Interviews...
And a submission!!
This past week has been full of challenges. But - I’m going to concentrate and reflect on the positives. After working since the summer of 2021 on a book project with another local author, we finally submitted the manuscript on our deadline - January 15th! There will still be a round of editing after the publisher’s editor goes through it, and then final proofing before the book is published. We are hoping that it will be out by this summer. It’s usually 3-4 months after submission, but that all depends on a lot of other things.
I spent the better part of this past year and a half visiting breweries and conducting interviews with my co-writer. Then I spent a ton of time revisiting those breweries, talking with the bartenders, brewers, taproom managers, etc… I drank a ton of amazing beer along the way. I formed connections with some wonderful people. I made friends and got out of the house!
Just because I’m done with the initial writing process doesn’t mean that I’m going to be leaving this obsession anytime soon. I will definitely continue to visit all of these breweries. I will also continue to do research in this field because it’s become a passion. I interviewed for a related position today.
I totally dropped the f-bomb during the interview. Well, in all fairness, he asked me if I liked craft beer. Pppfffftttt. It was one of those instances when my mouth just did its thing without consulting my brain. “Fuck yeah!” I’m optimistic, but I also know that they have quite a few interviews set up. Personally, I’d probably hire the first interviewee to drop an f-bomb in an interview, but that’s how I roll.
While he didn’t drop the f-bomb in his interview, Jason Parris, co-owner of Wake Brewing (one of the local breweries featured in the book), is someone that I hired when I managed a video store back in the early 90s. I remember seeing him and his brother Justen on the news before they opened the brewery (2017), and I was like, “Hey, I know that guy!” At that point, I had little knowledge or even awareness of craft beer, and what it was they were doing. It was in 2018 that I was properly introduced to craft beer by my good friend, John. I had tried (and liked) Jingle Java and Uncommon Stout, both by Bent River Brewing Company, but just thought they were special brews. I didn’t have any concept of the industry behind them until I went on a trip to Des Moines with John, and he took me around to several of the breweries there.
Wake Brewing was the second brewery we interviewed for the book. My co-writer did the first one solo because the scheduling didn’t work out for me. I had done short interviews previously for small articles for a local short-run zine, but, this was going to be my first in-depth interview. My co-writer had just totaled his 70s-era cassette recorder a few days before the interview and wanted to reschedule to give him time to special order a new one from Best Buy. I gave him so much shit for using such antiquated equipment. What transpired was likely karmic.
At some point, knowing that I would have to do some of the transcribing for the project, and knowing that the plan was to record the interviews on a cassette recorder, I purchased a cheap $10 walkman type of cassette player/recorder.
When his cassette recorder gave out, I chastised him for his lack of current technology. I bought a cheap digital recorder on Amazon, and had it two days later. I tested it out - recorded and played it back several times. (In hindsight, none of the test recordings were longer than a minute).
We sat down to interview the brothers Parris, and I started the digital recorder. I had brought the small cassette recorder as a backup, so I started that one too. This was one of those instances where I should have had a backup for my backup.
The interview kicked ass. These guys were so incredible to talk to. We had an awesome conversation (and some of the greatest beers). The interview lasted close to an hour. This was my first interview with any of the brewers/owners, and it blew me away.
I stopped both of the recorders and was on such a high all the way to the car. That high immediately turned into panic when I realized the digital recorder had fouled out five minutes in and was frozen trying to save.
If you don’t have memories of waiting by the stereo speakers with a tape cassette recorder for your favorite song to come on so that you could record it, then you will understand little of what happened with the cassette recorder. Back in the day, every now and then, you would stop the recorder after your favorite song only to realize that it wasn’t recording anything and that it had been playing instead. To record, you have to push down both the play and record buttons at the same time. It didn’t happen very often, but if you managed to get the play button engaged milliseconds before the record button engaged, it would play instead of record. This is exactly what happened with my backup recorder. It recorded nothing. It sat there and played silence for the entire interview.
I honestly never considered using my phone because I am typically out of space (too many pics and apps), and recording files take up a lot of space.
I was hoping that somehow the digital recorder would unfreeze, and by some miracle, it had saved the whole interview. I let it “chug” away all the way home, praying that’s what it was really doing. It was still frozen when I got home. I plugged it into my laptop to look at the files online to find that the file was corrupted and unreadable.
I was devastated.
I was so angry with the digital recorder. I managed to get it to work again long enough to record some choice short messages, and then I returned it for a refund.
It was a couple of weeks later when I received my tax refund. One of my first purchases was two nice digital recorders. Higher end. My co-writer reimbursed me for his.
Thankfully, the rest of our interviews went without recording snafus.
I went and re-interviewed Jason and Justen quite a few months later. I was actually glad to be able to do the interview later because they had just recently started doing their Flexi-record collabs with musical artists, which is super cool. It’s also cool in an almost “full circle” type of way. During the trip to Des Moines, my induction into craft beer, I saw the band Closet Witch play at Wooly’s. Closet Witch was the second band that did a record collab with Wake in conjunction with their Closet Witch Farmhouse Ale - Saison. It was delicious!
