Local Podcast Marks 100 Episodes in a Year

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

It has been a year since Mesquite artists Steve Dudrow and Rochelle Knight released their first episode of The Art Box, sponsored by the Virgin Valley Artists Association. Since that time, the podcast has heard from many guests and had plenty of adventures; including a new host, Linda Harris, who came on board after Knight moved away last fall. So there was celebration in the air this week when Dudrow and Harris posted the 100th episode of The Art Box.

The episode, posted on Monday, June 12, was a fascinating Creativity Roundtable discussion with the two hosts along with local artists Doreen Kincaide, Amy Wells, Floyd Johnson and Tyler Roylance. It is available for download at mesquitefineartscenter.com and on other podcast platforms.

Over the past year, the podcasters have met with a diverse list of guests that reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the fine arts in Mesquite.
They have interviewed the likes of artists Floyd Johnson, Kathleen Birkholz, Chris Picior and many more.

They have also spoken with local performing artists like Linda and Paul Villanueva of the Mesquite Cafe Blues Band; and a group of cast members from the Virgin Valley Theatre group just before their production of “Dastardly Desperate Desperados” last March.

The podcast has then cast a broader net towards creative people outside of Mesquite. Dudrow and Harris have interviewed American television director and producer Shelley Jensen, Hollywood stuntman Chuck Waters, Kansas City artist Greg Summers and many more.

And the podcast has even dipped its toe into the waters of community issues and leadership. They have had interviews with Mesquite Mayor Al Litman, former City Councilman George Gault, Love, Family founder Dana Long and Friends of Gold Butte director Brenda Slocumb.
All of this is just to name a few!

Both Dudrow and Harris agreed that a high point of the past year was their trip to Elko, Nevada in February to document the 38th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. This was done through a grant from Nevada Humanities.

During the weeklong trip, the podcast produced about a dozen episodes highlighting the poets, musicians and performers at the gathering.
“We went to all the shows that we could,” said Harris. “After the shows we would ask the performers to come in and interview with us. We were so busy that we didn’t spend all our allotted food money because we never really took time to eat. We had to send grant money back to Nevada Humanities!”

The Art Box is meant to highlight the arts and creativity in the Mesquite community and beyond. It was originally conceived as a way to bring the arts community together and to get to know each other.

“One of the reasons that Rochelle and I started this originally was to enhance the art community here,” Dudrow said. “I mean, we all come to meetings and we come to exhibitions and then we go home. So nobody really knows each other. So that was one of our pushes; that people would begin to know one another.”

Dudrow and Harris put in a good amount of time on each episode. They usually spend in excess of an hour with each guest.
“We sit down with them and try to just talk to them,” Dudrow said. “That is interesting just in itself sometimes.”

Dudrow said that about 5 hours of editing then take place to get the podcast ready to air. Their target is to get each episode down to about 45 minutes. But sometimes the episodes run longer.
“Sometimes the stories are just so good that you can’t cut them out,” Dudrow said. “So we do sometimes tend to run long.”

From time to time, subjects of interviews have hit an emotional nerve and the conversation veers away from the arts into more personal feelings and struggles of the guest.
“We have had some real tear-jerker episodes where people have shared some really deep feelings about their lives,” Harris said. “It is really a beautiful experience.”

This has led the podcasters to create a spin-off program called Clouds in the Sand. This podcast is sponsored by the Mesquite Womens History and Culture Center and Love, Family.
“Clouds in the Sand is not necessarily arts focused,” Harris said. “Rather it is just whatever people wanted to talk about. It has led to some really amazing and inspiring stories. We hope to get more local involvement with that.

The Art Box has become a popular podcast both in Mesquite and further out. In fact, it even has a small international audience.
“We just hit 10,000 downloads,” Dudrow said of The Artbox. “That isn’t bad for just one year.”
The program has listeners in 48 states and 24 other countries, Dudrow added.

Both Dudrow and Harris are excited about the future of the podcasts and the mission that they have provided in reaching out to the community.
“I think that the podcasts can be uplifting to people who face some of the same struggles and hear about how others have surmounted those struggles,” Harris said. “It teaches awareness, diversity and respecting other people. We are all a community here and anything we can do that helps community members understand one another better, I think it is uplifting to all of us.”

“The great thing about it is that we have new best friends every time we walk away from a podcast,” Dudrow said. “They are people that we know better and we keep in touch with them.”

The Art Box is recorded from a podcasting studio at the Mesquite STEAM Center. The studio was fully equipped through a grant from the Do It Best Foundation.