Interview: David C. Smalley
An interview with David C. Smalley
David C. Smalley is a comedian, actor, voice actor, podcast host, and author, who loves to have conversations with people who disagree with him.
Transcript
Daniel Schauer: [00:00:00] So I'm joined today by , David . He's a comedian. An actor, a voice actor, a podcast hosts an author, and he loves to have conversations with people that disagree with them. I actually first heard about him , about his, when he was doing a podcast called document of eight , he was participating in a charity event.
I think it was, I want to say it was , the vulgarity for charity thing. Like you were brought in to do three or four reads on that, but that's how I had , had heard about you. And also my introduction to modest needs. And ever since then, I've actually been a monthly contributor. Anyone who's not should , should go to Mazda saddle, Oregon, and consider that , it's worth your time.
But that being said, I know that at the time he was hosting document debate and I think it was hosted on I heart radio. And I know you've done recording and produce , production work for audio books. And you're now branching into , comedy and acting. So man, you got irons and all the fires, basically.
So that's why I wanted to have you on, because you've got a lot of unique perspectives. So Dave's , David, thank you for joining me. And how are you doing today?
David C Smalley: [00:01:04] thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm good, man. This is, and you're right. All of those things you're spot on those things I've been doing. And I think having a good, basic understanding of some level of production, I think almost everybody's starting to figure out now that you can do this stuff at home, but 11, 12, 13 years ago, when I first dipped my toe in this stuff, It wasn't so readily available and the equipment wasn't, so user-friendly and everything was either a consumer grade, low quality, or you had to go full on production mode in your home and dedicate an entire room and insulate everything.
It was so much more complicated and now, it's easier to get an understanding, but you still have to have a good understanding of some of this stuff in order to put out a good product. So over the years of putting out content. I've had to wrap my head around, audio engineering, audio editing completely self-taught.
I never went to anything formal, but man will, being thrown into the fire of live radio, live television, running sound boards as a backup for someone else. That'll. That'll teach you some stuff, and yeah , I've had a blast learning and getting involved. This is the first interview I've ever done by the way, having to do with something outside of all the other things I do.
And I'm thoroughly looking forward to it. I want you to know that
Daniel Schauer: [00:02:18] I'm glad. I have , I've done my very best to try to come up with a series of questions that , that you probably haven't been asked a thousand times before , which hopefully will make it a little bit more enjoyable for you. But actually , to jump right in, I. You were a drummer for your church?
Growing up. I played guitar for my church growing up as a kid. That's how I got my first introduction to live sound and one day the audio guy didn't show up and they were like, Daniel, can you run the mixing , tonight? And it was, , trial by fire, for lack of a better word.
It was that your introduction as well to audio
David C Smalley: [00:02:53] No , I, so this is funny story. I was in God. I was 14 years old. I think it was in eighth grade and I was at something called may Fest with my mom. I don't know if you guys have heard of that or if you've ever been a part of anything, it's like October Fest, you have these certain like seasonal festivals or whatever.
And I grew up in a small town called Everman, Texas, just South of Fort worth and somewhere around Fort worth. I think they had may Fest every year. And I went with my mom to Mayfair. We're walking around, doing regular stuff. I'd been begging her for a drum set for years. Cause I'd been, tapping on stuff, getting in trouble at school for beating on desks and all that.
And I've been asking her for a drum set and just on a whim one day, we're at Mayfest. And my mom says to me, There we walk up to this karaoke stage and it's a huge stage. There's tons of people there. And she goes, if you get up there and seeing achy breaky heart for me, I'll buy you a drum set.
Daniel Schauer: [00:03:59] Let's check.
David C Smalley: [00:04:00] Achy breaky heart , from Billy Ray Cyrus.
And I was
Daniel Schauer: [00:04:03] know it.
David C Smalley: [00:04:04] she thought I wouldn't do it. And little did she know? I did not give a single damn. And I went up there, I signed my name up. They called me almost instantly. And I went up and I didn't just sing it. Like I, I threw down, like I was full into it completely on board. And then. I don't know, I just had a blast too.
And I came down, she was blown away. She's Oh my God, you didn't give a damn. And I was like, yeah, I want a drum set. And within about, I guess a few months, because that was may Fest. When I , when school ended, which would have been the end of may or early June. The last day of school, I had a drum set.
It was a used $150. Piecemeal drum set that was like gray and blue and, just completely racked out set. And , I got it. And immediately I didn't need a lesson or anything. I knew exactly what to do. Everything fell into place. Yeah. I just completely, as soon as I sat down, I started playing beats just.
Like I'd had lessons for years. It was so easy to me. And it was just so much fun. And so I played for probably 10 months just teaching myself at home. And my mom took me to a bar. One time I'd been to bars early when I was younger, like five, six years old. She'd take me to a bar and we'd hang out and then she'd take me home before he got really late.
I know that sounds weird. But I literally grew up in a country Western bar, , like dancing.
Daniel Schauer: [00:05:27] for Texas. Yeah.
David C Smalley: [00:05:28] , but there's, my mom has pictures of me, like at five years old dancing with 30 year old women, like on a dance floor in a country bar and
Daniel Schauer: [00:05:36] I'm just
David C Smalley: [00:05:36] Oh yeah.
Daniel Schauer: [00:05:37] what I associated with the
David C Smalley: [00:05:38] Oh yeah. I did all of it.
I did all of it. I did , I did line dancing. I did two step three, step four corner freeze, shuffle bus, stop all the dances. That's what I was doing. And then , eventually. , just about 10 months after I'd gotten my first drum set. One of the live bands that were playing that night during one of their breaks, I just went up and said, can I set in on the drums?
I know a few songs. And I was like, I think I was 15 at this point. And the singer was like, you know how to play? And I was like, yeah, I just started playing. I'd love to play this song. And I think we played , God bless Texas, which is a, another country song, of course. And I played, God bless Texas. And actually before, before I sat down to play.
As the drummer was handing me the sticks. He was irritated that I was there to play. I think he hands me the sticks and he goes, make this kid play wipe out. And I didn't know what that was. I was, again, they completely, I didn't know what he was talking about, but I sat down to play.
I played , God bless Texas. And I just kept remembering this song, wipe out that this drummer who was irritated with me, wanted to set a bar so high or whatever. So I went home that night and I learned wipe out. I, my mom had the tape. I taught myself the, , the it's fairly easy for anyone. Yeah. It's super easy. But as a kid, you don't think about it. And then I thought, how terrible bus that drummer be if he thinks wipe out is actually a difficult song to play.
Daniel Schauer: [00:07:01] actually exactly what I was thinking.
David C Smalley: [00:07:03] And yeah. And then, so I, I learned that and was like, Oh wow. Maybe I'm, maybe that got, maybe I'm , I'm closer to being on that level than I thought I was.
And sure enough, man, within just a few years, I was the drummer in a heavy metal band and that sort of launched me. And as I was doing the heavy metal band. I played on the side for my church , several years into it. So I don't know, I would say not several years because I think I started probably around the age of 16 actually playing.
So I'd only been playing for about a year and a half, two years before I started playing with my church and then also the heavy metal band at the same time. So yeah. Yeah. And then by then, by 2000, by the year 2000, I was the lead singer of a band and we had a drummer and I had a small record deal and did some touring.
And , that just launched me into radio and then radio launched me into entertainment and voiceovers. And here I am, 20, 20 years later in LA doing TV shows, radio, podcasting, and standup comedy. So
Daniel Schauer: [00:07:59] Heavy metal manger intro into , into audio production at all. Or was it after that? Where like a radio show just landed in your lap and you were like, okay, I guess I'll get to learn audio
David C Smalley: [00:08:10] Yeah, it was actually, I would say 2003. There was , an internet radio station. They were called musicians.net, and I think they still may exist. But it was called musicians.net. And they had a big studio in Dallas where all these different people had these, it was basically like a rehearsal studio for bands , but, , they had like really cheesy, like live streaming wrestling radio.
That was the big thing that we're known for is like WWE, blah, blah, blah, blah. And occasionally they would bring in some of the rock bands that were practicing down the hall. Cause you could rent out space, for your band. And , I w you know, I knew a few rappers and a few standup comedians in Dallas.
And I had a co-host who was just, he was just really fun. I had a good friend who was really funny and I was like, Hey dude, he's always high, always smoking weed. And just so funny, but didn't really do anything. He just smoked weed, made jokes, and we've all got that friend. And I was like, you should be my co-host like, you should come make stuff funnier.
And I brought him in studio and approached them about doing a show. And when I started in 2003, I was 23 years old. We were doing live streaming internet radio. It was a radio show with me and my cohost. And we were bringing in, , unsigned rappers and comedians. And what we would do is we would play a clip from what they would do, play a clip of a song, or we would play a clip of their standup.
And then we would just roast them for how terrible they were. Like, we would just, we hardly ever said anything. Nice. We just, basically you came on the show to be roasted, but the bonus was at the end of the month, I had a lives show planned at this place. It was like a, it was like a catfish place that had a stage in the back and we'd connected with the local.
97.9, the beat , the number one hip hop station in Dallas. We connected with them and started booking live events. And so the deal was, yeah, you came on my internet radio show and you got roasted, but then you got to perform for five minutes at the end of the month. So I would have one show a week, every Thursday, a two hour live stream.
And then those four people would each get five minutes on the live show. If you were a comedian, you did five minutes of standup. If you were a rapper, you got to do one song and you would also do freestyle battles. People would come up and do freestyle battles. And then we would judge who won and it was so much fun.
It was just an absolute blast. And that's what cut my teeth on audio production because, I would be at home going, Oh man, I want those cool radio sounding bumpers and the voiceovers. And I don't have money to buy it too. Pay a voiceover guy. So let me do the voiceover and then change my voice.
And I got into, I used sound forge. I don't know if that's even still a thing, but
Daniel Schauer: [00:10:51] forge. I think it does still exist, but yes,
David C Smalley: [00:10:54] I mean I'm whatever the early versions were at like 2000 to three, 2004. , , yeah. And then, so I L I learned how to like crossfade and layer different tracks, and that's where I really cut my teeth in audio.
And then I moved into, so essentially. From this perspective, I was doing live internet radio. That would be archived. So you could go back and listen to my shows later, which is a podcast. But the word podcast didn't exist yet. So I've literally been, yeah, I've literally had a podcast since before podcast was a word.
The word was invented in 2004. And , that's what we had in live internet radio that you could listen to later and nobody had a word for it.
Daniel Schauer: [00:11:38] Was that David and he, so the show that I think I heard you mentioned in like your first or second episode
David C Smalley: [00:11:44] So that's called smally and high. , so that was a guy named Todd high. So that taught high school. No, that wasn't until 2010 or 2009. So this was, this original show is called. The smalls and ill show. So SMA LLZ and ill is ill. He went by illustrious and he was a rapper. So the smalls and ill show, there's probably some clips out there somewhere.
I can, I should probably dig through my old archives and see if I could find some stuff and play it on my show to go back to my roots. But , yeah, the smallest and IL shows where it all started as far as audio production goes.
Daniel Schauer: [00:12:20] how was it taking live? You took live calls at one point on those iHeart radio shows. Is that true?
David C Smalley: [00:12:26] Yeah. So for the first four and a half years that I did the new show at when I started the show called dogma debate, it's essentially the same now just a different name. So I still say it. That's my show that I started in 2000. It started in 2010 smally and high. So it was actually dogma debate already.
We changed it to small lean high. So for about a year, went back. To dogma debate. He stayed with me high, so stayed with me for about three months on the new show. And then he didn't like the content. And in fact told me, he thought it would never actually be successful. And he quit , and shortly after the sh by 2013, I was, I, I was paying my bills full time and ended up.
Moving to LA in 2016, and whatever. But anyway, but by, within about two years of him telling me it was too small of a niche and it would never kick off. I was, I we'd worked together and I resigned from my job , to go do this full time. That was pretty cool. I haven't talked to them a lot since, but I have no malice.
He's a great dude. And I'd put him on the air in a second if he ever wanted to do a show. But yeah , I. Around 2000. So when I first started that, that level of the show, I was on blog talk radio, and by default, , their software allowed people to call in. So you were live streaming and then I didn't like the sound because they basically, no matter how much nice radio equipment you had to, or studio equipment, I should say.
You had to dial in through an interface, into a phone, through a phone number. And so I would have $3,000 worth of equipment and it sounded like I was talking on a cell phone. And so I was like, this is, I was like, this is dumb. It sounds like we're just recording a phone call. This is way complicated.
Excuse me. And , , I researched a few other options and I found speaker,
Daniel Schauer: [00:14:14] Yeah ,
David C Smalley: [00:14:15] I went with speaker, they had a much more robust sort of sound and they could stream live, but I couldn't take live callers anymore. So I set up my own Skype account, paid extra the extra account for a month, per month, like it was like 12 bucks a month or something to be able to receive phone calls.
And in doing that, I had to bring in a producer. To take live calls, but I was like, Yeah to screen calls. But they couldn't do it sitting across from me in the studio. It couldn't be my co-host just taking calls. So we started setting up a plan of how can we use Skype to take calls during a live show?
And there were tons of message boards about it. There were tons of questions going, how can someone make this happen? How can you make, how can I take live callers using Skype without upgrading to their business account and all of this. And nobody had it figured out. I devised a plan set the settings just right.
Basically cracked the code. And then I started doing live callers will Spreaker themselves, reached out to me and said, you're the only ser show we know of. That's able to take live callers through Skype on Spreaker. Will you do a tutorial about it? And I was like, sure. So we set aside a whole day and filmed a tutorial and I made it funny and branded it around my own thing.
And I made a video about it where you would basically, you would set your Skype up to auto answer a specific, , a specific account to auto answer, every call that comes in, but the account is hidden. It's named very, obscurely like nobody knows what it is. And you would call in one number. I was connected to another laptop into the mixer and that one always auto answered.
Then I had the slider down. So it would say it would be on channel seven in the slider would be down at all times. And my producer would sit across from me in studio and be a co-host. And when we would get a call, he would just take his laptop and walk out of the room. He would answer it. And then he would screen the call and go, yeah, hold on.
And he would click transfer and it would just show up on this other screen for me and auto transfer. And so now he's transferred to me. I've got him on the line and all I got to do is slide up and he would type things to me and chat and be like, you have Dennis from Chicago on online seven, and I'd be like Dennis from Chicago and line seven.
And, we showed everybody how we did it shortly after I did that tutorial had. Thousands of views Skype, disabled, their transfer feature to make people go upgrade to the business
Daniel Schauer: [00:16:38] Of
David C Smalley: [00:16:38] Yeah , I'm pretty sure I'm the reason they did that because thousands of people were cracking the code because of the video.
And then, they just disabled that feature. But , yeah, I don't do live callers anymore, but I know that's a long answer to your question, but for the first. The first four and a half years of the show on Spreaker. Cause speaker did have a live broadcast functionality. I was broadcasting live. And then through speaker, I got to deal with iHeart radio and I heart radio was live, streaming me through there.
And then I also got a deal , a syndication deal for five radio stations in the Midwest. So for the first four and a half years, I was. I would say first four and a half years, I was live on blog talk radio for the first year, the following four and a half years, from years two to six and a half, I was broadcasting live through Spreaker, iHeart radio, and , five syndicated radio stations in the Midwest.
And that was a blast. So I never had to edit. At all, I was just going live on air. All my editing was, building stuff beforehand. And then I would go live in the show would just have to go off without a hitch. So I'm doing live production and live hosting and everything at the same time.
And there was so much that went into it. But when I was done, I hit stop and left and everything auto went to iTunes and everything else. It just auto uploaded. And that was great. But yeah, that's how I was able to take live callers and be live on the radio from my house, using the internet. In 2011, 2012.
Daniel Schauer: [00:18:05] Yeah, that was super cool. That was one of , one of the walls you broke in addition to having a podcast before people had a word to call it that, and then. You also monetized your podcast pretty early, right? Cause you had your own website where people, I mean you leverage what?
I think it was PayPal, right? I think I was a paying member for awhile. And then you basically thought of Patrion before Patrion thought of Patrion. You
David C Smalley: [00:18:27] To be fair. One of my listeners thought of it. I met , yeah, I was at a conference and I met, I was just doing it all for free. The only revenue I had was some there's a little bit of ad revenue coming in, but. I was a pretty small creator. I think I probably had, I don't know, four or 5,000 downloads an episode.
It was very new. And I was at a conference giving a talk and I met this guy named bill and he was a listener and he goes, Hey man, if you ever have some sort of thing, some sort of monthly thing where I can sign up and. Get rid of the commercials or get any extra stuff, if you had a way for me to pay you, I'd love to sign up at support you're doing.
And I was like, bill that's genius. Let me see what I can do. And I left the next morning. I drove home and immediately started working on how can I have , a login for my website and I wasn't, I T guy, but I was in architecture and development and mobile phones. I was not in. Coding at all. It was not a code monkey.
And so I went and found some code on the internet called wishlist member. I paid $99 for it. I pasted that down and built around it and taught myself basic ugly script. And. I had a basic shell of a website and then started asking listeners if the rainy it, people out there that wanted to volunteer and help me.
And , Phillip Kaiser, who had been volunteering for camp quest and other sorts of great organizations said, yeah, I'll help you. I'm an it infrastructure guy. He joined me in. The two of us built it together and we started charging using PayPal. And it was very primitive , very ugly, very basic Craigslist looking, just lists of stuff and slowly but surely it started to come together and yeah , it existed before Patrion did.
And when I say I was able to quit my job and go full-time in 2013, this was, I was not using Patrion. I was on my own platform. People were signing up through PayPal and basically I would cut my show off at a certain time and say, everything after the 90 minute, Mark is for patrons. And people started signing up and sometimes I would just do live streams for patrons.
I will do cute page. They weren't patrons yet, but I would do live stream. We call them members or fourth listener members and I would live stream and do that. And then when Patrion came along, I was like, I was in the process of being contacted by seven or eight other podcasters going, can you put me on your platform?
I want to earn money and you take a percentage. So I was kind of competition for Patrion, but I saw them and I was like, wait a minute. I found myself three or four times a week on the call with my it guy having to do server outages and server operating system upgrades and , network card replacements.
And I'm like, this feels like work again. This feels like I'm managing a server center. This feels I'm the manager of an, , of some sort of it corporation. I don't want to be in the it business. I want to create content. And this is, I feel like I'm back in the, so I started looking into Patrion.
I got on the phone with them and I said, look, I'm basically your competition, even though on microscopic, I've got seven podcasts that I'm currently managing, but. I think I want to join you and give up on everything. And they said, yeah, we would like that very much. So we negotiated a deal. I folded my business and I joined Patrion and now they handle all the password resets and I can't download this and that doesn't stop people from asking me for help.
But I do just tell them I don't manage that. Patrion handles all that. They set up the RSS feed. They manage, literally everything. All I have to do now is create the content and put it out. And it's worse, the percentage I pay them to do it , so that I can be in the content business, not the it business.
Daniel Schauer: [00:22:13] Yeah. I totally get that for sure. one of the things I want to make sure that I get down to, and it was related to the topic that we previously touched on was related to the Collins , that you used to allow, but even your, some of your guests, , Brian Fisher, I think comes to mind as a possible challenging audio editing, like how do you make that guy?
Who's almost Alex Jones talking into his mic sometimes. How do you make him or others sound good when they have no idea and you can't even coach them to get a good audio sounds from the source.
David C Smalley: [00:22:49] What I do is I make it part of the content. So Brian Fisher decided to join my show on a patio at night, in like in LA it was crickets. I think
Daniel Schauer: [00:23:03] it
David C Smalley: [00:23:03] were crickets, constant crickets chirping, and he, without having a cigar and not even thinking about it. And I, as soon as we get on the show, I'm like, this is going to be an audio nightmare.
So I just address the gorilla in the room. I just go. Are those crickets like, and I leave it in the show because I know that's what people, cause if someone says let's go camp and they're on the same page and they're setting up the tent, the crickets, aren't going to be irritating because you expect that going into it.
But when you listen to a podcast, you don't expect there to be crickets in your ear during a conversation. So if you bring the audience into the situation and they understand your struggle, they empathize with you. They think it's funny, everybody knows about it. And then we can move on and. I had RN raw as a guest , a cohost.
Oh, he was a normal guys nightmare because it wasn't that he just got loud. He was also. The quietest person in studio. So he would literally be away from the mic. He'd take a drink of his beer and he would go that's one of the things that we got to work on is one of these, you got this issue with that people believe in the Bible and they think the Bible is an issue.
And the problem is there. Everything in the Bible is wrong in the same sentence he would shift and just go into heavy metal screen mode, every.
Daniel Schauer: [00:24:21] more examples though. Are
David C Smalley: [00:24:22] I know, I knew that when I did that, it was going to over modulating for you, but you can fix it and I can fix it before I send it. , but it's one of those deals where rather than me focusing on hosting the show , or having a good time in the conversation, I had to speak up, come closer, back off, quit screaming.
And rather than, and me being behind the scenes doing it, I finally just started going. RN don't scream into the microphone. This isn't the WWE, like you're not calling out whole Cogan back off the mic and he would laugh and I would laugh and the people would laugh. And I remember distinctly years ago, when I started naming my title, it would be like versus David C smally and all the episodes, someone said my favorite verses is David C Smalley versus Ahrens.
Mike levels. And I was like, okay, they're in on it. They get the joke, I've called it out enough. And I think if you bring them into the fold, that kind of helps because some people there's just no way to fix it. It's bad. And I did go to a studio one time that had a fix for that. They , made their guests wear headsets.
So that, and the headset had a little mic on it because, people who aren't used to being in a studio are terrible about talking to the mic and then turning their head and be like, Oh yeah, you were there. And I used, you saw that too. And the audio is
Daniel Schauer: [00:25:42] if there's more than one
David C Smalley: [00:25:43] yeah, they turned their head not understanding because they're just not aware of where the, where their head needs to be.
And so I find myself directing their head back to the thing and they'll go, sorry, or there'll be like this. Oh, I'm really sorry about that. It's like a nightmare. And there, yeah. It's a little bit of that in a little bit of calling it out. Some people might get offended though. If you bring up that, that, you need to talk into the mic, it throws them off because they thought they were in sales mode or they're talking about their book or whatever.
And then you go come closer. They're like, Oh , and now that sounds great, but the content is gone. They're like , , anyway, I forgot the question. And so you gotta weigh the risks, , and lastly, to answer this question, isotope RX for my door has been a lifesaver. I don't know if you use it, but it is
Daniel Schauer: [00:26:29] do.
David C Smalley: [00:26:29] that the noise that they have is phenomenal and the D clip as well , way better.
I don't know how deep, how technical you want to get on this show into.
Daniel Schauer: [00:26:40] technical nerd. The F out, please
David C Smalley: [00:26:43] right, so let's do this. , any compressor that you have is going to add hiss if it's a live compressor or if it's a post edit compressor, there's going to be a
Daniel Schauer: [00:26:51] is what they call it
David C Smalley: [00:26:52] yeah. Yeah it's going to be a right. And not just that, but even just a constant, a lot of the
Daniel Schauer: [00:26:56] right. There'll be a constant Hess, but also it'll emphasize the asses and
David C Smalley: [00:27:01] And a DSR will not necessarily fix it if you've done a large compression. And if you try to de-noise that in, honestly, I'm sure there's somebody out there that does what RX does. I haven't, whether it's pro tools or even the free consumer stuff like audacity, I've never found anyone that does the de-noise quite like , our X does
Daniel Schauer: [00:27:20] doing the spectral
David C Smalley: [00:27:21] the spectral de-noise and that's what I was about to say.
It is because the other one's just, I don't know. So if you don't know how many people are going to listen to this, that aren't audio nerds already, but , if,
Daniel Schauer: [00:27:32] nerd podcast. Don't worry about
David C Smalley: [00:27:34] all right, cool. So when you, so when, if you were to court, something in audacity and there's a hiss going on and you can de noise that you can select it and you can say, get rid of that hiss or what?
I don't know what they call it anymore when they get rid of it. The his is going to be gone from blank, but when you're talking, there's always going to be a sort of fuzzy hiss around all of the wave forms. So every time you hear me speak, you're going to hear the hiss. And then when I stopped talking, stop talking, it'll go dead silent. RX , isotopes RX,
Daniel Schauer: [00:28:04] Is what you're talking
David C Smalley: [00:28:04] Isotopes RX gets in the mix, little of, all of it and gets rid of all of it completely. So I don't use any compressors anymore. I use no compressor and I do a little sound check before the show. And then at the end, What has really saved my life more than the de-noise is the D clip.
Because if you just normalize, it just it's like grading something on a curve. It only goes as high as the biggest thing, but with. D clip. You can gain things beyond, zero DB. You can gain things off the charts, and then within a certain range, you can decline down to something that's not going to be over modulating.
And so if someone is talking at a F minus four DB, and I'm at a 0.1, so I'm up here, they're down here. What I can do is I can gain that up to where they are at. Minus one DB and I'm at plus six, but that I can declare myself down. And it's a kind of a manual way of doing what a compressor could do, but it's so much better than any compressor I've ever heard do manually even boards that I've spent like two grand on that claim to be like the best at live compression.
They just don't do it as good as you can do in post-production with isotope RX. It's amazing software. Yeah.
Daniel Schauer: [00:29:24] Plus D verb is one of my favorite plugins. Like you don't see my room, but it's basically uncouth , acoustically untreated. It's got like wood backgrounds got tile in the back behind me. I've got some, , I've got a drum shield, which I use as like a makeshift recording booth for my music and stuff.
But. But, I'm basically in a not ideal room without acoustic treatment, so I can make it sound like basically flat audio and that's super helpful. The other thing I wanted to say about RX, I might as well rename this podcast or show the , the RX seven appreciation hour or something because literally.
I've after talking with you are the, I'm going to say six podcast tropes I've spoken with , and every single one. Are you using the RX suite? Are you on eight or seven?
David C Smalley: [00:30:07] This may surprise you. I'm still on three. I, and here's why I upgraded to six at one point. And I didn't like it. I didn't like, I think I went with a smaller. A lower end and I had the Mac, whatever the biggest one is on, on RX three. And I just never, all I do is de-noise any studio hiss or refrigerator clicks or dog bar.
I just de-noise all the crap out. And then I bring up the audio, I over modulator to, to gain it out and then D clip. And then I export it and it won't export to MP3, which I think is the biggest fault , of isotope in the RX three version. But then I just saved the file open in audacity and, bounce it as an MP3 from audacity.
So that's how I do my podcast. I don't need to upgrade it because that's all I that's all I do with it.
Daniel Schauer: [00:30:59] one of my questions was going to be , what's your, Oh, it's time check. We are at the time that you agreed to record. Do you have a few more
David C Smalley: [00:31:05] Yeah, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. No, go ahead. You're fine. Yeah. Yeah, no, don't worry about it.
Daniel Schauer: [00:31:11] , I wanted to ask if you , let's see, I had a train of thought, Oh, what you used audacity?
I've heard, you mentioned that several times. That's your DAW of choice? Has it always
David C Smalley: [00:31:21] , no. Isotope is the one.
Daniel Schauer: [00:31:23] That's what you record the audio really interesting.
David C Smalley: [00:31:28] I only.
Daniel Schauer: [00:31:29] you use their DAW software or do you record directly in NRX?
David C Smalley: [00:31:33] I record directly in the RX.
Daniel Schauer: [00:31:35] Interesting. That's the first that I've
David C Smalley: [00:31:37] Really? Yeah. I record directly in the RA. The only thing I use audacity for is for the MP3. I take a completely finished product in RX, and then I export it as a wave, open it in open audacity and export as an MP3. If they ever let me upgrade, if there's any sort of plug-in or something, to be able to bounce from RX three to an MP3, I'll never need audacity again.
But yeah, , I record directly into RX.
Daniel Schauer: [00:32:02] I am a giant nerd and would love to give you a free utility where you could literally drag and drop a wave file. You had explored it from RX and convert it to MP3 in the same folder. Would you like that? Let's connect afterwards if you want.
David C Smalley: [00:32:18] Sure. So I will say one more thing I just thought of, as you said that, cause if I actually consider doing that , If I need to cut any space or cut or cut the beginning out or if I take a five minute break in between the free show and the Patrion, it takes so long to bring everything to every cut takes a long time.
So I did lie a little bit. I will use audacity for that because it, when you cut it, it's instant. So I may do T I just rarely edit anything out, but I will cut dead space out from the ends and from the middle. And so I still have to put it in audacity for that. So I, yeah, I'll just keep audacity for the MP3 exports, but that's still a good tool to have for sure.
Daniel Schauer: [00:32:56] I get a little crazy with my editing. So I use a DAW to do things like I'll remove it when I say , like this. And then I can remove that space from both of our audio streams simultaneously. It's called like a ripple under a bubble or something like that, handy, stuff like that. And then I also do it to do intro music and interstitials and bumper and stuff like that.
But. Yeah. Thanks for getting all nerdy and talk with me. I love the RX , suite for sure. I've not done the RX eight upgrade yet. I have arc seven advanced and like you, it gives me everything I need. And ,
David C Smalley: [00:33:29] You record directly into it.
Daniel Schauer: [00:33:31] no, I recorded the studio one. That's my , DAW of choice , which is a PreSonus.
David C Smalley: [00:33:36] Personas. Yeah. I've used the personas board and where we used a studio
Daniel Schauer: [00:33:40] Studio live board.
David C Smalley: [00:33:41] Yep. Yep.
Daniel Schauer: [00:33:43] I heard good things. What'd you think of those two in your life board when
David C Smalley: [00:33:45] I had a producer during that time. So I literally paid him to learn it and I never had to be on the board. I was doing a hosting, so I never really got into it. I liked the board and then I ended up , just getting rid of it. When we , I, I. I changed how I did my show. I changed the format and went back to a smaller set up, but, , and started going into, I signed a couple of deals where I was going into studio.
Like with podcast one or with Starburns or so someone in LA and then when I was doing it at home, I've got a Mackie pro effects , I think, , 12 V2 or something that I just use at home. And I just didn't need, , with the post-production , availabilities. With RX, I just didn't need the compressor.
And it's a big board. It's a big thing and it's complicated. And if you don't have all the right things lit up, you're not gonna, , it's designed for someone who is literally only doing that. I think if you were also hosting something and directing traffic and you don't want to manage that type of board, I don't think if you have a dedicated producer, that's a great board to have, especially for live performances, but for a guy doing a podcast like this at home.
It was overkill.
Daniel Schauer: [00:34:57] Did you like the studio podcasting experience when you were a, when you were in downtown LA? For what? The few months? I want to say before COVID shut everything down. I guess you went in there for a little bit
David C Smalley: [00:35:10] It was about three years before COVID I? Yeah, I was, I signed up, I signed a two year deal with podcast one. The deal was up, we renewed for one year and then I went and I was in studio quite a bit with them and that was in Beverly Hills. It wasn't in downtown. And then I went to , The comedy store with their network and they have a studio in their basement.
And I did a lot of shows out of there for probably I'd say six months to a year with the comedy store. And then I started with Starburns. And that's where it looks like I'm going to go back. When COVID lifts is back in studio with Starburns. I love the studio experience. I prefer the studio experience. I like bringing three or four people in the studio.
I like being in-person face-to-face I like having a producer through a glass window that doesn't know me, that that I get to interact with. Live during the show. I like bringing the behind the scenes people into the live show and pulling the curtain back. It's my style of broadcast. I like stopping everything.
When the, when you know, 95% of podcasters, when the glass falls over, they write down the time code and go edit that out later. And I just go, Oh my God, he broke the glass. What happened? And during the entire cleanup phase, we're talking about how ridiculous it is that we're having a cleanup glass out of the studio.
I enjoy that type of radio when it happens randomly. And so I want to give that, that genuine experience to my listener. So some people may be turned off by that, but I love it. In fact, if I have something secret, I need to say if I want to say something to my co-host or to a producer, and I'll say, I think I know who you're mad at.
The lady that works downstairs. Yeah. I don't want to say her name. I'll mute the mics and go through three or four names. And the listener just gets 20 seconds of dead air, but when we come
Daniel Schauer: [00:36:57] then some laughing
David C Smalley: [00:36:58] yeah. And then they just get us laughing and they're like, Oh, you bastards, I could easily go cut that out.
But Y I want them to experience that. So to me, people can go back and listen to guys like Russ Martin. Very few people probably know who he is. He's a local Dallas radio guy. That's the kind of stuff I love doing. He's like a local version of a Howard stern. It's just very, it's just very real, very crude fights happen on air arguments happen on air things, get broken, they burp, they fart.
They open the bottles of alcohol. You can hear people swallowing, you can hear them set the, the cup down, they take a drink, you get that sound in studio. I love that stuff. It feels genuine. It feels real. And that's
Daniel Schauer: [00:37:38] the NPR episode that opens with someone opening a car door, as they walk up to
David C Smalley: [00:37:43] Exactly. That's the kind of that's. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Schauer: [00:37:48] Absolutely. I agree. That's one of the things I like about your show, too. Absolutely.
David C Smalley: [00:37:52] Thank you.
Daniel Schauer: [00:37:54] Let's see , we do have a , a bit of a lightning round.
Let's try and squeeze that in. So let me pull up my little, I'm actually trying to literally data ties this, unlike a UN charter on my site. So let me put it mildly. I have a form I fill out. I'm going to give you like. A finite set of responses. I need you to choose from one or the other because there's no text box for me to type other , the point of the lightning round for those who don't know , is that if you got to the music store or the audio store or ask an audio expert , if that gold plated like super awesome cable with the super triple ultra shielding is worth the 600% markup over that other cable , they are always on the side.
Certainly, , that it is certainly worth that money, but I'm not sure that's true, at least in my experience. So I wanted to get your take on it. David, are you ready for the lightning round? Let's go. Is it worth the money to buy a fancy unbalanced quarter-inch patch cable? That'd be something like a speaker cable or a guitar cable, not familiar.
David C Smalley: [00:39:01] Probably not fancy, but also not the cheapest. I think the high to mid grade is probably the best way to go. They all go out eventually. I think I like the Magnum, I think is what they're
Daniel Schauer: [00:39:11] are worth it or waste of money
David C Smalley: [00:39:14] Oh, you want me to get quick then a
Daniel Schauer: [00:39:16] do lightning round a and we're talking gold plated connectors, super ultra shield
David C Smalley: [00:39:21] waste of money. Waste of
Daniel Schauer: [00:39:22] of money. Okay, cool. Is it worth the money to buy fancy, balanced quarter inch patch cables? That is a nice CU , speaker cable or , mixing , connecting cable.
David C Smalley: [00:39:32] waste of money.
Daniel Schauer: [00:39:33] Voice money. Yeah. Oh , XLR cable. Any difference there?
David C Smalley: [00:39:38] I hate this binary options here. I always go mid grade. I don't want people to get the idea of going cheap. So I wasted money for the big gold-plated expensive. No, for sure.
Daniel Schauer: [00:39:47] cool. Cool, cool. Is it worth the money to buy an external preamp? If you're starting a podcast, like a cheap audio interface? No waste of money. Okay. Is it worth the money to buy third-party plugin hardware processors? I'm gonna say. Worth it based on your isotope review.
Okay. Is it
David C Smalley: [00:40:12] Okay.
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:13] But , we'll let you hatch afterwards. Is it worth the money to buy dedicated streaming hardware, like a stream yard or a sling studio? You may not be a streamer. So I understand if you
David C Smalley: [00:40:23] But I'll say yes, I think that's where the market's going. So yeah,
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:27] Cool. Is it worth the money to buy a green screen? If you're doing live streams,
David C Smalley: [00:40:34] no,
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:36] of money. Cool.
David C Smalley: [00:40:37] please let me explain this later. Waste of
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:39] I will. I will. We will let you hedge all to your desire. Your digital audio workstation you've said earlier was audacity. So I will
David C Smalley: [00:40:46] No, no isotope RX.
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:48] I okay. But that's not what you use to make edits and like interstitial stuff. Which is what I would classify DWI.
David C Smalley: [00:40:55] That's so unfair. I do 90% of all of my stuff in
Daniel Schauer: [00:40:59] Lightning round argument,
David C Smalley: [00:41:01] lightning. Round argument. Yeah, I reject.
Daniel Schauer: [00:41:03] else I'll put you down for something else, sir. Absolutely. Cause isotope was a curve ball, I think, as I said earlier , do you stream anywhere? Like a Q and a or anything like that. And if so, what's your streaming solution.
David C Smalley: [00:41:18] Occasionally just YouTube , stream yard. Yeah. Stream. You already need to.
Daniel Schauer: [00:41:21] You use stream here now. Cool. Do you have a preferred software that you use for conferencing? Restream as on Castro, zoom or Skype or teams, whatever Skype. Cool. Your preferred restraining service. If you have to like stream to Facebook and YouTube at the same time,
David C Smalley: [00:41:39] I don't do that now.
Daniel Schauer: [00:41:40] Cool. Do you use any your Audacity's , stock plugins, like U Q S compressors, anything like that to do a final mixdown? No, absolutely. You, I already know your answer to that. I, isotope RX is a suite of cost effective tools to get an audio broadcast ready and repair problems. Strongly agree. Can I
David C Smalley: [00:41:59] Strongly agree. Absolutely. I'm in the isotope camp.
Daniel Schauer: [00:42:03] Do you use isotope ozone at all? Which is like a mastering, a toolkit?
David C Smalley: [00:42:09] No. Oh, wait, hold on.
It says ozone on it. I don't know that I use that piece.
Daniel Schauer: [00:42:21] cool. I'll put you down for neutral. Do you ever use the fab filter set of plugins before or heard of it now? Waves plugins use us.
David C Smalley: [00:42:32] what do you mean?
Daniel Schauer: [00:42:33] There's a company called waves.
David C Smalley: [00:42:35] Oh , , ,
Daniel Schauer: [00:42:35] Cool. Gotcha. And then. You already said isotope as your manufacturer of plugins a name, if you're willing , could you ballpark what you pay a year or month to host your domains, your websites , your , RSS feeds and anything else?
Just so people can get an idea of like how you could get an entry level podcast on the air.
David C Smalley: [00:42:58] Are we still in the lightning round?
Daniel Schauer: [00:43:01] We are technically, but if you're not willing to share a lightening version, then we can skip over it. Let's go.
David C Smalley: [00:43:06] hold on, let me, I would say total costs. 500 a month
Daniel Schauer: [00:43:17] Cool. Wow. Thank you for sharing by the way. Not everyone does. You are , you are beating me in terms of podcasts per dollar per month, I think. Do you , do you record more material in general than a target show duration?
David C Smalley: [00:43:34] target show.
Daniel Schauer: [00:43:35] Maybe
David C Smalley: [00:43:35] What are you saying? A longer episode.
Daniel Schauer: [00:43:37] show, you try and make an hour long show.
Do you record like a little overtime so you can cut stuff out or it sounds like you actually straight the other way you go live for lack of a better word,
David C Smalley: [00:43:47] You, as long as the conversation is genuine. And then I release whatever we record. I don't.
Daniel Schauer: [00:43:51] So sweet. Thank you, David Smalley. Awesome. I also hedge go.
David C Smalley: [00:43:59] Okay, God, which one? Where are we going to start? So on the money first, let's start with the most recent , , I, when I first started with Spriker, they wanted me to give them. Just upload and it went straight to iTunes and that's what I did. And then when I signed my deal with podcast one in Beverly Hills and they wanted to move me out to LA, I realized I didn't own any of my stuff.
Like it was all just sitting on speaker and I was. I was like , if I'm going to have to start over with a new network, what if I end up leaving podcast one after a year or two? I don't want to start over again. So I sat down with my same it guy. That's been with me from the beginning, Philip and. I was like , let's build our own thing and whatever network I signed with, we can just do a, I think it's called a three Oh three or a three.
Oh some kind of redirect that he handles and we just redirect through their network so that we don't have to lose all of our iTunes subscribers again. And so that's what I did. So I have probably a little more expense because , I have , I have the set of servers that I rent out where
Daniel Schauer: [00:45:06] have this legacy costs to redirect from your old show. Your new show
David C Smalley: [00:45:10] E , it's more it's it's reader. So you have iTunes subscribers and they were all going straight to speaker. And then I was uploading to speaker. So when I leave speaker and come over here to podcast one, I have to re get all of my subscribers again. And that's you're. If you're a podcaster, subscribers are your number one source of everything right there, your ad revenue.
That's how you customer acquisition. It's literally everything. ,
Daniel Schauer: [00:45:36] downloads a month, I think is the key metric to get an ad.
David C Smalley: [00:45:39] So everything. So I now have my own system where iTunes is pointing at my system, not anybody else. So when I go to speaker. Yeah. Yeah. So when I go to Spreaker, then Spreaker. Redirects to my thing. And if I go to a podcast, one, they redirect to my thing.
If I sign a new deal with Starburns, then I'm a Starburns podcast, but they're going to redirect to my server. So nothing's ever just uploaded to them. It's uploaded to me and directed to them, or I upload to them, but the downloads are all redirected back to my server. So that way the iTunes subscribers, and not even just iTunes, any pod bean, any.
Any podcast app that you use that you're subscribed to me on you're connected to my server. And
Daniel Schauer: [00:46:30] because they all allow you to put your analytics URL in there. Is that right? Is that what you're talking about?
David C Smalley: [00:46:34] it's not just that. It's it's. I don't want to break the link to the subscribers. So if I, like right now, I'm on speaker. If I say, Hey, I wanna, someone else offers me a deal and they want to pay me an upfront amount. They, Hey, we'll give you $50,000 to shift networks and we'll give you 85% of your revenue instead of 65% or 70%.
And you negotiate and get offered a better deal because your downloads are higher, then. I want to be able to make that shift and not say, ah, now I have to, I'm starting a brand new podcast from scratch. Nobody wants to keep starting over. So now within about an hour and a half, I can make a phone call to fill up and we can change whatever network I'm on and I lose no subscribers.
So I would recommend doing it that way. It is a little more complicated, a little more stressful, but when you actually get ready to shift, you don't feel locked into to somebody's deal.
Daniel Schauer: [00:47:24] So technically speaking, do you have a cloud RSS server? Is that how you're managing that?
David C Smalley: [00:47:30] Yes. Yeah. Through digital ocean.
Daniel Schauer: [00:47:33] Digital
David C Smalley: [00:47:34] Yeah. We use digital ocean server
Daniel Schauer: [00:47:36] writing that down. Cause that's, I'm a nerd and I want to research it ocean it's spelled I think it is not like dropping vowels for
David C Smalley: [00:47:46] Nope.
Daniel Schauer: [00:47:47] Speak.
David C Smalley: [00:47:47] It's digital ocean.
Daniel Schauer: [00:47:49] Cool. Awesome. That's that's a very interesting little bit, like you've got so many cool insights because you've, we've been around like as this whole medium , came into being , so it's been super interesting to, to chat with you. You've been very generous with your time and I appreciate that.
I guess I have
David C Smalley: [00:48:09] I wanted to talk about, okay. Before we ask your final question and I'm not in a hurry to go. I'm not in a hurry to get out of here. , so I just received a notification. I was waiting on a , a callback for a, an audition. I had a back. And I was put on a veil for a super bowl commercial, and I just got the texts that I did not get it.
So now screw them. I'm not in a hurry. , so I'm just not going to get that commercial. But , I , I wanted to talk about , the door situation.
Daniel Schauer: [00:48:33] Yeah.
David C Smalley: [00:48:34] I guess I use the way I can describe it as. I record directly into, to isotope RX. And then immediately when I hit stop, I hit save, give it a name.
Now I've got the content I go in and gain D clip gain D clip three times. And that brings me up to a really what?
Daniel Schauer: [00:48:57] I hate to interrupt. Are you multi-track recording and I still are. You're okay. So you're recording the stereo mix of you and your guests talking mano mix. Okay. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. You're both talking to my ex, right?
David C Smalley: [00:49:09] Yup. Yep. And it has to be mano when it's done. And so if I record stereo, I'm adding a step in post to have to break it up. , it started raining and I'm in LA that never happens. I'm like what's hitting the window.
Daniel Schauer: [00:49:22] Oh, it might also be some background noise. My wife is finishing dinner for my two young kids, which is why, by the way, my defense for getting that it had been so long, like the three years felt like a few months to me. It's because I've had a kid since
David C Smalley: [00:49:35] Oh, wow. Congratulations. That's cool. So yeah, I, I do the gain D clip Gandy clip. And that brings the bottom audio up, all the hissing, all the refrigerator buzzing. And then I do the de-noise I've found if you do the de-noise before you raise it up, it doesn't catch some stuff. So I bring up the audio first, then I do the de-noise.
I usually have to do that two or three times because it'll be a little modulated, weird breath and stuff. I do that a few times and then have a really clean, crisp. A mastered file before I edit. If that makes sense, like you would think you do editing and then master, but I do it the opposite. I master the audio, I bring up the levels.
I make it sound really nice and clean. And then I take that file and save that as a wave and export it out. Then I open audacity and I cut off the end. I cut off the beginning. I cut off the end. I cut the space out of the middle and I export it. So I'm in audacity, honestly. For a minute and a half and I'm in isotope for close to an hour.
So to say that audacity is my dog feels dirty,
Daniel Schauer: [00:50:40] gotcha. Yeah, I
David C Smalley: [00:50:41] but yeah, if I did need to cut something, I would go do it in audacity. So that's why I tech technically I know that you're right, but I don't feel comfortable latching myself to audacity because it's honestly just an export tool for me in case I do need it.
And edit, but I hardly ever do need an edit. So
Daniel Schauer: [00:51:02] So do you have the intro music that plays at the beginning of your show? Do you have a soundboard or like a keyboard basically that has the samples loaded that you're hitting it to record it on the live recording? Or is that something that you had an audacity.
David C Smalley: [00:51:15] I play it live through iTunes. Like I just.
Daniel Schauer: [00:51:22] And then you've got the output of your iTunes map to make it so the guests can hear it and ah, and all that.
David C Smalley: [00:51:28] Yeah. Yeah. Just with anything with like that. Can you hear that
Daniel Schauer: [00:51:34] no, I can't.
David C Smalley: [00:51:35] you can't Oh, I've got a map to you. Oh, it's because it's coming in here so I could record my audio for you. Damn. Every other thing I've ever done, you'd be able to hear that because it's all the same USB audio
Daniel Schauer: [00:51:46] Normally you, the host,
David C Smalley: [00:51:47] Yeah,
Daniel Schauer: [00:51:47] the tables have turned my friend.
David C Smalley: [00:51:49] have turned it's coming out of here instead of in the system.
Dammit. But yeah. Anyway, I just play it right here in iTunes and I have , that's what I love about the Mackey pro facts is that it's just plug and play. It's so easy, you just pop it in USB and it's the in and the out. And it's just, it's so smooth. It's so easy before I got that, when I had a 1402 analog mixer.
I had the , what's that personas , focus, right? USB audio
Daniel Schauer: [00:52:18] focus, scarlet or
David C Smalley: [00:52:19] Scarlet. Yeah. Scarlet.
Daniel Schauer: [00:52:21] Focus right? Scarlet. Yeah.
David C Smalley: [00:52:22] Sorry. Yeah, focus.
Daniel Schauer: [00:52:24] No, no worries. So us makes the firebox, the , the studio live mixers. They make the ,
David C Smalley: [00:52:30] So I had the persona studio live and the Scarlet. This was a lot, this was back
Daniel Schauer: [00:52:35] box,
David C Smalley: [00:52:36] the red box, the Scarlet to eye, to I think focus, right?
Daniel Schauer: [00:52:39] Yeah. I tried that one out
David C Smalley: [00:52:40] Yeah. I had that as my USB audio interface plugged into the 1402 and it was such a nightmare because when something would go wrong, it's there's so many different levels of where is the, the troubleshooting problem.
And it was just a nightmare. So upgrading to, Again, I think every mixer now, almost that anyone's going to buy is going to have the USB built in. And these young kids just don't know how good they have it. We used to have to jump through hoops back in my day. Yeah.
Daniel Schauer: [00:53:06] it's true. It's true. I've had to, I've had to figure out many a problem. I'm a PC user on top of that. So I get to deal with like driver problems and like audio routing problems and all that. But,
David C Smalley: [00:53:18] I'm shocked. I, so I was an it guy for PC. And I had so many problems constantly. My thought was I know how to tear these computers apart and put them back together. So that's what I'm going to keep in my studio. And then I kept having so many damn problems with PC and the audio routing issues and the, how many applications want to take exclusive control of each device you plug in.
And by default they check their own boxes. And I got so tired of it. I went and bought a Mac. I plugged everything in and it just worked. And I went years without any problems at all in the studio. And I was like, I'll never go back to PC. Mac is just so much easier to work with when it comes to audio production.
So I've been
Daniel Schauer: [00:53:59] for anyone who has a , a bingo card filled out. We could just like , you might have the perfect bingo card. I'll finish it off for you here. , so I'll be the , RME audio interface, appreciation show. Now, instead of isotope appreciation, army has their own driver. Basically every audience interface you buy for windows.
Uses a Texas instruments driver to interface with your computer, which is why it's limited in terms of Latin C and also routing capabilities. RME is a company, a manufacturer out of I think Germany that , makes some nice high-end, , interfaces. I have a baby face. That's what we're talking on now.
But they have their own drivers. They're the only company that wrote their own driver. And their mixer allows me to do things like loop back, which you can do pretty easily on Mac that is almost impossible to do on windows without , an army or something similar. , super, super awesome , interfaces. W were there any other edges that you wanted to make?
David C Smalley: [00:54:53] I forgot it. Doesn't matter. I'll remember when I'm sleeping and wake up and go, ah, dammit. I didn't tell him about this.
Daniel Schauer: [00:55:00] Stairwell wisdom. There's a French word for it. I forget what the word is, but, , please do plug your social media sites. I'll link them all in the show notes of course, but , yeah.
David C Smalley: [00:55:09] Cool. Yeah. I'm David C Smalley on everything. So David C smalley.com. David's the Smalley Twitter, Facebook, Instagram it's even on Tik TOK, all David C Smalley. So yeah.
Daniel Schauer: [00:55:21] I guess to close, I do like to ask , basically I've have three or four categories of guests and as a podcast or slash audio engineer. My last question for you is , can you tell me the funniest story from a live show that you've done? I'm going to ask it for you since you do have a lot of live experience.
David C Smalley: [00:55:44] Man. So God there's been a lot because I used to play country songs of the week, crazy songs of the week. And I would not just alive, like alive in front of 300 people at a conference live. I had one, I was in Omaha, Nebraska one time and Neil deGrasse Tyson was there. And it was like two o'clock in the morning.
And I was still on stage because it was Neil deGrasse Tyson, and then me. Anybody's going to stick around for me afternoon, the grass Tyson. And he starts running long during his talk and
Daniel Schauer: [00:56:24] sure.
David C Smalley: [00:56:24] I'm sitting there watching his talk and I'm like, watch it. And I love him, but I'm looking at my watch and I'm like, it's, he was supposed to wrap up at 11 and it's like 1240.
And I'm like, Oh God, this is not going to be good. And he goes, I'm sorry, I'm going long. Is there anything in this room after me and everyone collectively go . And I was like, Oh , okay. That's that hurts. And so by the , he just kept on talking and had a great time and the people loved it. And then he went to an after party and I got on stage around like one 45 or so.
So it was like two 30 in the morning. There's eight people in the crowd. And Neil had been on my show before he had called in and we did a , thing , over the phone. And we'd also had a little fight over email that I misunderstood and was completely my fault. And I had to apologize to him and I brought him on the show.
So we had this weird history of being uncomfortable and then also friendly. So we had a cool bond, but he also knew I'd been an asshole before. So it was really bizarre. And at two 30 in the morning, Lawrence Krauss comes into the room, sets up on stage with me. We talked for a few minutes.
He leaves and as he's leaving is literally approaching 3:00 AM. Neil comes out into the main arena from the party and comes up on stage and he's, he goes, you want to do a show and there's eight people in the crowd and I'm thinking , why would he want to? And I go, yeah, sure. And so he comes up on stage, but he's eating shrimp. from the after party. So he's taking, he's eating I'm broadcasting live on air. Plus we have video going. So there's video of this, by the way, you can go to youtube.com/david, see Smalley clips. And he's one of the he's eating shrimp. And as he's talking, he's looking at me this way and I'm over here and.
He's talking, I'm seeing chunks of shrimp, just like stick to my microphone as he's talking. And I'm like , this is disgusting, but it's Neil deGrasse Tyson. So what are we going to, what are we going to talk about? And you have Neil deGrasse Tyson at 3:00 AM all to yourself in front of a massive audience of eight people.
What are you talk to him about? And I was giving a talk the following day in the same room on whether or not tacos or sandwiches. And I had gone really deep with it. I don't want to ruin it because it's on YouTube and it has a special little twist at the end. It's not like it's like a comedy stand-up comedy slash presentation slash meaningful message all wrapped up into one.
But I, I've got no regrets Tyson on stage rather than talking to him about, interplanetary systems or whatever. I just started arguing with him about whether or not a taco is a sandwich. And we just fought about that for 45 minutes. And it's one of the best times I've ever had on a live show, even though very few people were there to witness it.
So that's one of the first memories that comes to me when you ask me about live shows and having a good time. Okay.
Daniel Schauer: [00:59:19] That's a great story. Yeah. , it reminds I was talking to , Aaron, Rabih a , Aaron Rabinowitz, I guess he goes by now a few weeks ago, a philosopher and ethics professor and, , he was, , we were talking about, yeah, I lost my train of thought. Cause I, I hear my kids screaming in the other room and I have 15 minutes to get to my next interview, wow. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to do a hard cut. Wow. David, thank you so much for joining me today. I super appreciate it. I feel like we could talk well, at least I could talk to you for hours. I don't know about you, but I'd love to. To connect again, if you're open to it at some point.
And , yeah, it was great. So you've been very generous with your time and I thank you so
David C Smalley: [01:00:01] I appreciate it, man. I've had a good time again, like I said, I love talking about stuff. That's not related to my podcast too. So this is the first time I've ever got to just geek out with someone about audio stuff. So I appreciate you having me on.
Daniel Schauer: [01:00:13] anytime. Anytime.
David C Smalley: [01:00:16] Thanks for having me on, man. This was really fun.
Daniel Schauer: [01:00:18] Thanks man.
David C Smalley: [01:00:19] All right, I'll get this. I'll get this audio to you ASAP. All right. All right. See you, man. All right, you too. Bye.