Ask the Interviewer

That it's a Q and A. Anyone can do a Q and A. Mine are conversations, in person, at festivals and on tour buses, well researched and a lot of fun. Listeners say it often plays like two new friends hanging out and having a casual conversation. I build rapport fast, and that is exactly why artists open up. The interviews have drawn praise across the industry as some of the best and most engaging out there. Sound bites don't get you 500 million listens. Conversations do.

Email is best. Give me the who and the where, and tell me why they'd be a good conversation. Festivals and concerts are prime ground for me, so those dates always get my attention. I interview in person, and I'm easy to work with. Professional, accessible, and I build rapport fast, with publicists as much as with artists. It's a huge part of why the show works.

The conversations with the legends we have lost since. Bob Weir (The Grateful Dead), Oderus Urungus (Dave Brockie) of GWAR, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett (Bob Marley and The Wailers), Toots Hibbert (Toots and the Maytals). I sat with them in person, got them laughing, got stories nobody else has. Those conversations can never happen again. Every year more listeners find them, and they get to hear their heroes the way I heard them: relaxed, laughing, telling stories. I treat every interview like it matters.

It means the person across from you trusts you with their story, and you don't waste it. You do the homework, you listen harder than you talk, and you get out of the way when the good stuff starts rolling.

Email any time. I read pitches in batches and I answer all of them. I'm a busy man with a lot of big projects running, so for festivals and tours, earlier is better. A date six weeks out beats a date six days out, because good conversations take planning. I give every interview its respect and the proper time to prepare for it.

I know this is NSFW, but how did this ever happen? #susanalbumparty. Somebody on Susan Boyle's team launched her album with that and nobody read it out loud first. Read it again slowly. I'll wait. Funniest own goal in PR history, a legend of legends in the hashtag world, and proof you should say every hashtag out loud before it ships.

Howard Stern. I've listened to him since the '80s. He's changed a lot over the years, but he has always been an influence on my interview style: do the homework, get the guest comfortable, and the real conversation shows up. The man wrote the playbook for turning an interview into an event. I would love for him to hear one of mine and know the form is alive and well, with my own spin on it.

The best pitch I ever got was one I sent. It's a toss up between Ziggy Marley and Aston 'Family Man' Barrett (Bob Marley and The Wailers). Bob Marley is my all-time favorite, and both men are tied straight to him. I never took the common 'let's talk about Bob' approach with either of them. I knew the Bob connections would come on their own. I pitched getting to know each man for his own contributions to music and the interesting details of his own life. That respect is why those conversations worked. They didn't just work. Other journalists have told me they modeled their own approach on them.

My approach is part of the change. I go into every interview looking for a fun, authentic, genuine, and engaging conversation with someone most fans will never get the chance to talk to. I see myself as the connection between the fans and the musicians and celebrities. Social media shortened the distance between the two, and my job is to shorten it more. A fan should finish one of my interviews feeling like they were sitting right there with us.