The Mike Downey Podcast Series

This has been a long time in the making. Besides the fact that I started recording myself on 4 track in 1995 and it's now 2007 (holy crap!), I've thought quite a lot over the past few years as to how or if I'd make any sort of attempt at releasing any portion of my large backlog of unreleased songs. What held me back from starting this project years ago was that since I've always been such a small blip on the radar, I didn't want to go through all of the trouble of putting together a rarities album and then come to find out that nobody really cared except me in the first place. And like most musicians, the most recently recorded songs were the ones that got the attention, not something recorded 3 or 5 or 10 years ago.

I am definitely still excited about recording new material and releasing it. I'm more excited about that than ever actually. But I've also come to a point where I can comfortably look back at what I've done and have no reservations about it. All of that led me to right here. And here is a pretty nice place.

When I was in Chicago last September I dug through boxes of my stuff in my parents' basement and found about 10 or so CDs of mix downs I'd done (and a huge load of cassette tapes, but I left them for my next visit home). Any of you who know me or have followed along with my blog realize that I like to document stuff. So it was no surpise that I had these CDs. What was a surpise was that I actually enjoyed listening to them. Sure, not ALL of the songs are worth your time to listen to, but there are moments. And now I'd like to start sharing some of these moments with anyone who's interested.

Like I mentioned before, releasing this stuff "for real" on CD would probably be more problems than rewards. I don't want anyone to have to pay for these songs. I also didn't want to make mp3 albums because then I'd have to add it to my discography or something. The idea of putting it out as podcasts seemed perfect for me. I wouldn't have to really make a big deal about it and people could subscribe to the podcast and receive easily digestible chunks of it at a fair tempo. If you like it, burn it to a disc or let it live in your iTunes. If it's not your thing, no big deal. Now I don't want to shove complete pieces of junk into your ears just for the sake of releasing old stuff. Trust me, I'm going to be instilling some quality control into this project. I like to think I know where to draw the line. We shall see.

The Podcast Series will start out with a couple episodes dedicated to unreleased songs of mine, new and old. I also want to give some really limited releases and out of print stuff some new life as well so I'll be putting those compilations together in the future. I've always wanted to do a collection of cover songs that people I know have written, so that could happen. And I may release some DJ mixes, just so every episode won't be my songs, but stuff I've been inspired by or just like to dance to.

Wow, this turned out really long. It's time to let the first episode loose and stop yakkin'. Hope you enjoy!


The Mike Downey Podcast Series page