#TMITuesday: 10 Questions With Midnight Looms Creator & Host Gobs aka Music’s Boyfriend

Ah yes, the time has come again where the interviewer has become the interviewee! Typically it is I who is being interviewed by this week’s feature on his show Midnight Looms as the resident pop culture babby.
I switched up the roles this week and I let y’all get to know Gobs just like I do (okay not JUST like I do because we go back about 10+ years tbh). We’re chatting about music, fears, and rap in this all-new interview.

CHEGGITAWT!

1. Let’s pretend I don’t know what Midnight Looms is, pitch the show to me.

Midnight Looms is the ultimate podcast for adventurous late-night music lovers. We play all genres and all eras, but also pack every play list with brand new sounds. Each episode features conversations and/or performances from bands, DJs, rappers, producers, creators, and activists, or we play song suggestions from members of our growing community. It’s a weekly Journey-By-DJ through the music from the end of the world.

2. Since today is #TMITuesday is there something about you that readers may not already know? Hidden talents? Guilty pleasures?

People are always shocked when they find out how old I am, and my initial impulse is not to broadcast it, but I think we need to change the culture around aging. It really should feel wonderful to grow older, and I want to support that idea, difficult as it may be, so here it goes, Nikki…. I am a middle-aged man. Okay, the “man” part is up for debate, but I’m definitely middle-aged.

3. Whenever I’m on your show we talk about rap, so what is your current favourite rap song?

My fav track of the past year is Walking In The Snow by Run The Jewels. As for this moment, I love Nola Bounce and I’m all about Payback 2.0 by CeeFineAss. Also, Lexa Terrestrial’s Sukoshi is criminally underrated.

4. Okay, who is your celebrity crush?

It used to be Yolandi, but then sh*t got weird. I shouldn’t say this, because I’d love to interview her, but I have a pretty sick crush on Lights.

5. You’re very open about your dislike of Amazon, what are some of your favourite small businesses to support?

Well, first of all, I’d like to say please support NOT-AMAZON.CA and let’s grow the site until they’re in every major market on the planet! I buy almost everything at THE UNBOXED MARKET. Packageless groceries are the future or we have no future. PEOPLE’S CHAMP VINTAGE is the place to go for clothing. PLAYDEAD CULT for art and home furnishings. Java junkies need to check out DARK CITY COFFEE and if you’re ever in the Oshawa area, DEADLY GROUNDS has to be the most awesome coffee shop in the world. You know I like my drink. I mostly buy cider, in refillable jugs, from SPIRIT TREE, in Caledon, and I’m all about HOUNDS black vodka, which is made in Ontario.

6. Speed round:

cats or dogs? Dogs

water or juice? Water

fave colour? Is matte black a colour? No it’s not…. So purple.

go-to snack? Neal Brothers Hot-Hot-Habanero Salsa with fresh, locally made tortilla chips.

7. This pandemic has been hard on so many, what is an average day like for you?

I’m so lucky because the pandemic has not had any kind of major effect on my day-to-day life. The biggest downer is that I have to do online interviews for Midnight looms, which honestly suck compared to proper, face-to-face conversations, and it’s hard to get in-studio performances happening because we’re in and out of lockdown, but also because there are no acts touring, and obviously no events. Performances and interviews are such a big part of the show. Also, Radio Western has been closed for almost a year. I really enjoy being at the station. But outside of that, I stay home and stand in front of a computer all day listening to music just like I would normally. That sounds boring in writing but it’s what I love to do.

8. How do you prepare an episode of Midnight Looms?

Well, I Shazam every song that I like so I have this huge library of everything for reference. That’s the start. I choose guests based on new releases and Sophy, our producer, reaches out to their PR people to see who’s interested in coming through. Once we have guests booked and interviews/performances recorded, I spend way too much time agonizing over a playlist of songs that will compliment the guest’s music and also meet our content requirements. Once the songs are selected, I download them from the radio station’s library, or my own, or I buy them. Yes, I buy music. Loads of it. Support the artists you like, kids. Music is so cheap. There’s no justification for stealing it. Anyways, I digress. Once I have the tunes, I mix them all together in Ableton and interviews get arranged using Final Cut. Next, I figure out what I want to talk about and make notes. The time is so tight on this show, so everything really needs to be prepared in advance as much as possible. Finally, we broadcast, on Radio Western, and the recording gets posted as a podcast after. There’s all sorts of other tasks that need to be completed surrounding the broadcast, like paper work, picking and editing still images and promos, writing the episode description, prepping media and giving notes to our video editors. Thank goodness I don’t have to do much social media stuff. We have a great member of the team (Kate) who takes care of that. All together, it’s pretty much a full time job, if it were a job, which it’s not, because it way too much fun to be a job. Okay, maybe it’s a job, but a fun one, and rewarding and important too. What were we talking about?

(Take a peek at my latest appearance here)

9. What is your biggest fear?

Disability, I guess. Anything that would make me unable to keep going and working at the pace that I currently am would be detrimental to my plans, and I have BIG plans.

10. What’s next for you?

Those big plans I just mentioned. We’re working on major level ups for Midnight Looms. I wish I could talk about them but nothing is quite ready to announce yet. Big ideas take time. We’re close though. I can tell you that I really like live video streaming and we’re planning to incorporate lots of it into the brand. I can’t wait to tell people about what’s coming. Eeeeeee!

In the meantime checkout the killer lineup and tune into the show TONIGHT!