December 2019 marks the end of a year and the end of Season 9 of The Worst Little Podcast. Trust me: We’re as shocked as you are.

When four of us got together at the little-known Dogwater Studios in January 2011, we truly had no idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Rick shoehorned us into the end of his night, after he was recording a Christian bible study podcast, since the studio was configured for that anyway and bands never book on Mondays. We thought it would be cool to listen to tapes of old Reno bands every week and bullshit with each other and have a radio show without the fetters of the FCC or advertisers: our own radio show where we could act like DJs, like we did as kids with dual-tape cassette AM/FM stereos, but almost for real! On THE INTERNET!

Social media and the digital age were very different nine years ago. Streaming was still relatively new and often limited on all the services. Netflix had yet to morph into the media monster, and Napster and MySpace were still a recent memory. I remember having to explain to people what a podcast was: “It’s a really long MP3 file; just play it,” or “It’s like talk radio, but on the internet and with cussing,” and often explaining what NSFW meant along the way. Often, I had to beg and hound people for weeks or months to get them to agree to come into the studio and on ‘our little show’.

We started simply, with tapes and nostalgia, then an acoustic singer-writer (Danielle French!) sat in with us for our first live performance. Then we upgraded to interviewing bands with CD’s and it snowballed from there. The quick addition of weekly live performances is when we started to really hit our sweet spot. Trios, full 6-piece bands, metal, country, indie, horns, banjos, Tom Gordon, phone-ins and even a not-very-well-thought-out live show all developed out of this little idea we had.

The format, presentation and dick jokes all developed and evolved. After a while we started to realize that the show was more than we thought it was. Not only did people want to listen to the show every week, people wanted to be on it! For the experience, for the recording, for the promo – whatever! We didn’t care; we were delighted that people were into what we were doing. What had started as a fun weekly hobby to promote some shows and remember some good times had become a serious effort to document the current music and performing arts scene in Reno… and create some good times.  

The material, the content, the guests and the music; they were never-ending and still are. We are now an award-winning, 7+ person operation, with hundreds of listeners every week, an editorial calendar that is usually booked 2-3 months out, and thousands of hours of music and interviews with local artists, musicians, thespians, and business owners. Podcasting is a real media platform that is being taken seriously. (Not us, though, we’re still jerks.)

This thing that we do, that you all listen to, is something special to each of us personally. Thank you for supporting us along the way, for letting us into your lives, even if you skip through all the talking and just listen to the songs. It’s ok – that’s why we do it. I hope that we have brought a little joy into your life over the last nine years; you have changed our lives. We hope we mean as much to you as you do us.

We look forward to stepping into the new year and our tenth season with you when we come back from the break. Oh! I should probably mention, we’re taking the next two weeks off from recording in order to enjoy the holiday celebrations. [Insert favored midwinter greeting] Merry Crimbo and a joyous New Year to ye, one and all. Please enjoy this week’s episode featuring the WLP families: Dowds, Martins, Ramirez-s and the Foundlings.

And as always, thanks for listening.