125. No Set Path

125 No Set Path

Drew: [00:00:00] Just in our own experience, it's, it's really great to have access to the things you want, but be able to find a place that is comfy for you that you can call home. And I think, you know, yeah, going back to what made us comfortable coming from the city and having been there for a really long time, not as long as you, but you know, 10 or 12 years, you know, we wanted something that felt somewhat familiar to that, um, but also had its own.

Its own flavor. Right. And I think we found that with Uptown Kingston, because you know, we have space, but we're also close to other houses. We have a great relationship with all of our neighbors. We have that community sense where you can walk out the door and see people, you know, and like walk to a coffee shop and.

And have that experience. Neighbors are everything, you know, neighbors are everything down,

SONG:[00:01:00]

I'm looking, trying to get used to it. For now...

I'm a cidiot.

EPISODE:

Hi Drew. Hey Matt. How are you? I'm good. I'm overwhelmed. We're in your studio, which is very professional. Oh, thank you so much. I have an amateur. No, you're not. I've heard your show. You're not an amateur. Definitely not. I look at the run of all this equipment. It's like two. I got two lapel mics.

Some random mic. I've got like a thing plugged into my Mac. It's a, it's a double-edged sword, man, because you know, when you spend 10 years or more in the film industry, you just acquire a bunch of stuff. Yeah. And so now I've reached the point where it's like, I don't know how to not have a ton of stuff, but in this case it's actually worked out.

Pretty well because I've actually been able to turn this space into like a little business for myself, which is awesome. Oh, that's good. That's good. We'll definitely talk about that too. Yeah. I guess my first question is about your connection to the Hudson Hudson Valley. Are you from here? Did you move up here?

Like me? I, I [00:02:00] moved up here like you, so I have no previous connection to the Hudson Valley. My wife and I started house hunting in 2019. Yeah. And I've just hit five years here. Right. So we bought our place in August. Thank you. We bought our place in August of 2020 and now five years in, I've stopped quantifying to like long time locals that I was not a COVID panic buyer that we, I know.

Were actually trying to buy a house. Everyone says it to you with the look in their eye. I know, man. But, but truthfully, we were starting to look in 2019, towards the end of the year we started up in Hudson actually. Um, and had to walk away from a place up there, which, which worked out for the better. I think it was a little too far for us, and we actually wound up in Kingston the weekend that everything started locking down, so we kind of got stuck here.

So we hunkered down in a couple of Airbnbs and then wound up getting a short term apartment rental. When we really decided that, no, no, no, we're gonna hunt for a house here. We really like the town. Even with everything being locked down and we had no previ previous experience, like we really dug the city of Kingston.

Yeah. So that's kind of [00:03:00] how we wound up, wound up here is we knew we wanted to buy a place. We were getting priced out of the city. It was either buy a studio apartment in the city or buy a standalone home outside. Uh, we wanted to, you know, not only have some space, but get married, have a kid. Yeah. All that stuff we've done.

Yeah. Um, so it's, it's been a really great experience. And now five years in, we're like, okay. Yeah. We're, we're like in the groove of the Hudson Valley now. Right, right. And what do you think about Kingston? I love the history. I love the architecture. It's a little bit, you know, I'm in Hudson, so this has got a little more gravita.

There's a little more here. I really like it. I, from a history standpoint, like I grew up in a Revolutionary war town in, in Connecticut, so grew up in Newtown, New Jersey. Grew. Yeah. I grew up in, in Newtown, Connecticut. And, and the main street, which I grew, grew up not too far from. It's all like revolutionary War homes and, and lots of old buildings.

So that's kind of in my blood and I'm a history buff. I, I dig all that stuff. So I think, you know, historically, uh, and geographically is a really interesting place to be. [00:04:00] We had always heard that it was. Kind of like a, a haven for creative people. That's what, yes, that's what we heard, right? Yes. We didn't really know.

And I found we've definitely found that to be true. And the more time that goes on, the more you realize just how many crazy talented and like interesting people there are here, especially in Kingston. I, I don't know. I don't know why exactly. Um, you know, just from, from my past city life brain, I'm like, well.

There's not a totally great reason for, for Kingston to be this like magnet because it's not on a train line. Like it's not easily accessible by public transit. Although there is the bus, which is great. I like the bus. I like the bus too. And I can walk to the bus station. Bus is my backup when the trains.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but it really does have this like gravity to it. The city of Kingston. And there's so many interesting people here and there's so many great, um. Opportunities to like build and have community here as well. So I think, I think that's really part of the draw and I've only seen it grow more like I, I, [00:05:00] you know, when we moved here and we kind of bought our place.

And all that stuff. It's like we, we thought we were kind of at the top and everybody was kind of having some sort of COVID hangover where they're like, oh, runaway to the Hudson Valley. And Kingston seems cool, but it it continues to grow and, and change, uh, yeah, I think for the better. And there's like three different neighborhoods, which is kind of interesting.

There's this, the stockade where we are now, which is the Torical with the covered walkways where. Kinsley Hotel is, then there's down by the, uh, Roundout. Mm-hmm. Right where that cute wine shop brunette is. Yeah. And some like on the water. Yep. And then there's that middle Middletown, what's a Middletown called?

Midtown. Midtown, yeah. And that's been like really evolving and really changing and they put in the traffic circle and they're trying to spruce that up so it's not so sketchy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's still has its pockets, but I mean there's really a lot going on. It's restaurants. Lots of great restaurants.

Uh, the Performing Arts Center is down there. Um, you know, across the street from that there's the West Hill Brewery Taproom. Um, the Center for Photography. Woodstock opened up their new building, uh, not too far from there. And it's this whole huge old [00:06:00] industrial building that has galleries on the first floor and, and they're putting in dark room spaces and there's, there's a lot of.

From my limited amount of knowledge because most of my time is, is spent either working or with my daughter. So it's like my, you know, my, my time out in the community is, is limited right now, but there's really been like this influx of businesses and opportunities in Midtown and an effort to like really like build it, build it up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, Kingston's probably very creative 'cause there's a big music scene here, huge. It probably has the Woodstock halo. It probably is location 'cause it is pretty close to the city. You're near north of New Paltz and things. But I mean, there's so much cha changing here and I think across the river, you know, where I started and stuff is a little, you know, bougie and stuff.

So you kind of, if you want a little grit, I think you've gotta come here. Yeah. And, and the thing that I find interesting and unique about Kingston is if you want to get to any of the, the places out west and the Catskills that you know. People want to go to or [00:07:00] visit or whatever from the city. It's like you're going through Kingston, you're getting off the throughway and you're driving west through here.

So it is kind of the hub that people have to move through to get to those places. And I think 'cause of that, there's a trickle of of people doing some exploration here. And what about adjust? So is adjustment hard for you? Like let's talk Cate stuff. Like did you have to get acclimated? Was it very easy for you?

Do you feel like an outsider? I don't feel like an outsider anymore. Great. Uh, I did for a little while. Uh, and that was all internal. That had nothing to do with any external. No one said anything to you. No one said anything to me. I'll put it to you this way. I was convinced, even though I knew moving upstate was the right move for many, many reasons, I was convinced that when we moved here, I was like, okay, I'm, I'm never gonna work again.

For background, I've worked in film and video and commercials for over 10 years. Primarily as a cinematographer. So my primary source of income has been working on set, filming things. Right. And I [00:08:00] was convinced that I was never gonna work there. But you couldn't get a work up here by being up here, correct?

Correct. Disconnected from society A little bit. A little bit. There's Or disconnected from the industry. Yeah. Right. It's been an interesting experience because. On the tail end of COVID, maybe the two years following COVID because nobody had made anything or really produced anything. Everything felt pretty normal, like productions picked back up.

I was traveling to and from the city a lot, um, 'cause there's still a lot of production that that happens there. Um, but I was still getting work. And now in the years since that things look a little bit different, production for me has slowed down a little bit. But then, you know, other opportunities have come up like.

You know, building this space and having, um, local clientele come in or, you know, a lot of times I'll have actors or authors in here and I remotely connect them to another. Larger show or radio station. And so there has been a balance, but surely I'm still working and you know, I'm not, but I thought there is production up here, like severance shoots up here and TV [00:09:00] shows and yeah, there, there is.

So I live in a cut. See the, the, the online. Yeah. I live in a world that the bigger shows like Severance and anything HBO related or, or you know, studio films. Those are all union productions, which I'm not a part of. Oh. So it's, it's kind of a different. Sect of people. Um, I have a couple of friends I know who work on severance.

One of them just bought a place for his mom up here in Kingston. So there is a healthy production industry, but I think the trend is less frequent productions and kind of smaller scale. Um, so I've had to supplement a little bit, and also some of that is personal choice, right? I want to be at home with my kid more and have like a slightly different lifestyle.

All that being said, there's definitely opportunity, especially if you're a creative person, uh, to live and work in the Hudson Valley that I was not aware of before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what about where I'm like, where I'm sitting in the studio, have like. Famous people come, come through here of people sat in this [00:10:00] chair that I'm in right now.

I've had, I've had some actors and authors you would definitely recognize, um, in here in the past, uh, which is, which is pretty cool. Um, one of my retainer clients for the studio is big in the, uh, if you wanna call it life coaching space. Uh, she definitely like actually gets stopped by people, uh, every week at the local coffee shop.

Yeah. Um, so there, there are people of note here, uh, that you would definitely recognize, um, that roll through here kind of regularly, which is cool. Can I leave a note for them? You could leave a note if you wish. Like, come on, come on Cate. Sure, sure. I'm happy to send people your way. I'm too nervous around celebrity.

I can never ask them. Like directly. Like I lived for years next to Ethan Hawke in New York, and I never had the courage to talk to him, but Brian, Brian would, and we see Malcolm Gladwell all the time, and Brian like talks to him and I'm like, so chicken, like I don't know what's wrong with me. Some cowardice.

How long were you in the city for? Um, 25 years. Yeah. We lived next door to him for 10 years. Well, you should be comfortable. I around, I talked to him when my dog jumped [00:11:00] on his, and that was it. I couldn't make eye contact. Yeah. I mean. I've worked with a lot of celebrities, um, and you realize really quickly once you get the jitters out, it's like they, you know, they're just normal people who want to kind of hang out and do their job and go home and hang with their dog or their kids or whatever, you know.

I did work a little while for, with Alicia Keys, I have also worked with Alicia Keys. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't think she's a regular person. Like she's just so glamorous. She was so gracious. We were working, it was in advertising and yeah, she was the Blackberry in-house Creative director. Yeah.

And I was the Blackberry out of house creative director for publicists. And so we had a nice, we had a nice time. We met a few times and some phone calls left as she got off stage in Sao Paulo. It was like she was hors and she's like, I'm so sorry I'm late. I'm like, it's okay. I was doing laundry and you were in front of 400,000 people or something?

Uh, yeah. My, I, I shot something for, uh, uh. Virtual instrument company, um, that she partners with called Native Instruments. [00:12:00] And so I think this was two summers ago, we, uh, did an interview with her and some in studio stuff at her studio in Chelsea. Which was a very late night. So I can't say that she holds normal hours, but she was very gracious and very kind.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. So what about podcasting up here? How did you get in into that? 'cause I could talk about podcasting all day. Yeah. Podcasting up here happened, um, because of CVID. I have been an avid consumer podcast for a long time. Um, riding the subway to and from wherever I was going and during COVID, I just needed a project, right.

We had, we had bought our place, so I didn't start until after we moved into our house and I had this mostly finished basement where I'm like, uh, I should do something, right? So I started podcasting because I had a list of people I wanted to talk to, and I figured an easier sell to get access to people, um, that I wanna have conversations with, to say, Hey, I have a podcast.

Yeah. You know, do you wanna come on? Right. We'll distribute it and if it does something cool and, you know, people always wanna talk about themselves, not in a [00:13:00] negative way, it's just, you know, kind of human nature. So that's where it started. And it started mostly with like filmmakers and photographers and, and things like that.

And I've kind of slowly expanded and bra branched out into talking with different creative professionals and, and people who lead creative lives. Both here in the Hudson Valley and you know, across the country. Oh. Mention the name of your show so people know. Sure. The name of my show is No Set Path. Yep.

Ironically, there are two shows named No Set Path on Podcast Feeds. I was the first one and I own the copyright. For the record. I'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, no Set Path. Creative Entrepreneurship Growth Stories is kind of the tag that I have there. And I've started talking to still filmmakers and photographers, but you know.

Marketers and people who are involved with social media, more musicians, um, people who run like nonprofit organizations. Anybody who kind of like ties back to leading a creative life. And, and what I really like about the title No Set Path is I'm very passionate about the idea that like. No two roads to anywhere [00:14:00] are the same.

Everybody's path looks a little bit different. And mostly because I've, I've lived that, like if you told me 20 years ago, this is where I would wind up, I would've told you, you're crazy. Because I was going to be a musician, Matt. I was going to be a touring rockstar musician. Clearly that worked out. You still could be.

You still could be. Well, what do you play? Uh, I sing and play guitar and play some bass and a little bit of piano. Enough to get me in trouble. Yeah. That's great. I mean, I, I think I found that the same thing true about careers, no set path is that I have another show for the marketing industry called Rising, and it's about marketing careers.

And almost everyone we've interviewed really didn't necessarily set out to do exactly what they're doing and everything is, I think someone referred to it as there used to be the ladder, you know, you'd climb the ladder. Sure. But now it's more like a climbing wall. Yeah. And really the way to move forward is sometimes to move sideways.

Sometimes you have to go around a different direction. And I love that metaphor 'cause I think it's really, I do too. It's still about having a little bit of intention. Yeah. Like there's things you want to do. There's a bucket list of maybe things. I have a huge bucket list. I'm always [00:15:00] doing same projects about it, but it, it's not always straight, a straight line, a ladder up.

It's sometimes it's a, a rocking and I've never done a climbing wall. I can't cut a five feet off the floor. I'd fall. Um, but, um, I'm too afraid. Maybe with a harness. Yeah. I would do it with a harness. You could safety yourself in there. I think I could safety fit myself. I've never done it either, so I'm just, I'm just assuming.

Yeah. Yeah. There's probably one around here, right? There's a Mustangs climbing gym down in, uh, Kingston Plaza. Just open. Oh, really? Not too long ago. Yeah. Okay. So we'll go, we'll go after the show. Yeah. And we'll just go sideways, right? Yeah. I actually, I actually really do love that metaphor. That's really great, because a lot of times, most of the time things are not linear at all, and you're just looking for that.

Handhold or somewhere to put your foot or somewhere to get like some sort of purchase that you can like take the next step. Even though you can't really necessarily see where it is you're heading at the, at the time, you kinda have to go on faith a little bit that you're gonna find the next. Way to, to climb.

It's also newcomers. It's a little bit like that too. I find like even coming up here, like making friends and things like [00:16:00] that, like, I don't know how you did it, but we, we sat at the bar and we joined things and, and it didn't always work. Like sometimes it would stick for a little while and then you would have one circle of friends and you have a different circle, and then the one circle would mature and you'd move on to the next thing.

So it's not a linear path even with, I think friendships and becoming acclimated here. Yeah, we've always been. 'cause you mentioned it. We've always been sit at the bar people, um, because we always found it a the fastest way to like, get seated at a restaurant and get some food. Absolutely. Yeah. But also just a great way to like meet people and have conversations.

We're still sit at the bar people more often than not because what, what, what do you like, what's your favorite bars to sit and eat? We're a big fan of Cleo, which is right across the street here. Oh, I need to go there. They're really great. Yeah. Um, they, they call themselves a wine bar, so it's Cleo Wine Bar, but their food is outrageous.

Yeah. Uh, so, so good small plate stuff. The owners are lovely. The restaurant is beautiful and amazing. Um, they don't do reservations, so you just kind of have to like. I work with 'em a little bit. Weekends tend to get a little busy, [00:17:00] but that's a great spot. We're kind of daily patrons of rough draft barn books.

Yep. Um, which is, is kind of our default place to go. And you know, that's either coffee or tea for us or beer and a cider. And, and that's really great. So those are kind of our, our two staples. But there's any number of like great places around here. Yeah. Yeah. Kingston has a lot of, a lot of great food and, and, and places too, like me.

You moved here, but you love it and you love the history. Yeah. Where, where do you go for culture? Like where do you go, where do you, where do you take your daughter? Do you go to Asokan Reservoir? Like what are your go-to places? Yeah. So most of our go-to places right now, um, are kind of. In Kingston proper, like, because we live pretty close to uptown here.

We like to walk her around there and, and she has her regular places she likes to go. How is she? She's three and a half. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we do take her out to Ashoka. Um, when she first started walking. Uh, that was, that was kind of the place that I would take her. 'cause it's just a straight, pretty [00:18:00] flat shot.

Right. And she would just, you know, have a great time just going back and forth on the, on the trail. Also, she's discovered a love for, uh, a couple places across the river in Red Hook. So there's a park over there that she really enjoys going to. Um, so we spent more and more time there and kind of downtown Red Hook, she really enjoys, um, like Bliss Smoothie Bar because they Oh yeah.

'cause they moved, they used to be like this little. Tiny Closet, E space. And they moved into this amazing, beautiful storefront. Yeah. It was this amazing bakery called Annabelle's Bakery. Okay. And when they, we really said when, when Anna Bell, when Anne, she closed the bakery 'cause it was delicious. And she used to get me all these gluten-free things.

Yeah. Yeah. And she had a ghost in that space by the way. There's a, there was a ghost. It was a ghost Okay. And stuff. And so when Bliss moved in, they, they gutted. It's gorgeous. Yeah. It's stunning. It's become very popular. It's, it's great. It's great. So my daughter particularly loves that there's the toy store next door.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's super cute. It's like a candy and then it's, it's a woman this, um, I met them when we first moved to Redhawk and they opened a second location in Hudson, but that's their original one and it's [00:19:00] really cute. That's cool. Yeah. I'm just going back in my head into recent memory and it's like, yeah, we're either kind of in Uptown Kingston at the reservoir occasionally or in Red Hook, you know, other than dragging her around to do random errands.

But it would be great to expand our horizons a little bit more. You know, you work with what you got and when you have a three and a half year old, you know, you're on, you're on limited time sometimes. What do you really like about living? Do you consider yourself living in the country? You're really in a small city.

I don't consider myself living in the country at all. I have ready access to the country anytime I want, which is really, really nice. And I think for us it was a good, it was a good balance. When we were really digging into house hunting around here, uh, we were looking across the river in, in Red Hook at a couple places.

And while it was. Beautiful. And I still love going over there. Um, I think for a daily, like day in and day out existence, we really like being in sort of a more condensed [00:20:00] community. Something that's, that's walkable. I definitely don't consider this the country it's country light, right. You know? Yeah. Red Hook is a little more country too.

Microsoft's are very good for kids. I mean, the, the school districts, you know, is, is famously good in Red Hook and Beck. I've heard nothing but amazing things about the schools over there. Yeah. I thought we, we sold our house in Red Hook. We put in the market in June, and I really thought we'd be able to like.

Sell to. Yeah. Some family wanting to start school in September that had waiting on the sidelines and we, we didn't sell to a couple with kids. We sold to somebody who's actually a musician. Oh, okay. And he took my my goat shed and turned it into like a little music studio. That's cool. Which is super cool.

That's great. Was a great use of this little. We had an outbuilding. See that's the one thing I wish I had an outbuilding. Yeah, we have a detached garage that has no power and that's about it. You know, I, I wish we had a little bit more space in an outbuilding for some, something like that would be amazing.

But it's a, you know, it's an, maybe you could get a weekend place in the country. You know, let me just check my bag of money over here and, you know, [00:21:00] figure out how to do that. Oh, out by Fania Margaretville. Oh yeah. You know where the end the world ends, Livingston manner, you know. Man, I haven't been out to Fania in a minute.

Um, we used to go to Phonecia Diner, like kind of regularly. I feel like it's a, it's, it's ready for it's time for another visit rather. Yeah. Another place I forgot to mention, across the river that we go to regularly, especially in fall, we like to go to the farms over there. We went tore farm. Yeah. Greg Farm, is it Greg?

Yeah. I thought it was GRE for years. I lived around the corner for years. I pronounced it Greg. Yeah. And it's really Greg Farm, but it's spelled G-R-E-I-G. See, this is the thing I can never figure out. Is it all baby goats still? Still have the goats. It's so cute. This is the thing I can never figure out because like you said, you live in Cairo, but it's spelled Cairo, right?

It's all screwed up and like I'm in clever act and I can't say it. Right. Right. So pronunciation hacker. Thank you pronunciation versus, you know, uh, spelling of words is, it's questionable up here. Sometimes. I don't even think it's [00:22:00] like a bougie thing. I think it's just a dumb thing. You know what I mean?

It's just kind of like, it's just like somebody just didn't get the memo right. And then, and then that just kind of disseminated throughout the region. But anyway. Greg Farm, thank you for correcting me. We go to regularly in the fall because I have a really great pumpkin patch. Yep. Um. Which my kid loves, and everybody's always been super great to us.

There. We had a, we just went, you know, this past Halloween season to get a bunch of pumpkins and Nice, the guy ringing us up at the, at the exit was like, oh, you live in Kingston. You should come back. You know, come at sunset, go up on this hill, you know, it's amazing. You, you know, you won't be disappointed.

And it's like that kind of stuff I really appreciate. It's a wonderful place Farms. It makes me feel like a real local now, you know? Yeah. And they put in, during the pandemic, they put in, in their farm, they put in these great walking paths. So there's like three mile walking paths. Yeah. And we all used it all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was our sanctuary. That's cool. And I would go there almost every, every day with the dog. And it was just so great and so [00:23:00] beautiful. I had to do a double take. 'cause when we were out picking pumpkins, I saw a couple of people like running on this path. I, and I never knew they were there.

Yeah, there's a couple loops. Yeah. That's super cool. Beautiful property. And then near them is also Rose. Rose Hill Farm. Rose Hill. Mm-hmm. And they have a lot of events and popups and stuff. And that's where, um, the Sopranos famous scenes were shot. Oh, is it? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. There's, um, you know, where they buried the bodies in the country.

Are they still there? Probably out in ard, right? Or out that way. There's Westwood Orchard and Arrowwood Farms, like kind of on that same Oh, Arrowwood. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of same road. And those are really great, like family friendly, kid friendly places. It's like there's, there's a lot to be had up here for sure.

Yeah. I'm all about the farms. I've interviewed a few farmers and I don't think I'd be a farmer 'cause I don't really get up that early. Although I heard it's really the dairy farmers that do that Uhhuh. But um. But I think it's, it's special and it's what make this area so different from other communities.

Yeah. I, and I think just in our [00:24:00] own experience, it's, it's really great to have access to the things you want, but be able to find a place that is comfy for you that you can call home. And I think, you know, yeah. Going back to what made us comfortable coming from the city and having been there for a really long time, not as long as you, but you know, 10 or 12 years, you know, we wanted something that felt.

Somewhat familiar to that, um, but also had its own, its own flavor. Right. I think we found that with Uptown Kingston, because you know, we have space, but we're also. Close to other houses. We have a great relationship with all of our neighbors. We have that community sense where you can walk out the door and see people, you know, and like walk to a coffee shop and, and have that experience.

And neighbors are everything. You know, neighbors are everything, you know, in, in Red Hook, a lot of people know this story, but like our, our neighbors like. Were not that friendly to us. Mm. And it was really hard and we worked at it, and then we did something very cate and then nobody was talking to us. Um, but then in our new place, we're really friendly with neighbors on all our sides.

Yeah. [00:25:00] And it's such a pleasure. It makes, it's so reassuring. Especially during dark winter nights. Yeah. Yeah. Just having a, having a community of people to, to lean on is, is really great. And we live on a corner, so we kind of get the bonus of. Being friendly with the neighbors on both blocks that we're on, which it's funny because a lot of them don't know each other.

Yeah. But we know everybody, so it's, it's really interesting and a cool dynamic. Do people think like you're like a famous cinematographer and they want to be introduced things now? Absolutely not. So I'm the only one that's begged for their own feature film. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty best. You're the first. Okay.

What about PO podcasts? Like do you have a favorite like local podcast? I did a writeup about a bunch besides yours and mine. What are your favorite podcasts? Well, well, I was gonna say Cate, so now you've, you've, uh, you've ruined it for me. That's actually a really good question. I don't know if I have a favorite local podcast, nor do I think I've spent enough time doing justice to the local podcast and digging in as much as I, as I should.

So there's a few that I really like. So the, the Valley girls are great. Yeah. I've [00:26:00] heard great things about Valley Girls. We did a crossover with them like you and I are doing to Brett Barry's, uh, cat Gass. Cat's cast the Catskills podcast. He and I did a crossover. He's, he's great. His voice is like butter, and he's a sound engineer, so Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. His, his quality is unbelievable. Um, you guys should have like an editing off or something. Yeah, I have a, I have an email out to him. Oh, you do? That's good. And then there's a new one called Hudson Valley Unleashed or something. Oh yeah. It's like, uh. The guy that owns the restaurant in Rhinebeck and went on a radio station, so it's like three popular.

Oh, okay guys. Cool. The day of the show. And they bring on a lot of well-known people. Oh, okay. Yeah, I just, I just heard about that. Yeah, the other day. And then there's some local ones that are really good, like I was on the Reinbeck scoop. Um, which is kind of recorded at a local radio station in Recl, you know, which is the hammer by the train station too.

And that was super fun. We near, near the, where near the train station? Is that in the coffee place? Um, the little, oh yeah, across the street. A little studio's in the back. That's right. They have forgot about that. It's not as big as your studio. No, no, no. It's really [00:27:00] small. It's been a minute since I've taken Amtrak from there.

But yeah, I remember. So radio free, recl broadcast out of there. Cool. And they record a lot of their things at shows. That's a cool little spot. Although I don't always consider a podcast. That's a radio show, a podcast, you know what I mean? Like a radio show converted to a podcast is fine. Yeah. But I dunno if I would consider it a podcast.

Podcast. Yeah. It it, you know, that does bring up the, the whole topic of like local radio, which I'm not super tied in with radio. Yeah. I'm not super tied in with, but I've, I've done a couple of interviews over at like, for other shows over at Radio Kingston. Yeah. And that's, that's a really cool thing in the area.

And there is that kind of crossover where it's not. It's an interesting space because it's, yes, it's getting broadcast out on the radio, but now in 2025, everything is, you know, recorded and, you know, streamed digitally. So it is a really interesting crossover. Uh, my friend Blake, who I've had in here on, on my show, he runs Cinema Kingston, which is a weekly radio show that I've gone and guested on.

[00:28:00] The Hudson folks used to have a show over there, so I've gone and, and done an interview with them. Oh, great. But that's a, that's a really cool space, man. Uh, you know, there was a lot of investment money that went into that building, and it is a. Proper radio station. It is on Broadway. Yeah. In Midtown Kingston.

Yeah. In a very busy part of town. And you can't hear anything like, oh, I'm gonna walk in there. And it's metal around. Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful space. It's a beautiful space. That's nice. But uh, yeah, I love the little. Local radio stations that pop up. I forgot all about that place in rcl. It's super cute.

In the back of the shop. Yeah. The one in red, WKZE. Mm-hmm. I actually worked out of, during the pandemic. Cool. I rented an office there. Nice. And I got to be around radio people because my first job was as a copywriter for radio commercials. Okay. So I kind of, I feel like I grew up in radio. Yeah. So I have a really close like, emotional relationship with the ear.

The ear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so this totally makes sense that you've gotten fantastic. I, fantastic. I'm, today we're doing video too for this, which I never do. Well, you look great. It's gonna be fun. Thank you. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I just hope I to do more video. You, well, you [00:29:00] can always come here. I think it requires more preparation.

Oh yeah. I can come here. You can always come here. It's uh, lit and ready to go all the time. Maybe we'll do special episodes here. Big fan. With celebrities. With celebrities. Thanks so much, drew. Yeah, thanks for having me, Matt. Really appreciate it.

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