It was July of 2020, we were in the early stages of the pandemic. In Ontario, we had already gone through a lockdown, and things began to open up slowly. That summer I played a few outdoor socially distant shows with my band The Royal Pains, but bar shows like this…
…seemed so far away still. We made the best of it working and schooling from home, but it was a miserable time.
For me, personally the biggest struggle was not having that creative/performance outlet. It’s weird. You don’t know you need to do it…until you can’t do it. So I started recording little videos in my basement studio of covers…
I’m not much of a guitarist. I’m much more comfortable with a band, but this for awhile, scratched that performance itch. Eventually I began taking requests. I recorded 46 of them. But even this left me…wanting.
This time of turmoil was also a pivotal time for me at work. I was getting burnt out of corporate training after 20 years and looking for something new. I was getting noticed at work for producing internal podcasts.
I wrote about my journey with podcasting.
Since I began listening to podcasts, I knew wanted to produce one, but I never had the time, nor the idea. Now I had nothing but time, so I set to thinking of an idea. I figured, the easiest entry to podcasting would be an aftershow. The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack was my gateway pod back in the early days of podcasts. So I set out to look for a show that had some longevity, was well-liked, ideally had a cult following, and was underserved for additional content.
Letterkenny was a show that was recommended to me months prior by Mat—a coworker of mine, and one of my TPS cohosts. It was a show I’d seen ads for, but never had access to because I wasn’t a subscriber to Crave. During all the lockdowns I had a lot of time to revisit shows on my ‘To Watch’ list. I finally arrived at Letterkenny and so—through nefarious means—I started watching.
I was hooked in that cold open…
…when Wayne says “I think you cum in men enough for all of us.” they had me.
Tanya—my wife and TPS cohost—walked in on me watching the ‘Fartbook’ episode of Letterkenny. This episode is one of the more polarizing episodes of the show. You either love it, or think it’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen. Tanya was in the latter camp.
She admonished me for watching something so crass and juvenile. I didn’t blame her. I would frequently say the same for some of the ‘reality TV’ she watched. But she didn’t understand! The show used lowbrow humour and content to hide some really progressive ideas. It was the ‘spoonful of sugar’ approach. Only, instead of medicine, it was progressive ideas, and instead of sugar, it was dick and fart jokes. If only she saw it the same way I did. If only she’d give it a chance. If only…it was her homework to watch the show!
The idea came pretty quickly…but first…market research!
I looked around for other podcasts that covered Letterkenny. There were a couple. One out of Toronto called Letterkenny Podcast and one out of Seattle called How Are Ya Now?. Letterkenny Podcast stopped after 11 episodes.
I reached out to both to let them know I was thinking of doing this and I had no intention of stealing from them or competing with them. I never heard back from Letterkenny Podcast, but Dean and Tiara from How Are Ya Now? were super welcoming and supportive! In fact, we ended up collaborating on many episodes for both our podcasts over the past 4 years including a bunch of table reads of existing Letterkenny fan-favourite episodes and original fanfic scripts like this great one by best-selling author David Mack…
So I had my idea, my subject matter, and my cohost. But Tanya was only half in. She’d never done a podcast before and I could tell she was only going along with it because…well…what else was there to do? We couldn’t go anywhere.
I needed more dynamics, and also a back-up in case Tanya lost interest and dropped out. My first call was to Mat since, well, Letterkenny was his recommendation. Plus Mat had a dynamic personality. We’d done some of those internal work podcasts together. I knew he’d be great on the mic.
My next call was to Victor. He and I worked together for a few years and he too had done some podcasts with me. I knew his personality would make him a perfect foil. Both agreed and so we scheduled our first production meeting, which I recorded and it became our first episode…
Listening back to that first episode is so—as the kids would say—cringe. There is so much we didn’t know and we were so far behind the fandom. How could people listen and take us seriously as authorities on the subject?
But we kept at it and the stats slowly started building as did the listeners. We’d cover each episode and then at the end of each season Dean—ands eventually Tiara— from How Are Ya Now? would join us to recap the season.
Then the unthinkable happened. We had our first cast member interview…
Patrick was amazing! Plus he made us believe we could get other cast members. We dared to dream. Next came K Trevor Wilson (Squirrely Dan), Tyler Johnston (Stewart), and so on…
As of the date of this blog, we’ve recorded 35 interviews with various Letterkenny and Shoresy cast and crew.
Another important milestone in our journey was when we started having our listeners on as guest panelists. We had Dean and Tiara and for a whole season we had our buddy Dennis Gugin as a sponsor and guest, but the first time we had a guest on to help us review and recap an episode was when our friend Eliza joined us in episode 32 to recap/review Letterkenny 4, Episode 4: Letterkenny Talent Show…
We had so much fun with Eliza! It gave the show a whole new energy. So it became the default. Now on the rare occasion when we don’t have a guest panelist, it feels like something is missing.
The next milestone was when we had our first AG Hall Social episode. This happened in episode 50 at the end of our Season 5 review…
We opened up the zoom for any of our listeners to join us. It was a risky move. It could have led to chaos, but it paid off because it paved the way for the amazing community we’ve grown around the pod.
And thank goodness for that community! Because once we caught up with the show and we had to wait for new episodes of Letterkenny to review, we leaned heavily on that community to help us create new content. By this time we had a thriving Twitter DM group—which later moved to discord—giving us ideas and helping us produce episodes. Whether it was individual character studies, thematic episodes, trivia, you name it! they helped make it happen.
Then the spin-off was announced. The announcement of Shoresy as a spin-off got everyone excited and infused a new energy to the podcast.
During this time, I guess we were getting someone’s attention because we received a nice gift of Letterkenny swag from Jared himself…
Speaking of our amazing community. Once things opened up enough where we could take a family vacation, Tanya and I did just that. But rather than taking 2 weeks off the podcast, our listeners produced their own episodes. We called them Takeovers and they were brilliant! Here is the first one…
After receiving our gifts from Jared, we got bolder with our ideas. Early on, I had joked that perhaps we should take a road trip up to Sudbury to tour some of the Letterkenny locations. At the time, Tanya baulked at the idea…but now she was all in.
So we—well Tanya—planned a road trip up to Sudbury. I told our new friends from the show about our plans and they arranged some pretty cool access. I captured the highlights of our trip in this video…
It was such a surreal trip! Little did we know—well, we kinda knew—that we had just visited the studio the day after they wrapped on the final season of Letterkenny. Here is the episode we recorded from the Kitchen set…
We also recorded video of this episode…
Later that year, at the end of 2022, New Metric Media announced a special Shoresy night hockey game where the Sudbury Wolves dressed up as the Blueberry Bulldogs for one game to raise money for charity. A group of our American listeners came up to Sudbury for that game. They became known to us as the #BlueBerryCrew.
We didn’t go to the game with them, but we did meet up in Toronto when they first arrived and broke bread with some of our listeners for the first time in person! It was another surreal moment perfectly captured in this video…
Shout-out to the brilliant poem by Tate & Webb and the amazing read by Tres!
Thanks to that trip, another trip was planned only a few months later to bring back those listeners and include us in an epic Sudbury adventure where we got to tour the city with our listeners, see some Shoresy filming locations, meet some of the cast, be extras on an episode (Shoresy 2, Episode 3: Set The Tone), and even record an episode of our podcast from the Shoresy Locker room set—sadly, due to technical difficulties, that episode sounds horrible, but here it is anyway in case you’re interested…
The entire trip, we were being led around Sudbury by a film crew documenting our visit. That footage is now being released as part of a Discover Sudbury series for Sudbury Tourism.
I write all about it in the #SudburyMagic blog series.
Yet another unbelievable experience that would not have been possible if it weren’t for this podcast!
The latest milestone for this podcast happened back in November 2023, when news finally came out that season 12 of Letterkenny was going to be the final season. I was contacted by Letterkenny/Shoresy’s Producer Kara Haflidson informing me that Jared was ready to come on the podcast to talk about the end. This was HUGE news! We were getting the exclusive interview with the man himself! It was an amazing honour and recognition of all the work we’d done to this point. Jared did not disappoint…
I talk about the events that lead up to the Jared interview and a bunch of other fun stuff at the beginning of the following episode # 210…
This is probably my personal favourite TPS episode—other than the interviews— because it features us and the Blueberry Crew enjoying the fruits of everything that lead up to that point, and then we still get to talk about the episode of Shoresy in which we were extras.
Since the Keeso interview back in November, we’ve covered Shoresy 2 and Letterkenny 12 and we’re currently in the middle of our Shoresy 3 coverage. We’ve also had some amazing interviews along the way and a Letterkenny Presents comedy tour.
As we hear rumours of shooting for Shoresy 4 beginning later this summer, and new episode of something else that hasn’t yet been announced, we’re really looking forward to what other adventures this podcast will bring us.
Not too shabby for a pandemic project eh?
I hope you enjoyed the look back at the past 4 years.
Here’s to 4 more!
What are you thinking?