Sorting The Junk Drawer (Podcast)

Pat and Josh got together in our Sound Connections Podcast Studio to reminisce on their podcasting journey together and discuss building a podcast from scratch. They talk about what inspired them to make a podcast together, how they had to learn on the fly about finding the right podcasting mic, and how they improvised to get the most out of their largely nonexistent budget! The two also discussed what they like most about podcasts, and where they see their podcast heading in the future.

About Patrick Douglass Speir

Pat is a passionate individual with a love for life's adventures. While currently residing in North Carolina, Pat is planning a move back to his roots in New Jersey to be closer to family. By day, he works in a payroll company as a support specialist with dreams of entering the project management space. However, Pat's true passions lie outside of work. He's a dedicated father to a two-year-old daughter, with a son on the way, who are his pride and joy. In his free time, Pat immerses himself in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, enjoys watching hockey, football, and baseball, and indulges in his love for reading and collecting comic books (with Batman reigning as his favorite superhero). A regular gym-goer, Pat values staying active and healthy. Professionally, Pat takes pride in providing excellent service to major companies and brands, but personally, he finds being a present father to be the most rewarding thing he's ever done. He recently embarked on a new venture, starting an NFL podcast and producing an episode every week of the season for their first year, which he considers a significant achievement. Connect with Pat on most major social platforms as @junkdrawerpat.

Listen and subscribe to the Sound Connections podcast on your favorite podcasting apps including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!

Guys, welcome back to another episode of Sound Connections. We are here with local content creator for the junk drawer show, Josh Delgado.

Josh

Hello.

Pat

Would you like to give the audience a brief introduction of you? Who are you?

Josh

Oh, boy. Wow, that's a deep philosophical question.

Pat

Make it less philosophical.

Josh

I'm Josh. That's what I do. I'm a software engineer, and I also do podcasts and D&D and other nerd stuff with this guy and a couple other people.

Pat

That's true.

Josh

I like long walks on the beach.

Pat

You have a girlfriend. What are you doing?

Josh

With her.

Pat

Oh, okay.

Josh

You didn't let me finish. I just like long walks on the beach. That's what we're going to do on Saturday.

Pat

Oh, perfect.

Josh

It's going to be so nice. I don't know. There's an F1 race.

Pat

Priorities. Yeah. Priorities. So, with this, we're trying to focus in on local micro content creators, and The Junk Drawer Show, as a member of it, I will say, very micro.

Josh

Oh, very micro. Very micro.

Pat

We make micro breweries look big.

Josh

We make micro machines look big.

Pat

So where did the idea for The Junk Drawer Show come from? And I'm going to ask you this question knowing full well the answer.

Josh

Good, because I remember a version of what happened.

Pat

Okay.

Josh

So what I remember—

Pat

Is it the version?

Josh

I don't know. I really don't. I don't trust my memory anymore. That's fair. So I remember that we moved in together around 2017, mid-year 2017. And I remember setting up my desk on the right side of the stairs. And while I was doing that, I don't know if you were getting ready for work or whatever, but you came up and you were like, “Dude, you know what? I've just always wanted to start a podcast, and it just seems like a really cool idea. Do you want to do it with me?” And my response was like, “Yeah, I got a lot going on, but if you do all the prep work, if you get people and do all that sort of stuff, then I'm down for it.” And then that's where it started. And we just got our phones with the Apple headphones and used boxes as tripods.

Pat

As tripods, yeah. We built our own tripods.

Josh

By stacking boxes.

Pat

By stacking boxes and cutting holes.

Josh

Yeah, we're innovative, innovative, innovative.

Pat

Yes, we were innovative. We were creative and poor. Actually, those three-four of those things just all kind of went together.

Josh

Yeah, that was probably six months after my company failed.

Pat

So, yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Josh

So I was like just scratching everything together. And that's where boxes came from.

Pat

It was not a stretch to say our first podcast was rough. Do you remember the process in which we recorded that? Like we used video, we did all that stuff.

Josh

I feel like the production quality was rough. But even thinking about it now, because what we did was we took—there's this thing called 36 questions, and I don't know if it's around now—but it's meant to be a way for people to go from not knowing each other at all to knowing each other deeply.

Pat

It's a lover's thing.

Josh

It's a lover's thing. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.

Pat

So.

Josh

But like we had known each other for a good four years at that point, but not known each other.

Pat

Right. We'd seen each other in passing. We knew each other on a first name basis, but never had spent any kind of consistent quality time together. And I remember you being like, “First one should be this because I live with you, and I don't really know who you are.” And we had our Apple headphones and we were like, “This mic is totally going to work. It'll be fine.” You had tested it by yourself in like a room in like your closet or something. And you were like, “Yeah, no, the sound quality is fine. As long as you don't move.” And I was like, great. Now you have the fidget disease and it just, I remember everything picking up close, it was always like shirt, collar, something. And it was always just like,

Josh

It was the beard.

Pat

The beard too.

Josh

Right. Cause that's when I started like letting it get a little bigger. So every time it would. Yeah. And, uh, recently that happened at a bunch on work meetings. So I bought new headphones there.

Pat

At what point do you remember we made the distinct effort to up our sound quality?

Josh

We upped it. Was that episode like five or so a couple months in? I think, cause I remember we had my buddy Dustin on the one that I went on the train trip with.

Pat

Right.

Josh

He came back. So he, my friend Dustin, he's a web developer. I assume still, we haven't talked in a while, but—

Pat

He's alive, I think.

Josh

I think he's alive. I hope probably when, uh, when he turned about he's like, you know what? I'm not happy with how I'm living my life. So he sold his house. He, everything—

Pat

Worldly possessions.

Josh

Worldly possessions. He took everything down to just like a single backpack. And then he went to Bali, Bali.

Pat

It was Bali. Cause we talk about the Bali belly. Yeah. I will never forget that.

Josh

So he went to Bali and just started working remotely. And, uh, when he came back and needed somewhere to stay, I'm like, yeah, dude, we have a couch. Come hang out. Also, do you want to help me out with the podcast? Because I think what you're doing is super interesting and you should pay me for staying on our couch with your voice.

Pat

With your voice.

Josh

With your voice.

Pat

I think the thing that we, we'd kind of come to the conclusion to is both of us were people that were listening to podcasts at the time we were like, it's not fun to listen to something that sounds bad. And it's, it's two things that you don't think would correlate, but you're also like, “Hmm, if this is an audio feed and this is only going to be the way that this is digested probably would make sense to sound good.”

Josh

Yeah. And when I would go through an edit, cause I would use a little bit in audacity, having to listen to it. I have not been diagnosed with misophonia, but when someone chews with their mouth open, I want to hurt them.

Pat

Yeah.

Josh

So editing those, I would want to hurt myself. Yeah. I'm just like, Oh my God. And, uh, yeah, I'm so glad we made that upgrade. And the mics have been going for three years now.

Pat

Three. Uh, yeah. I mean, probably closer to four cause we're almost at four years with Junk Drawer.

Josh

Yeah.

Pat

But what process did you go through to vet mics, find mics, buy mics, set up mics? What was that? What did that kind of look like for you?

Josh

Well, I started saying, uh, Hey Pat, how poor are you? And when you said I'm this many poor, I'm like, dude, I'm that many poor.

Pat

Oh my God.

Josh

So I think we set up a budget cause we started with just three or did we go four, no.

Pat

We did four.

Josh

But yeah, it was really just what is our budget? Uh, divide that by four. What setup can I make? So I think Amazon basic cables, cheapest anchor arm that I could find. Not SpongeBob's anchor arms.

Pat

Different.

Josh

And then I narrowed it down. Very good. Actually, I narrowed it down between the MXL. MXL, MLX.

Pat

I think it's MXL.

Josh

Let's call it MXL. Uh, Jamie. Uh, the MXL seven and the nine and the seven was $20 cheaper.

Pat

And that's how we made our decision.

Josh

Yep. And they're still with us today.

Pat

Still. And I'll be the first one to break from that mold because Mainline and Shure have been so kind and have donated an MB seven to our, our pod so we could update and upgrade our stream a little bit. So that'll be fun and, uh, be a pretty cool, pretty cool thing that's happening. So what went into the thought process of The Junk Drawer show? What, what made you and me— weird question to ask—um, want to do a show that's kind of a catch all instead of about anything in one thing specifically?

Josh

So I'll answer this for myself. And the answer was indecision.

Pat

Okay.

Josh

Um, so I, indecision, I guess is the negative spin to it. I just like a lot of different things.

Pat

Right.

Josh

Um, so at the time I was listening to Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, though those kind of, kind of eclectic, very niche kind of people. And I'm like, ah, that seems fun. Let's just do that. You know, let's kind of reach into everything. And then you had talked about wanting to do sports. Um, I was also watching game grumps with Justin a lot. So I'm like, oh, let's do some video games too. And at that point I didn't want to narrow down too much because I didn't know what was going to work.

Pat

Yeah.

Josh

And I liked the, oh, Gary V.

Pat

Turns out nothing worked. Nothing worked.

Josh

We're terrible garbage people. And so, yeah, that was really it. And then our first logo was literally our junk drawer. Yeah. I don't know if you remember tha—

Pat

I do remember that.

Josh

But I pulled it out. I'm like, cool, good enough. Yeah. I'm tired.

Pat

And that was, do you remember what happened with the name too? You were like, what, what are we going to call ourselves? And we just literally sat in the kitchen for hours and we were tossing around names and we were like, these suck. And eventually I had said The Junk Drawer show and you were like, yeah, that's fine for now. And four years later, we're still having the same name. Um, but I like it. I like it as a catchall. And I like that when we, the tagline and a lot of our social media and stuff is, you know, that drawer where you open it up sometimes and you're like, oh man, $10. Like that's my favorite thing because that's absolutely happened to me before.

Josh

Yeah.

Pat

In a junk drawer. I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot I put this in here.

Josh

Thanks, Past Me.

Pat

Good job. Way to look out.

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Pat

So when did the focus from all of those things from gaming, from podcasting and whatnot, how did it shift to D&D, because that seems to be the main proponent of the channel. It seems to be the central focus. When did that kind of transition occur?

Josh

That recording date was March 9th or 10th, which I only remember because it was my birthday.

Pat

It was your birthday weekend. I remember.

Josh

So our friend Justin had gotten into D&D about a year before, I think. And at the time he was just a player and he was talking about wanting to try his hand in DMing. So I, you know, I don't think I hadn't seen him in a couple of months. I'm like, “Hey, why don't, for my birthday, you come out. I don't want to do anything crazy. I just want to chill, maybe do a couple of D&D sessions.” He's like, “Yeah, cool.” So that's what we did. Uh, he came out and did we record the whole weekend?

Pat

Yeah, we did.

Josh

I think that was kind of our schedule for the first year: is Justin, and Carlos eventually, and Mike would come over and we'd record for like eight hours on a single day, um, and then release that over time. But that was pretty much it. That was when, and it's funny because when we first started at the, it was like, I think you wrote, you did the intro. It's like—

Pat

Yeah.

Josh

We're just going to do this until like, you know, see how it goes. So we don't, yeah, until we don't. And then here we are three years later and it's our primary thing that we do. Once a week.

Pat

So with that, we recorded things for an extended period of time. We would release incrementally over time. When did the idea, and when did the execution to move things to Twitch and become a live stream happen and what has that done for you as a brand?

Josh

Um, it was when I decided to move to Colorado because I don't like the heat. When that happened, the last thing I wanted to do was to lose what we had built as a group, but mostly just as friends.

Pat

As a group of friends.

Josh

Yeah. And, um, so when that happened, I think we took probably like four or five months to get it up and running and figure out what we were going to do. Cause we also shifted campaigns, but, um, yeah, that was when we started switching, switching to Twitch. Um, and I think it's been great. It's kind of forced us to be a little more focused on it because there were times during the tabletop where like people would pull out their phones or someone would get a call and they'd have to take it or we'll just choose to take it. So yeah, I think it's done a lot for us. I think it's— slowly over time nudged us into a more professional group as well. Because we went digital. There's always, when you have five people at the table, there's always an issue of crosstalk of people, of two conversations going on at once. And me with my ADD, I'm like, ah, no, I hate this. And once we went digital, it was, it wasn't like a, oh, Josh just gets annoyed. It's like, oh, we can't do that. Cause then no one can hear what's going on.

Pat

Cause then we have no idea what's happening. So at this point, consistently on Twitch, what is the direction that you envision this heading in? What is the future of The Junk Drawer look like?

Josh

So I've always said that I just want to make cool stuff with my friends and that's, that's still kind of the same. And you know, we had, we had that meeting last night to kind of set expectations with everyone, like what we expect from them, what they expect from us and where we want to go. And I think, I don't know, I don't know the word for it. I don't know. A launching pad and experimentation zone. I want to make $5000 a year, so that the five of us and our significant others can go on a vacation. And that's really all I want.

Pat

That's pretty much it.

Josh

Once we hit that I'm happy and just coasting, but then, you know, my competitiveness will kick in. I'm like, but what about 10?

Pat

What about 10? And then we take two vacations.

Josh

What, what did we just make like a million dollars?

Pat

That's I mean, worst case scenario, you know, like—

Josh

Twist my arm.

Pat

So what is something that, uh, you didn't expect to come from this that has, and has, has affected your life in a, in a positive way?

Josh

I think because when we started, I didn't think it was going to be a weekly thing. Um, I didn't realize the consistency that it would help me build. And I've always had problems with rigid schedules. Like I just, it's hard for me to get into them once I do, I'm all about it, but that's not the actual answer. I'm like, like I have five thoughts going in my head and they're all just competing with, with my mouth.

Pat

Which one’s going to get out first?

Josh

Yeah. So really it's, it's the consistent friend group, you know, like we, we play every Tuesday, you know, and it's nice that even if I'm having a terrible week or if my roommates are annoying, sorry, Chris and Jordan, um, I know that on Tuesday we're going to hang out where I might have a drink and we'll just like play, and then I'll try to sleep, and I won't fall asleep until midnight because I'm too pumped.

Pat

Accurate. Yeah. Accurate depiction of what actually happens. So moving forward, D&D is going to be a constant. Is there something you would like to see brought to the channel either by yourself or by someone else that you would be excited about?

Josh

I think social stuff, stuff that's not…like it will be marketing. It will be a way to get us out there, but things that we make that don't have a purpose, you know, like, um, when Justin, Mike, and I were in high school, we did a film group. We had a small, like, little skit comedy group, four of us. And I miss those days where it was like, what do you want to do this weekend? Oh, I wrote this skit during math class because I don't like math. Okay.

Pat

Math is dumb and I'll never need it.

Josh

Yeah. Now we play D&D.

Pat

A math game.

Josh

Um, but I miss that. I miss just having an idea and not, not overthinking like, “Oh, well, what, if, how do we make it sound good? How do we like, what shots should we do?” And just in the moment being like, “Uh, you stand there. Okay, cool.” You know? And that's kind of the way that a lot of the social content skits have gone. It's just a lot of the time, It's just one person just like I'm wearing glasses. Now I'm not.

Pat

Do you envision more podcasts? Do you envision, uh, different voices coming on the podcast? Do you envision what, what is your end goal as far as the podcasting side goes?

Josh

It's something that I am dedicating myself to take more seriously starting tomorrow. Not, not as a joke, not like, “Oh, tomorrow.”

Pat

But actually, um, actually tomorrow.

Josh

Or I guess the first, but, um, I'm going to, I'm going to do at least one per month, um, of varying lengths, even if I have to just do a, like an unload of what I'm thinking just to get the consistency out there because I do, I do want it to be a documentation of me and my friendships with everyone and just people I find interesting. Well, one thing that I want to do is take the group that we have and like reinvigorate our friendships. Not that we aren't good friends now, but when all of us met to where we are now, is just so different of people.

Pat

Yeah.

Josh

Like I met Mike and Justin when I was 13 I think. So to go from to 13 like 29 we're just, we're very different people. And, uh—

Pat

Growth happens.

Josh

Growth happens and it's, you sometimes have to take those friendships and actively update them because otherwise you just use coast. So I want to do some interviews with the team. Um, I want to find people in Colorado to do it with as well. My roommate is big into history. He loves history, especially like Eastern Europe, Russia era, Soviet-era stuff. So I want to get him to do it. Um, a little, a little Joe Rogan-ish in the sense that it's just whatever I find interesting, whatever you find interesting, I'd love to get new people on. What about you though? Like, what do you see? Cause that you've been asking all the questions, and we built this together.

Pat

Yes, I am the podcast host. I'm very excited for what the future holds. I think we have a lot of very multifaceted individuals on our team that if pointed in a direction that they're excited about, which giving them the free reign to kind of do that being a junk drawer, um, really does benefit us. But what do you, what, what's the next upgrade? So we obviously talked about some, some challenges with sound. Do you envision a more video component? Do you want to upgrade sound again? What's the, what's the next step to bring The Junk Drawer to the next level tech guy?

Josh

Yeah. Uh, sound. Sound is the big one with video also. So because D&D is our main focus, we've run everything through Roll 20 which has video, but it's mega compressed and like super tiny. So the video feed that comes through on the Twitch stream is just not, not as good as our cameras are. So what I really want to do is move everything to Discord, rebuild this, the screens that we have and use that to have better audio, have less, have more noise isolation. But that's the big one because I think the content is there. We have the story, we have decent acting chops, you know, and…

Pat

If we don't say so ourselves.

Josh

Yeah, if we don't say I'm like pretty great.

Pat

I'm basically the best at this. Even though there's no metric for being great at this, I'm the best.

Josh

I like to confirm my own bias.

Pat

So with that being said, if someone came to you tomorrow and was like, “Josh, I really want to start a podcast.” What, what pillars would you bestow upon them in hopes of achieving their podcast dreams?

Josh

As in what to focus on?

Pat

What would make them? Yeah. What to focus on if you're building a podcast?

Josh

It's going to take a good ten episodes before you feel like you're in a groove.

Pat

Yeah.

Josh

So consistency is good. Don't read the comments if you get any.

Pat

We don't.

Josh

Yeah, we don't. We get ours.

Pat

We do.

Josh

Yeah. I mean, you got to read those, but like, I guess what I mean is don't take them to heart if you get, cause there was one dude on that Jake Paul was like, or the Paul Jake, who said something like, you guys suck. I hate this. I'm like, all right. I don't like you either. You're not my dad.

Pat

I don't like him either.

Josh

But yeah, so I think that's it. It's to try to be consistent. And one thing that I've been trying to do with other aspects of my life is to build that routine and just start super, super low. So I had kind of taken a break from working out consistently just because life got in the way. So I just started with like, okay, I have to do five pushups a day, just enough that it feels like it's too easy, but the hard part that you're actually working out is the consistency.

Pat

Right.

Josh

And I think that's where a lot of people fall when it comes to any sort of content creation or anything that they want to do. Um, so start really small. I had the idea to do like five minute podcasts at one point just to keep it going. Yeah. That didn't happen.

Pat

Consistency.

Josh

Yeah. Consistency. I am the poster child.

Pat

So I guess the last thing I want to ask is where can people find you if they're looking to get some more Junk Drawer show in their life and what can they expect to find coming up from you? Hmm.

Josh

Well, I think you mean us. Uh, so we, if you go to The Junk Drawer show.com we have a link tree that'll link you to all of our stuff, our YouTube, our Twitch, um, Discord, which I'm working on. Um, what else do we have? Instagram, Twitter, Instagram, Twitter, Tick Tock in the work is going to be soon.

Pat

I would also ask what this is—this'll be interesting as someone who has been playing D&D for a long time. What surprises you about that game that you, maybe had a bias about before or was something that you maybe learned about yourself through the game? What did it bring to you that maybe a lot of people would have a stigma or not expect it to do, being that it's got such a negative, I guess a negative connotation in culture.

Josh

Yeah. Um, I think what surprised me was the real emotions that came from it, and the almost cathartic nature of taking a character, and playing it for a long time because there is that level of removal. You know, I had seen tons of times when I was a kid of like, um, role play therapy just, you know, on Reddit or Stumble Upon when that was still the thing.

Pat

Stumble Upon.

Josh

Yeah, I miss those days. And I'm like, okay, but that doesn't seem real. But then my first character, Absity, was just like, it was me. I didn't even try to make it me. It just became me over time. And even the character now that I'm doing is still an iteration of things that I'm, it's almost like a snapshot of who you are at that time combined with who you want to be and who you don't want to be, you know, which I guess is a long way to say a snapshot of who you are at the time. Um, but I think that's the biggest thing is, is the real emotions from it. Like I, I felt an immense sense of loss at the end of our first campaign, you know? But yeah, I think it's, it's how real imagination can be. So let your kids be imaginative.

Pat

Yeah. Let them do stuff. Play D&D. Well with that, sir, thank you so much for coming on sound connections and talking to us a little bit about The Junk Drawer show, uh, The Junk Drawer show.com.

Josh

The Junk Drawer Show.com

Pat

Iis where we can find us. If you would like to see more of us. Thank you guys. And we will see you next time.

Josh

So long. Yeah.