Ear of Newt’s Patreon page celebrates its 500th audio post with a 1995 Gord Downie interview

By Steve Newton

I’m not the most intelligent guy around, but there is one very smart thing that I’ve done in my life that I’m quite proud of:

I kept almost all the cassette tapes I used to record interviews with during my career as a music journalist.

I’ve been accumulating the tapes since 1982, literally hundreds of them, and five years ago I started digitizing them and posting them on my Patreon page.

Not all of the interviews are great–in fact some are totally cringe-worthy–but I still get a kick out of hearing myself chatting with B.B. King in 1984 or Ronnie James Dio in 1985 or Dickey Betts in 1991.

Of course when I conducted the interviews I had no plans on them being heard decades later. But being a hardcore music fan, it just meant a lot to me to be able to converse with these talented folks. So I didn’t toss the tapes or record over them when I was done transcribing them for the original articles.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and modern technology did the rest. Thank you Audacity.

I guess I spent way too many hours and days digitizing those old interviews, because today I posted my 500th audio file. Yeah for me! Way to go Newt, I says to myself.

I wanted something special to post to mark the occasion, so I chose my previously unheard 1995 interview with Gord Downie, the late frontman of Canada’s beloved Tragically Hip.

You can visit my Patreon page to learn more about the Downie interview and listen to the full 30-minute audio by clicking here.

And if you enjoy the conversation and would like to help me digitize another 500 more ancient interviews, please consider subscribing.