Meet Vinyl Stallions Podcast

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vinyl Stallions Podcast. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Vinyl Stallions is JJ Russo (Spruce) and Adam Klepzig (Klep). Vinyl Stallions is a podcast about all things music. Specifically, we review albums, concerts and interview people who are immersed in the music industry in one way or another. 

We have been friends for about twenty years. Both of us grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, OH, called Westlake. We both have always shared a love for music and are both amateur musicians ourselves. We even played in a band (Dango Pakies) together for a few months in early 2016. As the restrictions surrounding COVID-19 began to subside towards the end of 2021, we found ourselves going to a lot more concerts together and discussing music on a deeper level. In February 2022, we started Vinyl Stallions to put our conversations out there in a podcast format. It has been an amazing journey since we started this podcast six months ago (8/8/2022 was the six-month anniversary of the show), and we have been lucky enough to meet some amazing people through our show. We continue to work on ways to improve it and are really excited about what the rest of 2022 might have in store for us and the audience. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There are certain aspects of making Vinyl Stallions that are smooth and their certain aspects of making Vinyl Stallions that are challenging. 

The actual conversations are very easy and don’t require a lot of thought or effort on our part. When we review an album, we only pick albums that we enjoy and have a decent amount of knowledge about. It’s so easy to be negative and to make comedy from bringing others down. We are not interested in that at all. There is so much good music out there. We pick albums that we like, and this makes it easier to talk about them. When we review a concert, we just talk about what we saw and observed. When we interview a guest, we just let genuine curiosity guide the discussion and don’t have much of an agenda. All of this is to say that the actual process of content creation is the aspect of making Vinyl Stallions that is smooth and easy. 

What presents a struggle to us is all of the work that goes into it on the back end. For starters, we do not live in the same city. Spruce live in Cleveland, OH and Klep lives in Holland, OH (suburb of Toledo, OH). Cleveland and Holland are about an hour and forty-five minutes apart. We record the podcast over Zoom, which does create a delay from when someone says something and the other person or people hear it. Beyond that, editing videos, managing social media accounts, podcast distribution, and running a YouTube channel all take extra time and effort. These areas are not within our expertise either. We have not tried to profit off of Vinyl Stallions, so paying someone to manage all of that is not an option yet. We have decided to handle it all ourselves and learn how to do all the back-end work as effectively as we can. It is still a challenge at this phase though. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Vinyl Stallions is a podcast about all things music. We review albums, review concerts, and interview peoples who are immersed in the music industry in one way or another. We also have an episode format called Vinyl Roulette. In these episodes, we select six vinyl records that are in our collections at random and listen to them and discuss. We also have a few more episode format ideas that we will be bringing to the forefront soon. 

Vinyl Stallions is something that we do on the side and is not a source of income. Spruce works in sales and Klep works in banking during the day. Vinyl Stallions is our outlet to talk about something that both of us love so much and are extremely passionate about – music. It would be interesting if it could become a source of income eventually, but we are realistic and understand how difficult and competitive that space is. Right now, our primary focus is building an audience organically and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. 

What do you like and dislike about the city?
Spruce (Cleveland, OH) 

Likes: Close to a fresh body of water; tight-knit community of friends and family; relatively easy access to anywhere in the U.S.; great food scene 

Dislikes: Long, dark, and rainy spring; snowy winters 

Klep (Holland, OH) 

Likes: Holland (Toledo) is a three hour or less drive to a lot of major U.S. cities in the Midwest – Detroit (1 hr.), Cleveland (1.75 hrs.), Columbus (2hrs), Cincinnati (3 hrs.), Indianapolis (3 hrs.), Grand Rapids (3 hrs.). This makes it very easy to go to a lot of major concerts that come through the U.S. Almost every tour will have a stop in one of those cities. Additionally, I like that it’s a very affordable place to live and is not too crowded. Everyone is very down-to-earth here. 

Dislikes: There is not as much entertainment or nightlife in Toledo as there would be in a large city. Our options are much more limited. 

Pricing:

• It’s all free

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/VinylStallions
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vinylstallions/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/VinylStallions
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXFZ8nHhuBmrDNOX_5aqWJA
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/7hlG1bgsc5xDVix5dRYaBW

Image Credits
Matt Bogard