I met Sue Kittredge and Steve Reeths at a party on my birthday—it wasn’t MY birthday party but it was a party ON my birthday—about 20 years ago. We found we had a lot in common in regard to music. Steve and Sue had played in the Muskegon area for quite some time and had been very successful, especially with bands like Solid Ground, which was a powerhouse country band, and Amaryllis, which is a legendary local band. And I was in a band called The Swinging Stem Cells. ‘nuff said. When I got a chance to go see them play, I was taken by the fact they were very professional and both really, really

good musicians. As you’ll see in the podcast, they got to those places in different ways. The thing that I value about them besides the friendship, is that they’re really professional about the way they approach music. They have the customer in mind like lots of companies would like their people to have the customer in mind. They’ll do anything to make sure people have a good time listening to the music, and generally speaking, when you go to see Steve and Sue play, in any of the bands they’ve been in, you’re going to have a good time because they’re that good. I couldn’t have asked for better teachers, mentors, examples as to how to go about the music business than these two.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. It’s the first podcast we’ve done as a remote. Talking to Steve and Sue, you’ll be able to tell by some of the background noise at their home in Florida that I was talking to them from the palatial studios of the Park Podcast. There are some glitches, clicks and a guy on a motorcycle decided to find out what his engine can do but I generally think it’s pretty good. The bird sounds are great and no, I did not put them in there for effect. They’re actually real birds. But it worked out as well as should be expected and I think we’ll probably get better and better as we’re forced to do podcasts remotely.