you hear on “current hit” radio, I won’t play it. A recent cover of Boston’s Amanda comes to mind, but that was played more as a joke than as a true request. But songs that I didn’t like on initial listen grow on me all the time. Flunk’s True Faith is a recent one that went from “meh” to “wow” in just a couple listens.
O’Shea: Going back to close to the beginning of Covervillle, you once did an October 2004 show “from a relatively empty gate during a four-hour layover in Chicago’s O’Hare airport”. Is that the most unique place you have ever recorded the show, or can you think of one better?
Ibbott: I think it would be. I’ve done shows in hotel rooms, and pieced together bots from live on the floor of the Podcast Expo, but I think O’Hare would be the most unusual. I’m not sure I could do it now, with all my equipment and screen real estate needs!
O’Shea: Of the variety of Coverville themes you’ve done (which according to your Wikipedia entry include Cover Story; Originalville; A Cappella; Lost In Translation; Cover To Cover Interview; Coverville Idol; Degrees of Coveration) which demands the most amount of your time to produce?
Ibbott: The Degrees of Coveration are very tough, but when you find a great song to link, it makes it a lot easier. The best situation is when you find an artist whose been around a long time covering something relatively new. It makes things a lot easier.
The interview shows take quite a while to do, and a lot of it is arranging a time to record with the interviewee, and coming up with good questions. And editing. Lots of editing. I have to listen through the interview three or four times to put everything into a logical order.
O’Shea: Have many stations/companies from traditional/terrestrial radio or satellite venues inquired about syndicating or otherwise broadcasting Coverville?
Ibbott: Not as many as I wish! If I could find someone in the know to help me, I’d love to pitch the show to XM or Sirius. I think my selections are a little too eclectic and varied for a fixed-format radio station. KYOU in San Francisco runs my show every weekday at 3pm. That’s a nice foot in the door, and hopefully I can turn it into more!
O’Shea: Are there any particular artists or bands that you can point to and give Coverville partial credit for their post-Coverville appearance success?
Ibbott: Copper Box, who makes it into the Countdown every year sent me an email after I first played them, telling me that they’ve gotten a lot of emails from people who heard them on the podcast. But I don’t think anyone could point to my show as any kind of credit for their success. It’s their talent and creativity that make them, and I’d never dream of being conceited enough to try and claim some of that credit!
O’Shea: On to some of your other podcasts, how did your Denver Post-related Lyrics Undercover and Podcast Network’s Today in Music History come about?
Ibbott: A friend turned me on to an ad that they were looking for a podcaster to handle their morning news podcast (where you’d have to get up at the crack of dawn - or earlier - and read the headlines into an mp3 and post it). It turned out that the guy I spoke to was a huge fan of my show, and knew who I was. He asked me to come up with a couple of music-related shows, and I pitched TIMH and Lyrics Undercover. They liked both, “hired” me, and basically allowed me to quit my day job. They had budget cuts recently, and had to drop TIMH, which TPN picked up, but they still have Lyrics Undercover.
O’Shea: Your workload seems pretty full at present (with your Wii and Not So Lame podcast) but is there any chance you may tackle other podcast shows in 2008?
Ibbott: No plans - but you never know what might come up. I’d love to do something huge for my 500th show, like a concert out in Vegas around the time of the 2008 Expo, but I don’t know if I’ve got the time to organize something like that!
Tags: interviews, podcast, Wii