WYSO Music Director - Juliet Fromholt

Rodney is joined by Juliet Fromholt, Music Director at WYSO Public Radio in Dayton, about her journey in arts and music, including a musical theater audition & a brief stint in film studies, as well as the vibrant Dayton music scene and it's growing support for local artists.

Learn more about Juliet:
https://www.wyso.org/people/juliet-fromholt
https://linktr.ee/attackofthefinalgirls

Follow Juliet on Social Media: @sonicpersephone

Transcript

Rodney  0:00  
Hello everybody. My name is Rodney veal, and welcome to the Inspire By podcast. Today's guest is someone I deeply respect and admire in our community, and she's super awesome and amazing. Juliet Fromholt, is music director at Wyso, but she has so many other interests, including a podcast about film. I get to find out all these things that we we I'm on the board of a community advisory board of Wyso, and I always hear these lovely, beautiful reports about why so. But now I'm getting to get to know the person behind the scenes, and so I'm super excited about that. She's amazing, super awesome. Juliet Fromholt welcome to Rodney Veal's inspired by

Juliet Fromholt  0:36  
Well, thank you so much, Rodney. I'm so happy to be here with you that respect really does go both ways. I'm thrilled to have this conversation today.

Rodney  0:43  
I am so excited to have you on this on the show as well. And so, okay, so this is just conversation, and it's fun. Things like, I've just had a curious like, what was your story? What? What? What got you? What got you to the road to this note, I mean, music director, I mean, that's, I mean for, for, for a public radio station. Music Director, I get, I'm kind of curious. Like, what was the journey like to get to that? Like, it's like, this is your life moment. So what? What was your dream? What was your dream when you were a child? Oh, gosh, out of curiosity,

Juliet Fromholt  1:20  
well, the road itself is long and windy, and I'll try to kind of sum it up as succinctly as possible, but the dream in various iterations was always to do something within arts and music. When I was a little kid, you know, I wanted to be like Stevie Nicks when I grew up. Oh,

Rodney  1:38  
okay, all righty. Hello. Love it. Yeah.

Juliet Fromholt  1:43  
You know, fun fact, I did actually play radio station in my basement as a little kid. There are tapes somewhere in either my mom's basement or my basement. So it was in there somewhere along the way. I wanted to do musical theater at one point, and that actually kind of led me to radio in a in a roundabout way, I auditioned for a musical theater program in college, put all my eggs in one basket, took some very bad advice about my audition. Blew it. Completely blew it. You know, as a 17 year old, your life is over. You know, it's like, that's the thing that you're gonna do. That's the thing your whole life.

Rodney  2:22  
My dream is this thing. You know, my dream? No, you know, that's not a that's not the answer. You want it exactly,

Juliet Fromholt  2:30  
exactly. So I had to kind of figure out, like, what do I want to do in college, I was working in a record store the whole time. That was my first job. Worked at a record store all through high school and college. So again, the music thing always there my whole life because of my parents and many other things, like always music in some way, shape or form. Decided in college, well, maybe I'll major in film, because I like film too. Did that for a couple years, realized it wasn't a good fit for me for a variety of reasons that'll come back into my life later, though,

Rodney  3:02  
okay, duly noted,

Juliet Fromholt  3:04  
bounced around major to major while I was doing all of that. My best friend from high school, who had started at Wright State with me, gets accepted into an art school to follow her dream, but that meant she had to move away to go to art school, and like, I'm so glad that she made that choice, because she is a person I admire. She is a successful person working in the video game industry at Ubisoft, like She followed that dream, like she is just like a person I admire. So she goes off to school to do that, and as I'm cycling through majors and trying to figure out, is it film? Is it something else? I'm like, Oh, I don't have any friends on campus now that Anna's gone. What do I do about that? Like, maybe, wait a minute, yeah? Like, oh, you're supposed to, like, make friends in college.

Rodney  3:59  
Yeah, there's something about that socialization. It's a, you know, undercurrent to the educational experience.

Juliet Fromholt  4:07  
So I was walking in the student union one day, and walked by the radio station, and there was a flyer on the door that said, Hey, do you want to learn to be a DJ? And I was like, That seems kind of fun. I like music. I work at a record store, that seems like a thing I might be interested in doing. So I went into the radio station, and I was like, Well, how do you train or whatever. And that changed my entire life. Long story short, that became my passion, my career path, everything. I found my community at the college radio station. I fell in love with radio. I had a couple of really pivotal people tell me very early on, like, Hey, you're good at this. And, like, you get it and you understand it, and you should, like, keep going. You know, you should apply for staff positions at the student station. I was like, I'm brand new, and I'm not a Comm major, and I. Don't I don't know if I want to do this. So, like, why am I more qualified than anybody else? They're like, No, you're you're good at this, and you understand it. And so I did, and so I ended up running that station. Stayed in college an extra year just to run that station. Yeah, yeah, we're no same time, I started volunteering at why so, worked in commercial radio for a hot second, like long enough to know that that wasn't really the path I wanted to take, that I wanted to do, like independent or public media, and then ended up sort of rolling a volunteer gig into a full time job at why so, and I've been here on staff for 15 years. Wow,

Rodney  5:41  
wow. I love it all because you wanted to make friends. I need to make friends in college. Yeah, well, I, and that's I love that, because it's just, it just speaks to me about the fact that this podcast, I interviewed us quite a few people, and I'm looking forward to 26 episode season is that they've all said it was like, it was someone, it was a different their paths were different. It wasn't that that was it was there's not a linear pathway to where you finally end up. And I just find that it's fascinating. It's like, wow, this proves my point. I mean, you weren't. You were going for two different other things, and music, musical theater, which is, I love this TV next, by the way, but I just think that's a really interesting thing that everyone seems to have that story, this notion of like, well, I went for this, and then this happened, and this opportunity, they said, You regret at it. And it's like, well, the fact that you were trying to be the next Stevie Nicks tells me that you should have probably heard the signs of the universe, that music is your world. Music is your world. Yeah, I

Juliet Fromholt  6:45  
think that initially, I think I was very nervous about that, because I think that, in part, because I was a very, shall we say, precocious reader of biographies of musicians as a young person, I realized how hard it is to, like, have a life in music or the arts or things like that. Even as I was going into musical theater, like, I realize now that that life probably wasn't the life for me. Like, I don't know that I would have really thrived in that environment, especially when you're starting out as a young actor trying to make it, you know, in that sort of New York Broadway environment, like, I don't know that my personality was really right for that, you know, like, I loved the performing, but the like, hustle that it takes. I don't know if I do that, but what I kind of didn't understand yet, until I got into radio, was how to make a life in music and the arts, like here in Dayton, Ohio, and that it was like, possible to do it, and it was possible to do it in a way that's like, of service and makes a difference in your community. That was something I had to learn along the way.

Rodney  7:55  
I love it. I love how you talk about that in service. I mean, because it's, it's, I love, that fortitude for the hustle. I mean, because a lot of people, I mean, I did the hustle, I mean as a dancer. I mean I acknowledge in this correct for a teacher. And it's like, I I don't recommend it to everyone. I always, you know, when I taught, I would say, Are you sure you're up to the hustle. Are you sure you're up to this? Because it is a lot. I mean, it is dealing with rejection. Is dealing with not always having the opportunities when they need to arrive, and sometimes it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the ramen noodle noodle diet was just not for me, but so I'm glad you talk about that. And so I'm just kind of curious about, like, you know, like when you the volunteer gig at why? So what was that like? I mean to and then that transition into the thing, like, now you're like music, because I love and I love your music choices. We're gonna talk about that too, yeah. Well, thank

Juliet Fromholt  8:57  
you. Even that was a little roundabout. So I got invited by a friend of mine, a former college radio colleague, Christopher olvis, was volunteering here at why so out of college, it was a period in the station's history where they were really trying to make a concerted effort to bring volunteers back to the airwaves. We had had a period right as I was in college, where the station lost a lot of volunteers. A lot of volunteers were pulled off the airwaves kind of unceremoniously, and the community was upset, and I'm actually working on some documentary work about that right now. Yeah, but this was prior to Nina Ellis getting here, and the prior general manager was really trying to welcome and bring volunteers back on the airwaves as music host. So my friend Christopher was already doing it. My colleague Jerry Kenny was hosting algorithms at the time, and had just gotten hired to be the Morning Edition host. And so he was starting to think about, you know, late Sunday. Night radio show, early Monday morning news show, like, right, right, maybe not the best equation. So he was looking for co host for algorithms. Now, I grew up listening to algorithms every Sunday night in my house, my parents and I listened to algorithms. So Jerry and I joke that like I'm his radio daughter, because I've listened to my entire life he needed a co host. Christopher encouraged me. He said, Hey, come talk to our program director and our general manager. I think he would fit in really well here. So I started co hosting with Jerry. Well, then Christopher decided he needed a co host because he was thinking about going back to school, and he was starting to like get his portfolio ready. So he needed a co host for Wednesday nights too. So I was co hosting both. And then right as I was getting ready to get hot, I didn't know I was getting ready to get hired, Christopher said, Okay, I'm going back to school. Wednesday nights are yours now. So I was planning on the first show of 2009 that was going to be the transformation from what was then called evening excursions to be my show kaleidoscope. What I didn't know is that simultaneous to that, the publisher I was working for would be tanking because of the recession, and would lay us all off, like, the day before New Year's Eve, whoa. And so I was around yso all the time during college, like volunteering, and I would come in during the day. I would, you know, train. I was having lots of conversations with the GM at the time, just about, like, how do we bring more students in? So I get laid off. I call over there. This is Nina. Had been hired, but she hadn't started yet. I call over to the folks I knew over here at the time, and I said, Hey, I'm just going to be job hunting, and I know you've got a couple of events coming up and a membership drive if you need somebody to help stuff envelopes. Like I should keep myself busy while I'm job hunting, I'm happy to come over anytime. And they said, Well, we have a part time reporter position open, and our operations director needs a fill in. And you know, the internet's like a thing now, and we need somebody to help us with our website. And you know how to do that, right? And I was like, yes, so is that the equivalent of a full time job? And they were like, yeah, we'll make it work. We'll come together. So I ended up starting working here at the very beginning of 2009 about a month before Nina started. Nina got here. The timing was so fortuitous, because I couldn't ask for a better mentor as I was learning, like the journalism end of things, I was still hosting my music shows, but really my work was not in music like I had the music shows, but I was working more on the digital end and the journalism end. For many, many years, I didn't music director until 2021

Rodney  12:58  
wow. Yeah. Okay, that is, that is, that is wild, yeah, well, I what's what I love about it. I mean, we're on this podcast, and my winding path from dance to you're now hosting a podcast on a TV show and working for public PBS. So it was, I totally, I, I can so understand that circuitous journey. I was, like, we're finding and, and you're absolutely right about a mentor and Nina and this, so you are a reporter, so you were just covering the you were covering the beat. I mean, basically, I mean, it's, you know, yeah, I

Juliet Fromholt  13:40  
started, yeah. I started out reporting in Springfield. We had a grant for Clark County reporter, so I did a lot of reporting. Then this was right during the housing crisis. Okay, so we were doing a lot of work, sort of focusing on the effects of the housing crisis, the mortgage crisis, on local people. You know, both Springfield and Dayton were hit very hard. Those are really hard stories to tell as a young reporter. You know, I was really learning my craft as I was telling those stories. But again, like amazing mentorship like Nina Eileen LeBlanc, who's a former why so news director, she worked with us on one of our mortgage crisis series, and just like, taught me so many valuable lessons about how to be a journalist and how to use sound to tell a story, and you know, how to do it, honoring people's stories and not exploiting them, things like that, you know, and my amazing colleagues over the years, like Lewis Wallace, I learned so much from him, and you know, still consider him a colleague and a friend. So it, I think why so is very special that you had the opportunity, and still have the opportunity to come in with some skills, but really learn under people, as you do that's been kind of a part of this station in one way or another throughout our entire history, and I'm very honored that I've had the opportunity to do that in a variety of roles. Yeah.

Rodney  15:01  
Yeah, I Yeah, no. I mean, you're absolutely right. It's like, mentorship is really important. I mean, I just feel like, absolutely especially in this field this, this is not a I lean heavily into some folks who are in television to ask their advice. Because I was like, I'm not used to this. This is unusual. This very unusual place to be. And so I totally get it. I totally, totally get that. And so I love the fact that this you're reporting, you're doing that. But it was it always a love of music. I mean, it was it just, or it was just like, hey, Julia, we know you love music. Make you the music director, or was it just always mean you referenced Stevie Nicks. So therefore I already know like, Oh, this is about to get deep

Juliet Fromholt  15:49  
musical. I mean, so, like, music has always, as I said, been a part of my existence. I think the way that I grew up with music was maybe different than a lot of my peers in school. So my mom is from New Orleans, and so a lot of that musical influence was like in my household all the time, like, you know, the meters, classic New Orleans funk, you know, I grew up with all that. Both my mom and dad are big rock and roll fans, and they also, and this is like, so special. I'm so lucky. My mom is still with us. My dad has passed, but they are both people who never stopped learning and discovering music as they aged. So like I would be in school and I would have, you know, friends in middle school grumbling like, my parents took away this CD from me, or they won't let me listen to this, or they don't like my music. And I would be like, Oh man, yeah, my dad took my back CD, and they're like, oh, he won't let you have it. I'm like, No, he likes it. He won't give it back to me.

Rodney  17:01  
It's like, what? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of shock, shock in the classroom, like, your dad sent it back. I mean, so what would they just so they're they just sound really special. I love how you describe it. Like they just love music. I mean, so it was like, every day, like, there's music in the house. I mean, oh yeah.

Juliet Fromholt  17:21  
And I grew up with my parents going to concerts regularly. So like, again, it wasn't a thing of like, oh, concerts are a thing teenagers do with their friends when they want to get rowdy. It was like, No, you go see live music. And I think part of that is, you know, my mom grew up in New Orleans, where live music is so a part of the culture. My dad lived down there for many years as a young person, like, that's what you do. You go experience live music. So my parents would take me to concerts over the years. You know, as I got older, like, I remember it being a big deal when I was, like, 12, coming back to school, and my dad had taken me to the first edge fest, which became X fest later, and that was in 96 so it was, like, very alternative, like, Guided by Voices played and veroca Salt played all these people and like kids at school, like even the teachers were all kind of like, what I don't like your dad was Like, Oh yeah, it was fun. Like, we went together. We had a blast, you know. So I think, like having that love and that sort of practice that, like, what you do is you listen to music, instilled in me from a young age, it's just always been a part of my life. Like, yeah, you might watch TV, but you might just as easily put on a record, or, you know, put on a CD, put on an album, listen to your favorite music. Yeah, it's just been a part of my life the whole time. So even as I was here at why so doing other things, like developing your whole digital strategy, all of

Rodney  18:55  
that, and reporting and everything else, you were still in that music scene. Oh,

Juliet Fromholt  18:58  
yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I was going to shows very active in the local music community, hosting my two music shows, you know, hosting algorithms, hosting kaleidoscope, you know, having live music every week on that show. So it was always, even when it wasn't like, the primary function of my job, it was still like, always a part of my job, but

Rodney  19:20  
it was also just a part of you, yeah, which makes it, I mean, I think it goes hand in hand. It makes it easier, easier. It really does. You know, there's always work. I mean, there's work and there's things that you'd have to do, but ultimately, the day, if you enjoy it, it just makes it just you're already, like, I'm already into the music, so great. Like, I'm here, and then look where the time went. Because yeah, as opposed to counting the clock, yeah, yeah,

Juliet Fromholt  19:46  
I do always caution, like younger people that I'm mentoring like to be cautious of that, that whole thing, of like, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And I'm like, actually, if you love what you do, you will work twice as hard. Hard, and you will have to force yourself to take breaks because you love it so much. Like, oh,

Rodney  20:05  
you can't forget to eat. Like, I probably should go to lunch now, yeah, that's a common occurrence these days. And so that you absolutely right. I think there's, there's a misnomer that, oh, you follow your passion. No, no, you're going to be working. You're going to be working on a documentary at night. It's okay, yes, what you do? So, yeah, no, no, no. I love, I love that. I love the fact that your dad took you to to edge, edge. I mean, fruit, assault, yeah, yeah. There you go,

Juliet Fromholt  20:35  
yeah. My, my mom and I still go to concerts sometimes. I mean, like the last, the last concert I went to before lockdown in 2020 my mom and I went to see the Dayton Philharmonic and Wycliffe. Oh, cool, yeah. So, like we, we go do stuff. You know, I think my mom is at the Levitt more than I'm able to be.

Rodney  21:00  
I'm on the board. She's probably there more than I am. I'm like, I try really hard, and Lisa's gonna listen to go, oh dear Roddy, it is. It's just this opportunities for just including music in your life. Is this really special? So we're gonna take a break, and then we're gonna, I'm gonna keep diving into the music, because it's like, ah, things to ask. So stay tuned. 

all righty, and we are back, Juliet, I have a question, because you, because you are, you're, you're into the music scene locally. I mean, what's it? I mean, describe it. And this is, I'm finding out that our podcast kind of goes out beyond Dayton, Ohio, I kind of shocked by that a little bit. But I think people don't really understand how special Dayton is in regards to its music scene. Talk about that because, I mean, it is. It blows my mind. Literally, it's today. It even BLOWS MY Yeah,

Juliet Fromholt  22:01  
yeah. For a city our size, we are so fortunate, and this scene is so special. So when you look at the Dayton music scene, you have to look at our roots a little bit. So Dayton, Ohio, is the confluence of funk music. You know, which funk music stems from the black diaspora. Folks were coming up here to work in places like GM. They were earning a living. They were buying their kids instruments. Those kids were making amazing music and revolutionizing a genre that would go on to revolutionize other genres like there is no Hip Hop without Dayton, Ohio funk, to be clear,

Rodney  22:42  
drop that mic. Drop that mic, because that's so true. Oh, my God, oh yes.

Juliet Fromholt  22:48  
And then we have the Appalachian influence. So same thing. Folks are migrating to our area from Appalachia to work in the factories. They are bringing along stringed instruments, traditional instruments, the music that their grandmothers and grandfathers are playing out on the porch, guitars, mandolins, banjos. They're bringing that here. Those kids are taking that, and sometimes they're playing that traditional music, and sometimes they're mashing it up with rock and roll and creating something completely different. So we've got all of this happening, big mixing pot of music. Flash forward. We've got seminal rock bands. But in this moment in Dayton music, it is so exciting to me, because we have amazing rock and roll. We have an amazing hip hop. I would argue that this is a new golden era for Dayton hip hop right now, like there is something magical happening in and it is so exciting to witness, like it is just a moment for Dayton hip hop. Like, if you're not paying attention to Dayton hip hop, pay attention, because this, this moment is going to go down like when we look back, you know, 20 years later on, this moment in the scene, we're going to say this was a golden era for Dayton hip hop. We've got rock and roll of all stripes. We have traditional players. We have jazz musicians. We have our immigrant community bringing their indigenous sounds in, mixing it all up with what we've got here. It is so cool. The other cool thing that I think has happened in this music community is, because we are small, we've had to learn to work together, and we've had to get used to like really kind of diverse bills. So in other cities, you wouldn't see a hip hop act and a rock act and maybe a bluegrass leaning act on the same bill. You're going to see that in Dayton, Ohio, and the audiences are receptive to that, because we only have so many places to play. So people have to mix it up. People have to get used to different types of music together. People are used to mixing audiences here, and most of our musicians have day jobs. Yes, you know they have, they have perspective. They have to balance out music, day, job, family, which I think, like, Hey, if you can make it as a professional musician, like, good on you. That's That's amazing. But I think that in this community, what has happened is the fact that folks have to balance out their job, their family, other things, and their music means that there is an intrinsic value placed on that music. The players are carving out time in their schedule, money to pay for their instruments, gas to get to the gigs, all of those things to make music because they love it that much. The audiences know that because they're in the same boat. They're all working jobs too. They're carving out time to see that music. There's like a mutual appreciation there that I think in some bigger markets and bigger cities, sometimes there's not that same recognition there. That may be the reality of the musicians and the artists, but I think here, because we're in this place that is, you know, whatever you want to say, post industrial Rust Belt, like, mission, yeah, right, that grittiness that we have here in this community, and I think that that has translated to the music scene. It is a very it's a music scene that is marked by that same like Midwestern, resilient, grittiness that everything else that shapes our community is.

Rodney  26:27  
I love that. It was really interesting because today I was at the Bing Davis exhibition of art at date Foundation, and there's this huge banner that talks about the poly rhythms of life infused in his work. I mean, you're talking about this, and I think that you're absolutely right, and I think it, I think it also holds true for visual artists and dancers and filmmakers. We have such a plethora of artists working, and they're working, and it's that same sort of thing that balance. And so there's this recognition. And it's not a you could say I'm a musician, and no one's going to be like, Are you sure? Like, really, you know they understand it? And go, Yeah, but do you also know so and so and so, there's a sense of connective, communal thread that runs through it all. And I was just thinking about when you when you're talking about that, like that. Bing acknowledges that, and he has, if you ever, this is the audience, if you ever get a chance go over to Biggs gallery, because he's playing he's playing music, and you would not ex. I mean, he was playing some serious hip hop the other day. I was like, Wait, what is going on with this 87 year old artist going to town on the hip hop? And he knew who they were. And so I just said, because you've 15 years, you know, but longer than 15 years. Really, you're really thinking, this is a lifelong love of music and this and living in this area, just, I love that you talk about hip hop and so like, what other genres you what? What other genres do you think that people would be really surprised that are existing under the surface, like something, like some insider baseball. Is there something beyond hip hop? Because which is, which is great in and of itself, I'm super excited about that. But is there something else that people might be surprised is growing here in our region?

Juliet Fromholt  28:12  
Experimental music. Experimental music, okay, yeah, I have to give a shout out to my colleague, Evan Miller. He's our midday host here on why so and my assistant music director, that is his world, and he has really introduced me to that world of folks that are really pushing the boundaries of music. You know, many of them come from a classical or jazz background, but they're going beyond the canon, and they're really making music that is challenging, interesting. Sometimes it involves built instruments, you know, materials to make music. There is a pretty small but thriving scene of that here in Dayton and largely in Ohio, in this part of the Midwest as well. Evan's doing some work to showcase that, and it's been really exciting to me, as I'm attending these showcases, helping him out, to get to see people discovering this music, and to see how many people are like coming out, who are just interested in experiencing something new and different. You know, we, Evan and I always joke like, hey, come get weird with us. People are willing to do that. Like to

Rodney  29:20  
do it. There really are, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the fact that it's experimental music, because I just feel like that's a as a choreographer, that's that's kind of where the sweet spot is, because we're always trying to find some sound, some Sonic, Sonic landscape that's not your typical sonic landscape to create movement to. And I feel like there's this, I feel like there's, there's a real golden opportunity coming there where art forms are gonna be like, Hey, you're over here. Hey, I'm over here. Let's kind of play in the playground together. Yeah,kind of curious about that. I mean, I, that's where my that's, that's what gets. Me up in the morning I call there's their genres to be mixed, art forms to connect. And I'm like, Bring it on. So I speaking of genres we're gonna shift because I you have this podcast. I Okay, so you've really followed the things that you are really into, and you have this podcast, talk about this, because it is a very specific podcast, and I love it. I just was so surprised, like Juliette. I had no idea. So talk about it

Juliet Fromholt  30:33  
well. So I love all film, really, but I'm very into horror as a genre. Part of that is watching like the classic universal monster movies with my mom as a little kid, like she and I still quote like the Bela Lugosi Dracula to each other, you know, along with like the Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein, like those, she and I will just text each other quotes to back and forth. So I've always been interested in the genre. My partner is a filmmaker. He works in the horror genre. He's a comic book maker now he horror is kind of his life. He really encouraged me, and I needed this push when we got together, like, a million years ago. At this point, I was definitely a little snobbier in my taste, like I liked older horror, I liked a lot of European stuff. And he was like, No, hey, horror is expansive, and there's something to be gained from everything. So I learned a lot from him, and really, sort of like, got out of my own head about it, and started really enjoying and embracing the genre. Another one of my best friends, Teresa, our partners are cousins, so we're essentially family. We all go to movies together a lot. And during the pandemic, Theresa and I would be just like, kind of messaging each other all day about movies, or like, you know, the Netflix series we were watching and things like that. And as we were coming out of the pandemic, she said, Hey, so I kind of have this idea, and I know you're really busy, but what if we started like a horror film podcast, because we're already having those conversations, we're just not having them on a microphone. I was like, yes, let's, let's do that. That'll be really, really fun. And it was also a really good opportunity for me to get to do something in audio that wasn't tied to why. So because, like, you know, I love, I love being on the radio, and I am working on a podcast for why so as well. But it is nice to get to kind of step out of my radio persona and, like, the thing people know me for as, like the music person, and talk about something else I'm interested in. So Teresa and I started attack of the final girls in 2021

Rodney  32:43  
late 2021 right? Yes, this is, this is the height of the pandemic. Yeah, wow, it

Juliet Fromholt  32:49  
was. And part of it too was that we had noticed that in horror media, it was a lot of men's voices. There weren't as many women talking about the films, and we had, we had kind of had a moment with a friend of ours that that really inspired her to ask me about the podcast where we kind of felt like, hey, like, where are our voices in this genre? So we started the podcast. The idea was that we're reviewing movies, but we're really looking at it based on what interests us, which is like through a lens of intersectionalism, through a lens of feminism, through a lens of both having appreciation for what the genre can teach us, because horror is a really interesting genre, and you can learn a lot from it, but also really talking about how films have or have an age, you know, not just dismissing an older film because it might have some things that make us uncomfortable today in 2024 but diving into like, why did they think that was okay in 1950 or 60 or 70, blah, blah, blah. How would we tell this story today? That kind of a thing. So we've been doing it for many, many years now. It's a lot of fun. It also we're both really busy, so it gives us an excuse to get together regularly and, like, sit and watch a movie and have a conversation about it,

Rodney  34:12  
have a dialog about it. Yeah, and that's what I meant about the whole notion of like, was different, about it, this, this, this, your take on the horror film genre, which is traditionally a male driven form, I think film in general, but that's a, that's a that's a whole other conversation, which I sometimes, I go, Okay, can we have some other voices, please? And maybe, how, maybe see this through a different lens. And so I'm kind of curious about because horror is not my genre. It's not I I'm the guy who literally gets up and walks out because I'm freaked out. It freaks me out because I get so panic. I get anxious. My anxiety takes over, and it's me and the pregnant lady who are sitting in the lobby waiting for the friends to come out. So these conversations about horror films, and I love how you're talking about how, how would you. Them and do them differently. So you're watching, you're good. If you found some obscure horror films that might surprise people that they should be like, go check this out. This is worth seeing, like, or at least engaging in a conversation. Yeah.

Juliet Fromholt  35:15  
I mean, there are, there are lots. I would also say, like, in addition to the obscure ones. I think that there are some very well known ones that, if you might have dismissed them as, like pop culture, but you watch them with a more informed context, or you watch them through a critical lens, you might get more out of them. Like, you know, everybody knows scream, you know, it's like one of the biggest horror franchises. But I think if you don't know horror very well, you're just like, oh, that's scream. That's like the big movie with nev Campbell in it. It's a big franchise. But when you actually look at scream as a commentary, as a meta commentary, a horror film about horror films, then it gets very interesting very quickly. I think, in terms of obscure ones, the one I always like to talk about that we did fairly recently, but it's one of my favorite films my partner introduced me to. It is Phantom of the paradise. It's from the 70s. It is a rock and roll horror film. It is a disco take on Phantom of the Opera. It has a lot of parallels with Rocky Horror Picture Show. They were kind of developed

Rodney  36:19  
same. It was a parallel track. I remember that film. Yeah, I'm of a certain age.

Juliet Fromholt  36:26  
It's Brian De Palma. You know, a lot of people realize it's Brian De Palma that directed it. That's a really fun one. It's not only a fun film, but the more you know about the movie, its development, the context of the time, like the commentary on the record industry of the 70s. You know, they almost named the villain Specter, but they thought Phil Spector was going to sue them. But

Rodney  36:53  
which is like, truth is stranger than fiction. With he lived his own America horn, American Horror Story in real life. I love that. And I remember that film. I remember going, what is this at that time? Because it was like, you know, you you know the folks of you know when they would you, you see it in the newspaper, or you would see it on a poster at the local Cineplex, because we only had four channels back in the day before cable. This is, you know, yeah, it's really fascinating. Like, like, there were choice like, oh, let's go see this film, and how they were pushing it as, like, the next thing and that kind of, yeah, oh, that's because it wasn't Paul Williams, Yes, see you, you combined all your loves and

Juliet Fromholt  37:52  
yeah, but I would say too, for people who are more interested in something a little mainstream, watch the original Night of the Living Dead. George Romero was a revolutionary, you know, to watch what he did to genre, what he said about humanity and capitalism and race and all sorts of things in his original trilogy of zombie movies, it there is so much like I could talk for hours about that trilogy alone, you know, and people, everybody's heard of Night of the Living Dead, right, right?

Rodney  38:24  
Because it's, it's in our it's in our psyche. It's an guys of the culture. And it's like, I would absolutely agree, I think that there's, I think, for far too long. I mean, there's some practitioners who, I mean, I've seen light of the Living Dead, and I loved it. I was like, Oh, this is, it was suspenseful. Creeped me out. It was but, but you're absolutely right about this commentary, this notion that what he did with an incredibly zero budget, effective filmmaking, which is, which is always a question for me. I mean, and Mike and I talk about this, or the producer and the like, you could throw a lot of money at a movie, but it doesn't make it effective or interesting? Yep, here's someone who made something with $0 that was effective and interesting and food for thought. Even when it came out, people were like, This is a lot to think about. It's that. It's really interesting. Yeah? So yeah, we're oh my gosh, like film. Okay, Juliet us in film. I'm loving it. So one of the things that's interesting to me is like, you know, we, when we do this podcast, is that we, we try to pose. I pose. Try to pose. A question about, for those who are listening, because it is about inspiration, what would you say to someone who's listening is going, you know, I have a son or a daughter who who's thinking about following into media, because you and I are both in it. What would you tell them? What advice would you give them about a media career? So to speak,

Juliet Fromholt  39:58  
I think. Think it would be to really look at what opportunities are available. I most people that I know that do media, like very few of them got their degree in communications, like my degree is not in communications. You know, many of us figured out how to do this through other ways. There are so many organizations in this community and in many local communities, things like public access, public broadcasting internships, opportunities to learn and just see if you're interested, and get your hands on some gear and start to figure out where you fit into the picture of media. And then we have so many tools now, like on our phones, that can allow people to just become a maker without permission, you know? So I think it's just like start to start to get involved and follow your interests, and you don't have to, you don't have to go to film school to make a film. You don't have to go to communication school to be on the radio. You know, I think education is wonderful, and I'm very grateful. I consider myself so privileged to have the education that I have. But we need to stop thinking of that as some sort of like gate or, you know that the that you have to take this very linear path of you go to college for the thing, and you get the piece of paper that says you have the thing, and now you can do this one very specific thing. So many people I know have taken windy paths and kind of got here on accident and fell in love. So I think just like start exploring and start seeing what opportunities are available in your local community. So many public and public access stations have volunteer opportunities, have internships opportunities. There are so many of them that are populated by people like you and I Rodney, that if somebody were to send me an email and say, and I've had this happen, hey, I'm starting college. I'm in high school. I'm just interested. Can I come talk to you? Can I get a tour, that kind of a thing? And it's always like, yes, absolutely, absolutely

Rodney  42:08  
yes.

Juliet Fromholt  42:09  
Talk. Let's talk about what you want to do. Let me ask you some questions that might get you thinking about things you hadn't even considered in a career in media. So just like, use the resources in your community and, like, explore and ask people a lot of questions.

Rodney  42:23  
I love it. I love it. That is, and that's such a true thing. And as an educator, I feel strongly about, like, you know, it's like, talk to folks who are in the business, talk about, you'll talk about work life balance. I mean, that is a really legitimate thing, especially in the arts. And it's like, are you prepared to give it your all, which means that you're giving up weekends to see concerts, and you're going to be hanging out with musicians, and you're going to be talking to folks about film you, I mean, but the thing is, the writ, the enrichment of that experience outweighs the long hours Absolutely. Yeah, you know, because it's it, because it's rooted in something else, and so it's written in something far greater than us. And so it's and that's what makes it fun. See, that is why I love hanging out with you, Juliet, because I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm super, super, super thrilled. So thank you for sharing an afternoon hour with me and and sharing your story. I think they were gonna be surprised. They're gonna like Juliet, no way. Yes, she's all that.

Juliet Fromholt  43:28  
Yeah, thank you.

Rodney  43:29  
It's my pleasure. Totally pleasure. You're awesome. So that's all I could say. I mean, you're just.