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- [00:03]
Robin
Hey there, it's Robin from prx. And I don't know about you, but with food prices as high as they are right now, I'm really looking to up my game with home cooking this year and to help us on our culinary journey. I cannot recommend enough one of our newer Radiotopia shows the Recipe with Kenji and Deb Kenji and Deb are J. Kenji Lopez Alt and Deb Perlman, two of the best home cooks out there. Maybe you've seen Kenji's YouTube channel or Deb's iconic blog Smitten Kitchen, and between them they have seven New York Times best selling cookbooks. They've helped millions of people eat better at home. I'm a big meal planner, so whatever's on tap for the week. I always make sure to check Deb and Kenji's recipes before I shop and before I cook because I don't have the time or money to make big kitchen mistakes. Thanks to Kenji, I know to coat my chicken in mayo before grilling and I swear by Deb's brisket every holiday. On the recipe, Kenji and Deb talk about the essential ingredients and techniques of a beloved everyday dish. Say macaroni and cheese or meatballs, the little things that really make a dish sing. Beware. They have very different styles and sometimes duke it out over methods. You'll have to figure out what works for you and as a result, you'll cook and eat better. From Radiotopia from prx the Recipe with Kenji and Deb Listen and subscribe wherever you get. Podcasts.
- [01:29]
Alex Goldman
This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary Magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [01:51]
Keenan Tamblyn
Why do people commit themselves to the things they do?
- [01:54]
Alex Goldman
Why are people so worried about sport? Why wine?
- [01:57]
Keenan Tamblyn
Why video games? I'm Brian Lowry and in this season of my podcast, Know what yout See. I'm asking a simple question, but a really big what's the point? In conversations with people with a variety.
- [02:08]
Alex Goldman
Of passions and obsessions, we get the.
- [02:10]
Keenan Tamblyn
Chance to look through a window and see what it means to truly focus on the realm of human experience. Join me on Know what yout See. New episodes begin November 26th.
- [02:25]
Alex Goldman
Hey everyone, this is Alex. Really quickly, before this episode starts, I wanted to ask you to consider signing up for Hyperfix Premium. I am asking for two reasons. The first is because I genuinely think that if you like this show, you'll probably like the Bonus content. It's five bucks a month or 40 bucks a year, and you'll get two bonus episodes a month. Access to our discord, which is really shaping up to be like a nice little community. I'm getting to know everybody and they're all really cool. We do a monthly AMA with me and the team. And like, if there's bonus content you are dying to see from this show, I am open to suggestions and I am not hard to contact. But the second reason is that by becoming a Hyperfix member, you're supporting completely independent media and giving us the ability to make the show bigger, weirder, more fun, more exciting. I have been incredibly lucky to have assembled an amazing team of producers who have all agreed to work for way less than they're worth because they believe in this weird little show we're making. And if you believe in it too, I'm just asking if you would consider heading over to hyperfixedpod.com join. Your membership will allow me to bring on new staff, bring on guest reporters to help us solve problems, make more ambitious episodes, make more bonus content, and seriously, so much more. And we'll just keep solving problems until there are no problems left to solve and we'll have created a lasting utopia. That's my goal. Again, that's hyperfixedpod.com join. And I can't thank you enough for listening. Here's the show. Last week, Hyperfix performed our first live story at On Airfest in Brooklyn. And in most cases, if we did a live version of a show, we'd probably re record the entire thing for broadcast. But in this case, the live aspect was simply not replicable in the studio. So we wanted to play you the story as it was performed at On Airfest. It's a story about regret, fear, and ultimately the courage it takes to just try. Here's the story. Okay. This is a story that we produced specially for this, and I'm just gonna launch right into it and we'll see how it goes. Thank you all so much for coming. I really appreciate it. And before I get started, I really need to do one thing, which is I need to shout out my team. And you guys should give them all an amazing round of applause. Our engineer, Tony Williams, Sari Safra, Sukenik, Amor Yates, Emma Cortland, who sadly couldn't be here. Thank you guys so much. This is impossible without you. Here we go. I am Alex Goldman. This is Hyper Fixed. Our first ever live taping on this show, listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. These words that I have just said to you are the words that start every episode of our show. And I like them because they provide the listener with a sense of calm and order. Like, Alex is here to solve problems. He's going to guide you from the beginning of the story to the end. Everything's going to be chill. But when I wrote those words a week ago, I had no idea if we were going to be able to pull off what we're attempting to pull off today. And if I'm being totally honest, I still don't know if we're going to pull it off. But there's only one way to find out. So this week, Two Birds, 100 Stones, a live podcast in six chapters. Chapter one, the first bird.
- [06:17]
Keenan Tamblyn
Okay, so I have my. My camera set up on a bunch of VHS tapes right now, and I'm going to use those to hold this thing up. So. Perfect.
- [06:26]
Alex Goldman
Why do you have a bunch of VHS tapes?
- [06:28]
Keenan Tamblyn
Because I'm a giant nerd.
- [06:30]
Alex Goldman
This is Keenan. He's a Toronto native. And if he is a nerd, he is the very best kind of nerd. He is a media nerd, and not just the kind that obsesses over stats and trivia. Kenan is the kind of nerd that attends as much to the social world of the art as the art itself. He spent years working in record stores, concert venues. He has an insane collection of physical media. But there's one artist whose work continues to evade him, and that artist is his mother. Megan, what is your relationship with your mom like? Like, are you guys pretty candid with one another? Do you have an easy relationship? Is it difficult? Is it weir? Like, what kind of relationship do you have?
- [07:10]
Keenan Tamblyn
I would say it's all of those things.
- [07:15]
Alex Goldman
That's totally fair.
- [07:17]
Keenan Tamblyn
Yeah, I love my mom to bits. She's been a very emotionally honest person my entire life. Like, there's nothing that she really hides or holds back on. When we have any kind of personal difficulties, like, we can talk about it. She's not a very closed person. She doesn't hide things. So that's why I think that we have a great relationship.
- [07:40]
Alex Goldman
But there is one thing that Megan has been reluctant to talk about. Her young dreams of being a songwriter over the years. Kenan's heard the story in bits and pieces, but the broad strokes of it go something like this. In the early 80s, Megan was a waitress at Second City in Toronto and she was writing songs. A friend of hers, Second City's house piano player, said, hey, I have this friend, she's a singer songwriter. I guarantee she would love to perform your songs. Her name's Katie Lang. Let's record some songs. You can give her your tape, I'll put in a good word for you.
- [08:14]
Keenan Tamblyn
She was a massive K D Lang fan. She saw her perform at the Cameron House, which is like a not very large music venue here in Toronto. She did a week long residency and my mom was there every night sitting in the front row by herself. Anyway, she has a cassette tape of her songs and she handed that to Katie Lange at one point and never heard back. It was gone after that.
- [08:41]
Alex Goldman
Megan was so devastated by the apparent rejection, she sold her piano, she packed up all her music and she charted a new career path for herself. Megan started working in film and television and that's what she still does today.
- [08:55]
Keenan Tamblyn
She doesn't need a megaphone. She's the person on set who is just saying like, and we're rolling, and she's five foot nothing and just commands everybody. She is in charge of the set. And that's, that's what she's like.
- [09:08]
Alex Goldman
These are some photos of Megan from her on set stuff. This is her with Don Johnson, Brian Dennehy, Rutger Hauer. For all intents and purposes, Megan has lived an extraordinary life. She's worked with tons of celebrities, Jason Priestley, Billy Zane, Gabriel Byrne, and she has a massive amount of insane stories about everyone from Leonard Cohen to Robin Williams. But Kenan has always sensed that somewhere inside his mother, there's still a person who longs to be a musician, or at least part of her that regrets that she stopped trying.
- [09:48]
Keenan Tamblyn
Basically she gave up on doing this after the tape. Didn't lead to anything. After K D Lang never called her back, she just was like, fuck it, it's never gonna happen. I'm abandoning this completely.
- [10:03]
Alex Goldman
That kind of bums me out.
- [10:05]
Keenan Tamblyn
I feel like, yeah, me too, me too. She really felt as though she had something to say through these songs. And other than a handful of people, nobody's ever heard it. And I truly feel like that lingers, it still lingers with her. So I, I wanted to bring her some resolution to this thing that she always wanted and never had.
- [10:37]
Alex Goldman
Also, for a woman who sounds like kind of brassy and willing to talk about anything, the fact that there is this one component of her life that she Steadfastly refuses to talk about. It must feel like a gap, a knowledge gap in this person that you, I think, know pretty well.
- [10:55]
Keenan Tamblyn
Yeah. I have never heard these recordings.
- [10:58]
Alex Goldman
Never.
- [11:00]
Keenan Tamblyn
They exist on a reel to reel tape that is sitting in a box somewhere. And then there's sheet music for all of them. All of the songs that I've never seen. I have memories of this one song that she did sometimes. It was about her friend. That's all I remember. Because we're going back over 20 years at this point. So I would love to see this tape get restored. And I have absolutely no. I have no knowledge of how to do that. It's a grimy old tape that, like, would need to be cleaned up.
- [11:36]
Alex Goldman
So that's where Keenan reached out to me. He had an instinct that I could get his grimy tape cleaned up for his mom so she could hear her music again and be inspired. And he was right about one thing. I am the type of guy who has a reel to reel in his attic. It's because I'm cool. But I had a feeling he was wrong about something else, which is that I don't think that this project was entirely for his mom. Are you more interested in hearing this tape yourself or in her hearing it with you? I guess would be the way I would put it.
- [12:14]
Keenan Tamblyn
That's interesting. I mean, I want to hear it because I've never heard it. So I'm definitely interested in hearing it for myself. But I guess I would say I am doing this for her as well. So I guess both. I would love to get her to talk about it more. It's one of the few things that she doesn't want to talk about very much. And maybe that's just because I haven't asked the right questions. I'm always hesitant to kind of bring it up also. There's not many reasons for it to come up in conversation necessarily.
- [12:48]
Alex Goldman
Kenan told me his mother is coming to visit him in a couple days and that she'll be staying for a week. So the plan is for him to bring it up sometime while she's there. Are you worried about broaching this with her? Like, are you worried that it might upset her?
- [13:05]
Keenan Tamblyn
Yeah, but I think that it's not going to be. I'm hoping that me saying, you know, what we're doing here. I tell her this story that might excite her. Like, I'm leaning more. I am worried, but I'm hopeful. I'm also worried. This is another major thing that I need to bring up I'm worried that these songs are bad. I'm worried that there's a reason she didn't get signed, but I have no idea. I have vague memories of one of the songs that I remember sounding pretty good when I was a kid. But I'm like, all I know is that my grandmother truly believed in her.
- [13:48]
Alex Goldman
How's your grandmother's taste?
- [13:51]
Keenan Tamblyn
Oh, my nana was the best.
- [13:55]
Alex Goldman
Do you worry about us recording this and then going to her and being like, hey, we talked about this deeply personal thing that you consider a failure in your life, and we want you to revisit that thing that you consider a failure. Do you worry that she's gonna be like, what's your problem? Like, why would you bring this up a little bit? I mean, like, you know her well enough. What do you think her reaction to this being revisited would be?
- [14:23]
Keenan Tamblyn
I'm leaning more towards the side of this could potentially excite her. I also think maybe she'll be like, well, I'll do this for my son. You know, I want to believe the reason that I haven't told her about it yet is just because one, I wanted to have this conversation first. And two, I didn't want to necessarily have her shut it down right away. So I wanted to have something on paper to be like, I've already had this, like, interview with these people who are interested in talking about it, because she's somebody that, like, if I'll. I'll secretly record a video of her doing something ridiculous because she's a very funny person, and she'll be kind of embarrassed that I did that, and then watch the video, and she will kind of acknowledge that she is very funny in it.
- [15:16]
Alex Goldman
So.
- [15:18]
Keenan Tamblyn
So I think with a push, perhaps she will be on board. But I. I'm gonna have to tell her, and I've got a whole week with her like this. Couldn't have timed out better. So we'll see.
- [15:32]
Alex Goldman
My advice would be talk to your mom. And then I guess we'll just see what happens, you know, like, how she feels and if she's comfortable with it. And I would love to about it. I would love to at the very least hear the tape and see if it's salvageable.
- [15:48]
Keenan Tamblyn
It's daunting, but I'm not afraid to ask the question, that's for sure.
- [15:52]
Alex Goldman
Let her know that some strange guy from the Internet is interested in hearing her music. Chapter 2 the Second Bird so I didn't tell Keenan this because I didn't want to put any pressure on him. But while I was trying to help Keenan solve his problem. I was standing waist deep in a problem of my own, and I was beginning to wonder if Kenan could help me solve that problem. So back In November of 2024, I'd been contacted by the organizers of On Air Fest about doing something for the 2025 festival. And I said, of course, because even though we'd only made two episodes of Hyperfixed at that point, and the team was only just starting to learn how to work together, the festival was four months away. Also, I have a policy of saying yes to everyone who asked me to do podcast stuff, unless they're fascists. So anyway, I agree to do the show, and then, I mean, you guys know what happens. November turns to December, and we're like, we should probably start talking about On Air Fest. And I'm like, oh, yeah, let's add it to the agenda for next week. And then next week turns into next week, and that week turns into Christmas, and Christmas turns into New Year's. You get it? And we were able to come up with a few decent ideas. And if you were eagle eyed, you might have even spotted the original idea we were were going to do for this on the On Air Fest website. But between January and the beginning of February, every permutation of every idea we've had for the show has fallen apart. So by the time I hang up with Kenan on February 4th, which is what, today's the 20th, so that's 16 days ago, my hands are empty. And if we can't find a story, we will have no choice but but to stage our doomsday option, which is titled On Air Fest Presents. Alex Goldman Attempts to make New Friends. Honestly, even the thought of that makes me shudder. It's as bad as it sounds. The idea was that I would bring people from the audience on stage and become friends with them during the session. But I have another idea, and it involves Keenan. So two days after our first call, I shoot him an email to ask him if he has time for a quick conversation. Which brings us to chapter three, the first stone. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, Four. One, two, three, 4. Hi, Keenan. You are muted. You're gonna have to unmute yourself there. Can you hear me now?
- [18:22]
Keenan Tamblyn
Yes.
- [18:22]
Alex Goldman
Amazing.
- [18:23]
Keenan Tamblyn
Yes.
- [18:24]
Alex Goldman
At this point, Keenan's mom is at his house. She's just flown in from Nova Scotia. She's staying for about a week, and the visit's going fine. But Kenan hasn't told her about the podcast yet, so he has snuck out into his backyard to talk to Us. I'll keep this brief. And it's crazy. This is crazy. It is totally fine if you're like, there's no way this is gonna work. Okay. I just wanna get that out in front of you.
- [18:47]
Keenan Tamblyn
I'm excited to hear it.
- [18:49]
Alex Goldman
So I tell him the story I just told you about how I had committed to this thing and then totally shit the bed. And about how I'm exploring alternative options for this live show, which is scheduled to take place in two weeks. And I thought, maybe this is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. And then I very tactfully ask him. I was wondering, considering your mom truly desires an audience, do you think she would, like, we could make this a story where in two weeks, the look on your face is mad skeptical. I can compose this story, and then at the end, she can come out and sing for us.
- [19:31]
Keenan Tamblyn
Oh, my God. That is. Oh, my God.
- [19:37]
Alex Goldman
I totally understand. Just think about it. No pressure. I know. That's like, a crazy thing.
- [19:45]
Keenan Tamblyn
Do I want it to happen a hundred percent? Do I think it could happen big?
- [19:50]
Alex Goldman
Maybe. I don't know.
- [19:52]
Keenan Tamblyn
I don't think she's done it in years.
- [19:55]
Alex Goldman
Again, totally fine. If this is not a thing that you. That is possible. I just want her to know that, like, if she feels comfortable doing it, I would love to give her the opportunity to sing the song she felt like she wasn't able to sing to other people. Oh, my God.
- [20:11]
Keenan Tamblyn
I. I will ask her. I'm still trying to think about how to broach this information to begin with, but I have a whole day with her today.
- [20:21]
Alex Goldman
And again, I apologize, because I'm also putting pressure on you by doing this. I know this is nuts.
- [20:28]
Keenan Tamblyn
I mean, technically you are. But this is like, if. God, if this could happen, I would be, like, just over the moon.
- [20:36]
Alex Goldman
But, yeah, it would be so cool. Two weeks is like, I understand. Yes, I understand.
- [20:42]
Keenan Tamblyn
I will talk to her today. I mean, I got to broach the story thing first. And then I'll.
- [20:47]
Megan Banning
I'll.
- [20:48]
Keenan Tamblyn
I will tell her.
- [20:49]
Alex Goldman
Okay, let's see how it goes. Can you. Can you hear the desperation in my voice? Can you hear it? It's so bad. Listening to that gives me secondhand embarrassment for myself. That's wacky. Okay. Chapter four, the First Bird, Part two. So a couple days later, we get an email from Kenan saying Megan's agreed to talk to us. And we're like, holy shit, this is gonna work. Megan's dream is going to come true. Kenan's going to get to hear his Mother's music. We're not going to get banned from on Air Fest. And best of all, I'm not going to have to embarrass myself trying to make new friends in front of a bunch of strangers. Everything is coming up Goldman. And then we get on a video call with Megan, and without saying it directly, she very clearly conveys that she does not want to even be talking to us.
- [21:44]
Keenan Tamblyn
You good, mom?
- [21:46]
Megan Banning
Yeah, I'm really great, Keenan.
- [21:48]
Alex Goldman
See what I mean? Now, under normal circumstances, this would have given me pause, because the last thing I want to do is force a spotlight on someone who genuinely wants to avoid attention, even if it means that I'm going to walk away from this with nothing to show for it. But Kenan cautioned me about his mom that while she may hate the idea of attention, once she warms up a bit, Megan actually kind of loves it. So all I had to do was warm her up. So I'm wondering, just to start, if you could introduce yourself.
- [22:20]
Megan Banning
My name is Megan Banning. I am the mother of Kenan Tamblyn, who started this kerfuffle. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a beautiful coastal town in Canada, and I'm here to visit my son.
- [22:35]
Alex Goldman
And he's ruined your whole trip, right?
- [22:37]
Megan Banning
Well, he wasn't in the door. Like, I think it was, like, the first day. And I cried. I don't cry very, very rarely. Oh, I was like, this is so personal. How dare you? And it's a part of my life that breaks my heart because it's a shoulda, coulda, woulda, Right?
- [22:54]
Alex Goldman
Well, I wanna ask you about that. Like, how did you get interested in music?
- [22:59]
Megan Banning
I came from a very dysfunctional home. My mother was bipolar. My father was an alcoholic. But we had love and music, and we danced when on a good day, we danced. But music was always a thing. There was a piano in our home. My mother tells a story. I just clung onto the piano and everything shut out. It was my piece, and I could play anything. I Playboy. I could hear everything. I could play and I could write music instantly. I went to another place. I went to a place that I was calm, and it was like I was in another world. It was my world. It was my music. I played every day, probably eight hours a day.
- [23:39]
Alex Goldman
Eight hours?
- [23:41]
Megan Banning
Yeah, I played. That's all I did is play music. Now I just play Euchre online for.
- [23:46]
Alex Goldman
The next 45 minutes. Megan told me about her life and her music. She told me about her dreams of becoming a songwriter and about how when she didn't hear back from Katie Lang. She decided it meant she wasn't good enough to be a professional musician. So she sold her piano, stashed the last of her recordings in nondescript boxes and drawers where she expected they'd stay until long after she died. Kenan would later tell me this was the most he ever heard his mom talk about her music. And even though it was clear that revisiting these memories was indeed very painful for Megan, it also seemed like the process of actually doing that, sifting through these old, painful memories, it was almost liberating for her. It reminded me of that thing that Mr. Rogers used to say about how if it's mentionable, it's manageable. Like, as long as we can figure out a way to talk about it, we can figure out a way to carry it. And I think for Kenan, watching his mom talk so openly about her music also kind of freed him to talk about what the silence around this music has meant to him and why he started this whole thing in the first place.
- [24:58]
Keenan Tamblyn
I guess it mostly came from desire to hear those songs, because my mom is a very, very open person, as you can hear. And this seemed to be one of the only things that she didn't want to talk about that much. And every time I said, can I hear those songs?
- [25:24]
Megan Banning
No, no.
- [25:29]
Alex Goldman
They were all.
- [25:30]
Keenan Tamblyn
They're only on a reel to reel tape, and that's gonna take. I don't know how to clean that up. And I got the sheet. I don't know where it is. And I didn't know how much of this was true and how much was her holding back. And I thought maybe all this story is. Is my problem is that I need to get this tape restored, and that way I could present it to her, and then I could listen to it, and that was that. And then now the story has kind of become a lot more about her, which I love, because she has a story. I think that because this is one of the few things that she is hesitant to talk about, it seemed like a unfinished chapter of her life. And it could be a bit of a bookend to that story, but not necessarily the end.
- [26:24]
Megan Banning
Yeah. Can I say. Let me tell you what this means to me. That my son, who I love to death.
- [26:32]
Keenan Tamblyn
I'd hope so.
- [26:33]
Megan Banning
Well, yeah, but I didn't under. I didn't get how much he knew, how much it meant to me until he did this. I never thought it mattered to him. I didn't think he. To me, it was just something I did. I didn't realize that he paid attention to it. And when he said, mom, I got this about your music, I went, what about my music? Like, I cried. I was mad. Ask him. I was in tears. I can't talk about this. He said, can we talk? I went, no. It wasn't till today that I would let him talk about it because it's so personal, because it's when you let yourself down. When I didn't do something that was I should have done. I didn't do something I was supposed to do. And it's a regret. But in my heart of hearts, I'm a musician.
- [27:31]
Alex Goldman
By this point, we'd been talking to Megan for over an hour and I feel like I understand everything that Kenan told me about his mom. This woman has not had an easy life. She's been knocked around, beaten down, but there's still so much fire inside of her. And yes, she spent decades carrying the weight of her regrets and fears. But I am a firm believer in the idea that it is never too late to change your life. And also, Kenan had told me that all his mom needed was a push. So I decided to push her. I say, megan, I don't want to beat around the bush. You're a musician with songs that nobody's ever heard. And I'm a podcaster with an empty stage and an audience hungry for something that stirs their souls. Would you do us all the honor of performing your music live at On Air Fest in Brooklyn, New York?
- [28:28]
Megan Banning
Oh, it's not happening. I'm not. That's never going to happen. I'm never going to be on a stage and sing my songs because a, I can't sing anymore. Like, I can't. Like I like my voice. I smoke fucking Marlboros.
- [28:45]
Keenan Tamblyn
Just cause you don't sing like Katie Lang doesn't mean you can sing.
- [28:47]
Megan Banning
No, I don't want to fucking sing like her anyway. She's too twangy. Oh, fuck no. Just could not do that. But here's what I could do. I would love to have someone else sing, like to have my music heard and my song heard. That would be. I would die to hear that. Yeah, I'm getting teary eyed just thinking about it. No, I mean it would be.
- [29:24]
Alex Goldman
It'd be something if there was one song that we could get someone to perform. What song would that be?
- [29:32]
Megan Banning
It's called Room.
- [29:35]
Alex Goldman
Rooms, Megan told me, is a song about a feeling she had years ago after her then fiance broke off their engagement. It's about that singular kind of heartbreak you experience when you're by yourself in the same spaces you used to share with someone you loved, when the volume of your sadness and anger is only outweighed by how much you miss being in a room with them. What would it mean to you for people to hear that music? Would it mean anything at all to you now? Like, what would it feel like to have people in public hear that it.
- [30:09]
Megan Banning
Would take you back to me back then, that if that young I was never sweet? I can't say sweet, no. But that. That part of me that still exists, to hear that music, it die. And is it good? I mean, it could be shit. I mean, I haven't listened it for so long, but I just know heart in my heart, I know it's good.
- [30:45]
Keenan Tamblyn
At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.
- [30:52]
Alex Goldman
But.
- [30:52]
Keenan Tamblyn
But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music.
- [30:59]
Megan Banning
Hockey, sex of bugs.
- [31:02]
Keenan Tamblyn
Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and.
- [31:09]
Alex Goldman
Hopefully make you see the world anew.
- [31:10]
Keenan Tamblyn
Radiolab Adventures on the Edge of what.
- [31:12]
Alex Goldman
We Think We Know Wherever you get.
- [31:14]
Robin
Your podcasts.
- [31:18]
Alex Goldman
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That's Q U-N-E.com hyperfixed to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com hyperfixed this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Pretty Litter. So I have two cats snuggle and Furball. They are both indoor cats and it's been a particularly brutal winter in the Northeast, so I am largely an indoor human. And on top of that, the recording studio where I make this show is in my basement, literally right next to my cat's litter. So it has the potential to get pretty gross down here. And that is why I use Pretty Litter. Pretty Litter's non clumping formula traps odor and moisture. It's ultra absorbent, it's lightweight, low dust, and one six pound bag works for up to a month. Also, since Pretty Litter ships straight to my door, I never run out. I don't have huge kitty litter bags taking up space, and most importantly, I don't have to go out in the cold and lug those huge tubs from the store to my car and into my house. Indoor cats and indoor humans agree. Pretty Litter helps my house smell fresh and clean. Go to prettylitter.com hyperfix to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. That's prettylitter.com hyperfixed to save 20% on your first Order and get a free cat toy. Pretty litter.com hyperfixed terms and conditions apply. C site for details Chapter 599 stones okay, so we've spoken to Megan. She's told us she wants to do this and that when she gets back to Halifax on Tuesday, she's going to send over the sheet music and the cassette. And all of this is great. We say goodbye, we hang up the call, and then all we can do is wait and pray that at some point between now and then Megan doesn't change her mind. Because if she does, we have no backup plan for this live show and no time to figure out an alternative. And if you think I'm simply I'm mentioning this simply for the sake of ramping up narrative tension. 1. You're right. 2. Let me remind you, this woman has not let anyone hear her music in nearly four decades, including her son. And now we're expecting her to turn over the only recordings via snail mail to a bald stranger whose end game is to share it with the world. So, needless to say, I did not sleep well on Monday of last week. I spent the evening imagining what the organizers of On AirFest would do with this programming slot if I failed to fill it. My most fantastical idea would be that there would be an Alex Goldman effigy contest, during which the most realistic Alex Goldman would be strung up right there in the main hall so attendees could take turns beating it like a Pinata Tuesday. When I wake up on Tuesday, I set about finding a singer. I don't know a lot of musicians in New York, so I texted my friend Eliza McLam, who lives in LA. Eliza is a musician and a podcaster. She hosts a podcast called Binge Topia. But her voice, guys, her voice, it's somehow delicate and cuts right through you. She sounds like she could sing you a lullaby and eat you alive simultaneously. And honestly, she would have been a perfect for this. But I was hoping she could recommend someone in the city. And when I got in touch with her, she told me she had actually just moved to the city. And immediately I'm like, oh, this is meant to be. So I got on my knees and I started begging and she was like, calm down, dude. I'd love to sing Megan's song. And I'm like, great. As soon as I get the music, I'll send it over. We check in with Kenan throughout the day. Kenan checks in with Megan, but by 7:30pm, there's still no news. Megan's told Kenan that she knows exactly where the cassette tape is, but that the sheet music might take a bit longer to find. And as for the reel to reel, which contains the only copies of the studio recordings Megan made for K D language, that was completely mia. So we agree to circle up on Wednesday morning. Wednesday, Wednesday morning, there's good news from Kenan. The sheet music and the cassette have been located, but the sheet music is just piano chords. The lyrics were written by hand. Megan has no way to play the cassette. And. And. And there's a huge snowstorm coming to Nova Scotia, so we scrap the idea of sending this stuff through the mail. Keenan starts calling audio nerds in Halifax, looking for someone capable of converting a cassette into a digital file they can send to us. Obviously, this is not an ideal situation, but then again, none of the work we've done on this project is ideal. And yet it is starting to feel like we have inadvertently assembled a small army of people who are deeply invested in the outcome of this operation. Like, within hours, Keenan has made contact with a legendary local musician named Rich O'Coyne, who has the gear to get the job done. And Rich is like, yes, bring me your tired, your poor, your busted tapes. I will convert them and then we can get them to Eliza. But due to the storm, nobody is able to get over to riches until Thursday. At 7am on Thursday, Keenan texts to say that the tape is on its way to riches. And at this point, we are exactly one week to the day from our show at On Airfest, and the organizers of On Airfest have started sending us follow up emails reminding us that our script and our clips and our photos are due by Friday, AKA tomorrow. But the thing is, we don't have any of that stuff, because this whole story hinges on a single song. A song we've never heard. And at this point there's a pretty good chance we never will. Because remember, this tape that's heading to Richard's? It's nearly 40 years old and it's been hiding at the bottom of a box filled with all kinds of other shit, and there's really no telling what kind of condition it'll be in when it arrives or if it'll even be salvageable. So when Rich sends this photo of the cassette, our hearts sink. The tape is visibly bent, twisted up inside the cassette's plastic casing. And as I'm looking at it, there's a brief moment where I wish I had quicksand near my house. Then I could just take a walk and end up accidentally buried up to my collarbones and explain to passerby that unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the on AirFest 2025, the premier festival of sound and storytelling featuring intimate conversations, performances and live podcasts. Because I'll be here in quicksand. Anyway, about an hour later, the thought evaporates completely because Rich, he goes in, manually re reels the tape with the kind of care and precision one might expect from a man who's deactivating a bomb. And by noon we have digital copies of Megan's songs in our inbox. And the moment we hear them, it's like, Look, I don't believe in destiny but over the course of my life I have experienced I'm going to start crying but over the course of my life I've experienced alignments that certainly felt like they were faded. And when Megan sent music to my friend Eliza, I felt like I was in the middle of one of those things where a hundred crazy elements suddenly and inexplicably aligned precisely the way they were meant to. So without further ado, I'd like to invite Eliza McLam to join me for the sixth and final chapter of our show, the song Rooms by Megan Banning.
- [40:33]
Eliza McLam
Smoke filled rooms and lonely afternoon Empty faces going nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars no introductions needed I've been here before Nowhere once forgotten Nowhere once forgotten well I'm ambling on and it's all gone wrong Cause I'm missing you I'M missing you? I can't complain? It's been a gambling game? I'm just a few hurts short? So I'll wrap myself up in your memory? Just to get me through the rough spots? I'll lift my glass to survival? Meanwhile I'll be missing you? Oh, I'll be missing you? Whoa, I'll be missing you? Smoke filled room Smoke and lonely afternoon? Empty faces going nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no Name Bar. No introductions needed. I've been here before.
- [43:09]
Alex Goldman
Thank you so much. Thank you. So what you're hearing right now is the recording from a boombox on top of a piano from 1983, I think. So. What you don't know is that Keenan and Megan have been watching via a Zoom call, which is being holding, held by my producer Sari this whole time. So I'm wondering if I could just bring the phone up real quick. Yep. Hey, guys, how you doing? Hold on a second, I'm going to put you on speaker. No, I don't know how to put you on speaker.
- [44:32]
Eliza McLam
Can you tell them to unmute themselves?
- [44:34]
Alex Goldman
Oh, yeah, you have to unmute yourselves. Can you unmute yourselves real quick? Can we bring the music down? The house music down.
- [44:41]
Megan Banning
Hi.
- [44:42]
Alex Goldman
Hey, guys. How you doing? What did you think?
- [44:46]
Megan Banning
That was something. Eliza, thank you. You did a great job, sweetheart. Really great. Kenan's breaking my heart. He's on Zoom. He's in Toronto, I'm in Nova Scotia. And to see his sweet little face, we both broke into tears. And thank you. For someone who I was like, this is not happening. Really quite something. And Alex and all your team, I appreciate it. It was a bit much pulling this off in a week, going into blizzard and finding all this memories 40 years ago of stuff I never thought would happen. And the fact that there's people that are hearing this song. I mean, I got five more that are even better. By the way.
- [45:33]
Keenan Tamblyn
Very much like her to say something like that. There's more and they're great.
- [45:39]
Megan Banning
And Rich McCoyne who helped me out, this strange man. I just ran up and said, hi. And a blizzard. Here's a tape. Good luck, Chuck.
- [45:48]
Alex Goldman
Bye.
- [45:48]
Megan Banning
And ran off.
- [45:49]
Keenan Tamblyn
He happened to live five minutes away from her, too.
- [45:51]
Megan Banning
Five minutes away and he wasn't home. It's like, Keenan, this is enough. If there's a snowstorm, I'm in olive. She's a wand. Really, Alex, you convinced me. I was like, this is not happening. Like it's. It's a lot. And I am blessed and the love of my son who remembered and kept the memory of my music and remembered because I forgot it was in a box in the basement that I spent four hours looking for. And it's been quite an experience. You know, that poor 23 year old that wrote it so many years ago. So what has inspired me is I'm going to go buy myself a keyboard and get back to my music because I'd love to play the piano, but the music is still in me.
- [46:37]
Alex Goldman
All right guys, well I'm going to hand you back to Sari because I'm running out of time. No, you're great. Thank thank you both so much for sharing this party. I'm going to start crying again. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming. Coming Stay tuned to the end of the credits to hear Megan Banning's original recording of rooms from the early 1980s. It's really beautiful. You gotta check it out. This episode of Hyperfix was produced by Emma Cortland, Amor Yates, Sari Sopher Sukenik and Tony Williams. It was edited by Emma Cortland with some help from the rest of us. It was engineered by Tony Williams, the music was by me, with the exception of Rooms by Megan Banning, which was performed by Eliza McLam. You can find Eliza's music wherever you listen to music. Her debut album, Going through it came out last year and it's amazing. She's the best. Seriously. Go listen to it. Special thanks to the team at on airfest for helping us perform this show to a lot live audience. Madonna, Mofiti, Scott Newman, Ephraim Jenkins, Tom Tierney, Paul Cuchero, Obiz Cruz and Andrew Brown. Special thanks to Rich Okoyne who digitized Megan's tapes just under the Wire for us. If you want to see pictures of young Megan with celebs and other visual components for the episode, we're going to make those available to premium members on the Hyperfixed website. You can become a premium member to see that as well as get bonus episodes. Join our Discord and much, much more@hyperfixedpod.com join Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator owned listener supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia fm. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for rooms.
- [48:54]
Eliza McLam
Smoke filled rooms and lonely afternoons Empty faces going nowhere places, idle chatter as we gather at no Name bar. No introductions needed cause I've been here before Nowhere once forgotten Nowhere once forgotten well I'm ambling on and it's all gone wrong cause I'm missing you well, oh, I'm missing you I can't complain it's been a gambling game I'm just a few cards short so wrap myself up in your memory Just to get me through the rough spots I'll lift my glass to survival Meanwhile I'll be missing you Whoa, I'll be missing you Whoa, I'll be missing you Smoke filled rooms and lonely eyes Afternoons, empty faces going nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars no introductions needed cuz I've been here before.
- [51:24]
Keenan Tamblyn
Radiotopia from PRX.