Odessa Arts Executive Director Randy Ham had been toying with the idea of having a podcast — or streaming chat show — for a while and now he actually does. Called Art After Dark, episodes drop every Tuesday at 7 p.m.
The show features a variety of local talent such as musician Sam Allen, Aaron Ganz, theatre director from Odessa College, Tiffany Wood from Skalicky Ballet Academy, and artist and poet Caleb Mendes. They have also taped shows that hadn’t been released yet with musician Eric Baker, Gina Bernal and Melody Herrera from Creatives of West Texas, Beatris Mata from Ector County ISD and Marianna Astete.
Ham had a couple of directors chairs at his Odessa Arts office that they used for different events and someone said it would make a good podcast set.
He called Ryan Shewchuk of 40 Wolves Podcasting, which has its own studio in Midland.
“They do a lot of different podcasts. He’s very skilled at it. I watched a couple of the things that he produced. I thought … yeah, let’s do that,” Ham said.
He called Shewchuk and gave him a tour of the Copper Rose Building. Shewchuk said the basement would be a prime spot for the podcast.
“I’ve always been a fan of the Dick Cavett Show. I’m from that generation of Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett. I thought … we could do this. It became very turnkey, very fast, because I book the guests. Ryan films it and edits it. Ginny (Van Doren-Truong) from Backstage Marketing does the marketing for it. We film four episodes in a day. We just have guests come in … one right after the other, and we do 30 minutes of each and then he edits it. We’ve got a month’s worth of content in one day,” Ham said.
It is on Odessa Arts’ YouTube channel, Spotify and Apple. Ham wears a suit and Allen, who interned at Odessa Arts this summer, wrote the theme music.
“It’s really kind of high production value for what we do. Even though it’s technically a podcast, I think of it like a chat show, and so I prefer people watch it rather than just listen,” Ham said.
He didn’t necessarily think they had the bandwidth to take on the show, but with the support of his staff and board he was able to.
“I’m trying to be very mindful of that, especially in light of recent events with trying to manage my own capacity as much as everybody else’s,” he said referring to a heart attack he recently suffered. “But it turns out … in terms of effort, it’s pretty low effort, and it’s a lot of fun. That’s one thing I just love that I can look forward to one day out of the month where we just go down there in the basement and we interview people. We have these really great conversations and that people are responding to it.”
“That’s been one of the really great things, the number of views that we’ve had and the number of comments and also we talk about how important marketing is, and what a big aspect of what Odessa Arts does is about marketing, not just us, but other people — our artists, our other organizations. This gives us a platform to be able to do that,” he added.
He noted that the West Texas Jazz Society is the longest running jazz party in the world and not many people know that.
In choosing guests, some people reach out to Ham directly and there are others that he invites on the show.
They recorded their first four episodes in June, and then spent July working on the editing and the aesthetic. The first episode dropped Aug. 6.
“We’ve only been doing it for a few weeks, and I have to remind myself of that, because the people watching have only seen four episodes. To them, it’s all new,” Ham said.
As of Aug. 21, he had not been approached by anyone wanting to pick up the show, but it would be “really cool.” He has gotten quite a bit of feedback about it.
“I do think that we have a unique aesthetic to be able to sell this, and it fits so well with my personality, that I just can’t tell you how much fun I have doing this, and the fact that people are responding just makes it even more fun for me,” Ham said.
“I’m just really excited about what we’ve done with this and how quickly and easily it’s come together,” he added.
He said he can’t thank his team enough for how well it’s gone so far.
“This is one of those things that we get to do that is fun from beginning to end. It’s never a struggle, and it’s never anything other than just pure joy that accomplishes something important,” Ham said.
