The Real Deadwood Podcast Blog

On September 13, 2003, Collective Soul came to Deadwood, South Dakota to headline the annual Deadwood Jam. As a member of the Jam Committee, my job was to transport the acts back and forth from their hotel to the festival site (about 5 blocks). That's how I met Ed Roland and Will Turpin. Ed, a good Georgia boy and a fan of the University of Georgia Bulldogs, and I, a good Florida boy and a fan of the University of Florida Gators, talked SEC football and the history of Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial, which he had just returned from visiting. My son, Alex, was with me and Will struck up a conversation with him. He asked him what grade he was in, and my son replied, "I'm a freshman in high school." The rest of the night Will referred to him as "Freshman."

Ed and Will were genuinely friendly and engaging with us (you can't fake that), and more than once that night I told my son, "See, even when you're a rock star, it doesn't hurt to be nice to people." It made a deep impression on Alex, and to this day, he delights in telling people about the time he met the famous rock stars Collective Soul. And I will always remember that night too. I'm not so sure about Ed, who, after their performance, partied hard with Young Dubliners lead singer Keith Roberts upstairs in Saloon No. 10. A few years later, in my role as host of The Real Deadwood Podcast, I interviewed Keith as the Young Dubliners played a repeat engagement at the Jam, and mentioned that night. "Oh yeah," he said, "I almost gave up drinking after that night -- almost." He want on to say that the Young Dubliners did many more engagements with Collective Soul after their Jam performance together.

So to Ed and Will I say "thanks" on behalf of myself and my son. We totally enjoyed meeting you and will always remember how nice you were to us. And as a result, we are excited about your upcoming CD release and new tour this year. I am a follower of you on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/collective_soul) and Alex and I keep track of your progress via your blog (http://www.collectivesoul.com/blog/). We'll be tracking your tour on your website (http://www.collectivesoul.com/live/) as well. Best of luck in all your endeavors -- you deserve it after all your hard work and loyalty to your fans.

And to wrap things up for this post, here are some pictures of Collective Soul performing at the Deadwood Jam on September 13, 2003, including one of Will before he went "punk" (scroll to the bottom of the page): http://classicradiogallery.com/deadwoodjam2003/

Last night I interviewed Marty Nelson, president of the Deadwood Tournament Directors Association and poker manager at Saloon #10 for an upcoming show. He told me about the Deadwood Poker Shootout, a citywide no-limit Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament to be held on April 21, 22, & 23, 2006, with a $200,000 prize pool. But the big news was who would be in town to play in the tournament — none other than W. Earl Brown, better known as Dan Dority, and the incredible Robin Weigert, Emmy nominee for her portrayal of Calamity Jane.

I've known Earl for a couple of years but I just met Robin over the summer when she was among the actors who visited here in June. We sat next to each other at the Sunday night banquet, during which a number of the actors got up on the Charlie Utter Theater stage and either performed or just expressed their gratitude to the town for the way they were treated during their visit.

At one point she started telling me a rap poem she had composed that was so creative and funny that I urged her to record it. In fact, I offered to put a music track behind it in my studio just for fun if she could somehow get the vocal track to me. Then Hawkeye Henson got on stage and asked me to accompany him, so I did. Then he said "You do one." So I did. Then he played another one. Then he told me to play another one, so I did. Where was my trusty digital video camera during all this? In the case on the stage. I was so excited about performing with and in front of the Deadwood actors that I plumb forgot all about taping.

Just when I finished my second song, who should come up to the stage but Robin Weigert, and said "Let's do the rap." So to my guitar accompaniment, she did her hilarious rap, much to the delight of the packed house (as I recall, it was somewhat of a parady of Eminem, his attitude towards women, and his general persona). Not having that on tape was probably my biggest disappointment of the whole weekend.

When it was over and we returned to the dinner table, my wife Mary said “Where’s the camera?” “Oh shit,” I said, and retrieved it just in time for her to tape the rest of the night’s activities, which included the comedy routine by Franklin Ajaye (Samuel Fields, The Nigger General), which is linked on the website video clips page, a comedy performance by Sean Bridgers (Johnny Burns) and Pasha Lychnikov (Blazanov), thank-you speeches by Titus Welliver (Silas Adams) and Peter Jason (Con Stapleton), and the grand finale performance by the entire cast and myself of Earl Brown’s song “Deadwood Hoedown,” which is also linked on the video clips page.

Anyway, to make a short story long, since I’ve heard that Robin is coming back to town all I can think about is somehow getting her rap performance recorded so I can share it on the podcast. That would be just awesome. I hope you will all have the opportunity to hear this masterpiece of rhyme and humor. I’ll do my best to bring it to you.

My wife Mary, who, as you must know by now, is the director of Deadwood's Adams Museum & House, has recently acquired an enormous collection of photos, drawings, maps, correspondence, and other records from the Homestake Mining Co. which was founded by George Hearst. When she asked David Milch in our visit to the set last year for verbal support for the project, David just up and contributed $25,000 toward the project. In gratitude, the Homestake Co. authorized her to send David a framed portrait of George Hearst that has hung in the Homestake offices for over 100 years. He responded with a letter of thanks asking if we wanted some t-shirts and caps. I'm hoping to get one of each to use as prizes for some type of contest on the show. In return I'm sending him a black Real Deadwood Podcast t-shirt. Since he almost always wears a black t-shirt and khaki pants on the set, I'm hoping maybe he'll wear the RDP shirt from time to time to spread the word about the show to the cast and crew.

Also slated to be prizes for a future RDP contest of some sort are Deadwood mugs celebrating the makeup and hair departments sent to us by our friend John Rizzo, Emmy-winning head of makeup for HBO Deadwood. Audio of his acceptance speech, and of the other four HBO Deadwood Creative Arts Emmy award-winners as well, will appear on a future show.

It's just my luck — the very day I post a message that JT LeRoy has agreed to be on my show, an article comes out completely destroying the JT LeRoy myth. I don't suppose JT/Laura/Savannah (see last link in the JT LeRoy post) is going to be in the mood to talk to me about Deadwood with controversy swirling in all directions. Oh well — you win some and you lose some.

The Real Deadwood Podcast got some publicity yesterday and today in the South Dakota media. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper published an article yesterday about the future of radio and how podcasting might be a factor. The reporter called me a couple of weeks ago after seeing a press release I had sent out about the RDP and talked to me for a half hour. Then he asked if I could send him a picture of me doing my podcast, which I did. So for two weeks I've been expecting a pretty cool story, but all I got was one sentence at the end. Oh well — some publicity is better than none. In fact, South Dakota Public Radio saw the article and asked me to be on a call-in show today at noontime to discuss podcasting. Again, I didn't get as much exposure as I'd hoped, but again, some is better than none. Little by little the word is getting out.

My wife Mary, the director of Deadwood's Adams Museum & House, was interviewed a while back by a writer named JT LeRoy for a travel article. JT mentioned that he was at the HBO Deadwood set, that he was writing an episode for season three, and that his son was to be in the show. Since then JT Leroy has caused quite a stir in the press. It seems that some people think he is actually a she — the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax over a number of years. Here are some links to some articles to fill you in:

• Who is the Real JT LeRoy?


• A Novelist's Novelist


• Pondering the real or fictive JT LeRoy


• Soul-baring fiction author J.T. LeRoy plays with gender — and identity. Does it really matter who he is?


• The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She


• Her Journey, All True

Personally, I don't really care what gender JT LeRoy is. Anyone who is smart enough and creative enough to get this much attention is my kind of people. Anyway, after receiving the monthly newsletter from the jtleroy.com website (where you can buy a t-shirt that says "I am the real JT LeRoy"), my wife emailed JT, gave the address of The Real Deadwood Podcast, and asked if s/he would agree to an interview. And guess what? The answer was, "I would love to! Please let me know when... I can't talk about the new season much." Hey, that's OK. I think I'll be able to come up with some other questions. You will definitely want to keep your eyes and ears peeled for this show.

The Deadwood Blog is a weblog by and for HBO Deadwood background players. As the weblog progresses, it will introduce some of the great guys & gals involved in the show and many of the wonderful talents and stories they possess. Beyond the obvious examples of actors and the plays, shorts, and independent films some are involved with, there are writers, artists, photographers, musicians, lawyers, war heroes, mechanical engineers, true cowboys, graphic designers and more, who add realism by populating the background of many of the shots in the show. Last week I emailed Michael Schaefer, who maintains the blog, about possibly including a link to the Real Deadwood Podcast along with other links he has to various Deadwood SD websites. He responded by doing a glowing post about RDP and emailing me to stay in touch. Thanks go out to him and his crew. I hope I'll be able to interview him and many other background players for the show.

We received some DVDs of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards show from John Rizzo the other day. John is the head of makeup for HBO Deadwood and won an Emmy along with Janie Bryant for costumes, Maria Caso for art direction, Carol Pershing for hairstyling, and James Glennon for cinematography. I'll be pulling some audio from the discs so you can hear the HBO recipients accepting their awards. But the real Deadwood won too! Production Designer Maria Caso and Michael Kelley, Assistant Art Director, arranged for my wife Mary Kopco and the Adams Museum to receive a commendation from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences "for contributing to the Emmy Award-winning achievement: Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series" for Episodes 4, 5, and 8 of the second season. It's quite a well-deserved honor for all the hard work the Adams Museum does providing research of all kinds to HBO to assure the historical accuracy of the show.

The big news over the last few days is that Deadwood will not start its third season in March as was originally scheduled, but will be delayed until June so that a new show produced by Tom Hanks called Big Love, about a polygamist with three wives, can get the Sunday at 10:00 spot right after The Sopranos that Deadwood was supposed to have. Instead Deadwood will itself be a lead-in at 9:00 for new episodes of Entourage and another new show, Lucky Louie. We hate the delay but we love the earlier time slot. Now the only place to come for your weekly Deadwood fix until June is the Real Deadwood Podcast.

I figured out how to get into multiple categories in iTunes, so now we're in

• Arts & Entertainment
• Audio Blogs
• Movies & Television
• News
• Talk Radio
• Travel

That's because the Real Deadwood Podcast brings all this and more every week. I also registered with iPodder.org in multiple categories today. Many more to come.

Last night iTunes listed the podcast in their directory. I have changed my mind about the category — I want to change from "Travel" to "News" since I think that reflects the content better, plus "News" gets front page billing and "Travel" doesn't. I added a button to the website pages that takes the user directly to the podcast page in iTunes for easy subscription. Now it's up to you to click that button and get iTunes to start paying attention to us.

Last night I submitted the podcast to iTunes and now I'm waiting for them to approve it. I put it in the "Travel" category since it's promoting the town of Deadwood as a tourist destination and all-around cool place.

Today I'm completing the packaging of the DVD I've created from footage of the HBO Deadwood actors during their visit this summer. I'm sending it to them as a remembrance of the fun we had when they were here. I'm also hoping they'll show it to cast and crew members who weren't able to make the trip in hopes they will come next summer. At the end I've included a message informing them of the podcast and asking them if they'd be willing to be a guest via Skype. They won't finish shooting season 3 until Feb-Mar so they may be too busy to respond until then. We'll see what kind of response I get.