Beyond The Threshold: Black Voices in Media
Beyond the Threshold is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by award winning sound editor & producer, Sidney Evans.
This show is dedicated to interviewing black professionals in the media space in variety of roles, highlighting the lessons and experiences it takes to achieve success in the field.
The goal is to build a platform that connects and supports those established in media, while also inspiring those looking to break into the industry.
Beyond The Threshold: Black Voices in Media
Ep. 0: Basketball Dreams to Audio Success
Text Beyond the Threshold w/ your thoughts or questions!
Growing up in a sports-centric family and navigating the highs and lows of a basketball career, host Sidney Evans share's his story of how failing an audio production course and a bout of depression, help him discover his love for audio production and the pursuit of a career in the field.
After eventually working for companies like FRQNCY Media and Tenderfoot TV, he discusses his calling to host meaningful conversations with Black professionals in the audio industry, resulting in the creation of Beyond the Threshold.
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Tune in as we give flowers to black men and women making waves in the audio industry. I'm your host, sidney Evans, and this is Beyond the Threshold.
Sidney Evans:Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Beyond the Threshold. I am your host, Sidney Evans, and hopefully by this point you all have listened to the teaser and the official trailer for this first season into the meat and potatoes of this season. I wanted to provide some context and tell you a little bit more about me and my story and my background and how I got to this point of bringing this show to you all. So I'm going to try to keep it as concise and brief as possible, but also provide some additional details.
Sidney Evans:So, first and foremost, I grew up in a sports family. My background is deeply rooted in sports, in basketball and baseball particularly, and once I really started focusing on one sport as the sport that I wanted to pursue, it ultimately ended up being basketball. Because of a ridiculous growth spurt that I ended up hitting From playing ball, from hooping, I was able to gain interest from colleges and initially I went to UNC Pembroke and ended up transferring to a junior college in Maryland called Cecil College, which at the time it kind of changed my life, but I didn't really realize it because that was, that was the seed that was implanted in me that created my love for media. I really just didn't understand it at the time.
Sidney Evans:So after playing ball at Cecil College, I ended up getting a scholarship and playing at Fayetteville State and transferring there for the remainder of my undergrad experience. Also, the HBCU experience was something that I had no idea that I needed. It ultimately ended up being the best decision I ever made in my life. So continued my basketball career there and I majored in mass communications and this is really where the start of my experience in media really began.
Sidney Evans:So I took all my coursework. Obviously you have to take the non-production courses, like the theory courses, so like your history or radio and and all this other stuff. That's basically like just memorization and book work. But obviously you have to fulfill like your production credits. So I actually ended up taking audio production and I had no interest in it at all at the time, which is very ironic, and I actually ended up failing the course. That was the only course that I actually failed in college and eventually I just stopped going to class because I really didn't see eye to eye with my teacher and the concepts weren't really sticking with me.
Sidney Evans:So I was kind of more into video at the time and I didn't really understand the correlation between audio and video, with me being young and naive, just to be completely honest. But so to fulfill the credit from the course that I failed. I ended up taking video production one and two and not taking audio production at all. And looking back on it now I actually regret not taking advantage of all the resources that we had at the school, because we had in terms of what I was familiar with like a state of the art radio station called Bronco iRadio, which was led by Ray Thomas and I believe still is, and I actually hope to have him on the first season of the show, but that's still to be determined.
Sidney Evans:But that would have been a great opportunity for me to really realize that I did have like a something in my spirit and my soul for audio production, but had no interest at the time and outside of the initial tour that they gave us when you visit the school, I don't think I ever stepped foot in a radio station. I was more concerned with ball and hooping.
Sidney Evans:So, finished my playing career, I got my undergrad from Fayetteville State and let me back up a little bit While I was there. So I had a year to complete after my playing career was over. That's where I interned within the athletic department as like a production intern. So I was doing more like being a cameraman for, like the video games and basketball games and working the scoreboard for the football games. We had like a very state-of-the-art scoreboard and that was where I really started to be like okay, I could, I could do this for career, but I really wanted to do it in sports.
Sidney Evans:So, like after that internship was over, I was trying to get my foot in the door with sports, but I didn't really know over. I was trying to get my foot in the door with sports but I didn't really know what I was doing at the time and I was basically doing anything I could to try to attach myself to sports. Still, there was a semi-pro team in Durham which is where I live now, durham, north Carolina that I brought a relationship with the owner of the team and it was called the Bull City Legacy and I was, like you know, doing a scoreboard at games and writing press releases after the games and doing a whole bunch of stuff.
Sidney Evans:But I was working like the hospitality industry outside of that, just to you know, maintain a living for me and my girlfriend at the time, which really wasn't paying much and I became really frustrated and eventually I kind of just gave up on the whole working in sports thing and kind of just got caught in the working to make money lifestyle that I feel like once you, you know, first venture out on your own and become an adult that you can get trapped into, and next thing, you know, years and years and years go by and you really haven't.
Sidney Evans:You've lost that like that desire and zest to really pursue your passion and subconsciously I knew that and it really just sent me into like a deep depression, to be honest, and I was in that funk for a while and I guess during that time, I guess you could say, I became woke.
Sidney Evans:And after being in that state of mind for quite some time, I realized that I had to dig myself out of that depression because it was just a horrendous place to be in, for lack of a better word. So because I had played ball so long and had to do all these workouts and had people telling me what I could and and couldn't do, I had stopped working out because I just had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do. So I got pretty out of shape. I wasn't fat by any means, but I was what you would call skinny fat. So I'm like I'm going to get back in the gym and really get in the best shape of my life and really get myself out of this funk.
Sidney Evans:And in the process of doing that, I started listening to a lot of music to like fuel my workouts. And I was running like three miles a day and then doing like an intense hour of weight training and I started just going back and just listening to a lot of the music that I either never listened to like full bodies of work albums, or listening to it from a different perspective and really not only appreciating the artist and you know the lyricism and the the what was being said but also gaining an appreciation for the production as well. So that was when my curiosity for like the music making process was at its peak.
Sidney Evans:And I'm like man, like I was in this funk, I was in this depressive state for for this long and obviously the working out and the movement of my body has something to do with it. But also like if this, if this music, if this can help me, help bring me out of that, like what really goes into making this stuff, like how can this medium kind of change my life and put me in a positive state of mind?
Sidney Evans:You know, during this era of time that they hit YouTube, hit the YouTube streets, and started doing a lot of research on like beat making and discovering all these producers and I know anybody who has ever had any interest in music goes down the. You know the Kanye stuff on YouTube and videos of him in the studio and making beats and I basically just watched everything you could possibly watch on how to make beats and produce music. So at the time I think my girlfriend had like a super old iMac which was still white on the outside that goes to show you how old it was.
Sidney Evans:So I um, it had GarageBand on it and I just like kind of learned the basics of like band on it and I just like kind of learned the basics of like making simple beats and really the concepts of audio production, more than producing good music. And this part of the story I'll kind of speed up a little bit.
Sidney Evans:But eventually I ended up, you know, getting a more up-to-date Mac and we got the updated version of GarageBand and continued my education on learning the concepts and principles and terminology and stuff of audio I promise you all. As you can see, I'm making the correlation to now, so just bear with me. But I started learning all of that and eventually I got, like you know, some, some simple equipment, because at this time I still was stuck on making beats and even though I did improve, it wasn't translating to a professional level. I'll just say that, to put it pretty frankly, the beats in my music still sucked and I became frustrated.
Sidney Evans:And around this time I kept hearing about this podcast thing, people making their own shows and putting it out and doing it from their homes and most of the stuff I heard around that time was more self-help related. I don't think we had really matriculated into the narrative storytelling At least I wasn't aware of the time that you get now from true, true crime and and these documentary style podcasts.
Sidney Evans:But I also had a close friend uh, shout out, shout out my boy G, Greg Hill. You all may be familiar with the minority trailblazer podcast, but he was doing his public speaking thing, um, killing it with that. He was in the early stages and he started the podcast and it was really starting to take off and I started listening to it and the content was really good, but he didn't know. He didn't know anything about audio. Um, he really didn't know anything about it at all. So the quality of the show from a production standpoint wasn't that great. So that led me to believe that, man, I think there's a market out here for like people like editing shows and making them sound good and actually using like microphones and you know for all those that are in the field.
Sidney Evans:You know if you, if you get a good recording, that's 75 of the battle. So I was like man, there may be a market for this for like editing shows for people. So then I just started really uh like joining groups on facebook just surrounding myself and getting in communities with people who like edit podcasts and who were in that world, in that world and I got my first editing opportunity. At this time I had me and my girlfriend at the time had moved to Atlanta, so I was living in Atlanta. I got my first opportunity to edit you know, do some contract work for like a company that edit podcasts for people.
Sidney Evans:And this is so funny, like I really was getting like $30 an episode to edit shows for people who were like getting the clients and just passing along the episodes. The next part of this story kind of goes to show you like how on cold we are as black people and really validated for me that this was my purpose, that this is something that I should be doing. So that first client I edited for was for the show Celeste, the Therapist podcast and for any of those any of you who have heard that show. Celeste Vissier is the host and she's a mental health therapist and she has an amazing show and she's an amazing person and has an amazing soul and giving spirit and personality.
Sidney Evans:So I connected with her. She saw that I was black. I saw that she was black. I think I did a couple episodes through the company and making that $30 and she hit me up probably was like last year. You know you're editing the show for me and we're doing us communication and you know I really just want to cut out the middleman. Like I love working with black people, so like I'm paying them like $400 a month to edit the show and you're editing it.
Sidney Evans:So if you're cool with it, like I'd rather just work directly with you and just cut them out and I'm like, instead of making $30, I'm making $400 to edit one show and this is the first paid work that I've ever done. So I'm like bet, I'm in. So that's what we did. She. She stopped going through the company and just started paying with me directly and I worked with her for quite a while. Shout out, useless.
Sidney Evans:But when I was living in Atlanta and this was how I knew a hundred percent that this is what I was supposed to be doing and I was dedicated to it. I was working at DHL at the time delivering packages, and I would literally take my laptop with me and do my route and if I finished early I would just like pull over, stop at a Starbucks and, while on the clock, still go in and edit the episodes while I'm still on the clock for DHL.
Sidney Evans:And it kind of just hit me one day I was like I never been this dedicated to anything, as far as willing to, you know, risk my job and do literally whatever I had to do to get it done. And for the days that I didn't do that, I would, you know, work all day, come home and you know, at the time I thought I was really really good at what I was doing. But I, looking back on it now I was. I guess I was okay editing and mixing, but like the speed and efficiency for which I was doing it was not that great.
Sidney Evans:So it was taking me long periods of time to edit the episodes, so I would stay up all night trying to get them completed. But yeah, after this experience, this is where really things started to kind of expedite themselves, like I just got better at editing, got better at mixing episodes and things like that and ended up getting a few more clients and, you know, getting a low paying client there doing free work there but really building my skill set and I guess I'm going to fast forward. So to give you a frame of time, I guess when I first started editing and I guess when I first started having the bug for music and really getting into the basics of audio, this is probably about 2016, 17. And then by the time I started editing for Celeste, this is probably like 18, 19. And you know, over the next few years, like 2021, covid and all that stuff.
Sidney Evans:I was, you know, doing projects on the side here and there, while still, like bartending and you know, really, you know making his meet. I moved back to Durham, like you know, to stack my money, like I really created like a plan of action for what I was doing and then I like I kind of lost all momentum because I got sick and I went through this really anxiety filled time of my life and I basically became a hypochondriac and it's it's a long, a long story and a long process, but I kind of really went through what you would call another bridge in my life where I had to overcome something to get to the next stage of my life. So then, after getting through that, with the help of God, family and my friends, I got my own place with me. Me and Greg actually moved right after COVID and got a place together and we were kind of in the foundational stages of the new part of our lives. So it just made sense for us to.
Sidney Evans:This is the start of us like doing a lot of media production work and really collaborating on a lot of things together. So it just made sense and shortly after then I got my first like reoccurring contract gig with like a with a company that was producing podcasts with a very high production value. It was basically branded podcasts. So this is when I started working with Frequency Media. I sat up, michelle, and my producer, ina and our engineer, matt. I still have great relationships with them to this day, even though I no longer work with Frequency and you know that part of the business no longer exists.
Sidney Evans:But this is when I felt like I jumped tiers and was like, okay, this is the big leagues. As far as I felt like I jumped tears and was like, okay, this is the. This is the big leagues as far as podcasts go in the production value. So we worked on some really cool stuff. We did the honeypots podcast. Um, we did a show with Vox media called more than this, which won two awards. So that was. I was able to officially say that I was a award-winning dialogue editor.
Sidney Evans:That's the, that's the role that I was in at Frequency Media. I was an audio editor. We worked on the show called let's Talk Menopause. We worked on a show called Once Upon a Playtime. Like it was some really really good stuff and I felt like I finally was fulfilled in a way that I was contributing to something that rivaled was fulfilled in a way that I was contributing to something that rivaled like something that was produced on, you know, in TV or film. Like I feel like podcasting on that level was like the third tier of those like big mediums.
Sidney Evans:So I worked for them for about a year and a half, two years. I wasn't full time but I was. You know, I was like an official member of the team and I was probably working like between 20 and 30 hours a week and that really helped build my resume and I knew it was going to lead me to the next great opportunity. But before I jump into the most recent, I want to also shout out Galen Bingham, who's the host of the Whiskey Jazz and Leadership Podcast, who's still my current client and my longest reoccurring client.
Sidney Evans:But to transition and get into this last season and get up to date, so, after working with Frequency, that led me the opportunity to speak at Black Podfest in Atlanta, which was in 2022, I believe they wanted me to lead an audio engineering session and that was Memorial Day weekend of that year and I was nervous I had never done anything, speaking wise at that point, and I stressed out about it and I overprepared and, you know, made sure all my T's were crossed and my I's were dotted and my T's were crossed.
Sidney Evans:Because I did not want to make a fool of myself and I went there and I did what I needed to do and I had a great time and made some amazing connections and I was intentional about following up with the people that I found interesting and wanted to continue to build relationships with and that I found either found their sessions at the conference interesting or compelling, or people that just their personalities I felt like I could, you know, vibe with when we get along. You know, it made sense for us to continue to stay in touch. So when I came back home, I made a list of those people and I followed up with them and got on some calls with some people and, you know, started following them on social media and making sure. You know, I continued to lay eyes on them and come and support what they had going on and they agreed to do vice versa.
Sidney Evans:And one of the young ladies, casey, who is the founder of, could Be Pretty Cool and she does a lot of things in the audio space and I hope to have her on the show for season one as well. She was one of the ones that I connected with and I happened to follow her on Instagram and her close friends. She added me and that's where she would post, post job opportunities to for people to apply to and and try to, you know, progress their careers, and I saw a post as an associate producer, uh, for Tenderfoot TV, which I had never heard of at the time, but I come to. It was. They were a big name as far as podcasting and true crime specifically.
Sidney Evans:But, um, I clicked on the link and and and kind of read up on the position and learn about tender foot and realize like the stuff that they were working on was really edgy and the founders, donald and were like the coolest people in podcasts and that's literally what I thought Like these guys they remind me of, like Babyface and LA Reid in the music industry, and they both had, unknowingly at the time, backgrounds in the music industry, so it just kind of made sense for their persona and I was like, man, I would love to work for these guys. So I interviewed after applying and I ended up getting a job.
Sidney Evans:So I started there in December of 2022 and we worked on some amazing stuff, man, and probably the most thing that I'm most proud of that I worked on and my whole time of podcasting is the Raven, which was a podcast created by Tim Livingston, who's like the head of content at Underdog Sports, and my producer, alex, had an amazing vision for the show. But it really highlighted, like the 2000 Super Bowl murders and Ray Lewis's involvement, which was a story that I remember hearing about as a kid but I didn't really get too many details afterwards and kind of how it kind of correlated with the manner in which the gentlemen who were killed in the Super Bowl murders, had the experience that Tim had.
Sidney Evans:So it was a really great show and that was the only thing sports related I've worked on at my time in my time in podcasting, but it's the thing that I'm most proud of and I was really looking forward to you know I'm most proud of and I was really looking forward to, you know, continuing to grow and the opportunities to work on amazing things and even from a career standpoint, that would come as a result for working for a team and a company as well known as Tenderfoot. And unfortunately, I was let go by Tenderfoot in January of 2024, this year, which was a surprise to me and it was really frustrating because, you know, a lot of people were getting laid off at the time in the industry and it just wasn't a good time to be looking for, like, a new full-time role in the industry, which I still am currently doing, but I still have clients and still continuing to make an imprint in the audio industry.
Sidney Evans:But this allowed time for me to reflect and led me to actually doing this show. So to reel it all in, to put a bow in it, to tie it all in as a result of that experience from being let go from tenderfoot tv and after having the idea to do the show for two to three years, I was like this is the time that I need to do the show. I've been behind the scenes so long, um, and I just feel like I I had, I have a, a great idea with the show and it's time for me to. It's time for me to remove myself from the background and be more to the forefront and give my opinion and and share what I have to say and do it in the context of this podcast and having some amazing conversations with, uh, other black individuals who who work in the context of this podcast, and having some amazing conversations with other black individuals who work in the same field that I work in. So that has led me to this very point in time right now.
Sidney Evans:So, yeah, that's me, that's my journey, that's my experience. I had a lot of ups and downs, but you know we're going, we're keeping it pushing and and I'm going to make this show everything that it needs to be. So thank you for taking the time to listen. If you haven't listened to the sneak peek or the official trailer for the show, I recommend you go back and listen to that before you dive into the rest of the season, just to provide even more context than what I have added here. And yeah, I'm excited for what's in store for the show and I look forward to presenting season one with you all. So stay tuned and I hope you enjoy.
Sidney Evans:Thank you for joining us on today's episode. Please don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you'd like to work with me or connect, please go to soundbysitcom and schedule a call there. You can also check out the full list of productions I've worked on. If you'd like to connect on social media, my handle is soundbysitcom on Twitter and Instagram and I'm Sidney Evans on LinkedIn. Don't forget to follow Beyond the Threshold on Instagram as well. I'll catch you on the next episode.