Kevin Kelly interviews artists, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers who have found success outside the mainstream.
Episodes
Saturday Oct 26, 2019
Saturday Oct 26, 2019
Blaine Deutsch is a designer, producer, painter, printmaker, cyclist, conversationalist, writer, and seeker of inspiration.
7:30 - Working with Corey Rich
9:00 - Climbing in Cinema
14:00 - Fred Beckey
17:00 - Living at altitude
18:30 - Growing up
21:00 - Indoor vs. Outdoor Climbing
24:00 - Commercial Outdoor Photography
27:15 - Defining ‘Producer’
30:00 - First big gig
33:30 - Favorite gig with Nikon
38:30 - Climbers are the anti-celebrity
42:00 - Filming Alex Honnold free soloing
44:30 - Dispelling the adrenaline-fueled thrill-seeker myth
52:30 - Working with Tommy Caldwell
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56:05 - “You could be a really enthusiastic baseball player but you’re never going to play in Wrigley Field. As a climber, you can go climb the Nose. If you’re a [cyclist], you can go ride Alpe d'Huez, the same route they ride in the tour. You can be in the same arena. And a lot of times you’re in the same arena with a pro right next to you and they’re just doing the same thing you are. They’re just having a good day out there.”
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57:30 - Kevin almost dying while driving thru a snowstorm in Tommy Caldwell’s Honda civic
1:01:00 - Estes Park
1:05:00 - Carlo Rovelli
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1:15:00 - Returning to St. Louis
1:19:30 - Working for your enemy
1:25:00 - Printmaking
1:28:30 - Sacrifice vs. Making Money
1:32:30 - Contentment
1:38:00 - Beekeeping & nature
1:48:00 - Making art in the future
1:51:00 - Blaine’s manifesto
1:57:00 - Respecting others
2:01:30 - Robert Montgomery
2:12:00 - Jasper Johns
2:19:00 - Encaustic painting
2:21:00 - Meeting Leo Castelli in the Guggenheim
2:25:00 - Outro
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Tyler Gross is an award winning illustrator and graphic artist based in St. Louis.
11:00 - How we met
13:00 - Kevin loves Tyler’s voice
18:45 - Sports announcer commentary
20:30 - Kaepernick & National Anthem
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24:00 - Introduction to illustration
27:00 - College
31:00 - Realizing he wasn’t good at drawing
35:30 - Transferring to Illustration from Drawing
38:00 - Community Colleges vs. University
40:00 - Kevin’s college career
46:00 - Sweating the small stuff
50:00 - Tyler’s eastern European teachers
54:00 - Creativity vs. technical know-how
58:45 - Developing a personal style
59:15 - Interning at Departika
1:02:30 - Paid vs. Unpaid Internships
1:05:30 - First paid gig
1:12:00 - Influences
1:16:45 - Looking for work
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1:19:45 - Moving to Denver
1:23:00 - Examples of effortless style but still working hard
1:25:00 - RFT Cover
1:25:35 - “That just comes from experimenting… that Riverfront Times cover you’re talking about was kind of a battle, really. And in a lot of those battles you spend so much of your time trying to get it right, trying to get it right it takes this kind of breaking point where you leave all that behind and try something new, and something kinda clicked with that.” QUOTE
1:28:00 - Typographers
1:29:15 - Eric Gill having sex with his dog
1:33:15 - Bruce Mau - Lifestyle
1:38:00 - Dan Cassaro
1:40:30 - Process vs. Style
1:47:00 - Trader Joes’ chalkboard artists
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1:54:00 - Thoughts on Denver
1:56:00 - Starting to smoke weed young
2:01:00 - Moving to San Diego
2:06:00 - Kevin flying to San Diego for one night for Josh Boston’s Lord of the Rings themed birthday
2:10:00 - Skateboarding in SoCal
2:12:30 - Meeting Wes Kremer
2:15:00 - Moving back to St. Louis
2:20:00 - About Anti-
2:23:00 - Working on projects you’re geeked about
2:24:00 - Foxing
2:28:00 - Skateboarding culture in STL
2:33:30 - Important podcast for young artists
2:40:15 - Outro
Wednesday Oct 02, 2019
Wednesday Oct 02, 2019
Indiana Rome is an Artist/MC/Producer.
8:00 - Hating the sound of your own voice
11:00 - St. Louis & Indianapolis
12:00 - Corey Black
19:30 - The Mob Dance
22:00 - Dropping out of college to work
23:00 - Getting into music
23:30 - Fruityloops
25:00 - Making sure your beat doesn’t sound like the software
27:00 - Freestyling
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31:30 - Going Solo
34:00 - Getting better thru collaborations
35:15 - Gaining confidence in front of crowds
37:00 - Performance IQ
40:15 - Breath control
42:00 - Becoming Indiana Rome
43:30 - Fronting vs. Being Real
43:37 - “Me, personally, I don’t front. Everything I’ve rapped about, I’ve had it at some point or have done or still doing. I’ve never talked about, ‘I’m in the Maybach, Im doing this… I got the yacht out there. I live in a two-bedroom apartment on the south side. Don’t get it twisted, I still get paid for this. I’m not Diddy yet, I’m not Jay yet. But it’s coming. I front to that point. To only what I’ve done.”
49:00 - Defining Dope Dealer
51:30 - Work/Play, Kevin & Dani McCoy
52:30 - Adrian O. Walker’s Podcast & Album Photo
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54:30 - Balancing influence and inspiration
57:15 - Trap influence in contemporary Hip Hop
1:00:15 - Schools getting rid of music class
1:03:30 - Rappers retracting old lyrics
1:08:00 - Kevin Hart
1:12:00 - Love Dope EP’s
1:16:00 - Determining live sets
1:17:15 - 314 Day
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1:19:30 - New Album: DLRS
1:23:00 - Kaotica Eyeball & Writing Style
1:27:15 - Production is king now
1:31:15 - “Loose Lips”
1:34:30 - Taking his music on the road
1:36:00 - St. Louis crowds are brutal
1:40:30 - Self promoting / #Cash4Dope
1:49:30 - Tekashi69
1:54:00 - Upcoming travels
1:55:30 - How features work
1:58:00 - Outro
Tuesday Sep 24, 2019
Tuesday Sep 24, 2019
Adrian Octavius Walker is a mixed-media artist based in Oakland, CA.
6:00 - Cursing
11:00 - Peeing in corners
12:55 - Chappelle’s latest special
16:30 - Made Monarchs
17:30 - Social Media/Instagram
19:30 - Instagram’s mental toll
21:30 - VSCO
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26:00 - Introducing Adrian at STLDW
28:30 - First time we met
31:00 - Rescuing kittens
33:00 - Introduction to photography
35:00 - Made Monarchs
38:00 - Club Dress Codes
40:00 - Being a good student
44:00 - Trade School
47:00 - Critiquing & Understanding Art
54:00 - First Photo Job
59:00 - Freelance
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1:00:50 - BREAK
1:02:00 - Going to the same middle school
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1:04:00 - Ferguson
1:19:00 - My Lens, Our Ferguson
1:24:00 - Evolving into portraiture
1:28:00 - Artifact Uprising
1:29:00 - VSCO
1:34:00 - Colorado Springs
1:36:00 - Oakland
1:39:00 - Ben Kaplan
1:41:00 - Graffiti as an art form
1:46:00 - Nure Collective
1:53:30 - Art World Changing
1:57:00 - “Winning, to me, is the same as the word ‘Power’. When someone feels like they can have power over you? They feel like they can dominate you, they’re better than you and they use that the wrong way. For me, the “power” that I want to use is being able to connect you with a friend that I think y’all would make a great team and make something happen. I feel good for doing that, I feel good for making that introduction. That’s powerful to me. To know, who I think you would vibe with to build something. That’s power to me.”
1:58:00 - Using the iPhone during Ferguson
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2:00:00 - #WeMatter
2:06:00 - Favorite contemporary photographers:
2:07:45 - National Portrait Gallery
2:08:00 - Amy Sherald
Wednesday Aug 21, 2019
Wednesday Aug 21, 2019
Kevin Brennan is one part vodka, two parts soda with a lemon peel. He doesn't own an Irish pub.
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7:00 - It’s all happening
8:00 - Cuba trip
14:00 - Working on McDonald’s marketing in Oak Brook, IL
21:00 - Quitting McDonald’s and moving back to St. Louis
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23:00 - The start of Durango Cigars
26:00 - Brennan’s in the beginning
33:30 - Promoting thru word of mouth
37:00 - Developing tastes
42:00 - Owning a bar
46:00 - Co-working & Evolving into more than just a bar
47:00 - The B-Hive
51:00 - Brennan’s Midtown
53:30 - Favorite part of the day
57:00 - What sets Brennans apart
59:00 - Arguments & Grievances
1:02:00 - The Bar Talk board
1:04:00 - Diverse patrons
1:13:15 - Hard to be comfortable in your own place
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1:15:10 - New Grove location
1:18:00 - Current state of St. Louis
1:22:00 - St. Louis needs a cool spokesperson
1:25:00 - We need to own it, literally
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1:32:00 - State of cigar business
1:37:00 - Medicinal marijuana rush
1:39:00 - Steady business > Startup frenzy
1:42:30 - Normal day
1:43:30 - Grove location idea
1:44:15 - Finally taking a break
1:49:00 - Traveling with intent
1:51:00 - Outro
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
Syd Suntha is a chef, co-owner of Ballyhoo Hot Sauce and overall hustler.
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4:00 - Syd/Suntish
6:00 - First time we met
7:30 - Get in the Van - Henry Rollins
8:00 - Hanging out backstage
9:45 - Getting into the music industry
11:45 - Going to live shows nowadays
13:30 - Finding & makes music before the internet
16:30 - The problems with instant access to niche content
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22:00 - Leaving normal jobs to work with bands
24:30 - Growing up as a Sri Lankan in St. Louis
25:30 - Embracing what made him different
26:30 - Tour managing Adair & Jon Oakes
28:30 - Pivoting career
29:00 - Cooking with Bert McCracken of The Used
30:00 - Kitchen Confidential
30:30 - Culinary school
33:30 - Tipping culture is bullshit
37:00 - Rockwell Beer doesn’t do tips
39:00 - Authenticity in pricing
42:00 - Restaurants and hard costs
46:00 - Vote with your dollars
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48:00 - Moving up to Seattle from L.A.
50:00 - Working at Skillet
52:00 - Food Trucks in Seattle
58:30 - Starting up Bread & Circuses
1:00:00 - Behind the name ‘Bread & Circuses’
1:03:00 - Putting a restaurant inside a brewery
1:06:30 - Leaving Bread & Circuses
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1:07:00 - Starting up Ballyhoo Hot Sauce
1:11:00 - Owning a product vs. owning a restaurant
1:15:00 - How Ballyhoo is more than just ‘Hot’ Sauce
1:17:30 - Brands collaborating with other brands
1:18:00 - Syd’s ‘Seattle Street Food Cook Book’ saga
1:23:00 - Wanting to do more collaborations
1:25:00 - Limited editions can’t be forced
1:25:45 - Psyence Fiction - Unkle
1:27:00 - Bape
1:30:00 - Head Automatica Limited Edition Dunks
1:32:00 - Wanting and buying a military hummer
1:35:00 - Syd’s parents
1:36:00 - Drinking in St. Louis
1:38:00 - Syd’s Dad’s drinking history
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1:42:00 - Sri Lankan influence
1:49:00 - Future of Ballyhoo
1:52:15 - Standing out from the competition
1:56:00 - The politicizing of everything
1:59:00 - Syd’s success motto
2:00:00 - Outro
Thursday Aug 01, 2019
Thursday Aug 01, 2019
Josh Boston is a designer living in Portland, Oregon USA. He likes turtles.
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0:00 - Intro
9:00 - Interview Start: What should the intro music be?
11:30 - Portland & The Simpsons
13:00 - How Josh & I met
15:00 - Growing up in the middle of Missouri
16:15 - Josh & Kevin’s Bromance
19:30 - First memorable piece of design
23:15 - First experiences with the internet
24:30 - Rudimental Drumming
25:15 - Ol’ Town Road Story & Hip Hop’s Influence
29:15 - Learning basic web design
31:45 - Old online design portals
33:30 - Seth Ericson
35:00 - Being young & dumb
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36:40 - Meeting Michael Cina
41:00 - Moving to California
42:45 - Gary Benzel/Green Lady
44:30 - Getting better at design
48:00 - Wanting to switch careers
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51:15 - “It’s not easy to be creative for a living. There’s peaks and valleys and there’s times when you’re kinda numb or you maybe had a good year then a bad year. I’m not trying to say this in a negative way, but it’s not discussed as much publicly. I think it’s discussed a lot in one-on-one coffee meetings, but you’re not seeing it from the stage in design conferences.” 51:48
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52:00 - Working at Lambesis
54:00 - The luster of working on big brands
57:00 - Alex Bogusky
1:00:00 - Working then and now
1:01:00 - Seasons of being a creative professional
1:03:15 - Big agency work-life / Missouri / Back to California
1:09:00 - Basic Agency
1:11:00 - Ego & work
1:16:00 - Original content
1:21:00 - Working at CPB
1:23:00 - Working at W+K
1:25:00 - Working on a 6 month project that never got made
1:29:00 - Creating separation from your hired work
1:34:00 - Working within restraints
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1:36:30 - Going independent
1:40:30 - Loving being laid off
1:44:00 - Throwing a recess party in a loft
1:47:00 - Freelancing means you need to be good with your money
1:49:00 - Starting up an agency
1:54:00 - Doing work that solely pays the bills
1:56:00 - Rules for social media
2:00:00 - Know where your money is going
2:02:00 - Jocko Wilink
2:03:30 - Throwing your back out
2:07:00 - Taking youth for granted
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2:08:45 - Freelancing
2:11:30 - Success without social media
2:15:00 - Brain Pickings / Maria Popova
2:16:30 - Mike Cina Great Discontent Interview
2:21:00 - Designers who merge their personal life with their work
2:24:00 - Cultivating taste
2:28:00 - Studios with only one style
2:29:30 - Be careful when criticizing younger creators
2:37:30 - Designer Radar: Braulio Amada, Brian Collins, Tobias Van Schneider, Mike Cina
2:44:00 - Compare/Contrast with Michael Eastman podcast
2:45:30 - The benefits of knowing design
2:46:00 - Outro
Wednesday Jul 10, 2019
Wednesday Jul 10, 2019
Michael Eastman is an artist working with a camera.
4:00 - Dude
5:00 - Big Lebowski/Jeff Bridges/Weed
8:50 - St. Louis slow to change visually
11:10 - Rate of Urban Renewal in STL
14:45 - Beginnings as a photographer
15:05 - “A lot of times when I went out and photographed my mantra was, ‘If I were aware of what people 150 years from right now were interested in, then I would photograph those things. They’d be significant records; historical records. And a photographer, unlike many artists, is really part historian. What they’re doing is recording a reality in time, that changes. So that was meaningful for me to see these changes and to record them. To do a portrait of a place.” - Eastman
17:30 - Why did Eastman get into photography in the first place?
19:10 - College years/Entering the workforce
23:10 - The attraction of photography
24:00 - The Daybooks of Edward Weston
24:30 - First Photographs as a “Photographer”
26:45 - Emotion in photography
27:03 - “What you feel about a photograph is transmitted, translated, communicated into print.” - Eastman
28:45 - Photograph things that you have feelings about
29:25 - Ansel Adams & Others
31:40 - First photo jobs
38:39 - “When I started, there was all these voices in my head. There were critics, gallery owners, museum curators, my parents, their friends – there was a Shakespearean chorus of naysayers telling me I couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t do it. Those voices propelled me.” - Eastman
40:25 - Relating Michael’s Story to the concept of Anti-
42:00 - Eastman’s First Show at Washington University
44:40 - Maintaining an attitude of incompleteness
49:00 - Sitting on your work for awhile
50:00 - Knowing William Gass
54:30 - Shooting Forest Park & showing them to Gass in his last years
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58:15 - Reinvesting back into yourself
1:00:00 - Commercial vs. Fine Art Work
1:00:15 - Shooting Nudes as Landscape
1:06:00 - Finding success in fine art later in life
1:09:00 - Success is the most difficult thing for an artist to overcome
1:11:05 - Vivian Maier
1:12:50 - Lee Friedlander
1:13:50 - Gaining a national reputation with commercial work
1:20:00 - Low overhead = more freedom
1:21:00 - Learning about studio lighting
1:22:00 - Shooting on location
1:26:00 - 9/11 & No Work
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1:29:00 - Overview of Eastman’s fine art work
1:33:00 - The importance of printmaking
1:40:00 - What Eastman’s working on now
1:46:00 - When photography became recognized in the art world
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1:49:00 - Agoraphobia
1:52:00 - Childhood fears
1:54:28 - A Ghost Story
1:57:30 - Composition/Framing
2:04:30 - Originality
2:06:00 - Cuba
2:07:00 - Buena Vista Social Club
2:08:00 - Traveling to Cuba
2:11:00 - Isabella's Two Chairs
2:14:00 - Havana
2:17:00 - Book sales lead to gallery openings
2:19:00 - Traveling photo show
2:21:20 - The Price of Everything
2:23:30 - NOLA and Current Photo work
2:25:00 - Forest Park Retrospective
2:30:00 - Leaving instagram
2:32:30 - Waking up with something to do
2:33:30 - Feeling mortal
Wednesday Jun 19, 2019
Wednesday Jun 19, 2019
Mike Spakowski is Partner and Creative Director at Atomicdust – A Branding and Marketing Agency.
Notes:
9:30 - Introduction
10:30 - Why I’m Doing This/Happy Birthday Mom
13:00 - Strange Brew & Ric Moranis
14:30 - Fatherhood: Could Mike be a stay-at-home Dad?
16:10 - How we met
17:30 - Competing and comparison in art & design
18:14 - "Comparison is a death spiral once you start comparing yourself to other people. Yet you have to acknowledge how good and bad your work is."
20:30 - Lifespan of Work / Porano Case Study
22:30 - Revisiting work from other eras vs. staying in touch
23:26 Life & Design is one of those things where we’re constantly solving the same problem over and over and over.
25:54 - Karlsson Wilker - Tell Me Why
27:40 - 90% of the work that you do ends up in the trash heap, art has a longer lifespan
28:38 - Expression is Hard
29:26 - "Art for me is trying to figure out a way to take my life philosophy and tie that in to things that I’m proficient at."
30:25 - How you constrain yourself is the key to making art
32:10 - "When I was young, I had all the ideas but no way to execute them. When I got older, I had methods to execute them, but forgot how to have the ideas. And now, I have the ideas, I have the methods it’s a matter of trying to find fucking time to get them done."
34:10 - Artistic process and outlining a concept
36:50 - This isn’t an art and design podcast
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37:25 - Mike’s Story
38:08 - Never knew what he wanted to do
39:20 - Community college and needing an art credit
40:08 - Seeing his and other students work in the hallway
42:15 - Parody and irreverence were alluring
43:25 - Buying a PC, playing games and designing loading rooms
46:25 - The beginning of Atomicdust
47:10 - Learning to code
49:55 - It’s impressive to make a successful company
51:25 - Important to sit back and reflect
54:15 - "It’s hard to make a living doing creative work, it’s more deeply personal."
1:01:25 - Is college necessary?
1:03:30 - The internet is the great equalizer
1:04:20 - RZA: "Whether I went to school or not, I’d always study."
1:05:25 - Encyclopedias to Internet
1:06:15 - "Learning no longer has a barrier to entrance, it’s a barrier of interest, time and stamina."
1:09:10 - The unexamined life
1:11:11 - Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it
1:12:38 - Contemporary business and pressure
1:14:55 - Vlogging & routine
1:17:25 - Casey Neistat’s older video work
1:19:04 - Appeasing larger audiences
1:20:15 - Finding things early on and feeling “ownership”
1:21:50 - Malcolm Gladwell - Tipping Point
1:22:25 - Anderson Paak & Kid Cudi
1:25:25 - Hold yourself up to a higher level and push forward
1:28:20 - Does the work suffer after appealing to a larger audience
1:29:05 - New work by an artist should almost confuse their fans
1:31:05 - You can’t worry about the audience
1:31:45 - Steven Pressfield - The War of Art
1:33:48 - Taking in content vs. producing
1:36:00 - Doing Something in the "FuturePast"
1:38:15 - Keep it interesting
1:39:25 - Tattoo Story & Tattoos in general
1:46:25 - Mike’s Hair, Cheap Beer
1:57:00 - Outro