Succotash, The Comedy Soundcast Soundcast

I’m very excited about today’s show. I’m usually excited about every epi, but sometimes I’m more excited than other times and this is one of those more excited times. Our special guests are Paul Bates, Lee Smart, and Nug Nahrgang – the cast of Illusionoid, one of my favorite podcasts. One of the most interesting things about Illusionoid is that it is a highly improvised show, built within a framework that makes it seem like each episode is an integral story within a structured whole. Maybe that's where the "illusion" part of the name comes from - I didn't think to ask. We DO get into the nuts and bolts of how the show gets put together - performance, music, sound effects - as well as how the three guys met up and how the show got started. I play a snippet of a recent Illusionoid episode after the interview, one that was inspired by part of our conversation just before the guys were going into the studio to record the show. You really should hear more and you can do it at http://Illusionoid.com, as well as o

I have declared myself to be a "counter Resolutionist" this year and, accordingly, 2013 is right on track since I have broken no resolutions. You can't break what you don't have.  Been suffering from some kind of viral crud (I'm not talking about an onslaught of cute kitty videos) that's going around the past few days but I don't think it's the flu. More like a cold. Whatever it is, it's taken up residence in my throat and sinuses, and will be making a guest appearance during this episode. Our Special Guest is no virus although, with David Owen's tenaciousness at lining up comedy groups and venues for the San Francisco Sketchfest, he could be mistaken for something contagious. Last year about this time we had Cole Stratton, co-host of the Pop My Culture podcast, former member of my improv group The Riffingtons, and one of the three founder/producers of the  Sketchfest. For the 12th year of the 'fest, Mr. Owen joins me to talk about this year’s upcoming exciting show. How exciting? Here's just a partial lis

Welcome to our first full-fledged episode of the New Year. We've got nine podcast clips for you, plus a lovely novelty tune, Undead Love Song, by friend-of-Succotash John Anealio. (Off his album Laser Robot Zombie Love, available at http://JohnAnealio.com.) And yet the show comes up a little short, timewise, this week. Maybe it's because we're missing our usual Burst O' Durst with political punwit Will Durst. (Durst's on vacay but will be back next epi...) Anyway, because the show runs a little shorter than usual, you might actually catch the little "extra" I began tagging onto the very end of the show starting with the previous episode. It's an idea I shamelessly stole from our friend Jabs of The DHead Factor — I started taking the audio track from videos on YouTube that feature recipes for succotash. This week's is a doozy: Daphne Oz and Tom Arnold make "Summerin' Succotash" on ABC's The Chew. Enjoy! THE COUNTDOWN Epi46 also marks the start of our Top 10 Comedy Podcast countdown, as tabulated weekly by St

Happy New Year! 2012 had many ups and downs, and that counts in comedy podcasting, too. Some podcasts went off the rails — such as Affirmation Nation and The Gentlemens' Club — never to be heard from again. While at the same time, milestones were passed for others. What did WTF, Nerdist, and Never Not Funny have in common? They all dropped their 300th episode this year! Congrats! And You Made It Weird, Who Charted?, Walking the Room, The Long Shot, and Sklarbo Country all turned the corner on their episode 100 in 2012. And the granddaddy of the comedy podcast ilk, Tom Scharpling's The Best Show On WFMU, actually rang up its 500th episode! I came up with the idea of doing a Top 10 Comedy Podcasts of 2012 but, unfortunately, the concept hit me the day before I was going to record Epi45. I didn't have the time or even a methodology in mind to pull it off, so I did the next best thing. I borrowed a list from the AV Club. They had their panel of reviewers dole out 50 points a piece amongst the podcasts out there

Happy holidays! Whether you're a Christmas-er, an Hanuakkat, or a Kwanza-hut, Succotash is damned glad to have you. "It's the time of miracles," said Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber in Die Hard and it's true. First of all, we're back in Studio P for the first time in many episodes. So good to have engineer/producer Joe Paulino back behind the controls. Not to mention Bill Haywatt, who has a fresh installment of Boozin' With Bill on tap this time around. Even Kenny Durgess, our booth assistant, is on the job and it's a great way to ring in the holiday season. I wanted to do something special for the holidays, so Epi44 is our Succotash Christmas Card to the illustrious members of the Pod Mafia. Who ARE the Pod Mafia? A loose collective of podcasters who have struck up a virtual (and sometimes actual) friendship via the web, and have actively worked to cross-promote each others' podcasts. I am pleased and honored to have been dubbed the Podfather by this crew, although I'm aware it's a precarious perch at best and s

Happy holiday season to you! Hope yours is shaping up well. I normally don't plug our wares in the blog too much BUT in case you feel like passing the Succotash for the holidays, now would be a good time to hop up to our Succotashery and get friends, loved ones, or just yourself some nifty Succotash t-shirts, mugs, and other assorted stuff. Commercial mode off. This epi brings us a special guest, Chris Bonno, in a special two-part interview but in a single show. See, I started the interview live, face-to-face, when Chris was up in San Francisco as the feature act for Hal Sparks, who I also interviewed. (Catch THAT chat back in Epi41!) But we only got about 8 minutes in when things got busy and we never got a chance to finish. Until a few days ago, when I caught up with Chris in LA via Skype and we picked up right where we left off. Chris is a comedian, an improvisor, a musician, an artist and a podcaster. A VIDEO podcaster, no less, and we will talk about his Electric Bonnoland show during the course of the

I'm trying desperately to get this edition of the Comedy Podcast Podcast up while it is still officially International Succotash Day. (As so declared by the inimitable Jabs of The DHead Factor podcast in Australia.) All day long our podcaster friends have been tweeting and messaging words of praise and support for the show — thanks, everybody! — and I've been enjoying seeing the number of downloads and the reviews and ratings go up! I'm Marc, he's THAT Chris Gore… Great fun this episode with my special guest co-host That Chris Gore onboard. Chris, the host of the PodCRASH podcast as well as regular on G4's Attack Of The Show, was in San Francisco for Stitcher's Podcast Awards. We talked about his tenure as publisher of one of my favorite magazines, FilmTHREAT, as well as his multi-pronged career doing all kinds of cool stuff in TV, the internet and film. Chris picked some nice clips for this epi, all of which I'd never covered before, and after we talked about his podcast — listeners of Succotash hav

Getting very excited as the holiday season looms. Not so much for Hanukkah or Christmas, but for Succotash Day! It's coming up on Tuesday, December 4th, and it's all thanks to Jabs, the main man at The DHead Factor podcast in Australia. (We talked about it when he was my special guest co-host in Epi40, if you missed it…) Given our production schedule, this show — Epi41 — is about as close as we're going to get to celebrating it on the air (on the pod?), although we might surprise you. Click over to Jabs' show on the day and find out which other podcasts will be talking about us — and we'd appreciate any ratings, reviews and other kudos that you might want to foist upon us up at iTunes, Stitcher and anywhere else Succotash is heard. Getting on with this show, I've got my interview with Special Guest Hal Sparks. As I already apologize to Hal in the epi, I recorded our chat two months ago, when he was doing a couple of shows at Yoshi's in San Francisco. I would have gotten this up earlier but…it's Succotash. On

We've got a bunch of clips in Epi40, the longest episode of Succotash yet! Yes, I said "we", because I'm joined by special guest co-host Jabs (aka Jason McNamara) all the way from Canberra, Australia, through the magic of Skype. Jabs is the main man behind The DHead Factor and invited me to share the hosting duties several months ago on his show, so I figured it was high time to return the favor. Wasn't sure how it was going to come together, given the time difference, but Jabs is on holiday down under so he was kindly enough to give up part of a Monday morning at his end. He really serves as a true co-host in this installment - I didn't really get a chance to interview him about his podcast or his life or anything. So if you're hoping to learn more about Jabs the man, please click right over to his podcast and start filling your ears. We split the job of pulling clips for this show, which allowed us to surprise each other with new discoveries. (And since we both enjoy yakking so much, the running time on th

I’ve really fallen behind in getting Succotash episodes out the door so apologies to those of you who have been trained by decades of televison and radio with their regular release of content. I’d love to be more on top of the release schedule but I have a regular fulltime gig which, if I were just sitting here with an open mic and spitballing witty bon mots off of today’s headlines, I could probably pull it off. But on this show I try to bring you snippets and bits from comedy podcasts around the interwebs and around the world and that just plain takes time. So Epi38 is a clipless show BUT I do have a great interview with one of my favorite comedians. Andy Bumatai is from Hawaii and is IN Hawaii and made his name there as well. He gets to the mainland from time to time, which is how I first got to know him. We get into that story in the interview. I recorded my chat with Andy when I was in Honolulu back in September and I was hoping to have it up before now, because it’s got some plugs for a show Andy and s

I’m back from the first Los Angeles Podcast Festival, which was about a week ago. It was pretty much a success and more well organized than you might imagine four comedians — Dave Anthony, Graham Elwood, Chris Mancini and Andy Wood — might be able to pull together. There were some interesting panels on how to promote your podcast and how to soup up your technology, stuff like that. And a bunch of live podcasts, everybody from Greg Behrendt and Dave Anthony’s Walking the Room and Superego! to Fitzdog Radio and Doug Loves Movies. Doug Benson’s show included Marc Maron, Zach Galafinaikis, Steve Agee, Todd Glass, and Dave Anthony. It was the most hilarious train wreck of a live podcast you’re liable to see…or hear. Susan Wygmans, Travis Clark, Me, Brandy Clark I got a chance to meet up with some of the podcasters that I’ve been tweeting and Skyping with over the past year or so but have never meet face to face! I had breakfast Travis and Brandy Clark from Tiny Odd Conversations and Susan Wygmans

I was delighted to be able to slice out a chunk of time with Ben Blacker, half of the the brain trust (along with producing/writing partner Ben Acker) behind The Thrilling Adventure Hour. For those unfamiliar with TAH, it's a mega-popular once-a-month stage show in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, America, which then gets sliced and diced into a weekly podcast as well. We've featured several clips on Succotash and I've reviewed it favorably in This Week In Comedy Podcasts over on Splitsider.com. Ben's an affable chap who talks about the origins of some of the show's most popular segments — Beyond Belief, Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars, The Adventures of Captain Laserbeam and more – and we drop clips from the segments as we mention them. Since I've only been able to enjoy TAH via podcast, I can't wait for the opportunity to catch the stage show one of these days during an upcoming trip to Los Angeles. Because of the length of the interview (and the fact we're playing about a half dozen clips from TAH in th

Although episode 36 of Succotash finds us back in Studio P ("The Home of The Hit!"), it's without the benefit of our engineer/producer Joe Paulino this time. Under the unsteady hand of booth assistant Kenny Durgess, the good ship Succotash manages to make the journey through the rocky shoals of podcast clips and interviews (not to mention a new Boozin' With Bill segment) to arrive in one piece in your ears. I'd planned to have Will Durst, our Ambassador to the Middle and the funniest political comic this side of Congress, live in the studio. He's just put out a new e-book, Elect To Laugh, a collection of his syndicated newspaper columns and I figured he'd snap up the chance to plug it. This being an election year with very little time left on the clock, it’s a political comic’s busiest season so we'll have to reschedule for right after Libertarian President Gary Johnson gets sworn in. (See what I did there? It's a joke about the fact I probably will never get Will into the studio...) You can click the links

Ringing in with Episode 35, Succotash is beginning to feel like a show (to me, anyway), even if our format keeps sliding around a bit. Maybe that's the nature of this beast. This epi is a real hybrid - half clips, half interview - and it's also the "lots of background noise" episode. I put it together while vacationing in Honolulu and my tracks as festooned with the lapping surf of the Pacific Ocean right outside the window. Coupled with the coffee house environment that special guest Sammy Wegent and I have going on in the background of our interview, I have no right to take anyone down for audio roughage in their clips - this episode, anyway. Sammy is the brains behind Everybody's A Comedian, the web series that is currently "airing" its sixth and final episode on YouTube this week. He's a fascinating guy who I first met when we were brought together a few years ago to put together an improv training program at the San Francisco Comedy College. Actor, stand-up, improvisor, writer...Sammy is a multi-threat

Ah. Back to an all-clip episode of Succotash, your Comedy Podcast Podcast. We have a cornucopia of clippage for this time around. Mostly new faces or, rather, voices, but some old faves, too. Purposely not clipping any of the "big" shows this time around. I’m talking the shows that get most of the attention from the media and, as a result, keep cropping up at the top of the heap on iTunes, Stitcher, etc. There are a lot of comedy podcasts out there that get short shrift, little notice or just plain ignored. Succotash has been making an effort to beat the bushes for the harder to find podcasts and, if YOU’RE a comedy podcaster and want to get a clip on Succotash, just email us a 3 to 5 minute MP3 snippet from your show! Send it to clips@SuccotashShow.com. I wanted to share a video with you from Frank Cronin, our Irish correspondent. He's finished his summer foray in America and is back on the Emerald Isle - Galway City, to be exact - where he's looking to finish up a college degree. His international travels t

Greetings, Succotashians! Welcome to Episode 33. Going a little different this installment, with the majority of the show centered around our special guest, podcaster and singer/songwriter John Anealio. (I promise we'll have beau coup clips from comedy podcasts locked and loaded in the next episode...) John Anealio AKA Captain Six String I think you'll like our chat, which is interspersed with several of John's comedi-sci-fi tunes as well as a clip from his weekly podcast, Functional Nerds. (I even sneak in a reprise of friend-of-Succotash Dana Carvey singing a silly ditty we've featured before, The World's Catchiest Song.) Here's the list of John's tunes I play during the interview: • George R. R. Martin Is Not Your Bitch (Remix) • We Don't Need Another Trilogy • Cecilia • Rachel Rosen • Unicorn Pegasus Kitten All this tuneage plus a lot more is available at John's website, http://JohnAnealio.com. (And as good a job as I finally do in this episode by pronouncing John's name cor

With Epi32 we're back at Studio P with Engineer/Producer Joe Paulino and all is right with the world. (BTW, be sure to check out Joe and Tim White's CD Inhale Slowly - it's not only great meditation and relaxation music, but it's kicking ass on the mellow music charts!) This episode of Succotash is positively brimming with podcastly goodness — a scintillating guest co-host, a new Henderson's Pants ad, an installment of Boozin' With Bill, a Burst O' Durst, sci-fi comedy music from John Anealio and a passle of podcast clips. Our guest co-host is no stranger to Succotash listeners — it's Phil Leirness, he of Chillpak Hollywood Hour podcast fame. Phil was in Northern California and the timing worked out that he was able to get to Studio P and help me serve up this latest portion of Succotash. We talk a little about his work and he gives us a few tantalizing glimpses into what is going on with the TWO follow up films to The Truth Is Out There, the conspiracy theory based documentary Phil directed. (Both CHH a

Welcome to Epi31 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. Once again, I recorded my bits from my traveling studio, AKA my car. Long story. Suffice it to say, however that NEXT episode we will be back at Studio P with Engineer/Producer Joe Paulino AND a special guest co-host! That’s right. But this time we’ve got some clips and an interesting interview with a young filmmaker. A VERY young filmmaker. 16, to be exact, by the name of Dylan Price. I wanted to chat with Dylan because I could see parallels between a young person, finding his way around in the early throes of learning how to make movies and a number of the podcasters out there I've come to know that are stumbling around on their way to learning how to produce a decent show. Listen to hear if you don't recognize a little bit of either yourself or someone you know who is excited, eager, and willing to do just about anything to do what they love. Speaking of the interview, I need to apologize to Dylan. He had a campaign up on Indiegogo to rais

Welcome to Epi30 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast! We're back to having a bunch of clips this time around — what I like to think of as "Succotash Prime" — and a couple of other things besides. Caleb Medley Kicking off with a serious note here on the blogside of things, I wanted to do what we could as listeners, podcasters, comedians and friends, to help out Caleb Medley and his family. Just one of the tragic stories to emerge from the Dark Knight Rises massacre on July 20th in Aurora, Colorado, Caleb is a young up-and-coming standup comedian from the Denver area and was at the movie with his wife Katie. He got shot in the eye and is in critical condition as I write this. He has yet to see the face of his new son, born the day following the tragedy. Comedians are already rallying (as well as many others) to raise funds to help cover the cost of what is going to be an expensive recovery. If you'd like to help, you can click here to Support Caleb online OR mail a check to: Support Cale

The Succotash format is pretty much out the window this week, because I had a chance to sit down for an in-depth backstage interview with Craig Shoemaker when he was at Tommy T’s in San Francisco recently. So that takes up a bunch of show, only leaving time for a couple of podcast clips and a couple of other goodies. Plus Craig is not this episode's only interview. More on that in a paragraph or two. Regarding "Shoe", if you're not familiar with him, where the hell have you been? The guy's been around for about three decades, doing standup, acting, writing, radio...the list of stuff he's done goes on and on. Here are a few particulars: He caught fire for years as his deep-voiced character called The Lovemaster, but that is backed up by solid time served as the consummate journeyman comic. He's shot comedy specials for TV (including his most recent, Daditude), starred in films (such as Should Have Been Romeo) and even has written a couple of children's books (such as What You Have Now, Your Daddy Had Then