Back Porch Podcast

Along our musical journey, there are always those songs or even particular bands that have led us on each path we’ve taken. Yeah, that sounds extremely pretentious. However, you know we’re right. And you probably already thought of those bands by the time you’ve reached this sentence.

And that’s why we recorded an episode about it. We wanted to explore and discuss those bands who helped us discover all the other music we listened to.

To do that, we’re joined by our good friend Steve Patrick, drummer of Young Rising Sons. We talk about his band and their new album SWIRL, and we also discuss the music that influenced him.

So take a listen and check out SWIRL. You’re going to like both things.

This week, we’re exploring the one-album wonder. Sure, everyone knows about the one-hit wonders like Blind Melon’s “No Rain” or The Knack’s “My Sharona, but what about the artists who made an entire album that was dynamite and then faded away? 

That’s what we’re diving into. What are some of our favorite albums from artists who found lightning in a bottle one time and why did it never really happen for them again?

We’re joined by our good friend Josh White, former bassist of local band Curse the Mariner and market manager for Unified Beerworks to help navigate the landscape of artists who were outstanding that one time. 

In the episode, Josh, Beam and Corey each nominate three of their personal favorites and then they try to whittle it down to the top five. So come for intelligent breakdowns of emo masterpieces and stay for when they nearly come to blows over nu-metal.

We’re back with our Twin Films series, where we are trying even harder to play into everyone’s nostalgia. We choose the winner of the best 90’s movie about a child who becomes a key figure in a major league baseball franchise.

That’s right, we’re talking Little Big League and Rookie of the Year.

Two movies with highly improbable plot lines, but were childhood favorites of both Corey and Beam.

They are joined by returning guest Sara Senecal, who also happens to be Beam’s wife, to dissect each movie and to determine which film pulled off this theme the best. The winner actually comes as a shock to our judges.

Grab your beer. Grab your hotdogs. But get ready to not be bored with something that involves baseball for once.

While many of us may have huddled around our television last evening to watch the 93rd AcademyAwards, Anthony Hopkins most certainly was not one of them.

Sure, he was nominated for Best Actor for his role in The Father, but he chose to stay in Wales and not pay attention to the awards ceremony whatsoever. He didn't see himself winning.

Well, as we all know now, he actually did win.

This reveal led to a perplexing ending to the Oscars that left a lot of people feeling untethered.

We're joined by our friend Cory Schneider to process everything that happened during last night's ceremony. We really needed it.

In this episode, we reveal the big winner of our very own Academy Awards for Best Sci-Fi film of the 2000s.

It’s a contentious discussion, featuring filmmakers and previous guests Micah Khan and John Yost, but we were able to reach a consensus. And honestly, none of us really saw it coming.

Come for the reveal of the big winner, stay for Micah’s spirited defense of Vin Diesel. Because that’s a thing that happens...

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, we’ve been thinking a lot about what movies get nominated. One genre that seems to always get omitted are science fiction movies. So, we decided to correct that and host our own Academy Awards for Sci-Fi films.

For this go around, we decided to focus on Sci-Fi movies made between the years 2000 to 2009. The one caveat, though, is we focus on the films that didn’t get any recognition from the Oscars. That means no Children of Men, no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, no Avatar. 

None of that.

For this endeavor, we enlisted Capital Region filmmakers Micah Khan and John Yost, who were both previously guests on this podcast. They’re also two very good friends, which is why this episode becomes a little chaotic.

We’re going to be releasing this awards show in two parts. The first being the nominees and the second being the selection of the winner of the 2000s Sci-Fi Academy Awards, which will be released on Friday.

And we are back! With a pretty timely episode, we might add.

With the Academy Awards less than two weeks away, we’re going to be talking about the best in movies from the past year (and change). While the pandemic put a lot of heavily anticipated movies on the shelf, a lot of truly excellent films were released and widely available for people to view in their homes. While it will never quite live up to the excitement of seeing a movie in the theater, the convenience of home-viewing was a salve in a year full of uncertainty.

We’re joined by our good friend Cory Schneider, an avid cinephile who views the Oscars as his Super Bowl, to breakdown all the nominated films and what it means for movies going forward. From there, we dive into the six major categories (the four acting awards, directing, and best picture) to discuss snubs, who we want to win, and who we ultimately think will be going home with the Golden Statue on April 25th. 

If you’re a fan of movies, join us to hear our takes on the past year in movies and check back in with us after the ceremony to hear our reactions to the big night.

This week we wrap up Corey and our guest Zac Howes’ list of their Top 5 Underappreciated Films of the 2000s. These are movies we thought were some real classics here. Some hidden gems, you might say. Unfortunately, not everyone felt that way when these movies came out. We of course feel differently. We want to thank Zac again for not only coming up with the idea for the episode, but also for producing his own list and sharing it with us. Remember, you can do the same and be on the show with us! Sounds fun, right? Also, we’re going to take next week off, so there will be no new episodes. But after that, it’s Oscars season, baby! That felt weird. Again, there are some spoilers. So, be aware...

This week’s episode focuses on a more carefree time period of our lives. A time where we didn’t give a shit what people thought of our movie tastes and we just liked what we liked.

We talk about the movies we loved that apparently others weren’t such big fans of from the 2000s era. And then we rip each other apart for them. Because now we’re adults and that’s what adults do.

This is also the first time our topic is listener generated, as Zac Howes came up with this idea and brought it to us. So, thanks, Zac. This was a great idea.

Give it a listen and let us know your thoughts. Because we all had a lot of thoughts on the movies on these lists.

Also, this has all of the spoilers. Sorry, we probably should have mentioned that in previous episodes.

For this week’s episode, we decided to get weird; we had an idea, and we just had to go with it. After watching some movies and television episodes, we noticed an interesting trend when it came to the portrayal of torture; they were always playing metal music. That got us thinking, if we were faced with “enhanced interrogation”, which songs would break us down and get us to reveal state secrets (we don’t have any of those, but just go with it).

We start off by discussing the United States’ use of enhanced interrogation, before discussing its portrayal in popular culture through movies like Zero Dark Thirty and television series like Ozark and Homeland. From there, we get into the songs that would be detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being, discovering some things about ourselves in the process.

Our good friend Joe Donlon accompanies us on this journey of self-discovery and ends up having to deal with us railing on things he loves.