Bryan, who is probably at least if not more widely known for his music as for his NPR radio show joined us on the podcast this week. He will be one of the featured performers at this weekend’s Good Beer Festival at Pemberton Park in Salisbury which is one of the best things to happen to the region since the Pangea blessed us with an ocean view.
I would never have the courage to suggest that the region couldn’t use one more guy with a guitar singing “Come Monday” but for variety it’s nice to have access to someone who recognizes that there are other songs to be written.
But for all the cliches about performing on the road, it was kind of interesting to hear Bryan talk about the difficulties he has going out with his own personal Mrs. Russo (I have one as well, but she’s a different person) because it is kind of his job to go to cool places and provide the entertainment.
I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic if my Mrs. Russo suggested date night at the Worcester County Commissioners meeting so it was easy to dig where he came from.
The best part about interviewing artists is that, no matter the medium, they pretty much confirm what we like to thing about art: it is worth doing for it’s own sake.
As much as we spoke about local artists — and to be fair we do spend an amount of time on them — we also got a brief glimpse into the exceptionally empathetic side of co-host Todd DeHart of www.gcfl.wpengine.com.
Brian Carl (B.C.) — brewmaster at Burley Oak — has a habit of remaining shirtless much of the time, which was news to Bryan Russo. when he came out wearing shorts and long rubber cleaning gloves it served primarily to freak Bryan the heck out. To be fair and honest, the key to good beer is constant cleaning so it was more than likely that B.C. was out back scrubbing something or other.
The rubber gloves veered the conversation toward the television show “Breaking Bad” which is about a chemistry teacher who makes methamphetamine in his spare time. It is a truly depressing show but, according to the empathetic Mr. DeHart, not as depressing as the “I Love Lucy Show.”
Picture a very, very young Todd watching all of the terrible things that befell that redheaded comedienne. No matter how hard she tried to get things right they went horribly wrong and, to a child who’d yet to learn the subtleties of slapstick “I Love Lucy” was indeed as heartbreaking and horrifying a statement about the human condition as is “Breaking Bad”.