I recently spoke with WAMC’s Susan Barnett for her show 51% – The Women’s Perspective. She asked me about freelancing and gave a nice shout out to my site Freelance Cafe. It was fun to be on the other side of the mic for a change!

This was Episode 1220, broadcast on November 29 at 8pm and again on December 5 at 3pm.

Here’s a blurb about the show:

In America, women make up more than half the population. Worldwide, women are expected to outnumber men within the next fifty years. And every issue we face is one that affects us all. 

Whether it’s the environment, health, our children, politics or the arts, there’s a women’s perspective, and 51% is a show dedicated to that viewpoint. 

Host Susan Barnett talks to experts in their field for a wide-ranging, entertaining discussion of issues that not only fall into the traditional ‘women’s issues’ category, but topics that concern us all as human beings and citizens of the global community.

Tune to 51% weekly throughout the U. S. on public and community radio stations, some ABC Radio Network stations, Armed Forces Radio stations around the world and on the Internet. 

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I have done dozens of tape syncs as a freelancer and I rarely get to hear how the tape I gather gets used. But this time was different. My friend and fellow j-school graduate Tamara Keith needed sound from Schoharie, NY, a city that was hit hard by Hurricane Irene. So I drove up there and met Harold Vroman and Alicia Terry, held the mic while Tamara interviewed them over the phone from DC, and then had them show me around town. I sent the tape to Tamara from the parking lot of the Schoharie Free Library, and she wrote this story.

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Introducing my most recent work – Nikolai Lobel Woulfin, born on Mother’s Day. He joins my three-year-old son Ezekiel as the focus of my other full-time job. My friend and colleague Catherine Girardeau of Earprint Productions will be filling in for me at Distillations while I’m on leave this summer, though I’ll continue posting the shows here. I have some interesting new projects brewing for the fall, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things once I start getting more regular sleep.

Yet another award for Trey Kay’s The Great Textbook War. This was a biggie – the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards – celebrating the year’s best in broadcast journalism. Trey invited the whole team to celebrate with him at the awards ceremony in NYC, hosted by the Today Show’s Lester Holt and CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. (I got to shake her hand!) It was such a treat to share the stage with such a talented group of journalists (mostly super-slick TV folks and this ragtag band of indie producers.) And so great to meet fellow producers Deb George and Anna Sale, and to hang with Jonathan Mitchell again. Go indies!!

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I just completed this piece for the 2010 Third Coast Festival Short Doc competition.

All You Need Is a Wall: A meditation on big changes, building walls, and breaking them down again.

This year’s assignment:

For the 2010 ShortDocs Challenge – Book Odds – we teamed up with The Books, IOHO one of the most inventive and creative bands making music today. With the help of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong we chose eight audio samples from their vast library of sonic offerings, and four song titles from their record The Way Out. Then we issued an open call to “make radio” – short audio stories including at least two of the samples, and named after one of the song titles: “A Cold Freezin Night,” “All You Need is a Wall,” “Chain of Missing Links,” “I Didn’t Know That.”

words/sounds

- buzz note
- strange town
- winding coinbox
- with youououou

sonic doodads

- clarinet clock loop
- eros vibraphone
- note manual
- scaledown

I chose All You Need Is a Wall, inspired by the many stone walls I see in my new home in upstate NY, and my neighbor Jody, who used to be a stone mason.

As a freelancer, there are so few opportunities to do truly creative work with sound. The folks at Third Coast give us an opportunity to do just that – to think about sound in new ways, challenging us to break out of our day jobs and get creative. The winners get all expenses paid to the conference in October, but for me, it’s not about winning. It’s about doing a piece that I feel good about. (Incidentally, I didn’t win. But I had a great time at the conference.)

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Every couple years, the Third Coast Festival sponsors the “Short Doc” competition – to find the best short audio pieces, 3-minutes or less, around a certain theme. In 2007, this was the assignment:

Dollar Storeys invited seasoned producers and radio fans alike to submit short audio works inspired by one of three items purchased at a dollar store: a ceramic mug sporting a feisty feminist message, a 4-pack of wooden mousetraps, and an old-school bicycle bell.

I chose the bike bell, inspired by my friend Arwen, whose bike (and bike bell in the shape of a burger) was stolen many times in San Francisco.

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The Great Textbook War keeps raking in the awards – this time a 2010 National Edward R. Murrow Award. Go Trey! (Trey Kay is the producer and brain behind the doc and the guy who hired me to help out.) I’m so honored to have my name in the credits, and I’m so thankful that Trey brought me on board.

I had the great fortune to work on this hour-long radio documentary with producer Trey Key, who won a 2010 Peabody Award for the piece. Trey recorded his scratch tracks in my new home studio, and I’m hoping that sets the bar high for the work that will be produced out of there. I edited the scratch tracks and did a rough mix of the full doc which was a lot of fun. Great to work on a project that gets some well-deserved recognition! Listen to the final, full-length doc here.

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