To answer a few of your questions/LOLMoes

As to how I got started doing what I'm doing with the interviews/podcasts. I figured I'd give ya a good answer (although I kind of wrote a short story.. lol).

I have an English/Writing (oddly enough... Shakespeare concentration) and Journalism background. When podcasting was introduced in (05?), I took an interest in it, purely as an experiment. I messed around with it as a way to promote my own music... At the time, I had been working on a solo album. I had only put out a few podcasts, and kept evolving the format, but before I knew it, there was a nice following.

As time went along, I realized that I needed to fuse the performing side of me with the journalism side, and pack it all into the podcast. It took a few years for me to really establish a good listening base (in about a year and a half, I got up to about 20,000 listeners). Industry people and music labels started to take notice of my format (I was the only host on the podcast until fairly recently), and I began getting tons of e-mails and packages from labels all over the world.

For some reason, I decided to take a hiatus from podcasting when the audience was just starting to snowball. I had an itch to finish my album, so I took a good long break from podcasting and anything that had to do with journalism. However, about a year and almost a full album later, I decided to resume the podcasting, but on a much higher level.

Doing interviews and on the scene coverage was a very natural transition. I have no social phobias about talking to anyone, no matter if they are a very well known personality, or an everyday person. Also, I had been a lead vocalist for a band and gotten on stage in front of a ton of people. I've always thought that performing was one of the most exhilarating things in the world. I've been told that I can put people to ease very quickly in a conversational or interview situation, and that's why I've gotten people to open up so quickly to me on the mic.

When I resumed the podcasting gig, I started talking to a ton of industry people, to get a feel of how "Moe Train's Tracks Podcast" would be received on a much higher scale, and I got an overwhelmingly positive response. They had heard my older work, but when I pitched my newer ideas for coverage/interviews/etc, they loved it. A reoccurring comment was that "they don't know anyone who's trying to do what you're doing at the same level while still remaining independent."

So I decided to go balls to the wall and test out the waters... While adding my good friend, Brian aka "King B" as co-host. We have an insane chemistry which results in fun, comedic timing... which is a huge part of our show. (Constant laughter is key.) There are some "pilot episodes" which haven't been heard by the public. I contacted the same people who I had spoken with before, and they loved the changes to the format. In taking some chances, I discovered that there was a format out there that you don't see in mainstream media. Uncensored and "in the trenches" coverage which gets much deeper than the superficial coverage that are too commonplace in today's media.

Bonnaroo 07 was actually the first huge scale operation that we covered (and the only podcast that I noticed at Roo), and interviewed Bobby Weir, Ziggy Marley, Neil Fallon (Clutch), and semi-interviewed Gregg Gillis (decided to party at the Tool show, and danced onstage with him the next night. Later interviewed him in Philly). The interviews went extremely well, and carried it on to Lollapalooza. We interviewed The Wailers, Ghostland Observatory, Slightly Stoopid, and G. Love at Lolla. At Lolla, I ended up doing another change in the podcast formula which is still something that I work with today. At a Lolla afterparty, I found out that there are some M.T.Tracks fans in the form of several Sirius DJ's. The one DJ came up to me and asked, "Hey man... Who are you with? I saw you interviewing some pretty high profile acts!" When I told him, his face lit up. He said, "No sh!t! I know exactly who you are! Great show! Hey man, don't take our jobs!!!" We had a few drinks, and the irony was... I DO want his job.

After Lolla, we interviewed Gregg in Philly. A few months later, we ended up at Vegoose, and interviewed Infected Mushroom (Erez and Duvdev). Unfortunately we didn't get any other interviews at Vegoose, but we decided to cover the fest pretty late in the process. We hooked up with a few people during Vegoose who were very interested in what we were doing, including an editor from a very well known "men's" magazine/site.

Now, there are several PR companies who contact me on a regular basis about me interviewing their bands an getting them exposure on the podcast, but honestly, I don't have time for about 90% of the requests that I get. Although I have a co-host, I still do all of the studio production, as well as conduct every interview. We never work from a script, and and are extremely improv based. We're currently having our website redone by our buddy JM (an inforoo citizen and our next door/campsite neighbor from Roo 07). Once that's done, then we're going to be pitching our coverage to about 3 times the amount of festivals than last year, and also looking for sponsors. We're already in talks with several large media outlets about picking up our show, and in the long run... We want to take our show to Satellite Radio. Although we went from about 20,000 to approx. 52,000 listeners (and easily tens of thousands more misc listens from being featured on the interviewees' sites) in 8 months (makes me very happy), we'd like to make that number MUCH bigger in 2008. I think we can accomplish that by hooking up with a major industry player, but I want to keep all the creative integrity of the show under my control. We believe in a very honest approach to what we say in our podcasts and in the interviews. I don't want that to change.

I hope I answered most of your questions... And finally, there are a few vital life lessons that I've learned in the past few years:

1. Be very passionate in what you do. If you aren't, then people can see right through it.

2. Never be afraid to follow your aspirations. You'll never know what their answer until you ask. What's the worst answer that they could give? "No."

3. Believe in those crazy ideas that you have. Who knows where you could end up?

4. Believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, who else is going to believe in you?

5. Listen. I have a tattoo of the chinese symbol of the Zen meaning of listen on my left shoulder. If you listen with your mind, heart, body and soul, you will TRULY hear. This is so true on many different levels.

6. Laugh and smile as much as you can. It's therapy for the soul.

7. Take the time to experience as much beauty in life as you can find. It's out there manifested in everything that you could think of.

8. You might laugh at this... but "The Secret" works. It's based on the Law of Attraction. I think that it basically gets you focused on your goals... If you want something bad enough, it will happen.

9. Talk to anyone and everyone. You NEVER know who you may end up talking to.

And finally...

10. One Love.

Moe

If anyone has any other questions or anything else that you want to talk about, please feel free to contact me at Moe@TheMoeTrain.com or on AIM at XxMoeTrainxX.