Jon Stone: One Hour To Doors Season 1 Wrap Up

Jon: 0:00

This is Jon Stone and you're listening to One Hour To Tours. Hello friends, you're pal Jon Stone, here solo today. We have now completed the planned 12 episode pilot season of One Hour To Doors. I thought it would be nice to spend a little time with you directly today and recap the season and my experience. Words cannot express how grateful I am for the gift of time from all of the season one guests and to you for listening.

Jon: 0:39

A funny thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I ran into a friend that I haven't seen in a couple of years, Scott Plusquellec, with the city of Seattle's office of nightlife business. I was excitedly telling him about the podcast and after he heard me out, he asked me a question that caught me off guard. He said "why are you doing that? It was a very good question indeed, and I've reflected on this query for the last couple of weeks. I've got a solid answer now that I want to share with you.

Jon: 1:10

But first let's start with a foundational premise. I believe that human beings need to come together from time to time in person in common cause. I believe to do so is essential to what it means to even be human In these days. I can cite the miseries we all experienced during the pandemic shut down as proof of my belief. Celebrations, sports, music, special interests, even the act of mourning, the cause is not important, it's the physical connectedness that matters so dearly. Human gatherings, even mass gatherings, are as old as humanity itself, but in our lifetime, the stakes, the implications, they've changed. Today, as participants in the business of bringing people together, we have become the responsible party charged with making gatherings remain possible by making them safe, and that is a paradigm shift. We collectively, as an industry, now bear an enormous responsibility of professionalism that simply hasn't existed in the past. None of us are exempt from this, regardless of scale or scope or role.

Jon: 2:27

So why am I doing this podcast? I have a few motivations. First, from day one, I have always been fascinated by the people that the magic of our industry happen. We all, tend to be as interesting and colorful as the events that we produce. You may not be everyone's cup of tea, but you are my people. But the nature of our work dictates that most of us remain perfectly invisible to the outside world and, to an extent, invisible even amongst each other. I've decided as of late that I don't like that and it occurs to me that this podcast could be a means to share all of you beautiful animated characters with the rest of the world. I suppose in a sense this podcast could be construed as an open love letter to my industry.

Jon: 3:27

Second, I see an opportunity for learning here. I figured out long ago that everyone I ever meet has something that they can teach me, often when and where I least expect it. All I have to do is listen closely. I see to it that every one of these episodes has at least a handful of really important information and insight. Some of its role specific, a lot of it is a little more universal in nature, some of it is overt, some of it is nestled between the lines. But there is invaluable information for everyone here, free of charge. All you have to do is listen closely.

Jon: 4:11

Lastly, playing on the aforementioned invisibility problem, I see an opportunity to promote more common understanding among us. That might look like a better understanding of the particular roles that we all play. That might look like a better understanding of how our roles mesh together to create something larger than any one of us, and ideally that might look like a better understanding of who each of us are as human beings. I think nothing but good can come of that, so I'm compelled to at least try. If I could use one word to describe all of my motivations in summation, I think it would be perspective.

Jon: 4:55

So what caused me to actually start this podcast? Happenstance, really. I have to look back at the onset of the pandemic and the global shutdown of our industry. I found myself with some extra time on my hands and, as I talk about in a couple of the episodes, I eventually found myself in a bit of an identity crisis, not being able to do what I do and with no clue as to when or if I would be able to do that again. It made me reflect on the sum of my career to date and ponder what my new, highest and best use might be in the future. I used some of that time to explore a hobby that I've been curious about for a long time called field recording. In a nutshell, that means the act of making audio recordings in nature. It could be actual nature sounds, or recording things for motion picture, live action, that kind of stuff. I have a background in studio recording and I have a background in live audio. But field recording is an entirely different craft because one has virtually zero control over the recording environment and the subjects. It demands a different skill set, a different mindset and different specialized equipment. I took to it pretty quickly and I enjoyed it, and I'm still enjoying it to this day and, most importantly, it reacquainted me with my love of all things audio. Who knows, maybe the aspect of confronting that which I cannot control was exactly what I needed to do at the time.

Jon: 6:33

Here I'll show you some examples of my recordings. This is a recording of a thunderstorm from my patio. One day I was searching YouTube for field recording videos and the thought crossed my mind to look up some behind the scenes videos about festivals and events and whatnot, and I was surprised to find that there just isn't that much content out there like that, and a lot of what was out there at that time was a pretty low quality in one way or another and that just irritated me. So I could see a topic that I knew people were interested in, but there was a lack of quality content available. That planted another seed in my head. That realization eventually merged in my brain with my newfound live remote recording skills and ideas started to percolate that eventually became the concept for this podcast. This is a recording of water dripping into a bucket from a roof during a rainstorm.

Jon: 8:15

I know that inevitably there's going to be a lot of gear heads listening to this, so let's just talk for a few minutes about the technical side of how I'm doing this. I thought about all of this for too long and then at some point I just started doing it, determined to figure the rest out as I go. To date, all of the episodes of recorded live in person, face to face. Sometimes I travel to get the sessions that I want, but that's okay. I do realize I could do this over video chat or whatnot, but I prefer in person conversations. I just think that they feel better. I multi-track the sessions and then take them home and edit them later. And again for you gear heads out there, my mobile rig is simply SM58s straight into a Zoom H8 at 24-bit, 48K, with the built-in limiter engaged just as a precaution. I simultaneously run Rode Wireless Go 2 lav mics as backups, again straight into the H8. Back home I dump the tracks into Logic and I process everything in the box.

Jon: 9:23

On the voice tracks I typically do a high pass using the StockLogic EQ, then into a UA610 preamp, then into the StockLogic LA2A compressor clone, then into the Izotope RX10 D-click and D-ess modules. On my voice specifically, I also use the UA Pultec MEQ-5 just for a little dip at 200 Hertz, which clears up a lot of the mud in my voice. Sometimes for a female voice I'll use different preamps, it just depends on what sounds good. The theme music and the radio call tracks just have the same high-pass filters and a kiss of the Logic stock platinum compressor. And then the stereo bus chain is the stock Logic SSL G Bus clone, the UA Pultec MEQ5, the UA Pultec HLF3C, I believe, with no settings, just running it through for the color and if needed, I'll add another instantiation of D-Click and or D-ess. And finally I meter using the incredible Izotope Insight plugin. I target my levels not at volume but at loudness, with a target of negative 16 integrated In editing.

Jon: 10:45

I chop out a lot of uhmms and ahh's, a lot of dead space, a lot of false starts and so forth, but I try to leave the conversations as intact as possible. I give my guests 100% review and approval authority and here's why I do that. I do not script these conversations and I never will. I do my research. I have ideas about what I want to talk about, but what I want most is real, open, honest conversation. I don't want guests holding back. I don't want guests being careful with their words. I want the straight up. So my promise is that, as a guest, you can speak freely without fear, knowing that at the end of the day, I will never publish something that you wish you wouldn't have said. That said, to date, no one has come back at me and asked me to remove anything, not a single word. I do chop out the occasional curse word. I want to maintain a family-friendly rating on the internet, but the finished conversations that you hear, those are 99.9% of what really happened.

Jon: 11:51

At the end of the day, this podcast is about building and celebrating and educating our community. If you want scandal and drama and tension and all that heck, just go to work for the day, or the internet's full of that stuff too. It doesn't need one hour at the doors to add to it. I put a lot of time into each episode about 20 hours all told. I'm trying to get faster and I am in time, but presently I am essentially a one-person operation and I'm still learning as I go. This is the field recording that I'm most proud of to date. It's a recording of the boiling mud pots at Yellowstone National Park. It was recorded at dawn actually just before dawn so you can hear the amazing bird chorus in the background as well. I love the boiling mud pots.

Jon: 13:32

I do have some specialty assistants that I need to acknowledge. First, I am so grateful to my test listeners. These are people who have been listening to every episode in draft form and advising me on everything from content to flow to tonality and levels. Now, with a dozen episodes under my belt, I'm beginning to wean myself off of their volunteer services as I get more confident in my work. A round of applause to my testers.

Jon: 14:03

In Manzanita, Oregon, my brother from another mother and one of the strangest cats you will never meet because he's a recluse, but I love him anyway, Mr PJ Newman. From the city-state of Des Moines, Washington, my most trusted colleague and sounding board of all time. Ms Susan Den. And the most important opinion of them all, located in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains near Monroe, Washington, my mom, Joanne Stone. Thanks, mom.

Jon: 15:01

And I also want to articulate my deep appreciation for someone who has been teaching me what I need to know about the social media aspects of this show. Naomi Morgan is the CEO of NM Entertainment, which is a rapidly growing company that produces live entertainment for a variety of specialty markets. Naomi is super savvy with the socials and with branding in general. All of the Facebook and Insta posts that accompany each episode, Naomi designed all of that. She designed the whole strategy, the format, the scheduling, and she had the patience to teach me how to do all of it myself, something which I really, truly, sincerely don't want to do. But hey, here I am, so there I go. Naomi, thank you.

Jon: 16:01

Let's see, lessons learned and favorite moments from season one. By far the most interesting thing that I've learned, and often the most frustrating thing that I have to deal with, is that, with rare exception, all of us have all sorts of quirks and anomalies about our speech patterns that we just don't notice when we're talking with each other in live conversation, but when you listen back to the recordings, all of these flaws jump out. It is the strangest thing. For example, before I started doing this, I had no idea how many really long pauses that I regularly insert into my sentences. I presume that's just my brain searching for words. Why does it take my brain longer to search for words than other people? I have no idea. I've had guests who often start a sentence and then they pause mid-sentence and then maybe they'll start a new thought and they'll pause again and then jump back to the original thought, and so forth.

Jon: 16:58

I never have noticed all of that while recording or in real life conversation, but on playback it just jumps out and it can be really distracting. So that's a good amount of the editing work that I do. I chop around the edges here and there to make us all, especially me, sound like we know how to talk and are having a cohesive conversation. I do the tedious work so that you only have to listen to the important words. That's how I think about it.

Jon: 17:27

Anyway, I have learned one thing that really seems to be a hallmark of people in our line of business, and that is that, generally speaking, we never hesitate to say I don't know, and I think that is just about as sexy as can be. I think it's a reflection of the problem-solving skills that are a requisite in our industry, especially in the field. We can't afford to fake it. We are open and honest and we check our egos at the door on this line of work. I love that In the same vein, in almost every episode I have the random questions segment. You know what you never hear in those segments. You never hear the guests being uncomfortable or hesitant in diving right into those questions and to me that speaks about an intense sense of curiosity and, again, an absence of fear of the unknown that tends to be very common in all aspects of our craft. That's a beautiful thing.

Jon: 18:24

I don't think I can call out any one favorite moment from the episode so far. I mean, just having the excuse to spend quality time with so many beautiful souls is a joy for me. I do love some of the twists and turns that come out of the random questions segments. I loved the moment that Chris Weber and I revisited one of his arts programming stunts from a long time ago, when we both came to the same conclusion that that stunt was at once the best idea and the worst idea he'd ever had. I loved the moment in my chat with Riley Stockton where I realized that he was in fact the hometown kid who had gone away and then returned home and realized his childhood dream of being the executive director of Spokane Hoop Fest. That felt really, really good. Anyway, looking forward and wrapping things up, again, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you. Thank you for listening. I mean that. The response to the pilot season of One Hour to Doors has well exceeded my expectations. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jon: 19:35

By the time this episode airs, I will have already recorded at least the first two episodes of season two, and let's just say I intend to come out of the gate at full throttle. We will have episodes on sponsorship, on marketing. We're going to look at various production and operation trades. We will talk with leadership at some of the cities and venues that we heard such great things about in season one. We're going to test new waters with some issue specific episodes, and we're even going to take our first steps to visit events outside of the state of Washington. All sorts of good stuff is in the queue, as always. Please subscribe or follow the podcast on your player of choice and follow us on Facebook and Insta. Use the socials to throw comments and questions at me or at the guests. Let me know what you would like to hear in terms of future episodes. This podcast is for all of us. Don't be shy, use it. That's all for now and until next time. Thank you for being here. All call