Contact Details
- Ross Mickel (@the.bootlegger) • Instagram photos and videos
- Facebook – Bootleggers Beware Group
- BIG HEAVY WORLD
- The Radiator Live Stream & Introduction — Big Heavy World
Interview Details
Date: Saturday December 21st, 2024
Location: Burlington
Length: 01:24:46
Episode Number: 52
Show Notes Link: vermonttalks.com/ross-mickel-bootleggers-beware
Short Link: vermonttalks.com/52
Transcript
Becca Hammond: What’s new 802? I’m Becca Hammond and you’re listening to Vermont Talks. Vermont Talks may include graphic or explicit content. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Vermont Talks. I’m here today with Ross Mickle. He’s the producer of Bootlegger’s Beware, which is a radio show and a podcast. He was a finalist for the Seven Days Daisy’s Award in 2024 for the best local radio host and you’re also a concert photographer. Welcome, Ross. And I wanted to say before I get going, it is the 21st of December, it’s Solstice Day in 2024. I forget to say these things and then 20 years later, I’ll forget why we recorded this. Hi, Ross. Welcome on to the show.
Ross Mickel: Hi, Becca. Thank you for having me.
Becca Hammond: So tell me a little bit about yourself before we get into everything else.
Ross Mickel: Who are you wearing? Let’s see. I’m a native of Vermont. I grew up in just down the street here in South Browlington. I started doing the radio thing in 2003 at Castles and State College. I picked it up because the club was there and it seemed like fun. It was the closest thing I could get to what I really wanted to do at the time, which was music production. Yep, makes sense. When I was graduating high school, my guidance counselor knew nothing about or there wasn’t a lot out there for music production schools.
Becca Hammond: Right. Yeah, because Lyndon didn’t have their program until I think after 2010. I didn’t know when they started that, but that was a lot later than 2003.
Ross Mickel: Mass media and communications was the thing that I landed on and Castles and State was my home. And I started doing radio and the bug bit me. And when I was between jobs in 2010, I was trying to find a way to give my life some purpose. And I wound up here at Big Heavy on the radiator. And here I am almost 15 years later. At such a cool spot. A much older, grayer version of myself.
Becca Hammond: Weird how time changes here. I will say, at the very beginning of Vermont Talks, I had Jim on the show and Jim and Bob. Jim. What is Jim’s last name? Lockridge.
Jim Lockridge and Bob Calhoun on the show. So it’s been it’s kind of interesting coming back because it was December of 2019. And this is the first time I’ve got to record back at Big Heavy World again. So I’ve got a lot of love for this place. So I’m happy to be back keeping local music alive and just this culture is really, really cool. So it’s really cool to be here talking to you, Russ. And what was your thing at Castleton? Like what was your first radio show like?
Ross Mickel: It was roughly what I do now. The radio show now is all live music. The live music recording and bootleg bug didn’t bite me till a little bit later. But I just played what I had in my CD collection. At the time, that was what we had was, you know, CD decks, and you just rotated through what you wanted to play. And I just played what was in my collection at the time. And over one summer break, I discovered that there were there was such thing as bootleg recordings out there.
Becca Hammond: And I, which I will say Vermont and bootlegs are not synonymous with each other. I feel like you’d see them more in the bigger cities. That’s it’s it’s not a thing that I really ever heard of anyone in Vermont bootlegging.
Ross Mickel: It was nothing that I that I knew anything about other than I think I stumbled onto Led Zeppelin’s last performance in July of 1980. And it was three or four years after I had gotten into Zeppelin as my favorite band. And I was like, well, I need to hear that because obviously.
Becca Hammond: And so I dig that up. And along the way, I came into some other stuff. And I started watching old PBS recordings and things like that. Yeah, cool. And I just fell in love with the idea of the live music thing is really cool. And I love having each show as its own moment in time. And it’s just turned me into this obsessive collector. Do you know how many bootlegs you have?
Ross Mickel: Roughly, like 36 or 3700 shows. Cool. I’m convinced that I will probably go to my grave, not having listened to them all completely. But that’s okay. I made peace with that a long time ago. That because I’m a completist, I want the whole thing when I’m picking up stuff for the radio show. But then occasionally, I will listen to one track that I will play on the air and then move on to the next thing. Right.
Becca Hammond: Well, the thing about a lot of live recordings is there’s a lot of magic to be found, but sometimes the magic is fleeting. Yeah, sometimes they’ll be like one song that you’re like, wow, that was so special. But the rest of the court, it’s okay.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, that is great. Well, I think a lot of it for me is those one off moments where somebody has sat in or it’s a one off thing where a band or a group of musicians have gotten together to play for one night. Right. And the opportunity to hear that one night and to go back to it is pretty cool.
I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from listeners over the years that I will have played something that they were at or having shows that I’ve been at is a pretty special experience to be able to have those memories, but also be able to revisit them is pretty neat.
Becca Hammond: Right, exactly. Yep. Yes, I think I might have already quoted this to you, but I’m going to quote it on air again, that music decorates time, art decorates space. Very much. That’s every moment, even if it’s the same song you’ve heard 50,000 times, a live recording can be so different than the studio version than any other live recording. That’s it. Just one concert can be so special compared to the rest or they can all be special. Every single time they play, it’s unique.
Ross Mickel: I find that there’s a reason usually why when I’m hunting, I will pick a certain show, and occasionally I will have to remind myself exactly why that was, whether it was to complete a run or because of a special series of sit-ins or whatever the case might be. There’s always a reason, and when I’m listening back, sometimes the memory will come back as to why I’ve picked a certain set of shows or something like that.
Becca Hammond: Some of the coolest recordings, I grew up listening to Shell, I’m out of Montreal, and some of the coolest recordings of the most famous people were the live albums or one-offs. They used to play a few by Tom Petty where the crowd just sang all the words, and the crowd sang it so perfectly and so beautifully. He just stopped singing for part of the song, he just let the crowd sing. It was so special. Those are my favorite old, and that’s it. I never got to witness it. This is like 20 years before I was born. These moments are so unique.
Ross Mickel: That’s the other thing that’s hit me over time is my whole collection is almost like a time machine, going back to bands and performances and things like that that I missed by 30 or 40 years, whether that be now or before I was born, and bands that I’ll never get to see in whatever space they were in when they were contemporary. That’s pretty cool for me, because then I feel like I’ve been there.
Becca Hammond: Yes, exactly. I love a lot of those older recordings. I got very obsessed with Woodstock when I was younger, and those recordings are such magic. It’s so amazing that we have that much footage of that event in all of those moments, because some of them, like the Jimi Hendrix playing the National Anthem, everyone left. There was a few thousand people actually witnessed it in person compared to the half million or whatever, a quarter of a million. I forget how many people ended up in that field. There was a huge amount of people there, but most of them missed Jimmy playing the most iconic thing from the entire event. We all get to witness it now by the million.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. Some of the really extra cool ones are, my whole collection started around early Zeppelin recordings. When you go back and think about the every gigantic band was a band playing in a school gym to no one. That whole context on those kinds of recordings, or my other early one was Stevie Ray Vaughan. Those early club recordings that very few people were at, or he played in a bowling alley in Dallas in 1983. Those kinds of things just blow my mind. Oftentimes, regardless of what the quality of the recording is, I have to hear it.
Becca Hammond: Of course you have to hear it. It doesn’t matter, right? The device it was recorded on becomes such a figment of like, it doesn’t matter because that history is so much more important. Like you said, the time machine, going back in time to hear that moment. Those crazy old recordings we have of political speeches, they sound like potato cam. They don’t sound great, but you still get goosebumps. You’re still just completely blown away that we have some of these old recordings, especially. The older they are, the more ridiculous it is that we have them. Really love the concept of just recorded history.
Go figure with what I like to do. But those moments that nobody’s in this school gym, those moments, so special. Some of those are the like, when people get the most creative because no one’s judging them.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, because nobody’s there to judge you. I mean, those kinds of things can go either way, but just to have those moments to listen to. I’ve said that to every band that I’ve interviewed and folks that I’ve talked to for the last 15 years is go record yourself. It’s so ridiculously easy now to somewhat properly record yourself. You never know when that magic happens. Right.
Becca Hammond: And you’ll never be able to recreate it sometimes without that reference. Right. And even if you can recreate it, it might not be the same. I don’t know. Some of those weird old YouTube videos had that flavor of my that’s where I found so many bands when I was in college, but I finally had the internet and the YouTube algorithm used to be pure gold where you’d find someone playing in their bedroom. And like it’s the most like heart wrenching song and they’re so pure and just simplistic. It’s before any fame or anything else could happen and those were so cool. Yeah. I mean, I know I’m talking about video, but it’s the same concept. The same idea. Yeah, exactly.
We just kind of bridged that gap where video became so accessible that you could just record yourself on video and get the song. It’s so cool though. I was talking, have you met Tim Woos or no of Tim Woos? He’s an audio engineer around town. I don’t think I do.
Okay. So he used the term recordist, which kind of blew my mind, which apparently is some like early 1900s term for someone who just records history and like audio history, especially just a recordist. So that’s kind of what I think of with all the bootlegging and just those moments as recordists through history.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. And I partially consider myself something of an archivist for my own enjoyment. And the radio show gives me the opportunity to not only collect that and hear that stuff for myself and to be constantly on the hunt, but also to share those things with other people. Because otherwise, the hard drive of stuff that I just put on the desk over there is just me hoarding all this music that I would, I will progressively work my way through, but I have no outlet to share those things. The radio show gave me that outlet and the opportunity to connect with other people and to share odd things that you would never hear anybody do unless you were looking for it. Right.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, it’s definitely a interesting medium. Radio’s, it’s odd watching radio like come and go in some ways because radio shows kind of fell off, especially I don’t know when exactly the huge die off happened. They used to be so popular though. And it all kind of faded away and everything got very video oriented. But now podcasts have completely like brought this resurgence back where people do record these things and they do. They sit down and actually listen to them and video is 100% not required.
I honestly like it a little better. I think I can consume audio while doing so many other things versus video and audio. I feel like I have to watch it right in some ways. So if you just kind of take that option away, like, oh, you can’t watch it. Well, now you can do your dishes or whatever and get your life done.
Ross Mickel: Right. I mean, whatever people are doing while they’re listening to me on a Saturday morning is enough. Just the fact that there are even a handful of people in this world who take their time out to listen to me play music and share my thoughts about it kind of blows my mind.
Becca Hammond: Are you a musician yourself in any way, shape or form? I’m
Ross Mickel: a self-taught, horrible guitar player who has no time for playing a whole lot of music on my own because I spend enough time around the on the camera or doing other things that, you know, the day goes by so quick that I don’t have time to pick up the guitar.
Becca Hammond: But hey, just appreciating music. It can be a full time job. Yeah.
Ross Mickel: I mean, this whole thing is a second full time job to me. I spend all of my most of my waking hours listening to or hunting for the next thing and or going to shows and photographing it here around town.
Becca Hammond: Which the photography side of it is also so cool. The still shot moments of a, of a, like the video has its place. The still shots have their place. Just the pure audio has its place. All the different mediums of recording a moment are so interesting.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. It’s all about those. It’s about the memories and it’s about documenting it and being there to enjoy it in whatever way you choose.
Becca Hammond: And I think something about concert photography in particular to me is so artsy and beautiful. And it’s interesting to see the still shots of concerts I’ve been to. And I’ll be so shocked at the, like sometimes those moments as a snapshot are just so different than what I experienced at the show. And like just the look on their face will be so much more powerful in the still shot. And like you didn’t quite get that impression and it’ll change your perspective of something you witnessed in person.
Ross Mickel: Which is interesting. Oh, for sure. For sure. And even more so for me on the, on the photography side is sharing a space with other photographers capturing the same night.
Excuse me. Where we all have a different way that we see a room. And our perspective of the stage is all different. So I like spend, while it’s nice to have free free reign of the of the pit up in front. It’s also nice to share that space with other people and be able to see after the fact how they captured the room and what they did. And it’s another way of, you know, inspiring myself to get out of my own head because I have the, as a photographer, I capture, I have my own style and the way that I’ve developed and watching other people do it helps me get out of my own box.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, definitely. It’s really cool seeing the different after shots. I was thinking about exact thing after the show. I’ve seen two people that I know. So I follow their Instagrams and then just to see how different the photography, like how it differently come out.
Some people are very artsy. Some people can take like crystal clear shots in the dark, which blows my mind every time someone manages to do that. And the lighting effects that we have it shows now completely change the vibe of these shots. And even if it’s like the exact same shot from the two different perspectives, the reflections off whatever is reflecting will completely change the feel of the shot.
Ross Mickel: And we all have our own styles after the fact for editing and cropping and all the other things. And it just makes us each just a little bit different.
Becca Hammond: And that’s what I said before about it just being such a powerful medium. It’s interesting watching like Instagram grow into what it is. I guess that’s kind of similar to what I was talking about with just a different media, like radio blows up and kind of dies. And then this the snapshot concept and then something like TikTok that was basically just like the video version of Instagram as far as I can tell.
Just quick little videos. Yeah, it’s just really cool because those moments after the concert are such powerful marketing material as well as just like the memories like we as fans appreciate the memories, but the bands can use it to help spread just come see us, you know, look at the band, come check us out. And without them, the experience is like a, you know, the snake eating its own tail, right? Because without the experience, without those moments to photograph, you don’t have anything to share. Like you’ve got to get out and start playing to start building any sort of like community and vibe and record those experiences so you can share them with everybody. The bands are interesting because I’ve interviewed so many of them.
It’s interesting seeing the way they attack the marketing sector and if they don’t record, that’s the hardest thing, right? Because everyone asks, are you, oh, you’re in a band? Can I, where can I find you online? Like, where can I listen to you? Where can I see what you’re doing is immediately what people ask. So if you don’t have someone helping you record or a friend coming in taking pictures of your show, you’re kind of missing out.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, there’s, there’s nothing tangible to give people. I’ve said it for, for years, that’s something I’ve always said to, to younger and newer bands is, okay, I get it, you can’t go necessarily rent studio time, but when you play live, you can record it. And you can put that on band camp or SoundCloud or, or, you know, podcast it or release it as a live album, master it afterward. And it’s a pretty simple way to at least have the content. Me as a live music enthusiast, 99% of bands that I discover or listen to or somebody tells me about the first thing I do is go try and find a live recording. Right. Because I want to know what you, what you can do without the net.
Becca Hammond: Yes, that’s definitely very important. I think we’ve all had the experience of going to listen to someone we heard on the radio and then being kind of shocked. Like, oh, this is the same band. This doesn’t sound like the same band.
Ross Mickel: But also being able, even if you’ve heard the, those bands, if you’ve heard a studio recording, I still want to know what you can do live.
Becca Hammond: Right, right. Well, it’s, it’s two different things. Like the, just the production quality, a lot of studios is, they’re very talented. The production quality is very high. But like you said, the net, somebody is kind of guiding you. There’s, and it’s cleaned up. Everything’s been so cleaned up that it’s really hard to know exactly what they sound like in the garage. And the, you know, what did you say at empty high school, Jim? Yeah.
Ross Mickel: There, there’s the, the, the freedom of the stage and those moments where you play or playing and you can’t take it back. That’s where I feel like a band shines. Not necessarily note for note recreating what you’ve done in the studio or what you practice, but what you can do outside of that.
Becca Hammond: Right, right. Well, that’s the, those are the magic moments. Yeah, exactly. Experimenting, seeing what, what you can do, changing it a little, just getting a little emotional with it. I feel like a lot of those, those like raw YouTube recordings, it’s almost impossible to have that same moment in the studio. Everything’s a lot more restrained and restricted and organized and clean and there’s plan. You just kind of lose that raw like, I don’t know.
Ross Mickel: And where, where you can’t plan it is where it’s cool. And that’s where, you know, the, the musicians that, that are, that play in the, in the quote unquote jam bands, the mad, those magic moments for them are when, when they lose themselves in it. And when they, when they know that they can’t get it back and you’re, everything is kind of on the tip is kind of, is really neat. And to know that they also have that perspective.
Becca Hammond: Have you ever made your own bootlegs?
Ross Mickel: Any bands? No, I’m not, I’m not very well versed in the, in the live recording. Being a, being a photographer, that’s what I’m doing. And even when I’m at a show by myself, and I’m not working it, I’m also not in my phone.
Yes. I promise myself, if I’m not working a show, to be in that moment, the same as everyone else is without watching my, watching through the tiny phone on, or the tiny screen on my phone.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, I, I’m with you on that one. I gotta love the recordings. Don’t get me wrong. I love the history. But oftentimes your poor little camera, Mike is going to get so overloaded and sound so bad. You’re never going to listen to that video again. It’s going to be a sad thing that you missed in the live show to record the bad video.
Ross Mickel: I’ve caught myself recording video now and again through my phone and I always stop and I’m like, well, yeah, it’s fun to have this. But if I’m not going to use it for anything afterward, sometimes I’ll do that to post on the, on the Facebook page, right, or something like that. But the majority of times I’m at a show, I’m working it.
So I have the, the actual photos from my camera, right, that are, you know, high enough quality that I’m really happy with, that I can share with people afterward. Yep.
Becca Hammond: I mean, I forgive the people if you want a 15 second Instagram, I’m at this concert. Yeah. Okay, I get it. Just don’t do it through the whole show. You’re going to miss everything.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, you do kind of miss everything. I think it’s all a person, a personal choice that I’ve made to when I’m at a show, not record video. Yep. It’s nothing against anyone who does, but that’s just the way that I choose to, to enjoy those moments.
Becca Hammond: Well, that’s it. It’s really hard to actually enjoy the video if you’re too busy looking at your phone or checking your phone or whatever. A lot of people spend a lot of time staring at their phone.
Ross Mickel: This is a problem. I mean, it’s, it’s wonky that I say that even though, because when I’m working a show, I’m literally watching it through my viewfinder. Right. The majority of the time.
Becca Hammond: As a recordist though.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m there with a purpose and I’m watching it through the camera because that’s what I want to do. But when I’m not there doing that, yeah, my brain sees it as though I’m watching it through the viewfinder sometimes, but I try to escape that and I try to, if I’m not there with the camera, kind of be in the moment and observe the room in its fullest. Right.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, I love the, I just love live shows in general. I’ll always try and go if I can. I mean, I, we all get tired. We all have to work. But I do. I try my best to go out, especially to my friends bands and try and support the local crowd as much as I possibly can.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. You know, the, the, my perspective on that winds up being all the big bands were once a small band playing in the small room at higher ground or, you know, on the small stage at, at Nectar’s or in a gym somewhere, like we said.
Becca Hammond: And, you know, these basement shows that I’ve been going to lately.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. And, you know, you never know who’s going to come out of that to be the next big thing. So supporting our, our local community and the local musicians is just as important as going out for the big show. Yeah.
Becca Hammond: Yeah. I would argue it’s almost more important. Yeah. Because it’s, some people have a funny attitude about local musicians. That’s my exact argument is like, you don’t know who you’re missing.
And you don’t know what kind of friends you’re going to make. That’s the other thing is just the community vibe around local shows is so powerful. And Burlington in particular, it’s a special place. There’s just a really wonderful group of musicians who play out here.
Ross Mickel: The whole artist community here is all very supportive in that way. Us as, as photographers, we all support each other. We all want to see each other’s work and we want to see each other do well. And the musicians feel the same way. But by and large, we all want the whole thing to be better and to be, you know, an inclusive, helpful space.
Becca Hammond: Which it is, I will say, I think Burlington does a really good job at keeping everything pretty up the everybody’s pretty darn up the and all of the art scenes.
Ross Mickel: But there’s, there’s, there’s so much great music going on around here. You never know who’s going to be the next big thing. I mean, or who’s going to get recruited by the next big thing. The most recent one was Cotter Ellis from, from Swimmer, who’s now the drummer for Goose, who just played Madison Square Garden with Warren Haynes a few weeks ago. And, you know, I saw Cotter play with Nico Suave at higher ground three days before that in the same hat and clothes that he was wearing three days before in front of, you know, 150, 170, 175 people at higher ground. And then three days later, he’s playing behind Derek Trucks and Susan Tadeski with Goose at Madison Square Garden. And I’m just like, I know that guy.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, that’s really cool. There’s so many, it blows my mind when you start asking around about who’s doing what in the music scene. Because there are so many people who are doing so many cool things that it’s like impossible to keep track, honestly. And I was just saying, I can’t believe how many recording studios there are that are like successful recording studios.
That you, they’re so under the covers, you almost don’t hear about them. Vermont’s so cool, though. We are, we are really cool in terms of the arts scene, I will say.
Ross Mickel: The whole scene wants to support itself. And that’s the coolest thing about it. And to be anywhere remotely close to that as a photographer or as somebody who’s an interviewer or somebody who plays music and has people in here to do interviews periodically, however, I can be part of that community is pretty cool.
Becca Hammond: I agree. I definitely agree. I love talking into the bands. I love talking to the photographers, too. Do you get hired by the bands or do you kind of do it voluntarily?
Ross Mickel: Occasionally. It’s a little mashup of the two. Occasionally, I’m hired by bands. I’m lucky enough that my day job pays me such that I can do the live music photography stuff on the side so that I can work for the free ticket to get in.
And that’s enough for me. Yeah, I know that’s kind of a complicated spot to take as an artist is I’m giving away a lot of my work for free. But I have the space where I’m able to do that and I’m there as a music lover and somebody who just enjoys being part of those moments. And where I can, I want to support the local musicians as well in that way.
Becca Hammond: It is for a lot of bands, it’s hard to get that startup capital. They don’t have the 500 or thousand or however much to hire someone outright and that’s that snake eating its tail thing.
If you don’t have the content, it’s hard to drive the audience to come to your shows. So that’s really nice of you that you do that. And I always really enjoy concert photography.
I think I said that already. It’s just a really cool art form. There’s a lot of little details and you can make it so funky. You can make the entire editing process really, really funky. I forget who it is. Someone around takes long exposure concert photos, which are incredibly cool. They’re really funky and they’re such a weird niche where it’s almost more like art than it is just a picture of the band.
Ross Mickel: There are so many different ways to do that. And we all have different styles and the way that we do things. And I think I know the folks that you’re talking about who are doing the long exposure light trails and things like that.
Becca Hammond: Yes, a lot of light trails where the guitar will be moving through the phone.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. I have a couple who are my favorites. Taylor Cook is one who takes a lot of his shots like that with a lot of shutter drag. Luke Autry, who’s across the hall, has always been one of my favorites. He has a way of doing things that I sort of aspire to. And he’s a classically trained photographer to begin with. So he knows a lot of tricks of the trade where he’s a, to me, he’s a wizard. But he also has a unique way of seeing a room that I try and get my head into now and again. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. There’s a fine line between trying to, between accidentally copying somebody else and also creating your own style. Right.
Becca Hammond: There’s a lot to photography. I’ve had a few photographers on the show and it’s always so interesting just how, like you said, how differently they approach taking a shot. And it doesn’t matter what you’re taking a picture of. It’s that whole composure concept, the lighting, there are so many little finicky details to get the clarity that you want, that background blur or lack thereof. It’s very, like, I don’t even know, can you get a background blur in low light easily?
Ross Mickel: You’d have to ask Luke. He’s the whiz on that end. I’m completely self-taught as a photographer. I fell into this concert photography thing completely by accident where I taught myself everything that I claimed to know completely on the fly. So I didn’t have any training as to how to use the camera. I just dove into it and hoped that it turned out well and it turned out moderately well the first few times and I enjoyed it enough to keep going back. But I also forgot everything that I thought I had learned with every two or three week period between shoots.
Becca Hammond: Yeah. Well, it’s not the most intuitive thing in the world, like taking, it’s so much fun to point and shoot, but to get all the details right of actual, like, fancy photography, I’m a point and shooter. I like to point and shoot a lot. It’s a lot of fun for me, but then I have 400 photos and I go, wow, I don’t want to edit these.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, I mean, it’s, and I do the same thing. I’m also a prisoner of that. I will overshoot pretty regularly. Usually it’s to try something a little bit new on a given night. So I might overdo it when there aren’t any restrictions. And that means I’ll come home with 12 or 1500 photos and I will sort of hate that. But I feel like as long as I’m shooting with some sort of a purpose, then I feel okay, whether that’s, you know, to capture something new or to try out a new lens or to try out a new, you know, something new that I’m borrowing from someone else.
Becca Hammond: If you have the willpower to go through all the photos, you might as well take it as many as you want, right? Because you don’t know which one’s going to be like the money shot, especially if you’re experimenting.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, there’s a lot of experimentation. And the growth of that has been super fun for me too. It took a long time for a lot of the mechanics of it to click for me, where I actually understood what I was doing.
Right. When you’re self teaching, and nobody has told you anything about what you should be doing, you’re breaking rules from the get go. And it takes a lot of time for all the settings and things like that to actually make sense. After a couple of years and it actually clicked, then I started to feel like I was getting better. For a long time, I would come home a whole lot more frustrated than I do these days. Right.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, one setting, that’s it. One setting on that fancy camera is wrong. All the pictures still look great.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, everything is wrong.
Becca Hammond: And it can be very discouraging.
Ross Mickel: Yes. Being self taught, I was discouraged a lot for the first, maybe two years.
Becca Hammond: When did you say when you started taking pictures?
Ross Mickel: The first gig was January of 2016 with Lettuce. They reached out here to the station and asked somebody to come cover the show. Somehow that included a photo pass. So I grabbed one of my friends DSLRs and took a shot at it. I made it work. You’re sure? I made it work.
I made it work. I prefer not to look back on almost anything from that first, maybe year and a half. I fell in with a gentleman here who wrote writes for Glide magazine. I did a whole bunch of stuff for him in early 2017 into 18 and 19.
Which meant that I was way over my skis in the sense that he was getting writer’s access to shows that I had no right bringing a camera to. Where Tedeschi Trucks Band was the first one in July of 2017. Their Derek Trucks is borderline an idol of mine. The guy’s fantastic.
His band is incredible. And I sweat it. I can’t tell you how nervous I was. And that was a transformative experience for me as in terms of once I got through that and a couple years later government mule up at JP. Those perspectives, the perspectives of those moments make it almost easier for me to do the job now.
Where those were a reminder that these are just musicians. They don’t care about me. They don’t care that I’m nervous. And I shouldn’t care that I’m nervous. I should channel that nerve into making sure that the shots are right. And not to say that I don’t get the nerves because I want you as any any artist will tell you they want everything to be right.
Yeah. So I get nervous every every time I go out and shoot. Whether it’s somebody I know or I don’t know whether it’s somebody who’s famous or somebody who’s not. I want what I put my name on to be good at the end of the night. So I channel all of the the pre show anxiety into focus.
Becca Hammond: Yeah. It’s yeah. I can imagine it being nerve frowning.
Ross Mickel: It took a lot to learn that perspective in the sense that when you when you idolize the musicians you’re pointing the camera at that’s a whole different level or was for me a whole different level of nerve where I wanted to do that person justice also. Right. And it’s also like that pinch me moment.
Becca Hammond: Oh yeah, of course. The fan, I call it my fangirl moments. Oh, a thousand percent. Oh my god, it’s this person.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, but then, you know, it’s the same as musicians, I think, on the other end. Once the music starts, you get in the zone and it’s just like any other gig. Right.
Becca Hammond: Now I was thinking when I was a kid, I got thrown in way over my head with something that was like, wow, I feel really challenged musically at this. And then everything else seemed more easy after that, like that climbing of the mountain, the photography of the band that you really idolize. Like it’s really scary and hard, but once you’ve done it, you feel a lot more like centered in your craft.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. I’ve heard musicians do interviews and things like that about, you know, playing with people. You always want to play with people who are better than you or who you think are better than you to challenge you and to be able to embrace those moments. And all of that, some of that is even true for me as a photographer. The photo jams, as I call them, with other folks in the scene here are inspiring to me in that same way.
Becca Hammond: Very cool. The photography that gets done here is always interesting to me for the rocket shop. It’s gonna be a fish eye lens, right?
Ross Mickel: Yup, that’s a fish eye lens. They’re so cool, especially the big bands. For the last couple of years, I’ve been the one that’s doing those. That was different for me because I never worked with a fish eye lens before.
Becca Hammond: Yes, they’re very weird.
Ross Mickel: It’s very different and I hated it for a while.
Becca Hammond: I don’t blame you. It’s weird to shoot, especially a portrait of someone to get that angle, right? Must be really interesting.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, it was really frustrating to begin with, especially because it wasn’t something that I brought to the game. I picked that up from Jim when he left to go when he moved to Arizona. And it took me a long time to get used to, one, I wasn’t a portrait photographer. I don’t think I am still because I’m used to the moment dictating what I do, not me dictating the moment.
Becca Hammond: Right, right. And yes, directing people how to look at a camera is a whole thing.
Ross Mickel: I still don’t think I’m all that great at it, but occasionally I get it right.
Becca Hammond: The shots I’ve seen recently all have looked pretty spot on. I didn’t notice a drop in quality at any point.
Ross Mickel: Good. I’m glad to hear that. But that was a challenge for me to get outside of what I normally do. Just because it’s, I can’t say it’s easier, but it was easier for me to follow what somebody else is doing rather than go the other way, where I’m telling someone what to do. And that’s been a growth thing for me. But also, I’m coming to embrace the fisheye piece of things where I’m now used to it enough that I’m bringing it to shows and trying to use it in a different way. The whole thing is a little bit humbling. It’s like trying to teach yourself a completely different instrument. If you know the guitar and you’re trying to teach yourself the trombone. Something that’s completely different, that operates in a completely different way.
Becca Hammond: They’re very artistic if used in the right way. And they’re so cool, especially at something like a concert. Because you can see everything, right? You can pull the whole crowd in the entire stage. Depending on how you’re shooting with it, that’s it. You can see everything.
Ross Mickel: But it’s also, I’ve learned that it’s fickle. It has a very narrow range for focus, no matter what I’m doing. One out of every four or five might come out okay.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, that’s kind of been my experience with playing with it. They’re fun to play with.
Ross Mickel: They’re very artsy. It’s super fun to play with. I carry no expectations that I’m going to get it right every time. I don’t anyway. I’m sorry, I’m coming off of a cold. So I’ve got a constant tickle in the back of my throat.
Becca Hammond: I’ve been there. It’s okay.
Ross Mickel: It’s driving me nuts. Yeah, it’s just about stretching the boundary a little bit for me as an artist.
Becca Hammond: Very cool. Oh wow, we’re already at 48 minutes of recording.
Ross Mickel: I’ve got plenty of time if you want to keep going. What else do you want to?
Becca Hammond: Do you want to talk about the Seven Daisies Award?
Becca Hammond: Sure. I mean you’ve got nominated for it. What was that like? I know very little about that whole process except that it happens every day.
Ross Mickel: It almost happened outside of my control in a way. Steve Cormier, formerly of Champ and WDEV down in Waterbury, is a longtime friend of mine. I was an intern at Clear Channel back when he was at Clear Channel. He’s kept an eye on me apparently and he not tried to get me nominated, which in itself was humbling. Because Corm is somebody who has a radio personality I looked up to for a long time. I wanted to be an intern on Corm and the Coach back in the day. I didn’t get drawn for a thing like that, but just to be in the sphere of that was pretty neat.
Yeah, definitely. And then when I came here to Big Heavy and started working on the radiator, he’s followed me off on the side and I think he’s kept, for some reason, has kept an eye on my show periodically. And he wanted to get me nominated. So I thought, well if Corm thinks that I’m capable of being nominated, then I’m going to lean into this thing. And I threw it up on the Facebook page and in the Facebook group and I told my family and friends. And there were enough people got me into the Final Four and that kind of blew my mind a little bit.
Becca Hammond: That’s very cool. Congratulations. Thank you.
Ross Mickel: It still kind of blows my mind to be up there with some folks who as radio personalities I’ve looked up to for a long time. Mike and Mary over at Star and Mel Allen over at WIZN. Those are people who as our mainstays in this area in terms of radio personalities, they’re the all stars. Right. And to have even been mentioned in the group of them, however I got there, was kind of a mindblower for me.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, very cool. It still is. I like that they do those. Those are always fun. It feels like a local sort of game show almost. They’re always cool. So yes, definitely congrats to you on that one. Thank you. What time again? We should say what time again is your show Saturday morning?
Ross Mickel: Saturday morning is from 10 to 1 roughly.
Becca Hammond: And that’s bootleggers. But where are you working on Rocket Shop? Like the radiator Rocket Shop ever? Have you ever worked on that? You’ve been here for 15 years. I just want to cover everything.
Ross Mickel: I was a guest host one time on Rocket Shop last summer. I’m a moderate interviewer. I leave that to the professionals. I don’t mind doing interviews and being part of this kind of a more conversational interview. But the on air thing didn’t feel the same to me. Yes. Even as a veteran of radio, I’m on the radio once a week for forever. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years. But the Rocket Shop thing is a completely different animal for me. And I love to leave that to Abby and just be in charge of the photo at the end of the night.
Becca Hammond: Fair enough. So bootleggers for where started what year exactly?
Ross Mickel: Here on the radiator in 2010.
Becca Hammond: Okay. So this has been, I didn’t realize this has been the show the entire time. I wasn’t sure if you’d done different things. Nope.
Ross Mickel: That’s pretty impressive. So is that officially when it became a podcast as well? It became a podcast. I’m not sure. It didn’t start out completely as a podcast.
Becca Hammond: It wasn’t as big of a thing in 2010.
Ross Mickel: I mean, it was becoming a thing, but it wasn’t as big of a thing. It was just a thing where, you know, when we were over on College Street, it was me staring out the window listening to music. And I’m a, since I’m a digital marketer by trade, I leaned into everything that I know about self promotion and the digital realm of getting people to, to raising awareness of a thing. And it was probably 2011 by the time I started doing a podcast. And that only came about because I had a handful of people out on the West Coast who listened to me. And they didn’t want to get up at six o’clock in the morning to listen to me. Yeah. And I don’t blame them because I wouldn’t want to do that either.
Becca Hammond: And that’s nice that they reached out and, you know, wanted to listen to you.
Ross Mickel: You know, the radio show thing. I’ve had a series of sort of holy shit moments. I call them about the radio show is I started it just a week ago. I started to get requests to give my life some purpose. And then bands started reaching out to me and then people I didn’t know started listening to me. And then those people kept coming back from week to week. And it became more than just about me. And listening to my music. And then I had to go do the hunting. Then I started to get requests and then I had to go find things. And it just snowballs from there. It’s still fun. It’s never stopped being fun. And it’ll it’ll never stop being fun. Right.
Becca Hammond: Well, that’s it. You got to listen to cool one off recordings.
Ross Mickel: Yeah. And I get to hang out with it with a handful of people who are just as passionate about it and have just as much fun with it as I do. Yeah.
Becca Hammond: That’s really cool that bands reach out to you. I mean, obviously the group, the Facebook group, which the bootlegger. Oh, wait. No, sorry. That’s not the Facebook group. It is bootleggers, but we’re on Facebook. Yep. That is the Facebook group. There’s a lot of people on there having interesting conversations, sharing all sorts of different points.
Ross Mickel: How much time have you spent in there?
Becca Hammond: A bit. I’ve joined the group. So it’s been showing up in my feed. Yeah. But I’ve also just been clicking on the group just to see what is going on because you can’t trust your Facebook feed. Everyone should know you can’t trust your feed. It’s not showing you a huge amount of what you want to see. It’s showing you marketing.
Ross Mickel: And it’s showing you what you’ve clicked on and interacted with most recently.
Becca Hammond: Yes. It’s getting… Honestly, it’s gotten so much worse the last few years. I started counting as I scroll. Not following, page to follow, not following, page to follow, not following group to follow, ad, ad, ad. Like the amount of things I actually see from groups I’m in and my friends is so minuscule. It’s honestly a little upsetting, but that’s it. I joined three groups and your group got pushed to the bottom and I wasn’t seeing anything.
Ross Mickel: So I have purposely gone and checked out. We can fix that. Gone has checked out some of the interesting recordings because that’s it. People are sharing all sorts of different stuff.
It’s obviously a pretty active community. I have no rules in terms of what people can do for the most part in terms of the music they share. I just would appreciate… I appreciate when they’re thoughtful and insightful and fun about it. I don’t…
I’m an active participant maybe once or twice a week. The rest of it is just… I am more happy to give people a space where they can talk music and shoot the shit with other people. A whole bunch of them have all become friends and they’re the ones that show up on Saturday mornings to listen to me and we all have a rapport and it makes it super fun.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, that’s cool. Did they talk to you when you were on the air?
Ross Mickel: Oh yeah, all the time. That’s cool. That’s really fun. I don’t always have a chance to follow along with all the conversation but every once in a while, yeah. Very cool. And occasionally somebody will post something that will make me laugh out loud and I’m glad that I’m not on the air when I see that thing.
Becca Hammond: I’ve seen some definitely goofy posts, funny stuff, which is nice. A good online community is important to find.
Ross Mickel: There’s a lot of characters in there. Yeah, definitely. Do you want to share and you don’t have to share but I’m curious what your downloads look like because you’ve been doing this for so long and it’s got all of these active people all over the world. It’s not just local people. In terms of what the numbers look like.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, podcast specifically.
Ross Mickel: It’s not as much as you would think.
Becca Hammond: My consistency is key. It doesn’t have to be astronomical.
Ross Mickel: It’s consistent. Sometimes it’s hard to say because it goes out on, it’s on Apple podcasts so I don’t see metrics of that.
Becca Hammond: Your RSS feed doesn’t tell you these things. I don’t know how you set yours up. Mine will tell me every time my feed gets hit, no matter what direction it comes from.
Ross Mickel: The main publishing point is automatic and all the RSS feeds are set up through that. I only see probably a snapshot of what my actual listenership is like. It varies between 30 and a couple hundred visits per week. I understand that a three hour show is a lot for somebody to digest after the fact.
Becca Hammond: Even a half hour show,
Ross Mickel: it’s hard to know how long people actually listen. In that way, I’m perfectly… I’m not doing it for any sort of… There’s no flex involved. I’m just doing all this for fun and whatever numbers there are is inconsequential to the fact that I’m just having fun on the radio. Right.
Becca Hammond: It’s always just interesting to me. I think the one with the podcast, the thing that gets me is just the… I love the local community vibe that can come from… Like radio is a very local thing. But the podcast is this thing that can just grow and spread to interesting parts of the world. One of my biggest downloads cities is… Somebody in Germany loves my podcast. They very consistently download my show.
They have been for years at this point to the point where it’s multiple downloads of the same episode or coming from the city. I have done zero marketing. I don’t know how they found me. I don’t know why they’re into Vermont music scene if they’re a local that moved to Germany or what. But it’s just fascinating to me that it’ll tell me that one of my major cities is Düsseldorf, Germany.
Ross Mickel: That’s really cool. That’s one of those things that blew my mind right away was I have a couple of people who regularly listen to me from Australia. Cool.
Becca Hammond: And I’m not surprised at all. They speak English there. That would make sense.
Ross Mickel: Well, regardless of the language they speak, just the fact that somebody takes the time to listen to my show from anywhere really is kind of a mindblower. But there’s a… So year one of doing the show, a Saturday landed on the anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s passing on August 27th, whatever the…
I think it was 2010. And so naturally I did a tribute show, two and a half hours of Stevie Ray Vaughan music. And it just happened to be that a handful of people gravitated to that and found it super cathartic. Yeah, oh, I’m sure.
And so it’s become a requirement that I do it every year on roughly the Saturday closest to that anniversary. But this guy from Australia happened to find me. His name is Stu. He found me, I think year one. And I think he listened to me live regardless of the time difference, which is like 17 hours, something…
Becca Hammond: Yeah, it’s significant. It’s like one or two o’clock in the morning. And periodically Stu will pop in and listen to a show live. He’s bought merch. I’ve sent him stickers, all the things. He took his sticker out for a night on the town. Nice. Did he take pictures with it?
Yeah, he took pictures with it with the people he was with and the people at the bar and this, that and the next thing. But Stu shows up at least once a year for the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute. And that has turned into like this coalescing point in late summer where everyone gets together to listen to three or four hours of Stevie Ray.
And it’s this really strangely… Well it’s not strange. It’s a cathartic thing for people who saw him live and really enjoy his music that I didn’t know was going to be that… Right, it was going to be a big deal.
I did it because it was natural and everyone was like, well, this was awesome. You need to do this. And now it’s the one thing that I put on the calendar that I plan aggressively a month ahead of time. Yeah, that’s really nice. And it’s fun that it’s become like a tradition for you as well.
Ross Mickel: But the community that’s come about through all of this is just kind of… I didn’t plan it that way. So it’s kind of, it’s really neat.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, it’s really cool. So once again, the Facebook is bootlegger’s beware. The Instagram is the dot bootlegger. Where do you share your photos of the bands? Any more specific?
Ross Mickel: I will happily admit that I’m a horrible Instagrammer. If you’re following me, if you followed me for more than eight minutes.
Becca Hammond: I am as well, so no worries.
Ross Mickel: You know that I’m very inconsistent on Instagram. But that’s normally… I’ll share albums of shots within a few days after a show. And then those same shots go into my Instagram queue of stuff to be shared and then they sit until I feel like doing all the typing that involves scheduling a gazillion Instagram posts. But you can certainly find me there.
Becca Hammond: Did you say your name? Sorry, your Instagram handle?
Ross Mickel: On Instagram is the dot bootlegger.
Becca Hammond: The dot bootlegger. Oh, okay, yes, I did say that. Okay, the dot bootlegger. Very joined up with the radio show.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, I try to keep all the things pretty consistently branded.
Becca Hammond: And it’s also cool that you have some merch. I saw that you’ve got some of the bootlegger’s Beware stuff on the Big Heavy World site.
Ross Mickel: I’m wearing it tonight. Yes, you’ve got one of the shirts on. It’s cool that you’ve got merch. If anyone wants your merch, they should check out. Do you sell it on your own website or do you sell it on Big Heavy World’s website? Through Big Heavy World’s merch store.
I thought about doing my own. But our website for Big Heavy has a merch store component. And I thought, well, the best way that I can give back to Big Heavy is to try and sell some merch because people have been bugging me about merch for ages. And that’s just another thing that with a day job, I don’t get around to. So it’s easy enough for me and Bob to sit here with my logo and slap it on a few things here and there.
Right. There’s a t-shirt, there’s a hoodie, there’s a tank top, and there is a coffee mug. For a very short period of time, there was a pint glass that I’m the only one that owns any of because I didn’t like it very much once I got it.
So I pulled it. But there’s only so many hours in the day and I don’t get around to publishing as much merch as I would like. But the t-shirts are fun.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, definitely. And hey, support Big Heavy World. Yeah. Shout out to Big Heavy World again because we got to mention it.
Ross Mickel: I can confidently say without Big Heavy World, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Yes, I agree. I wouldn’t know you. We wouldn’t be sitting here. So, you know, big, big, big thank you to Big Heavy and the Radiator for giving me the freedom to do this. Yes.
Becca Hammond: And same for me. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to record here. I really appreciate having a space. I think Burlington appreciates having this space. I think it’s a little bit of a secret in some ways.
Yes. The bands know about it. It’s a really cool spot. The DJs know about it. I don’t think the average person, I’ll say the name Big Heavy and they’re kind of like, yeah, I know of it, but they don’t know that it is this.
Ross Mickel: It’s complicated because we’re a volunteer run. We have very limited office hours when we can have the space be open for folks to come in and check it out. Our main time is usually during art hop. Yep. You may have cruised through during art hop. I can’t remember. But we’re usually open one night during art hop. And that’s our big moment throughout the year.
Becca Hammond: Right, the public moment. Yeah, makes sense. But we are, like you said, we are sort of a hidden gem where if you don’t know that we exist, you can kind of sneak by. And they’re still archiving music here, which is incredibly important for Burlington. So if you’re making music, come get your music on the Rock a Chop.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, you know, be on Rock a Chop. If you don’t want to do that, send us discs and LPs and MP3s. We’re here to support the local music scene in any way that we can. You know, to the extent that we will give bands the recordings after Bob’s mastered them, and they use them for Spotify or wherever else that they’re publishing things. If they don’t, if, like we said an hour ago now, if you don’t have money to go record in the studio, come here, spend 45 minutes with us, we’ll give you something to use at the end of the night. And in the process of that, our favorite part about it is that we’re also helping document the current history of Vermont music. As it’s happening, we’re trying to document it and catch people talking about their music at the time. Because something that Bob says all the time is there’s a lot of music that once happened that happened before Big Heavy World.
So we don’t have, you know, 1987 fish to think about where, you know, nobody sat down to interview them when they were playing Harris Millis. But so that’s what we’re trying to do here. And we take that really seriously. We have a lot of fun, but we take it pretty seriously to produce the show on Wednesday nights.
Becca Hammond: And you guys do a fantastic job. Shout out to Abby.
Ross Mickel: Yeah, Abby and Bob do a fantastic job. I’m mostly just here as the photographer at the end of the night.
Becca Hammond: Which is equally as important because you need the thumbnail.
Ross Mickel: True. But Abby and Bob do an excellent job of producing the show. I’m more than happy to be here and watch them work their magic every Wednesday.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, very cool. Is there anything else we should mention before we wrap it up?
Ross Mickel: And thank you so much. You tell me, is there anything else you want to know about?
Becca Hammond: Did we cover everything? We’re at an hour and 10 minutes. I think we’ve covered everything I had on my very basic list. I mean, we could finish it up with a fun question of what’s your favorite concert you’ve ever been to?
Ross Mickel: My favorite show I’ve ever been to.
Becca Hammond: It can be a torturous, horrible question.
Ross Mickel: I can think of maybe two or three that were that really stand out to me that I go back to and I listen to somewhat regularly as regularly as I can justify. One is the Solstice Revival. Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. Before they were Tedeschi Trucks Band, the summer of 2008, I saw them at Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom with a friend of mine. And it was the first time I’d ever seen Derek Trucks play live and Susan Tedeschi. And I was completely blown away. That is a special moment for me because I wound up seeing Derek Trucks Band twice more within a space of two weeks that same summer. And I got hooked.
Let’s see. My first government mule show was pretty special at Memorial Auditorium. New Year’s Eve at the Beacon Theater with my dad in 2015 was pretty special. I took my dad to see government mule at the Beacon Theater. It was a top three best show I’ve ever been to. It blew him away.
It was everything I needed it to be. They did three sets that night and finished at just shy of 2.30 in the morning. And it was amazing. I probably could go on. There’s a gazillion other recordings in my collection that stand out.
Becca Hammond: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking as that may be a hard question.
Ross Mickel: It is tough, but those are the ones that are really special to me. I mean, there’s moments from every show I’ve been to, especially the ones that I have that I listen back to that are super fun.
Becca Hammond: Yes, that recording of history. My message. What’s your favorite? Oh, God. See, that’s it. People turn it around on me and I can’t answer the question. Honestly, and it’s going to send a little ridiculous, but probably one of the most fun just in terms of experience the first time I ever saw a goire.
I was about 15 and it just completely melted my face in the most ridiculous way. And that’s more about the experience than the music. I will say I don’t love listening to goire. I love experiencing goire.
Ross Mickel: I have pondered going to see goire a handful of times. They were here at higher ground earlier this year or last year. I leave that to the real professionals to capture with the camera because that is an experience
Becca Hammond: that I don’t know if I can handle. But goire is definitely something up there that you have to see to believe as I understand it. It’s an experience. That’s it. It’s not just going to a concert because I love metal shows. Those are always the ones I feel like I feel them in my soul when I go to a metal show. I love all music. I love all concerts. Metal shows hit me a little different though, but it’s something about the people at goire. People at goire go absolutely insane.
It was the experience of the crowd of the you can’t get out of the mosh pit because it was a sold out show I went to with their previous. This must have been in 2009. I want to say so this is a previous iteration of goire.
Their lead singer has since passed and been replaced. So totally different vibe of goire, but you couldn’t get out of the pit. That was it. Everyone was just like very gently hopping around in like this angry like, yes, oh my god. The aliens from space. It was just fun.
That’s it. It was just such a like the the experience physically with the music and the vibe was just one of those like, oh my god, music is so powerful and like goofy and fun. I’ll never forget that show. That was just so ridiculous to me.
And still to this day, it’s ridiculous. I love going to metal shows. The vibe at metal shows. Something else. I love the the experience of the people more than anything, the vibe in the crowd, that weird energy.
Ross Mickel: I have come to learn that there’s no there’s no such thing barely as bad music. It is whatever moves you. My wife listens to, you know, the backstreet boys and a lot of that. Um, or late 90s, early 2000s pop music and pop and things like that.
Becca Hammond: The most pop beat of the pop was the 90s pop.
Ross Mickel: Good stuff. People can’t believe that we coexist because you would think that two people who are married or and we’ve been together for six years. Need to be listening to the same music and we find the exact opposite. Yeah. But I have learned. I’ve learned over the years not to judge people mostly for what they listen to. There’s the occasional thing that I will kind of side eye.
Becca Hammond: But oh yeah, we’ll see if I said Guar was my favorite band. That’s all I listened to. I would give myself the side eye. Yeah. Because like I love Guar for the experience, but they’re like not. Acoustically, like the thing I want to listen to. But I’ll get down with some backstreet boys. I’ll listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
I’ll listen to literally everything and enjoy it so much. I just think of that physical experience of being at that show is like shocking to the point where I can’t not bring it up. I’ve never had an experience like similar to that.
I’ve heard a lot of wonderful musicians and person who like make me tear up and give me the goosebumps. It’s not quite as visceral. Like I love it. Don’t get me wrong. Love the musicians. There’s a place and a time for every type of music, every experience. Guar will punch you in the face. It’s quite literally.
Ross Mickel: But it’s all about where you connect with it. And if you connect with that one thing once and it left that mark on you as a music person, that’s awesome. And I’m not here to judge that and nor should anyone else.
Becca Hammond: My dream some days to be in a very theatrical metal band that can recreate some of the obnoxious experience. But with a little more music. I have a dream someday. I’ve been inspired by the war experience. And I love going to the shows even today because the people that go back to war shows.
If you haven’t been to one, you don’t know they all buy a white t-shirt and write the date of the war show to get it covered in fake blood. Oh, yeah. And you save the war. As a, you know, a time capsule of the history of your experience.
Ross Mickel: I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, without even having seen a war show that that wouldn’t necessarily be my scene. I would want wind up either getting hurt or I would be in the back. But everything is in how you experience it. I saw now that I’m thinking now that you have me thinking about it, I saw the dropkick Murphy’s during their one and only show of I think it was 2012. It was here at higher ground. It was their only show of the you were.
Becca Hammond: Yeah. No, it was phenomenal. It was. Was it the one where it rained and the pit was just mud?
Ross Mickel: Well, it was here at higher ground. So it was indoors.
Becca Hammond: Oh, wait. Sorry. I’m sorry. They they were here in that summer. It must have been the year before then if that’s the only time they were here.
Ross Mickel: I can’t remember what year it was. I’m pretty sure it was 2012. But that’s one of those things where the experience was almost better than the show itself. Yes. It was I remember vividly waiting in line to go into the show and somebody threw a when they were, you know, going through to ask people to to put away their weapons or whatever that they had brought in with them. Somebody threw a handful of bullets into into the parking lot. And I was I continue to this day. I am dumbfounded by that.
Becca Hammond: I’m not. That sounds like a drop kick for a skunk.
Ross Mickel: But I’m sitting there as a as a jam band person where I’m way outside of my element. And I’m like, who does that? Right. But I remember seeing it and I I can see it in my mind’s eye. And I hid in the back for the entire show. It was it was fun. We had a blast. But I knew there was no way I was getting down anywhere.
Becca Hammond: You didn’t want to get kicked in the shins. No, I didn’t. That’s the so I will say there’s lots of different pits in all of the heavy things. And some pits are more violent and scary than others. The dropkick Murphy’s is mostly just people kicking each other in the shit. Yeah. Because it’s punk like yeah, Irish dancing. So there’s a lot of like doing a jig going on.
Ross Mickel: No, it was it was super fun. That’s the ones I think I’m at is I can’t remember if I saw them twice. Or it was I think they added a second night and I wound up going twice. Slightly fuzzy because it was 12 years ago. Yeah. But it was one of those weird crazy experiences that I that I can say I was at. But I’m not sure I would do today.
Becca Hammond: Well, that’s I will I can’t get in a pit anymore. I got punched in the face a little too hard when I was probably 20ish somewhere around there and I can’t do it the same anymore. I’m not fearless like I used to be.
Ross Mickel: I’m not fearless at all.
Becca Hammond: So it’s such a fun thing though. I love any any thing where the crowd gets like a little excited is always just fun something about the energy to me.
Ross Mickel: Just those are the fun live recordings for me to see and to hear and to watch on YouTube but not necessarily to go to. Right.
Becca Hammond: There’s this funky. Well, this is very odd and random, but there’s this interesting DJ set called the book Club that has started on YouTube and there are those interesting DJs that take like older music and will blend it in and it’s supposed to be a dance party.
So it’s very poppy. But the way they shoot these videos is so interesting because they specifically tell people they’re not allowed to bring a cell phone. There’s like rules to the book club and they’re supposed to not face the DJ. They’re supposed to like look at each other and party. So it’s like a party like dance party. And they get all these weird angle shots of these people doing this and it’s very cool. It’s like way too cool, honestly, in New York City.
Ross Mickel: That’s very unique. It’s it’s funky. That does feel like a very New York City thing to do.
Becca Hammond: Extremely New York City and it’s funky because they have like a theme for every episode they do. But it’s one of those funky like live things that’s so unique and like this moment will never happen again. And you get like weirdly invested in the people in the crowd because they’ll be like talking to each other and you’re like, you’re just kind of paying attention to them in a weird way. And they’re just some random people from New York City. It’s it’s funky. I don’t know. I love we’ve talked a lot about all of the different recordings of history, the archiving of these interesting moments.
And I wish I had recordings of some of the things I’ve been to because that’s I’d love to be able to relive it. Anywho. Okay. All right. I think we should wrap it up, but thank you so much,
Ross Mickel: Ross, for coming on the show. You’re very welcome. This was a lot of fun.
Becca Hammond: This has been a lot of fun. I enjoy speaking with you. So this is episode 51. So vermonttalks.com forward slash 51 is going to be our show notes for today.
Becca Hammond: Check out Bootleggers Beware, the podcast, the radio show. Check out Bootleggers Beware, the Facebook group. We should.
Ross Mickel: The Facebook group is a one of a kind experience. I will say that. Yes. Folks in there are are super fun. Yes.
Becca Hammond: Good experience, good vibes all around.
Ross Mickel: Don’t count on me for Instagram though.
Becca Hammond: But go look for it.
Ross Mickel: So maybe some of your cool concerts. Go follow it. Go follow it, but keep your expectations low in terms of my output.
Becca Hammond: That’ll just make every post all the more special, right? Yeah.
Ross Mickel: Let’s go with that.
Becca Hammond: All right. Thank you so much, Ross, for being on the show.
Ross Mickel: Thank you, Becca. This was a lot of fun.
Becca Hammond: And thank you, listeners, for listening to the end of the show. Have a great day, everybody. And that’s what was new in the 802. Have a great day.