Get Offset Episode 133: Game of Tones and The Pedal Movie

Episode Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Emily: It works this time.

[00:00:06] He’s never impressed.

[00:00:13] Andrew: Welcome to the get offset podcast. My

[00:00:15] Emily: name is Andrew and my name is Emily. And we’re here today with two friends who you might remember from being on the podcast back in January. It’s Dan and Michael, the producers directors, I assume of the pedal movie. Woo. Thanks for having us, which is now out. It is out.

[00:00:34] Dan is in a haunted haunted space. Well, I don’t know if anybody else is seeing what’s happening

[00:00:41] Dan: there on my end. Is that on anybody? Else’s what’s happening? It doesn’t go up for me. Oh, it’s like flashing green. The weird, yeah. I’m not

[00:00:51] Andrew: getting that sunlight looks nice. It’s like nice afternoon. Oh, there we go.

[00:00:57] Well, flares. Well make

[00:01:01] Dan: as far north at this time of the evening, like the sunset over a very long period of time from like four in the afternoon, but like 10:00 PM. So there’s just all kinds of strange light for refraction that happens. It’s magic. It’s a constant magic hour.

[00:01:18] Emily: Oh yeah. Oh, we we’re, we’re pretty familiar.

[00:01:21] I mean, I don’t think we’re quite as far north, but yes, I feel you on the. It’s very light for very long. Then there’s like the, the, the disjointed children laughter

[00:01:34] Michael: very

[00:01:34] Emily: ghostly it’s haunted. So before we were recording, we were talking about spirits, but not that kind, right?

[00:01:41] Andrew: No. I was going to celebrate the, uh, this movie coming out and getting an interview.

[00:01:45] You guys for the, uh, for the release by cracking open my cherry cheese Quaker devices need that. I have. I I’ve been waiting to open it for a special moment, but I figured 9:00 AM AF the day after a really hard day of a, of moving furniture. Probably not the wisest decision. Cause I’m still a little

[00:02:03] Emily: behind.

[00:02:03] Yeah. Oh, drunk. So fast, too early. It’s too early to be that wasted.

[00:02:12] Andrew: Uh, actually I don’t know the ABV is, but I thought it was just like 5%. That’s fine

[00:02:18] Emily: for me. Yeah.

[00:02:20] Michael: It’s old school beer.

[00:02:22] Emily: I thought he was old school wine.

[00:02:25] Michael: That was, it

[00:02:26] Andrew: depends. It tastes like honey and it makes me feel nice and warm inside. So that’s what matters, right?

[00:02:34] Sure. No, but I almost cracked it open while I was watching it. And then I decided not to,

[00:02:40] Dan: and I don’t remember why, but they were too engrossed in the narrative to focus on anything else like drinking.

[00:02:48] Emily: He told me he was feeling very emotional.

[00:02:51] Andrew: I was feeling a little emotional. I, uh, I, I, I didn’t like it bawl my eyes out, but there might’ve been a couple of rollers.

[00:03:01] The storytelling was phenomenal. You guys did a great job and it hit me right in the face.

[00:03:06] Dan: Right. That’s awesome. Who would have known

[00:03:10] Michael: that a story could make someone feel something?

[00:03:15] Emily: It, it affected me for sure. Oh, wait. It affected you. Yup. Yup. Ooh. It’s not going to work. It’s that slapping? Did he put a delay on that?

[00:03:28] No.

[00:03:29] Andrew: Digital delay slowly

[00:03:31] Emily: decaying. Let’s just send cast. They’re just not quite working.

[00:03:35] Andrew: Well. How are you guys doing? Let’s let’s

[00:03:37] Emily: catch up a bit. Yeah, what’s what’s new for y’all over the past

[00:03:41] Dan: couple of months finished the film. The movie is

[00:03:45] Michael: finished. That’s

[00:03:47] Dan: the main thing. Um,

[00:03:49] Michael: yeah, that really was, uh, yeah.

[00:03:54] Emily: Nice. That’s exciting. Uh, so, uh, for the listeners, the pedal movie came out, uh, last Friday, April 30th, and, uh, it’s on iTunes, Google play and food is the U um, for, for rent or purchase.

[00:04:11] Michael: Yeah, that is right.

[00:04:14] Emily: Yes. Yes. And, um, I watched it, I was surprised to see myself in it more than once I got to introduce prince.

[00:04:24] That was pretty neat.

[00:04:26] Michael: Well, when you give such a great interview, you get to be put everywhere possible.

[00:04:34] Emily: Your interview was great. I appreciate

[00:04:37] Dan: that butter. You are hosting it. It is a thing we’ve noticed that when we talk to people who are podcasters, especially, or YouTube, like people who talk in this sort of space, like frequently, they tend to say things pretty concisely.

[00:04:52] Like, um, you know, Blake’s a good example too. Like there’s may be several people who mentioned friends, but you know, a lot of the editing process, the movie is. If say if seven people said the same thing, like who actually said it from the most articulate or clear kind of way, I guess that was a big part of the editing process.

[00:05:11] Um, so you being in it, the amount of times you are is it’s totally a credit to your ability to do that.

[00:05:18] Emily: Oh, cool. That’s great to great to hear it. No, I, I get that sometimes what I’m doing written interviews. Cause I, I tend to do a lot of those. Um, and I had to break somebody’s quote out. I’m like, okay. Who said this in a way I don’t have to like manipulate the quote at all.

[00:05:37] Like, I don’t want to have to put in like five ellipses to be like, I bought a red Dan electro guitar. Like, you’d be like, oh yeah, I saw the red dead electro and it was great or something. Yeah. Right.

[00:05:50] Andrew: Like beginning of the sentence dot, dot dot, which we have no idea what’s in there because we don’t want you to know end of the sentence.

[00:06:00] Emily: It’s usually pretty meandering when I do that, like that that’s always a problem. It takes some, it, sometimes it just takes people a while to get to a point.

[00:06:08] Michael: Yeah. And what you just, what you just described in the editorial senses, what Dan had to do for like a decade writing articles, right? Dot, dot dot.

[00:06:18] Emily: Oh, yes.

[00:06:19] That is what I, that’s what I do now. Copywriting all day, every day, for sure. It’s not bad. I like it. For sure. All right. So, um, the pedal movie came out, obviously like just to pull back the curtain a little bit. Um, we did record this well before the pedal movie came out a couple of weeks, at least, but Andrew obviously watched it.

[00:06:41] I watched it. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re going to talk about it. Yeah.

[00:06:48] Dan: Issue kind of a general, like it’s spoiler warning. Spoiler like pedals exist. They’ve continued to exist. And you know, there’s new ones that are coming out

[00:07:01] Emily: documentaries really do require a spoiler alert, kind of like, um, the, the Q Anon into the storm.

[00:07:08] I think like you can fairly do a spoiler alert on that one, but yeah, the spoiler I’m like guitar pedals were invented. Have the news. Are seeing our surgeons.

[00:07:20] Andrew: Yeah. Timing there. Even like I’ve been reading through books. I like, I’ve got books on my bookshelf behind me, behind the screen screen, I just whacked.

[00:07:28] Um, and I’ve like, I’ve read through them all. And I, I feel like I’ve got a decent understanding of the history and like still is like bits and pieces. Like. Oh, I actually didn’t know that like kind of just having that all filled out and whether it be a couple of the anecdotal stories or just putting together pieces of like, I’ve read about a couple of different fuzz pedals in two different books and didn’t realize where they lined up in the timeline.

[00:07:49] I mean,

[00:07:51] Dan: that’s fair. I think

[00:07:53] Michael: that was, that was also like a really big impetus for us doing this because it’s, you know, like, like you were just saying a lot of the individual stories. Have existed in articles. You really kind of have to want to find those, but so us putting this into sort of one big, concise, um, you know, story where it’s weaving in and out and showing kind of like the larger breadth of the influence that everybody had on each other.

[00:08:23] Builders builders, builders, artists, builders, you know, et cetera. So on and so forth. Um, I think like for us, I think that was like the big kind of light bulb let’s let’s do that, that hasn’t been really done before. And it’s a story that deserves to be told in its entirety or in some. Yeah,

[00:08:43] Emily: because I know knowing that you all feel I’m like hundreds of hours of interviews to be able to get that down into, into, you know, less than less than three hours, even, uh, you didn’t about two hours and 22 minutes.

[00:08:57] That sounds, that sounds like a task. It sounds like you probably had to make some choices that I don’t. Yeah,

[00:09:04] Dan: definitely

[00:09:05] Michael: so many choices. Yeah. I

[00:09:07] Dan: mean, we may have mentioned this the last time, but I think the real seat challenge is like, Finding stories, both in kind of the historic chapters, as well as the more contemporary ones that are like emblematic of the pattern.

[00:09:22] So like, it would be a really repetitive and kind of ultimately tedious movie, if it was like, here’s the origin story of like every Bedell company, just, you know, cause like they’re all interesting. They’re all great people and interesting pedals, but you know, they all follow a kind of a similar pattern.

[00:09:39] So it’s sort of. Deciding like, okay. Having a few people talk about how they got into it and how they learned how to solder and how they learned how to market the, you know, whatever it is, um, that, that, that microcosm kind of speaks to the whole. And by weaving together, all those kinds of disparate microcosms kind of creates the broader narrative.

[00:09:58] And I mean, I may have, again, you know, like this is something I’ve said to a few people, but like, If you go and watching this movie too, with the eye of like, I can’t believe they didn’t mention blank, my blank, favorite pedal or blank, favorite pedal builder. Like, yeah, you’re going to, like, it’s just not possible for every battle to be mentioned every federal company and that’s, and there are obviously a lot of ones that don’t get included that we would have loved to have the time and space to do, but that’s again, the sort of the sort of conceited.

[00:10:26] Structure of it is like showing the really some really exciting examples that still speak to the kind of like the broader truth, you know, the broader history.

[00:10:35] Michael: Yeah. And another interesting thing with the film, because we’re not, it’s not a voiceover and film Dan and I didn’t write the movie. Right. I mean, we did, after the interviews were created, which you’ll see in almost any documentary, but we weren’t actively writing a film.

[00:10:51] This isn’t like. Narrated by Peter clarity. Exactly. Which I love that, but we wanted this to be from the mouths of the people who were being interviewed. And so it became for us this really fun Easter egg hunt, where somebody would say something, for instance, you know, George trips, or, you know, would, would talk about, uh, prescription electronics, you know, and it would set us on a, on a path of.

[00:11:19] This is, this must be very important Jack, or it must be very important because George trips, who we considered to be one of the very first nineties boutique builders that set off a thing is talking about it. And so that occurs throughout all of the interviews, which kind of lead us to go to kind of amalgamate, uh, an aggregate who set, who mentioned a couple of these same things.

[00:11:43] Okay. This must be something that we should. Pursue. And so it kind of is a really organic way to look at like who we do include and who we don’t. And it’s not a malicious thing if we didn’t. Absolutely not. It’s more like, this is kind of who all of these folks combined with, you know, our own sort of like data on like popularity within, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:12:07] To tell the story, the human story of effects throughout it. So, uh, that’s a little bit of like behind the curtain about, you know, sort of how we choose chose certain stories and brands.

[00:12:22] Andrew: Total side note. I loved watching George just drink through his bottle of whiskey. Like add

[00:12:29] Dan: the bottles a little bit connoisseur.

[00:12:31] He, um, he like bruise, like does his own blends and stuff like that. Um, it’s a hot Nam tip for ya. Um, the other funniest one is, I don’t know if it comes up in the most, his whiskey. I don’t even remember if it comes up in the movie, but, um, is Paul Gilbert, uh, who who’s when we interviewed Paul Gilbert in his studio.

[00:12:50] In Portland is, is adorable. Little cat was like jumping around behind him the whole time and like climbing on his guitars and stuff. And, um, and that same, uh, shoot that same day. We also turned into like a river feature about Paul Gilbert’s guitar collection. And if you watch that video, it’s like, um, you can kind of tell like the continuity based on like where his cat is, like jumping around in the screen.

[00:13:14] Emily: I love that kind of thing. I feel like I saw a cat in that movie. I don’t, I don’t really remember.

[00:13:21] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. There was the Paul Gilbert cat. There’s a, there’s a cat spotting with, um, at death, by audio with Heather Bickford and Natalie Hernandez. There’s a few cats. You got to look for. But they’re there.

[00:13:34] Andrew: I think we need to start like, uh, we should, we should do like a giveaway, like the first person that gets the correct amount of cats in the movie.

[00:13:41] Get something.

[00:13:42] Emily: Yeah.

[00:13:43] Andrew: Cat spotting,

[00:13:44] Emily: ticker. Maybe I’ll give away a cat. One of my, one of my mini cat. I’m just kidding. I have won

[00:13:51] Michael: the pedal movie drinking game.

[00:13:53] Emily: No. Oh, too soon

[00:13:56] Andrew: for me. Oh my God. About giving away a cat snow. My mom took. Cat with her. So yeah, I’m down to just poppy. Now. I’m sad.

[00:14:07] Emily: Percy was a cuddle bug.

[00:14:09] Andrew: He is an absolute credible, I mean, I’d say like, she took him, she moved like 15 minutes away, so it’s not like it’s a big deal, but

[00:14:15] Emily: yeah. Yeah. And, um, what kind of drinking games could you play during the pedal movie that would potentially kill you? That would be a,

[00:14:26] Michael: yeah. The pedal movie drinking game is definitely something somebody should and probably will make and post on a message board.

[00:14:32] Let’s get ahead of that. That’d be good drink when you hear it. The word

[00:14:42] Emily: you would be dead. You’d be dead in the first.

[00:14:45] Andrew: Yeah, you’d be dead before you get to the

[00:14:47] Emily: eighties. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And then I thought the eighties almost killed me.

[00:14:52] Andrew: I mean, take a drink every time. The pedals on Josh. Stop on Josh Scott side table change.

[00:14:58] Emily: You’re watching, you’re watching EagleEye. I was just like, I just like every single shot

[00:15:04] Andrew: with him, he’s got like a different set of pedals, like, based on what decade he’s talking about

[00:15:09] Dan: interview, that was a while ago, uh, in the reverb studio in Chicago, as opposed to going to him in Casey.

[00:15:16] And he brought like, like a suitcase of some of his like rarest. And w w w it just seemed very much like an, a movie where somebody has this briefcase, like, uh, like, uh, what’s it like, um, change to their, their risks, like handcuffs, like, it was just like,

[00:15:32] Emily: yeah, exactly. Does that open up? We good. We happy, we happy when you open it up to the orange,

[00:15:40] Dan: uh, dead.

[00:15:43] Yes. That was just

[00:15:43] Michael: the Quan ish.

[00:15:47] Emily: No wonder they’re so valuable. Does he have cloned number two?

[00:15:51] Michael: I

[00:15:52] Dan: think he sold it.

[00:15:54] Andrew: Yeah. What else could we, and now I’m trying to think, what else could we put in?

[00:15:58] Emily: He didn’t. I didn’t did. Y’all get into klons in the

[00:16:03] Michael: movie. Really? Yeah. I don’t remember. And we conveniently put the clan in, in a place where you think that we miss it, but it’s because it, you know, it actually came up in the nineties, but it, it made a lot more sense for us to put it into resection.

[00:16:19] About the vintage market kind of re you know, re-explore or exploding, I guess, kind of for the first time. And so we wanted to make people go like they forgot the client. I can’t believe it. I’m going to turn this movie off, but don’t worry. We do. Can you talk about the client

[00:16:34] Emily: big, big, fake out

[00:16:37] Michael: exactly the spoilers.

[00:16:39] Emily: Oh, that wasn’t. That was a good spoiler one, actually. Yeah. Yeah, we’re doing a thing with our Patrion supporters. So this might be a dependent plug our Patrion. Um, if you’re subscribed to our Patrion at patrion.com/get offset, we are doing a, uh, kind of like a book club version of this movie where, uh, I’m using the Patrion dollars that you give us to help you rent the movie.

[00:17:08] And then we’re all gonna talk about the movie in a little, uh, audio video, video chat on our super-secret discourse. So check us out. patrion.com/get

[00:17:17] Michael: offset.

[00:17:18] Dan: That’s super cool. Yeah.

[00:17:22] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see if y’all can y’all can make it. I know that the time zones are kind of a wacky, but yeah. Should be fun.

[00:17:33] Anything else to plug Andrew? I guess, leave ratings reviews on iTunes for both this podcast and the pedal movie.

[00:17:42] Michael: Yes, please.

[00:17:43] Andrew: I will definitely be leaving a five star.

[00:17:47] Emily: For the podcast,

[00:17:49] Andrew: um, for the movie, uh, it’s out of 10 stars, right?

[00:17:53] Dan: We have to do anything to get. Do any of you use letterbox? I wonder if we have to do anything to get it onto the letterbox or if it automatically pulls from IMTP or something?

[00:18:03] Because letterbox reviews are the best. And I think we can get some cookie ones. We’ll have to say

[00:18:13] uh, movies letterboxed is, uh, I S I S I swear, they’re not paying me. It’s a really fun, like social review platform where you can like, leave reviews for movies and like, see reviewed your other friends leave, but it’s like, it’s like this send it to, most of the reviews are just like witty one-liners they’re not actually filming.

[00:18:31] Um, the most famous Leadbox is somebody left a review for the movie choker. That was just, this really happened to my friend, Steve or whatever. Um, so anyway, again, I’m not connected to letterbox in any way, but if you’re into films, I recommend it as a fun platform to play around on.

[00:18:53] Emily: Nice. I, wow. They have a very long FAQ.

[00:18:57] I’m not going to read that right now, but I’m sure the answers are there. I’ve never heard of this, but that’s kind of funny. Okay. One

[00:19:05] Andrew: line of review for the pedal movie, it affected me.

[00:19:09] Michael: There you go.

[00:19:10] Emily: Well, you’ve already called dibs on

[00:19:11] Dan: that one. There’s a joke in here, somewhere in here, somewhere about crybabies, but I can’t articulate it quite well right now.

[00:19:19] Emily: Oh yeah. Uh, did y’all watch the pedals, the musical, the GHS. Yes, that seems very timely for, cause I think I just watched pedals the musical and then I watched the pedal movie. I’m like, oh yes, the first 30 minutes of this are familiar to me.

[00:19:37] Michael: Sure. Well kind of there’s no, there’s no, there’s no. Um, breaking into song and dance though.

[00:19:43] I really would’ve liked it. If you know, Philippe Herndon or Mike Matthews would have just started breaking into song and dance in the interviews. We didn’t get that far,

[00:19:55] Emily: man. I think you could’ve gotten Felipe there. Oh, definitely. I think you could’ve, you could’ve, you could’ve done it now. He’s thinking, damn it.

[00:20:04] Why didn’t I, this is my big chance. I love him. I love the, um, the blues pedal that he did on April fools with it most in the dark. We talked about that last, uh, like right after April fools. Yeah, watching Ryan from demos in the dark, try to play bad.

[00:20:25] Michael: Yes. And fleet Philippe was in, uh, our April fools, uh, video that we did on the, uh, the great, um, Margaret Cutlass.

[00:20:36] If you don’t know her, go check that it is,

[00:20:41] Dan: it is remarkable. How famous man it’s remarkable how committed to April fools this industry is compared to it. Industries. Um, I mean, I say that not governmentally, but it is like the amount of April fools jokes related to pedals versus other hobbies and interests that I have any sort of peripheral view of seems very high.

[00:21:04] Emily: There aren’t any sourdough starter, April

[00:21:06] Dan: bullshit. That is serious business.

[00:21:11] Emily: That landed like a turd. It’s not funny. Don’t make a fucking joke about the sourdough starter got diff uh, uh, I love how many of those April fool’s jokes for the pedals. Actually existed. Like I bought this the coils from rare buzz wearables or whatever you ever hear buzz.

[00:21:34] It just, uh, it’s an anti buffer and it makes your cable run sound longer. It gives you that real long cable run sound that has the light and an inspired guitarist production.

[00:21:48] Michael: Yes. And the ch uh, the chips. Like wacky whammy. Did you see that? It’s like a four-foot long whammy bar, which is for sale.

[00:21:58] Emily: You can buy them.

[00:21:59] Actually, I can say this because I will hopefully have done it by the time the video comes out. I did buy it. And I started using it in demos. It just, it just did not acknowledge that I have this weird four foot long whammy

[00:22:10] Michael: bar. I think it’s super cool. Like it’s just, it’s an aesthetic choice at this point.

[00:22:15] It’s not even funny. It’s just cool. I think it’s

[00:22:17] Emily: cool to see Andrew Andrew thinks the same and I’m, I’m not in agreement with y’all. I’m like, I think it was the stupidest thing.

[00:22:27] Andrew: It was the last,

[00:22:29] Emily: it was April, April 6th or something.

[00:22:32] Andrew: Something like that. And I think the fight ended when Emily said that ACDC wasn’t good without the, uh, the gimmick.

[00:22:39] Emily: And I

[00:22:41] Andrew: said, I think I just gave up at that point and walked away.

[00:22:45] Emily: Are you saying that he needed more like, uh, like he needed a trick to have more stage presence? And I said, yes. And then you just stopped. It’s funny. Cause like it takes someone being so wrong and so serious to, okay.

[00:23:00] Andrew: I’m just trying to grossly misrepresent what you said to try and undermine your appearance right now.

[00:23:05] Emily: My appearance. I think I look great. What are you fucking talking about? Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Um, I can’t believe y’all, didn’t talk about the crowd there. Hotcake in your mind,

[00:23:15] Michael: me, either movie over the Crescent about cake we’ve grossly misrepresented. That, that, yeah, you should,

[00:23:24] Emily: you didn’t talk enough about New Zealand or Australia and billers.

[00:23:27] I care about

[00:23:28] Dan: no it’s New Zealand. I mean, it is, it is actually, that is like, I have like this, uh, I think I’m a slight delay guys, which is okay. But if my interjections seem off time, that is what anyway, I, uh, I’ll just talk uninterrupted for ever. Um, so, uh, I have like this list of like, people like that that are like, oh man, we should have, could have, you know, like, oh, they’re important.

[00:23:53] They came at this point that like, I’ll like wake up and like, remember, you know, and like, it’s like a, uh, a point of anxiety. Um, but that is definitely one of them because we’ve, I only found out very late in the process that he was, uh, how early he was in it. Um, so like that that’s, uh, there is, there is one key voice in the film though, and that is Ben from red beach, which, uh, comes up.

[00:24:20] So we do have at least a little bit of a Southern hemisphere trick, but only, only very rarely.

[00:24:28] Emily: Representation.

[00:24:30] Andrew: So I’m curious then like, well, let’s talk honorable mentions. Who, who else is on that list that haunts you?

[00:24:36] Dan: I think I mentioned this last time,

[00:24:37] Michael: Tom cram. Who’s awesome.

[00:24:42] Dan: Um, bomb. We were planning on shooting with the even tide crew for COVID derailed that, and we kind of had to abandon that, but even Thai would be really great because those guys have been in the business forever.

[00:24:54] And have this perspective of like studio stuff that’s sorta unique.

[00:24:58] Emily: Yeah. Then they start making like, um, didn’t they start with, with, with plugins and stuff,

[00:25:05] Michael: pedals,

[00:25:05] Dan: right. Seventies and like revolutionary. Right? I mean, the pedals is a very late thing in their evolution as a company, but that would have been a really unique perspective.

[00:25:14] I’m really pumped to talk to them. Um, and then. I mean,

[00:25:19] Michael: if you listen, there’s a few, there’s quite a few people. John Cusak was a what’s another one.

[00:25:24] Dan: Yep. Yeah. That interview was another COVID victim. Yep. Yeah. Um, and then, and then, I mean, this is probably, I mean, what,

[00:25:34] Emily: oh, that the interview was a COVID victory.

[00:25:37] Dan: Might delay maybe throwing up my time in here, but, um, The other, the other one, and this is sort of like, I guess, just sign up like cards on the table. The thing that I think is probably the biggest emission in terms of interview subject matter, which is going to be very obvious. A lot of people watch this is the vibrant, uh, boutique, uh, Japanese industry.

[00:25:59] Like we didn’t talk to anybody. Who’s making pedals in Japan because we didn’t go to Japan. Weren’t able to court like a situation to make that happen. So that’s, that is, I would say that’s the biggest. Wish we could have arranged that

[00:26:12] Emily: at the same time. Yeah. Cause it was like from you it’s like a 12 hour difference, isn’t it?

[00:26:16] It’s bananas. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:19] Michael: And I mean, to be fair, we did try very hard to it’s like we, you know, you don’t need to interview every single person you can talk about and mentioned people and stories and companies without interviewing them. Right. I mean, every. Every documentary in the history of time has done the same.

[00:26:37] You can make a movie about the Beatles without integrating the Beatles for the film. Right. Uh, so thankfully we were able to talk about a lot of the key, um, brands and companies that you think you’ll see or that you think you’d want to see. But yeah, it’s like, you know, it’s kind of a mixture of like accessibility and, and just having to choose.

[00:27:03] The right, the amount of folks that kind of check various pockets right. Within, within the, the industry. So like, you know, choosing a few folks who are, who were able to speak about the digital landscape, whether it’s source audio, you know, stri men, et cetera, a few folks who are really, uh, can speak to the major internet.

[00:27:26] Boom. You know, you’re as Quakers and you’re Josh Scott’s and your WAM players, and then your really small builders that are one or two people like Daredevil, like et cetera. So, you know, because we can’t talk to 2000 pedal builders and stick them into a two and a half hour movie and, you know, making a 14 hours.

[00:27:48] You know, six, seven part series might be a little overkill. Um, we tried really hard to basically say like, okay, who can we find to represent various pockets of this industry? Um, and then hopefully in the bureau and all of that, like we did enough folks across where it, where it still tells like the overall story, you know what I mean?

[00:28:08] Dan: Right.

[00:28:10] Andrew: I think you guys did a phenomenal job of telling the whole story. I think anyone who says, oh my God, I can’t believe you didn’t do the yada yada, they deserve a failed sourdough starter. So

[00:28:22] Emily: that’s, those are the ones I have. I have some fail. Yeah. I mean, for me, I remember on the last

[00:28:28] Dan: again. I’m sorry guys.

[00:28:29] My, uh, my relay here is throwing off my timing, but, um, um, I was gonna say the other part of balancing that is like, like Michael was saying, like, there was definitely a temptation to me. You know, game of tones, like, you know, seasoned like a 11 hour, you know, we’re going to cover the full breadth of it, but like there’s this balance.

[00:28:49] It also is. We’re really deliberately trying to make something that was accessible to people who are already invested in this industry. And this. Hobby cause like, there are a lot of people who are really invested in pedals, like us, who would love to see the insides of every, you know, maker and every pedal and get really into the wires and into the weeds of Alfred’s story.

[00:29:10] But at the same time, we were trying to make a movie that is also going to be interesting to people who are like maybe guitarists or in the music classic rock, you know, whatever it is. Prints, you know, like, but they don’t necessarily like care about like, you know, the minutiae so much. So it’s, that, that is a very hard, not hard, I guess, intriguing and like, and like captivating challenge was trying to balance those two impulses of like the, this is really for the heads versus like, this is for everyone, you know, it’s a story.

[00:29:45] It’s not a encyclopedia.

[00:29:47] Emily: Yeah. I like that. I like, I like, it’s a story, not an encyclopedia. I think that’s going to be a mantra, I think, uh, for, cause you know, there, there, there could always be more. And a lot of times I watched these documentaries series and uh, they lose me. They lose me because it’s yeah.

[00:30:09] A little bit too long. They be trying to force an episode around a theme that didn’t deserve a whole like hour or like couldn’t fill it, but they’re like, oh, we have that time. I like that. You all leave people wanting more and you’re doing these kinds of, um, shorts and extras. I know you did one for in women’s history month that went about as one would expect.

[00:30:29] Uh, once it goes, uh, something about women in gear to go on, on YouTube. Yeah. I think I messaged. Yeah,

[00:30:38] Michael: well, the good thing I’m happy. I’m happy. We didn’t put out the, um, thankfully, you know, maybe folks now that they’re filling this out have seen the part of the film about forums and now. Maybe we should have waited until after it now.

[00:30:56] No, there’s no way

[00:30:57] Emily: TGP is going to, that’s going to go over really well on

[00:31:00] Michael: TGP, but, uh, no, I think that, that, um, that’s that story that we just put out, uh, the extras where the women builders is, uh, was a really like important thing to, to put out. ASAP and PR and sort of like pull it out of the film, expand on it a little bit.

[00:31:20] Um, because it is, you know, so much of this film was about like looking into the cultural, uh, aspects of the industry, whether they’re business aspects or whether they’re more like personality aspects or artists creating trends, you know, like the culture outside of the circuits. Right. And obviously like inclusions, uh, a huge thing that.

[00:31:43] Is taking the industry into different, um, all kinds of different levels and kind of, you know, if there’s like a sea change occurring in the last couple of years across the music industry, music instruments industry. So why wouldn’t we talk about it? It’s it’s super important. So the naysayers can, will continue to naysay and we don’t care.

[00:32:05] Emily: Yeah. Nor should you

[00:32:08] Andrew: think was going to say something and then the delay kicked in. But I want

[00:32:12] Dan: to hear a guy Michael covered it pretty well, but I was going to just say thanks to Emily for that message and for, and for going to bat, because I have this sickness where I feel like I need to like correct people on the internet.

[00:32:23] And I was thinking to myself, Has anybody ever been convinced of anything on the internet? Like, has anybody ever read a comment or a tweet reply or whatever it is, and like had their mind effectively changed, but like, I think if there’s like a tweet, like a Twitter thread or a Reddit that a river or something, not, not, not major, I didn’t look at it that way.

[00:32:44] I, my opinion, like that should be like in the specimen or something like that. It shouldn’t be like that moment. Um, but what bothers me so much about that dialogue and just like, we don’t need to harp on this. I dunno, like for what it’s worth, just reading some of the comments in different venues in response to that video is not even the people who are like outwardly misogynistic and like in like, you know, terrible one, like hateful, like that’s obviously hugely problematic, but it’s the people who have this sort of willful ignorance of like, why is this even a problem?

[00:33:14] I can’t believe people make such a big deal out of gender or, or like the, like people who like act offended because you’re raising the issue. And it’s like, dude, like, well person, but dude, you know, like, um, yeah. It’s like the fact that you don’t think there’s an issue. It’s never been an issue for you because you’ve never been in a position where your identity has like marginalized, you and you don’t have any empathy.

[00:33:38] And it’s like, you, you spent your sort of person who spends hours, like commenting on YouTube demos or Reddit threads or whatever, or whatever it. And that’s like an expression of culture around this hobby. This topic is social and expression OSHA. And expression of culture on this hobby. If you just want to go play pedals in a total backroom, like cool.

[00:33:59] But like the hypocrisy of like, I don’t want these topics to be raised in this hobby is like, it’s just so hypocritical and it really, it really grinds my gear.

[00:34:10] Emily: Yeah. You know, I think we, I think that we spent a long time as a culture, trying to pretend that these differences don’t exist and we’ve, that was how I think.

[00:34:19] Expected us to approach it and how we were kind of taught to approach it. Not just in terms of like gender stuff, but with race issues like to teach, oh, like, oh, we’ll just act like it doesn’t exist. Act like there’s not a difference when there is, and you need to, I, I feel like we tried that for a while.

[00:34:35] It didn’t work. So maybe now we need to try a different strategy of like making the world a more equitable place. And maybe the way you do that is to celebrate the differences, point out the differences and teach more awareness. Because I think that when you don’t talk about things like that with children or with anybody, they don’t have that awareness and you can’t really fully blame them for not having that.

[00:35:01] Um, at the time, but like, you gotta learn, you gotta like, it’s like you go into do your jury duty. And the first thing they do is they show you a video about implicit biases. And, um, that’s just like, that’s just obviously just one example, but that was kind of how I felt, uh, what kind of ground, my gears a little bit with, with those comments where the people who.

[00:35:25] Made judgments about the film as a whole, from watching, uh, an eight minute clip. That’s what really pissed me off. And that’s what I like everything else I expected, but to have like a couple people go in and say, oh, this is just an extra, I’m like, shut up. You haven’t seen the movie. Yeah.

[00:35:43] Dan: That’s just classic people or something that you did

[00:35:46] Michael: appreciate you, uh, comment.

[00:35:48] And yeah, if you’re looking for, if you’re.

[00:35:54] Emily: Good. So many people. I was

[00:35:58] Andrew: just, I was just going to mention the, uh, the quote for when I say it was Jamie Stillman in the movie said it was talking about the guy who’s chained to their keyboard in their basements

[00:36:07] Dan: and ranting about things

[00:36:10] Andrew: on the internet. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, and I thought that was, I thought that was.

[00:36:20] Fair kind of harsh, but fair, uh, thing to pull out of the movie. It’s interesting just to encapsulate

[00:36:28] Michael: that, right? If you, I mean, if you’re talking about, you know, 150 hours of interviews, cutting room floor type of stuff, hunch so much time spent, uh, it may surprise people that have a lot, I would say. A very large majority of folks that we interviewed had a lot to say about that.

[00:36:53] Internet people good and bad. But I would say that we could have probably done, you know, a three-part series just on the, the, the idiosyncrasies and the rabbit hole that is like internet when it comes to, um, the pedal landscape and. I think, I, I think, uh, it’s like some of the most fascinating stuff to me, it got extremely tangential, like to, to spend more time on it than I think we gave, you know, we gave it as much time as we could, without it suddenly going into a very different film, but that was something that was really interesting for us.

[00:37:34] And we, we, we didn’t plan on spending a lot of time on it while interviewing people, but everybody had a lot to say about forums. YouTube people, internet people. So it’s obviously something that like is on people’s minds and, you know, there’s kind of a community around just the sort of negative aspects of what that’s created.

[00:38:01] So, yeah,

[00:38:02] yeah.

[00:38:03] Emily: Yeah. There are a lot of negative aspects about the internet. There’s a lot of beautiful stuff

[00:38:06] Michael: too, right. I would just say if you’re somebody who likes to kind of be trolling. Everyone is listening. All the people that you’re trying to say, negative stuff against, they’re all listening to you.

[00:38:19] So, uh, I guess that shouldn’t make you feel very good, but it, it, you know, I don’t know, I’m not one of those people, so yeah,

[00:38:30] Emily: there’s, there’s one that I’ve, I’ve kind of pulled out every once in a while for, for trolls. And, uh, it’s, it’s basically like, who, who do you think you’re talking to? Is kind of a big one and it, my band has experienced that too.

[00:38:44] We, we blocked a person who, uh, was commenting on a picture or a singer posted and they’re like, oh, we just liked Jenna so much better. When, when she doesn’t wear a lot of makeup and when, when her hair isn’t some bright color and she’s like, who do you think you’re talking to? Like, well, do you like mean to be insulting me?

[00:39:06] Why don’t you assume that I’m running my band’s account? It’s is that kind of thing? Right.

[00:39:12] Michael: And I guess I shouldn’t say to like the, um, as a sort of, you know, add on to, they are listening. Like if you’re one of those people and you’re commenting, they’re listening. But they’re not, they don’t care that you’re just making them mad that they’re not going to change something because you’re demanding that, you know, this is, yeah.

[00:39:35] I think, you know, I think, you know, we’re talking about, but yeah. It’s one of those

[00:39:39] Emily: things, basically like they hear you and they don’t care. You’re like, um, it’s like mosquito in your ear kind of more than anything else. Like I’ve, I’ve said I’ve also another response I’ve had is people will say, oh, you do this in your demo.

[00:39:54] You should do this. Instead of like, well, maybe you should start a demo channel. Cause you obviously have a very, very clear idea of what you want in a demo channel. Like you have a great vision, go for it and leave me alone. That’s where I live with it.

[00:40:08] Andrew: So it takes us kind of towards the end of the movie where we start transitioning into this is what the last decade has been and how much it seems like from every decade since 19, really just throughout the entire movie, every decade changes.

[00:40:21] So drastically, like 10 years is just worlds apart from. And so, you know, this movie is filmed on the back half of this decade. And, uh, now we’re looking at the beginning of the decade, you guys have spent an absurd amount of hours kind of just digging into the last 50, 60, 70 years of this history. And I’m curious with all of that context, kind of towards the end of the movie somewhere I forget who said it was, um, someone said, can it be like, is it going to be like this forever?

[00:40:53] And the obvious answer to that is no, but w but what’s next. I mean, given the trajectory and how much you guys have sunk your teeth into this, I imagine you have a good

[00:41:01] Dan: day. I hope you’re prepared to be slightly disappointed. Um, I, uh, It’s a really good question. And it takes it to take a slight step backwards, which you’re, you’re scratching up against like, uh, something that’s like endlessly fascinating me as like a former history major.

[00:41:17] And in somebody who thinks about this stuff a lot is like the further you get away from the history, like the easier it is to like, like put like start and stops and like periodization. Um, it’s really hard to do that when you’re actually living through it. Like the power of retrospect to clarify sometimes in good ways.

[00:41:33] And sometimes in bad ways, like there were digital pedals that existed in the seventies and lots of digital pedals that existed in the nineties. It was really easy for us to say like, okay, the eighties was like the digital cause like decades or like a convenient, you know, bookmark, um, to actually answer your question though, you know, we kind of, this kind of comes up at the end of the year.

[00:41:51] Um, spoilers now, uh, if somebody is listening to this podcast backwards, they’re going to get great spoiler warnings. Uh, so, uh, so I, I think, I think the big theme, obviously as pedals, as instruments, as opposed to pedals as effects, right? So like something like you’re a pedal player you’re buying this metal because it does something.

[00:42:12] Then you want to explore it the way that somebody might explore. And I think that kind of continuation of that impulse. Like you’re, you’re really defining your sound and your creative expression based on how you use a pedal or manipulate sound as a tool is sort of like what’s going to keep on developing and exciting and new ways as part of that.

[00:42:34] Also I think that the distance between like synthesizers and synth gear and pedal gear and guitar gear is going to continue to like collapse more. So that, I mean, really like. Different are the circuits in like your synthesizer systems and like, they surrogates in a lot of like really like new age, you know, forward-looking pedal boards.

[00:42:54] There are some differences in terms of like, you know, like the, the, like the levels of the audio and like, and like stuff like that. But it’s really like, not that much. It’s like, not that far of a leap. So I think, I think that sort of continuation of like, of like, Pedals being this sort of form of expression or like pool of expression that takes on a life of its own and kind of collapses with like synthesizers and other types of gear is sort of where everything is.

[00:43:22] I mean, this isn’t a, this is not a super like unique or novel perspective. Like it’s pretty evident, but I just think that’s like, I think that would be the chapter we would add to this. If we were going to make this movie like four or five years from now. Yeah.

[00:43:35] Michael: I think I a hundred percent agree with that and that’s kind of why we do put a.

[00:43:41] A big focus on that as like the film closes, because I think, you know, in the eighties pedals didn’t die. People thought they were going to, was sent to music popping up and we’re kind of in another. Uh, I guess you could say similar era where people, especially maybe of the older or more like classical classic reminded a mindset are, are like guitars dead.

[00:44:05] Um, it’s not, but also it’s just the way, it’s just the way that they think about. Maybe not as a, probably as, as it once was that doesn’t mean that the guitar is dead or that affects her dead. In fact, I think there’s, there’s a lot of evidence to show that like the market is rising and rising. Just people aren’t making three chord, rock and roll jams as much.

[00:44:29] They’re doing more inventive things even. Yeah. Do you think that a laptop and do you know some sort of VST software is not interesting? Somebody else does think that it is. And so people utilizing effects, uh, and taking circuits, digitizing them, taking digital stuff, analog, Geisinger it, right? There’s all kinds of things that are gonna make, um, that industry continue to carry on.

[00:44:57] Similarly to when we thought it wouldn’t 30 years ago.

[00:45:02] Emily: Nice. Nice. Um, let’s see. I think I might’ve said some questions. If we want to talk about those, um, you know, it feel free to not answer this, but, um, I th I was super impressed that you all got Fran and. Because on a very personal level, I, uh, reached out to her, um, several years ago about, um, an article I was trying to have written and it ultimately just didn’t come together.

[00:45:32] Um, but she’s told me she was retired and didn’t want to talk about that shit anymore.

[00:45:39] Michael: She is. Yeah. I think, I think we were, we were also pleasantly surprised. I mean, obviously Fran is an awesome person and. Once we went to, uh, Pennsylvania and actually met with her. It like proved everything that we thought that, that, you know, we were like, this is going to be she’s so awesome.

[00:46:00] And after meeting her, like, we were like, wow, she’s even more awesome than we thought, but getting, getting that interview. And I think Dan could probably speak to this a bit more was I, I think hopefully what we had on our side was. We’re making a film about the history of effects, pedals, and you’re extremely important to that.

[00:46:17] So if you want to be represented, please say yes to this interview.

[00:46:22] Dan: Yeah. I, I think I I’d have to, I’d have to dig up emails, but I think it was really the appeal of like, you know, we want to kind of tell the story like holistically, you know, maybe, you know, warts and all to some, some extent and you know, this isn’t like a.

[00:46:42] You know, I think, I think approaching it as, like I mentioned this in another interview we just did, but what’s what was really cool about the Fran interview. Um, one of many things is that unlike a lot of builders, Fran isn’t in the industry anymore. So there’s a certain distance that gives this sort of like, um, clarity and like, um, like thoughtfulness you’ll notice that we.

[00:47:10] Pull that interview in for a lot of the historical sections as well. And that’s just because Fran is like, so elegant, thoughtful about it. So I think it was sort of emphasizing like the historical and like, you know, that perspective that, um, you know, luckily it worked out because I mean, the groups in the, in the field, it’s like it really great part of the movie in my, yeah.

[00:47:35] Emily: Yeah. I just love listening to her. Talk about stuff. I’m sure she could have driven her own documentaries. My guess. I bet she has some stories.

[00:47:43] Michael: Yeah, I I’ve. I would really like to, uh, and I think we probably will. We’re going to be continuing to pull up some more sort of cutting room, floor extras, bonus feature type of thing, as we have been with where the women builders and, uh, that was clients thing.

[00:47:58] We have a mutual on story. There’s a bunch of stuff popping up on the river YouTube channel. I think we’re going to carry on doing that because. Uh, so many of the stories like Franz, um, uh, Morant being heard more, uh, you know, in the same format, we just could not fit them all into the film, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to see them at some point this summer.

[00:48:21] Emily: Yeah. Nice. Awesome. So I think that’s a pretty good, good place to, to wrap unless Andrew or y’all have, uh, other closing thoughts, um, subscribe to the river. YouTube. After you watched the movie,

[00:48:35] Dan: I’ll just say, uh, thank you very much for thank you very much. Thanks for having us. And, um, thank you for your participation and support through this project.

[00:48:47] Emily: Thank you so much for inviting me. It was really, uh, exciting, exciting for me. I kept looking at my husband while we were watching and I’m like, I’m going to move with fucking Kevin Shields.

[00:48:58] Michael: Yes. Yeah. And it’s forever. So that’s cool. That’s wonderful. Definitely. That’s great.

[00:49:08] Emily: I kid, my mom’s always proud of me.

[00:49:09] Uh, so, uh, does anybody else have any, anything else, uh, to, to wrap wrap with,

[00:49:17] Andrew: just want to say a thank you right back to you guys because yes, my goodness. Um, I guess so at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that I got a little misty-eyed and I think, but. Somatic element that hit me really hard on a personal.

[00:49:34] Was the entrepreneurship and the success of that in like hearing some of those success stories and kind of ending with a, and you can do it too. I think, I think it’s a thing that I really needed to hear personally at this moment in time. I think I’m not alone in that. And I think that’s going to have a really huge, positive impact in that sense.

[00:49:54] And so I wanted to say the very heartfelt thank you for making me literally last night in this chair, cry, solitary tears all by myself.

[00:50:03] Michael: That’s I mean, to me, I have to say that’s so awesome and something that I don’t think any of us. I don’t think we were trying to set out to like fool people into getting emotional or like feeling for w w we were trying to make a movie about people and like a really cool grassroots movement that turned into like this big thing, which is really cool.

[00:50:24] And so is, I think what you felt is an extension of, of why we made the film. It’s like, there is such a massive community of people who really do care. The industry. And so we made it as a love letter to you and to, to them, but also to the future, to people who don’t know the personalities behind the effects.

[00:50:44] And now hopefully they do. And they, they don’t just think, oh, it’s a  they think like, oh, like somebody made this and I know the story behind the company that did or whatever, you know what I mean? And so that’s really great to hear. I’m glad that you had that reaction. Yeah.

[00:51:01] Andrew: No, it was super compelling and yeah.

[00:51:03] Great job. Phenomenal

[00:51:04] Emily: job. Nice. Awesome. Well, um, I think that is, uh, uh, great. This has been a great way to spend a Sunday morning. Thanks to Dan and Michael, everyone listening, watching. Please watch the pedal movie it’s available now. Uh, subscribe to the reverb YouTube for that those bonus features. Um, they’re mailing lists too.

[00:51:28] I’m sure that they’ll send out emails when, when new videos drop. Absolutely. But, um, yeah. Yeah, until next time. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding. My name is Emily. My name is Andrew that’s Dan and that’s Michael goodbye. .