When destiny calls, sometimes it leads you to your namesake on a map and into the heart of a community that becomes your own. In our latest episode, we sit down with Patrick Cleary, a former Wall Street banker turned Humboldt County archivist, who shares his incredible journey from the buzz of high finance to the serene shores of Big Lagoon. Patrick's midlife transformation is not just inspiring; it embodies the power of a name and the magnetic pull of a place that feels like home.
Tuning in, you'll be treated to the inside scoop on how Patrick took the reins of KHUM radio at its darkest hour and turned it into the soundtrack of Humboldt. It's a story of bold risks, strategic leadership, and a commitment to preserving the local soundscape in a world where cookie-cutter radio reigns supreme. Witness the rebirth of the station within the historic Carson Block building, and discover how figures like Cliff Berkowitz, Mike Dronkers, and Larry Trask have left an indelible mark on the local broadcasting scene.
Wrapping up, we celebrate the musical heartbeat of Humboldt County, from the much-loved Folklife Festival to the educational workshops that cultivate talent in the redwoods. Patrick offers a peek into his own musical ventures, from recording his songs to performing live, proving it's never too late to chase a new dream. So pull up a chair and join us for a symphony of stories that celebrate the enduring spirit of local culture and the transformative journeys that connect us all.
Find us on Facebook at 100% Humboldt.
When destiny calls, sometimes it leads you to your namesake on a map and into the heart of a community that becomes your own. In our latest episode, we sit down with Patrick Cleary, a former Wall Street banker turned Humboldt County archivist, who shares his incredible journey from the buzz of high finance to the serene shores of Big Lagoon. Patrick's midlife transformation is not just inspiring; it embodies the power of a name and the magnetic pull of a place that feels like home.
Tuning in, you'll be treated to the inside scoop on how Patrick took the reins of KHUM radio at its darkest hour and turned it into the soundtrack of Humboldt. It's a story of bold risks, strategic leadership, and a commitment to preserving the local soundscape in a world where cookie-cutter radio reigns supreme. Witness the rebirth of the station within the historic Carson Block building, and discover how figures like Cliff Berkowitz, Mike Dronkers, and Larry Trask have left an indelible mark on the local broadcasting scene.
Wrapping up, we celebrate the musical heartbeat of Humboldt County, from the much-loved Folklife Festival to the educational workshops that cultivate talent in the redwoods. Patrick offers a peek into his own musical ventures, from recording his songs to performing live, proving it's never too late to chase a new dream. So pull up a chair and join us for a symphony of stories that celebrate the enduring spirit of local culture and the transformative journeys that connect us all.
Find us on Facebook at 100% Humboldt.
Hey, welcome my friend Patrick Cleary. Hey Scott, 100% Humboldt and you. You are all of that and then some.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that. Some people might disagree. I wasn't born here.
Speaker 1:That's okay, but you're local enough. I mean you know Ferndale. I mean you gotta be there 200 years, don't you?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean really local. Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say anything on the record.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't say that we love you, ferndale.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, thanks for coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my friend called me an archivist of Humboldt and its people and I like that. So that's part of our mission and you seem to be the perfect guy. So how did Patrick Cleary get to Humboldt? Tell us about your journey.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there was a map, a point on the map called Patrick's Point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just it's right here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if I decided, if I was going to find a sign from the universe about where to move, that was it.
Speaker 1:Wow, how did you learn about Patrick's Point? Just saw it on the map.
Speaker 2:Okay so, slightly longer story. I was living in New York City working on Wall Street, having my somewhat premature midlife crisis, and decided that it was time to sort of move and start over and figure out what I wanted to do. And there were a number of factors but there was a friend of mine, Jennifer Mackie, who at the time was living here in Humboldt, and she suggested that I might want to check it out. So she started sending me things like 101 things to do in Humboldt.
Speaker 1:County Greg's Magazine. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I don't know if Greg owned it back then, but no, probably didn't. Yeah, and yeah, I saw a thing on the map called Patrick's Point and I said maybe I should check that out.
Speaker 1:Wow, did you go to Patrick's Point there when you got here?
Speaker 2:Did you camp out? My then wife and I put our stuff in storage and drove across the country checking out different places, wound up here and, within a week of being here, found a house to rent up in Big Lagoon, just north of Patrick's Point, and after about two months here, the guy who owned the house told me that I belonged here and so he was gonna sell me the house. Well and Did you buy it? I did.
Speaker 1:I did. I bet that was real expensive back in that day 1997, yeah, yeah, but boy, big Lagoon is pretty up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were. If I remember talking to you in the past, you were an investment banker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I came straight out of college up to a little country bank called Chase Manhattan Mm-hmm, went through their training program, became a commercial lender, did that for eight years, went to a firm called Trust Company of the West where I did more what they now call private equity and so investing money in private businesses. And then went back to Chase and did a couple years of international investment banking, primarily in the telecommunications and media, still in New York City. Yes, still in New York City. So that particular stint I was on planes about 75% of the time. Yeah, no life. I mean I got to see parts of the world. I got to see Indonesia and Singapore and Iceland and London and a number of From the airport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the Hyatt Hotel which are yeah, gotta see some of them.
Speaker 2:Are remarkably similar throughout the country, throughout the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Where'd you go to college? I've never asked that. I don't think Georgetown.
Speaker 2:Okay, Washington DC.
Speaker 1:DC. Yeah Huh, finance major. International finance yeah, wow yeah, and then naturally to New York City to banking, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there were like the 12 of us from Georgetown who wound up in the training program at Chase.
Speaker 1:Let me press on this for a second. So why did you decide to come to Humboldt and put all your crap in storage? And I mean, was there something that precipitated that? You said it meant a life crisis. Yeah, yeah, I mean, had enough of this. I don't know if I could try something new.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it was a variety of things. It was I had been through my first divorce and that was very traumatic to me. Sure, I never expected to be the type of person who would ever be divorced. Sure, and I was unhappy. I was, you know, and I was kind of like waking up. I was one of those things where I did really well when I got to Wall Street. I went to Wall Street, I was 21 years old. Wow, I was a vice president at Chase by the time. I was 26. You know, I kept getting promoted. I never even got around to going to business school because I kept Getting promoted, promoted and everything. And then, you know, with the divorce really forced me to say what am I doing with my life? And you started doing some particularly outward bound trips as part. You know, I don't know how familiar you are with outward bound, but outward bound is primarily an educational program, mostly for youth, but they it's outdoor, though it's outdoor.
Speaker 2:It's outdoor, it's an experiential education Love it, yeah. And on one of those trips I met this woman, jennifer Mackey, and we became friends and I was going through my soul searching, nice, yeah. But it was time to leave. It was time to do something new. You know, my thinking straight out of college was oh, I'll go to New York City for a couple of years, that'll be fun. And there I was 17 years later. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:You know, as time happens like Joyce, and on the map New York City is like seven walls. That way the other side of the studio.
Speaker 2:Maybe a few more that sort of scale. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a dimension away, in some ways, in terms of culture.
Speaker 2:I tell people I tried to move as far away from New York and as possible and still stay in the continental United States.
Speaker 1:Funny story a lot of people I think Mary Keane first got this that many people came as far west as they could and landed and humbled, wound up here for a variety of reasons, variety of people, and there's nowhere else to go.
Speaker 2:There were also a lot of people go north. They want to stay in California but, they want to get as far away from Southern California as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can't. I guess you could live in Mendocino, but there's not much out in Fort Bragg.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Mendocino could have been possible. Yeah, you know, at the time when I did this, I had a map of the United States and just crossed off where I did not want to live and had a list of things that I wanted in a community and there were certain things like a university. I really wanted to live in a place that had a university. I wanted a place that had an airport so I could get out of there if I had to.
Speaker 1:Maybe some music.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and water. I wanted to be somewhere near the water and this kind of fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds great. So what did you do after you arrived and how did you get plugged into say, the radio world.
Speaker 2:Well, I really spent the first couple of years trying to learn to play the guitar. I mean, that was really my primary focus and I had a couple of clients that I kept from my Wall Street days for a short period of time and got involved a little bit through Humboldt Area Foundation with the development of the prosperity strategy, the economic development strategy that they did in the late 90s, early 2000s. So I met some people there and then really the first real job I had since, when I moved here and I'd been lucky I'd saved some money from working in New York First job I had was running the co-op. You might recall, somewhere around 2000, 2001,. They did the remodel of the arcade store and that went dramatically over budget and they got into some financial trouble and the employees were angry because they had been living through jackhammers and dust and everything and were promised all sorts of things when the remodel was over, and they finished the
Speaker 2:remodel and the management said we're cutting your benefits because we're broke. And so the employees responded said, well, we just voted in a union. And so the board had a meeting and somebody said I think we need a Wall Street guy to come in here and try to straighten us out. And a friend of mine was at the meeting and says I may know what, do you know a guy? I may know a guy. He's up in Big Lagoon. So I came in as the interim general manager of the co-op and did that for about a year and a half.
Speaker 1:I think I remember that. Yeah, so the outgoing. And then are they still a union shop? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We go to church right across street, we go over there oh they're great, they're catalyst. Yeah, they do a good job, yeah, yeah. I mean you know the and so does the co-op.
Speaker 2:I love Bethany and Jason. They're great. They're great. Had her on the show, she was great. Oh good, yeah, I mean, I think when I got to the co-op the turnover rate was 83% a year. Geez.
Speaker 1:Really Wow yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. I mean Churn it. Yeah, I don't even know that we had time to train with that sort of turnover. That's a lot of turnover. Yeah, and the union has brought a lot more stability. I mean there's people who Sure, yeah, I mean there's still a couple of people there who remember when I was GM Not too many at this point. Yeah, yeah, maybe a dozen. How about that?
Speaker 1:But David Lippmann, our friend, was GM after well, after you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, and I used to have a sort of a ritual where they would hire a new GM and I would take them to lunch and I would say-, oh, how about that? You know like, hey, here's my, you know two cents of advice. You know, keep the change. Yeah, but I have not met the current GM I hear very good things about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see you're doing a good job. Yeah, Then Eureka. What was Eureka built so Well?
Speaker 2:Eureka at that point was the Fiffenelle Fiffenelle, marked over by Eureka City Hall. It was a very different store in those days, small, yeah yeah. And then it was after, when we recruited Len Mayer to come in as GM. Then Len was the one who built the current Eureka store.
Speaker 1:Which is gorgeous store? Yeah, it is. They do a good job. They have some African peanut soup that's super hot. So I sat with a friend there and he's eaten their soup and he's just pouring sweat. So watch out for the African peanuts. I'll have to try it. Yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to it. So what happened after that? After that, there's some radio-.
Speaker 2:Well, so during that timeframe I was getting into well, I've always been into music but I really enjoyed this radio station Kehum. I just loved their music and got to know the people involved there. Kehum was sort of an interesting story. It was started by Cliff and Amy Berkowitz and Jacqueline Debots in 95. They started the radio station with basically no money for all intents and purposes.
Speaker 1:They had no money.
Speaker 2:Right and it was a start-up. So it didn't go well and they were in some financial pain, but at the same time they had miraculously gotten another license for another station, and so they were looking for people to put up some money to help them build the second station, take care of some of the creditors that they had. The idea was that having an economy of scale operating two stations out of the same facility is definitely economically more viable.
Speaker 1:Were they in Ferndale at the time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, yeah, they were in Ferndale because Ferndale was as far north as the FCC would allow Kehum to be at that point.
Speaker 1:How about that? Let me show you Ferndale on the map. Let's see if I can find it Fortuna Ferndale, right there in the area of the valley. Can you find Garberville? Garberville is way down at the bottom of the valley In those days.
Speaker 2:Kehum was at Garberville station. Oh, how about that? Oh, yeah, I think I remember that. Yeah, yeah, it's no longer licensed to Garberville, but at that time, how about that? Yeah, so the signal was on Garberville and you have to have your office within a place that can hear the station, and so they were in Garberville and the signal doesn't travel to Garberville.
Speaker 1:No, or did it it?
Speaker 2:gets down there. It's not as strong as it used to be down in Southern Humboldt. It's transmitting now off of Neal.
Speaker 1:So these guys are kind of hurting financially a bit and you come in and you get some extra attention. Well, I came in as an investor.
Speaker 2:I put in a little bit of money. I went on the board of directors and we got K-Slog. It was what the second station we came launched and I retired from the co-op and got a call the day before Christmas from the general manager and said we bounced our payroll, oh no. And I said so how did that happen? He said well, we ran out of money. And I said no, I figured that much out.
Speaker 1:We got that we understand that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how did we run out of money? And he says I'm not sure. And I said, oh, I don't like that answer. So I went down to take a look at the books and it was much worse than anybody was telling me yeah, don't worry, it'll get worse.
Speaker 2:And so I debated it and I was again very much in love with K-Hum and what it was. I mean not only for the music but for its community involvement. I mean, k-hum is a very, very special radio station, and so, after thinking about it, I went to the board and said okay, we either file bankruptcy or somebody comes up with some money. I'm willing to come up with some money, but I have two conditions, and the first one is that I get a controlling shareholder interest in it, and the second of which is we get a new general manager. And they said well, who do you have in mind for general manager? And I said I don't have any good ideas, so I guess it's me. And so I became general manager in January of 2003 and president of the board, and I've been president of the company since then. I've hired general managers over the years. You've probably met most of them.
Speaker 2:Many yeah sure, and in the meantime, in 2005, we made a partnership with the Blue Lake Rancheria. They put up some money and we bought a station in Fortuna that had been known as the party Remember that, yeah. And they were broke, and so we bought that and basically rebranded as the point, so that became our classic rock station, great station, yeah. And then we, in 2010, bought the old KXGO, which for, oh, for a whole variety of reasons we won't go into now, no longer exist, at least in that incarnation. I'm not sure that was a good thing. What?
Speaker 1:are the calls on that now?
Speaker 2:Right now it's the lounge. It's 94-1, the lounge.
Speaker 1:It's not KXGO or.
Speaker 2:No, there is a KXGO that Med River Radio has, but it's a much weaker signal than it used to be A whole different deal. Yeah, and then in 2011.
Speaker 1:KXGO, let me interrupt real quick. It used to be lounge sort of relaxed. I go way back to when it was in all the dentists and doctors' offices. Oh wow, before it became Classic Rock, Before it was the monster of.
Speaker 2:Classic Rock yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, and its numbers were really good because they were in every office. Every office in Humboldt had this radio station on.
Speaker 2:The lounge is. You know it's in my dentist's office anyway, I don't know. Okay, the lounge is not quite. It's much more upbeat and it's far cry from the old elevator music sort of style of.
Speaker 1:Darnamichi or somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're now more into Pink Martini and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure they're coming to the Brit. By the way, I just read that yesterday.
Speaker 2:I saw Molly Tuttle and the. String Dusters, that'll be a pretty good show the Dead South.
Speaker 1:Yep, jason Moraz, he's coming. Yeah, he's coming to the Brit Festival. They rarely announce a bunch of shows, so the Brit Festival is way up here and Way up there. It's up there in the Curtin area for Jacksonville, or you know this, yes, talking to the camera. Tell us why is K-Hum special? What makes and made it special in terms of formats? Interesting, right, the involvement in the community. It's kind of an outlier in the best sets of the word, it's not? What are the clear channel stations?
Speaker 2:It's real organic, right? Yeah, I mean, I think what happened in the radio world starting in 95 and 96, and I saw this towards the tail end of my Wall Street career the FCC allowed companies to own a lot more stations. Yeah, what happened was they started automating and formatitizing their stations, where stations started sounding the same all around the country and K-Hum sort of issued the idea of a format. You know is the original radio about the rules, so you could play Frank Sinatra, followed by Frank Zappa, right, you know that's fine. Yeah, I mean, you know, but the main thing was that it was very much involved in community activities. It did, and still does, the Stop the Violence campaign to promote awareness of issues around violence in our community and starting the healing. It did a lot of live broadcasts from various places and it had an exceptional group of people I mean Cliff Berkowitz, who started it.
Speaker 1:Great guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know really, Amy, Mike Dronkers in those days, Larry Trask, who's now runs the lounge for us. Larry was the first guy I hired when I got there. How about?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, larry's done almost every job in the company except for sales, and that's coming.
Speaker 1:Larry.
Speaker 2:Don't say that he might quit. You're next you know Larry's the guy who's helping me with moving the facilities into Eureka.
Speaker 1:So tell us about that. Where are you going to Eureka?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've signed a lease with the support of the Blue Eyed Rancheria. The Blue Eyed Rancheria and I have an agreement in principle that they will acquire 100% ownership of the company, which I'm very thrilled about because I'm a big believer in local media and the Rancheria can't move, it has to stay here. It's here, yeah, so you know, we can, you know, sort of ensure that we have local media here. As I started to say, we created the Lost Coast Outpost in 2011. And that gave us, you know, a built-in news department. But the Outpost has been in Eureka for the last I don't know six, seven years maybe, and so the two sides of the company have, you know, been separate and we want to get them back together yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're going to be moving into the Carson Block building, the old sort of downstairs theater space in the center of the building.
Speaker 1:Does Rancheria have any part of that? Are they part of the?
Speaker 2:No, the building is owned by the Northern California Indian Development.
Speaker 1:That's a separate entity.
Speaker 2:It's a nonprofit that works in native areas, on native issues Beautiful building though the remodels. Well, yeah, I should give you the tour sometime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do it. I'd like that it was a theater back in the day, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, william MacArthur built it as a theater in I think it's the 1890s. It was a recession, he didn't want to lay off his workers, and so he built an opera house. Wow.
Speaker 1:It's kind of inside up and inside the building.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, carson was a smart guy. He had a department store on the ground floor, he had offices on the outside of the theater and then he had a theater on the inside and he's got a nice little house up the street.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so it was walking distance. He could walk to work. So it was a beautiful, beautiful building that fell into disrepair and the Northern California Indian Development Council put together a pretty remarkable financing package, which later when we get to Humboldt Area Foundation. I was part of the SIRP that helped fund that, and so it's kind of right in the heart of Old Town. It is the heart, yeah, and if you want to think about downtown revitalization, you have to make sure that the buildings in that area are robust, that they're not run down.
Speaker 1:And that's a big one that would be in jeopardy if it was left in disrepair.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, they were struggling to make ends meet with it and it was not seismically okay. So the seismic retrofit on that is just really impressive when you see some of the steel beams.
Speaker 1:Walk by it, for it seemed like they were never done. They kept working on it for forever.
Speaker 2:I think it was $17 million project.
Speaker 1:That's great, yeah. What a great thing to have, yeah, and what a great location for y'all.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, yeah, it's nice, it's central and it's got nice spaces for studios, for the outpost, for the salespeople to come and go and for live musicians to come down. Back to what makes K-HOME special, I mean, I think the other thing that always made K-HOME special was that they would bring live musicians in the studios and there would be sort of that live performance element.
Speaker 1:Right, the troubadours that are coming through town.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as well as locals yeah. Yeah, k-home's always been a big supporter of local music and, as you and I have talked over the years, we have a very, very robust local music scene.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, yeah, we had talked to Demark a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I watched that one oh did you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was brilliant. I thought he did a great job. I hope you thought so. Yeah, I mean, first of all, you're like this builder guy that came to town and helped the co-op and now you revitalize this radio station and build on it. And then loco. And let's talk about loco. A lot of people actually lost Coast Outposts actually called. Do you call it loco?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, in fact, I'll tell you the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll tell you A lot of people might not know what it is. I think it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know the Google Analytics numbers that we see they're pretty high, right. Yeah, I mean we get 330,000 unique visitors a month. There's only like 120,000 adults in the county. Now I'm a unique visitor on my phone versus on my iPad versus on my desktop. So divide the number by three, yeah, still big numbers. I mean, I think, 90% of Humboldt.
Speaker 2:County knows what the lost Coast Outpost is and it's an online newspaper and what the story was that Hank Sims, who at the time was the editor of the North Coast Journal, had run into some conflict with the publisher, judy Hudson. Judy brought an editor in above Hank, sort of demoting him, and Hank quit and he called me up and said meet me at the double A bar and grill tonight, which is right over here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, that's right there, eureka.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right across from the courthouse, and I said, well, I've never been to the double A and he said, all the better, good, so let's meet there, steak and, and. And. So I get there and I say so, hank, what's up? And he says I'm coming to work for you. And I said I can't afford you, hank. And he said what's not what they're getting away, what's just like you know, like.
Speaker 2:I'm like well, hank, what would we do with you? You know, and it happened to be the same month that America online had paid $300 million for the Huffington Post which got my attention and you know I was which is an online newspaper, which is an online newspaper, you know, and you know, and at that point I was like wait, what is the Huffington Post? I mean, it's just a website. Right, $300 million for a website, huh, and I'd been trying to study the internet. I knew that the world was changing. I knew radio needed to adapt to it, though, you know, online radio listening is still never really taken off as a thing. I mean, there's so many options there, and so I was like, you know, okay, hank, let's keep talking, let's do this thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I had been at a Christmas party the month before and somebody said to me I said, what's the name of your company? Anyway? I mean, I know what you do, but what's the name of the parent company? And I said, well, it's Lost Coast Communications. And he says, oh, lost Coast, what a great brand that is. I mean, can't you see it? The moment somebody says Lost Coast, you just you get a vision of it. And he says you have this beautiful brand here and I'm like I have this brand that I don't use. I mean, cause everything was labeled. You know, we were K-hum, we were K-soggy, we were the point. You know, like we were very much not into branding ourselves as a corporate entity.
Speaker 2:And so I said okay, hank, it has to be Lost Coast, something you know. And then around the second beer I was like how about the Lost Coast Outpost, you know? It kind of fits the sort of the brand like you know, like the edge of civilization there at the outpost, you know, in the Yukon. Yeah, exactly, we're out here in the outpost, at the outpost. And Hank said let me sleep on that. And he texts me back in the morning. He says I can shorten it to Loco I'm good, let's do this.
Speaker 1:It's got a colloquial name that everybody could remember.
Speaker 2:And it is kind of fun, and so we launched the outpost in 2011.
Speaker 1:So it's all organic. You guys invented this thing from ground up.
Speaker 2:I mean the. Url's the whole nine. So, in fairness, hank really has invented this thing. Hank is the you know he's the genius behind it. You facilitated it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And Hank, you know, doesn't like selling advertising very much or dealing with payroll or any of that stuff, Mr Journalist.
Speaker 1:I'm one of the writers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I talked about this the other day and you know I was like you don't really want to deal with this stuff, do you Hank? He's like, no, I don't All right, yeah, yeah, well, and but Hank's also a very ingenious computer programmer. So one of the things about the outpost is Hank has created all these little gadgets that can go to the sheriff's office every morning and say who was arrested yesterday and pull it live, pull that information, post it automatically. I mean, that is automated, nobody has to do that.
Speaker 2:There's no guy phoning in for the daily log, yeah no, and if you dig into the outpost and I think the thing that people don't quite appreciate about the outpost is, you know, like all the city agendas and minutes, court dockets, court dockets you know weather reports, I mean like what everybody else is printing. You know we have a whole section called Elsewhere that will tell you what Kim Kemp is posted. But the Northwest Journal is done. You know there are many gizmos. You know, in fact I think it's, if you go to the, the masthead, and you look under it, I think it says news gizmos, and so Hank has all these gizmos that are feeding into the outposts that are providing it with.
Speaker 1:So it provides you guys is the core center to start it, and then you could go whatever.
Speaker 2:Then we can add our contents to it over time. And you know, and you know, right now we've got I believe it's five reporters there, plus we have the Wild Rivers outpost for Greston City and Brookings.
Speaker 1:Is there a correspondent up there?
Speaker 2:There is one correspondent up there, gotcha.
Speaker 1:So Hank had his background in Time Standard right. Was he not an editor?
Speaker 2:He was the editor of the Northwest Journal. Okay, he may have worked for the Time Standard at one point I thought maybe I could be wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:The first time I met him, I was one of the original members of the Headwaters Fund board and Hank had just started as a reporter at the North Coast Journal and I wasn't quite sure what to make of this guy. He reminded me a lot of the old television character Colombo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, he was a little bit disheveled, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and he's like Let me get this right, mr Cleary, mr Cleary, you know like, and he did. He came up to me after the meeting and he said Mr Cleary, I just have one question. And then he asked a really hard question, of course, and I'm like, oh, this guy's smart. And so that was kind of my first introduction to Hank and so, yeah, it's really, hank has created something. That is, when you look at the changing media landscape and you look at, you used to work for newspapers, yeah, 20 years. Yeah, that business has been decimated by the internet, sure, and I don't know what the official circulation is of the time standard at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty well, that's what I hear. Maybe it's more on Sunday, maybe. Yeah, love you guys at the time, love you John.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, john worked for us at Las Cos for a while. I did not know that oh yeah. The general manager for three years.
Speaker 1:I guess I do know that. Yeah, that's right, yeah, he was there for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, they were 26,000 circulation on Sundays, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they were the freak. We worked for the Tri-Cities, you remember.
Speaker 2:Right, which was part of the.
Speaker 1:You know, ron Pallegi, but we were 48,000 and we thought we were bad ass and they had their daily at 20,000. And now that would be enviable.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be the envy of the nation. Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2:Well, and I was just going to say that's not their fault, I mean, that's nationwide.
Speaker 1:It's not their fault, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, there were 300 newspapers that went out of business last year. Yeah, alone, yeah.
Speaker 1:Alone. Yeah, and we had two at one time with that, oh yeah, with the Eurica reporter.
Speaker 2:That was a golden era of Humboldt media boy.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you, man, it was a beautiful paper. Yeah, it was gorgeous to look at. My boss would come from Texas. He goes. You have two daily papers in this back horse town.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right I didn't do this. Yeah, Well, they were bleeding yeah both of them, both of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know we did get. I was telling somebody the other day that Western Web you know there's a beautiful printing press next to Rob Arkley and the Eurica reporter yeah, but you know, I mean the newspaper you know well. In fact, the story I want to tell was in 1997, the Wall Street Journal did an article on over-mediated markets. Ah and, and we are one Humboldt County was the most over-mediated micro-polleton area in the country, more media outlets per capita than anyplace else in the country.
Speaker 1:Totally believe it yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, because we had all the TV stations, the radio stations everywhere. We have the Ferndale Enterprise, you know those Ten newspapers yeah. I mean Fortuna had its own newspaper. Arcada and McKinleyville were separate newspapers back then.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, right, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Beacon. What's his name? Odell? On four or five papers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's true Competitive market.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we were how do they, how would they research that? I guess there's ways to gather that data.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and FCC has central database for television and radio, so that's easy.
Speaker 1:So per capita we had a lot of, and plus we had other Bay Area KGO feeding in. Yeah, all that other happy horse stuff coming in. Cable Cable was running strong back then. Bill Smolin Right, william F Smolin yes, did you ever meet him?
Speaker 2:No, I did not. I knew his sister Carol Ann, his brother Don yeah, and I know the person who runs the Smolin Foundation now.
Speaker 1:He was legendary Peabody Award winner. Yeah, absolutely One of the first West Coast TV stations, right, channel three, yep KM, and he sold the building one day he walked by my boss's office Ron, you want to buy the building? He goes. Yes, sir, mr Smolin, I'd like that. Okay, I'll draw it up. Good day, ron. And that's how it was done. It wasn't even a handshake High five. There's no five. Call me Now. He owns half of the city block in Eureka. So that guy was legendary and he was. You know, cronkite won the Peabody, so he's in that realm. He was. I guess he was a terrific guy, but he was old school. Yeah, so Locos become the monster in terms of in the best sense of the word popular red hit.
Speaker 1:I mean it's bigger than, say, the time standard of the journal on an online present. It's bigger than anything. Oh yeah, the county.
Speaker 2:I mean I'll put my statistics up against. You know any. I mean it's bigger than anything North State even. I don't know. I haven't looked at the numbers lately, but last time I looked I think we were bigger than the press democrat in Santa Rosa. Wouldn't surprise me, and you know we actually last year. There's an organization, a nationwide organization called the I think it's the League of Independent Online Newspapers, lion, and they said would you?
Speaker 2:like us to come in and do an audit of the Las Vegas Outpost. And I was like, yes, please, yeah. And they said, you know, come in and tell us what we could be doing better. Come on down. And you know. And so they, they spent some time with us and looked at it and they wrote a report and they said you guys are the poster child for how to do local news, right, wow. And I was like, so what could we do better? And they said we don't know how. About that? Well, I was kind of disappointed to be honest, come on.
Speaker 2:Like tell me something to work on. Like you know like you know, like we can't possibly be that good, you have to, eureka. Oh, you did yeah. Well, yeah, we did yeah.
Speaker 2:Combined with the radio stations, yeah, but you know, I mean, the interesting thing about Las Coast too is, I mean, k-hum has won an Edward R Murrow Award for best radio documentary. It won a national association of broadcasters award for the storm coverage back in 2005. Well, k-slug has won a radio mercury award for best public service announcements. I mean, you know, the people there are incredibly talented and you know, and again, you know, like we're in market size 272 maybe out of 300 or something like that in the United States Really Top 10,.
Speaker 1:low for 10%, right yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean we're you know we shouldn't be doing this. Well, yeah, like you know, the rest of the country should be doing better.
Speaker 1:That's a good way to look. I'll tell you what I like about Locco is the obits. Yes, I don't know how he draws the data, but no one has an obit like Hank does. I'm sure some are submitted and almost all of them are submitted. Yeah, yeah, really classy, I mean. Done well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, that was actually something that you know. We kind of got into it as on a fluke, but a friend of mine's father died and she said could you run the obit?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I asked Hank and Hank said well, we just you know, I don't want to just do one-offs, I want to have like a policy. And so we came up with a. You know well, why don't we just do it for free? And you know, hank's criteria is you have to have lived in Humboldt County or have a memorial service in Humboldt County. So we're not getting people from Texas sending their obits yeah that's fair.
Speaker 2:You keep it. You know relevant locally. But after the booked section, it's the second most read section of the outpost, so the jail who got arrested last night is still number one in terms of so he draws that that's fresh hot bread every morning.
Speaker 1:Yep, Huh, Makes sense. I mean that sells. Well, yeah, people are always.
Speaker 2:I'm standard.
Speaker 1:The DUIs was a huge deal, man, and they published. They went back and forth, they had published, then not published, and then they put it back. And so so what after radio? So you became president of the Humboldt Area Foundation.
Speaker 2:Executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation. There's actually a couple of small things in between, or simultaneous, so I was actually the interim general manager of KHSU from 2008 to 2010. Wow, and I'm pretty sure I was at that time, the only person in the United States who simultaneously ran an NPR station and three commercial radio stations. That's pretty cool. It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can pull it off, yeah.
Speaker 2:But KHSU was having some challenges. At that point they had fired their general manager, and so I went in just to try to study the ship a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, they'd be back. I know they're gone, so what's his name? Disassembled it several years ago, right?
Speaker 2:The university? Yeah, basically outsourced it to Capitol Public Radio. They have one or two people who produce a little bit of local programming, but it will never be what it was.
Speaker 1:So it's just like the Lumberjack football team's not coming back. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I would think it'd be easier to resurrect a radio station.
Speaker 2:Well, they still on the station.
Speaker 1:In terms of staffing. I guess, it's a money thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it, and what Tom Jackson said when he came is that and to some degree there weren't a whole lot of students involved in KHSU it was a local endeavor in every way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean to me, and I argued this quite a bit with Ron Richmond at the time when he was president, and I said it is your best way of letting people know what's going on at the university. Oh yeah, and I said you don't do a very good job of that. I said there's a lot of things happening on the university and you've got 30,000 people listening to you every week. You could be telling them, hey, we got this classical concert, we got this guest lecturer, we've got this sporting event, we've got all this stuff. They didn't do a very good job of that. We started to get there and then I did a brief foray into politics in 2010 and ran for county supervisor. I kind of remember that. Yeah, I think I knocked on your door. You might have. How did that go for you? You know close, but no cigar, yeah.
Speaker 1:Learning experience, learning experience, yeah, who'd you?
Speaker 2:run against. Well, the way I like to look at it, joe Duffy was retiring, I declared, and then a fellow named Ryan Sunberg decided to run against me. Gotcha, gotcha and I got 49.3% of the vote. She was.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good. Pretty good to run.
Speaker 2:Not bad for a guy from New York City.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just came the walk on that came on the football field. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2:But having not succeeded in that endeavor, you know, as my wife and I talk about, was a blessing in disguise, because a year and a half later the position of executive director of Humboldt Area Foundation opened up. And had I just been elected supervisor Couldn't do that, I couldn't. Yeah, you know just bail for that.
Speaker 1:Can't do both.
Speaker 2:No, and it would have looked awful. So I did get hired as the executive director of the foundation. What?
Speaker 1:does the foundation do to explain real quick what so how much do they manage? They manage a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. But so Humboldt Area Foundation is what they call a community foundation, which is basically think of it as a amalgamation of a lot of small foundations. You know, in order to effectively create a foundation and have the infrastructure to invest, and you know, and a foundation, what they do is they take the money, they invest it and they pay the earnings out, you know, to do good work, but in order to and they can do it forever that way, with that model, they continue. You know, you tend not to touch the original investment amount, but you. So the principle remains yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like when I was there, I think you know we had, we had given out more than we'd ever, you know, been given Sure, and we still had, and we had a lot more money than we started the miracle of compound interest.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly so. So, without digging too deep in it, who determines the investments? Do they have internal investors or do they farm that out to whomever?
Speaker 2:We, the investment committee of the board, made the final decisions, or, you know, final recommendations to the board. But we had at the time an advisor out of Los Angeles who was very, very good, and I had been. You know, part of my why I was even remotely qualified for this job was I had been. I had sat on the investment committee and the audit committee at the foundation for a number of years before that. So I actually understood that part of it pretty well. Sure, you know so there, there, there was that part of it. But then there's the you know the much harder part of how do you give the money out effectively, right, the whomever and yeah.
Speaker 2:And and and obviously you know you know the challenges that face our community are. You know, I don't know that there's an amount of money that can solve that problem. I don't think they. We don't have that much on hand. But you know what? The one of the examples that I've used of where the foundation could be really helpful is if you drive into Arcada off of Samoa Boulevard and there's that building on the left that has the marbled murals painted on them and it's a humbled housing corporation that built a building there, basically for people who needed permanent supportive housing. The Polar area foundation gave the original grant that allowed them to prepare the plans for it, after which they were able to seek you know other outside fund, and so that was an example of an effective use of money where we could make smaller grants to really jumpstart certain activities. The foundation also does a lot of college scholarships. They give out close to a million dollars a year in college scholarships. They do a lot of work around.
Speaker 2:You know the arts around community energy. And then you know as the time has changed.
Speaker 2:You know we started to really you know, start the community conversation around race and equity and some of the disparities in our community. So how many years were you at the helm? I was executive director for seven years, from 2012 to 2019. And then I stepped down for two years and just ran the investment portfolio and did some of the work with donors and things like that, and then I, you know retired from there during the pandemic, but not quite retired with Humboldt Folklife Fest.
Speaker 1:Well yeah, or did we miss something? Was there?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to miss anything.
Speaker 1:It's a big resume, folks Wow.
Speaker 2:So, Folklife.
Speaker 1:You've been at the helm of that for a while now, right.
Speaker 2:Well, so in 2001. Before I got reengaged in the work world, I went off to a music camp to, you know, learn how to play the guitar, found out I was doing it all wrong and came back and was very, got very passionate about music education and at that time I'd actually been starting a conversation with people here about we were talking, you know, economic development and things like that, and I still maintain and I still may this may still happen at some point that one of the best economic development strategies we could have in Humboldt County would be to have another university. Those universities bring you know, they bring brains, they bring you know a lot of thoughtfulness and culture and so maybe a private university smaller scale yeah.
Speaker 2:And maybe a music university or music and arts Arts? Yeah, and wouldn't we be a good place to do that? Wouldn't that be the perfect? Yeah. And so I wrote a very passionate letter to the board of the Humboldt Folklife Society which I just found I hadn't read it in 20 years. I thought I was very forward at that point in time about some of my ideas. But I was like, hey, humboldt Folklife Society, you've been around at that point. They were around for 20 years. I mean, they've been around a while, yeah. And I was like you could be a great vehicle for creating a music, a folk music university, which I would shorten to folk you from time to time. Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Should catch that Nick.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Folk, you Anyway, sorry, I love it.
Speaker 2:And so I got it and the board kind of said who the hell is this guy? Yeah, we ain't never seen you move this young guy Move no chairs at the festival and things like that. So I got involved and helped to put on the 2002 Folklife Festival and then got really involved in that and kind of expanded it Used to be kind of a three day thing.
Speaker 1:Is it up at the Lazy J or Lazy L, lazy L.
Speaker 2:Folklife it left. Lazy L stopped in the 90s. Before I got here the property had sold, but that's where the festival was for a long, long time.
Speaker 1:Is that Craig, Craig the repairman? He's Glenn Campbell.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Craig Craig Lemsters, that was his daddy. Yeah, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, craig's great guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he's quite a musician. Oh, he loves Glenn man, oh yeah, he played with his daughter. Yes, he still does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's a nice man he is. So you've been doing this 20, I'm counting Way too long, 22 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, you know I keep trying to take a step back every year. Describe it real quick.
Speaker 1:So the.
Speaker 2:Folklife Festival. So the Hubble Folklife Society is a very tiny nonprofit that believes that everybody should participate in music and dance, and whether that's playing an instrument, whether it's dancing, whether it's singing, whether it's enjoying the live performance.
Speaker 1:Come to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, we've put on, you know, the Folklife Festival since the very beginning, since 1978 or whatever. Wow, we've done a lot of dances over the years, of various types. We have produced our own shows. We don't really do that as much anymore. We do some education. We're doing a major push right now to do a lot more education. We traditionally have done workshops at the Folklife Festival.
Speaker 1:So if you wanted to, which is August, july, july, july, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:so if you wanted to bring your mandolin and you know, take some lessons.
Speaker 1:I gotta take some lessons, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, I mean we all do. I mean, it's like you know. The funny thing is, like you know, you play mandolin, don't you? Yeah, yeah, Among other instruments, yeah, yeah. But you know, there's this like misconception that oh, some people are so talented. And practice a lot. Yeah, that's what it is. It's like you know nobody. You know very few. People are, like, just naturally talented and can pick up an instrument. Most of us need to. You know. Watch somebody else do it, you know.
Speaker 1:And people that got discovered. Like Jimi Hendrix, he worked his ass off for years, you know it's like these guys kill themselves. Actors same thing Coupler overnight like Taylor Swift. Now I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:Right, just kidding, yeah, no, she was not overnight. She worked really hard. Far from it, far from it, she worked very hard. Yes, and then you know people like Molly Tuttle, whose dad is probably the leading instructor of folk music down in the Bay Area. How, about that so she grew up in the musical family.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna get tickets. Yeah, I'm gonna go and sell the 29th. What is today? I think it's Monday, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do that With the infamous string dusters. That should be good. That should be a good show.
Speaker 1:So the Folklife Fest coming up at Dell Art in Blue Lake California.
Speaker 2:That we're starting to put the plans for that for mid-July. You know, the week ending July Can't resist. Yeah, you point to that, Joni, I'm looking at the map. You got your point to the map, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right here by Corbell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it seems like the Dell Art, dell Arté, dell Arté would be perfect for a folk. You know, folk you.
Speaker 2:We're exploring that possibility with them. You know, Dell Arté is going through a metamorphosis at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The original generation of the… Carlo and wow, and you know, joan Shirley and Donald Forrest have passed away recently. Yeah, michael Fields is no longer involved. Mm-hmm, we have a new leadership there. And yeah, we did a folk school there last year. That was pretty successful. I was pretty happy with it. You know where we taught? You know bluegrass guitar or harmony singing or… Nice, yeah, there was a… I don't know if you know… Do you know Rob Diggins at all?
Speaker 1:Just saw him Friday night in Trinidad.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, what a nice man. Yes, he's an brilliant musician.
Speaker 1:What a great…. I mean, he's playing the fiddle and it's jazz horns. Yeah, okay, yeah, this guy's… he's off the hook.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, rob emailed me right before the folk school last year and said, hey, I'd love to be involved. And I was like great, rob, like you want to teach a couple of classes? And he said, yeah, I'd love to. And I said, whatever, you want to teach, rob, what?
Speaker 1:a resource.
Speaker 2:And so he emails me and says I'd like to teach East Indian ragas on the violin. Okay, Perfect. I had my doubts, but it was a well-attended workshop.
Speaker 1:Got to take him to the double A.
Speaker 2:Yeah, talk to him. Yeah, I mean, we have such tremendous talent here in Humboldt County. It's a whole other podcast, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know to some extent you and Paul DeMarc went over it a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's some guy like Rob, you know he's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, as we wrap up, a couple of questions. What's next for you At this?
Speaker 2:point. You know I'm going to try to help Las Coast get moved into its new facility, get the transfer to the Blue-Aid Grand Chariot of the ownership, you know, stay involved to, you know, as an advisor, if desired, sure, but I really want to focus on my music. You know, as I think I said before we started, I've been starting to record some of my original stuff, finally, because I've been writing songs for 20, 30 years.
Speaker 1:Bongo Boy Studios, jimmy Foot, yeah yeah, and Dominic Romano, and Romano, I've heard that's a really quality studio too. It is. It's everything that musicians would love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Dominic is a very good producer and you know I have been, you know, I finally just said to him. I said, look, I'm scared to death of this. You know, help me. You know, like you know, I hate the sound of my voice. Yeah, who doesn't Right? So I'm doing that. We have a couple bands. My wife and I are in both the Backseat Drivers, which is sort of an acoustic blues band, and then we have a new band called All-Wheel Drive. That's more of a swing jazz band. Nice, hi.
Speaker 1:Cat. Yeah, hi Cat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we have a new duo thing. We'll be playing Easter at Moonstone Crossing Winery. Very nice Easter Sunday, hey. Thanks for coming, appreciate your time. Thank you, scott.