Three Song Stories

Episode 61 - Tara Calligan

 

Tara Calligan is this show’s online content producer and primary in house cheerleader. Her day job at WGCU is social media and digital philanthropy manager - which basically translates to being the station’s Social & Digital Media Maven - she creates and curates all of our social and digital media content, of which there is much.

Tara calls herself a self-proclaimed audiophile, supernerd, Bob Ross Chia Pet aficionado, and Halloween enthusiast...which I can attest to simply from spending time in her office. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism, and wound up at the station after doing an internship.

Episode 60 - Jim Griffith

Jim Griffith is a musician and art center director. He got his M.M. degree from the Juilliard School in 1987, his undergraduate degree from the Manhattan School of Music, and attended Florida State University. He’s been a member of the Hudson String Quartet in New York and director of the New Arts Festival in Fort Myers. He formerly served as principal violist of the New York Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Virtuosi, and he’s played with a bunch of other orchestras around the country over the years. He’s been with the Naples Philharmonic since 1989.

In 1997 he formed a nonprofit called Florida Arts, Inc. in order to create a home for the arts in downtown Fort Myers, and he managed the founding and development of the Sidney and Berne Davis Art Center.

Episode 59 - Caleb Neff

Caleb Neff’s a producer, songwriter, and lead singer of the band Rosaline. He began performing at the age of 10 when his mom forced him to get guitar lessons. He’s worked on, and contributed to, hundreds of recordings over the years. He describes himself as a “Lifelong tone afficanado”, and says he loves weaving old recording equipment into his process. His home base is Juniper Recording in Cape Coral, but he also uses commercial facilities when needed, he says giving the artists he works with the best of both worlds in terms of sound, feel, and budget.

Episode 58 - Marc Davis

Marc Davis’s been a musician for 25 years - he’s spanned genres as diverse as rock, country, reggae and metal. Today, he plays drums, guitar, bass and horns in both original and cover bands, as well as doing some session recording work. Marc is also a trivia quizmaster, host of the trivia podcast Know Nonsense, and a manager in the food service industry...think pretzels. To me, Marc Davis is emblematic of the power of trusting friends' opinions, plus social media, to create a real kind of friendship from a distance. His last message to me as he agonized over his song choices was, “Mike, this has torn my world apart...ha ha ha.”

Episode 57 - Shawna Caspi

Shawna Caspi’s a Toronto-based singer-songwriter who’s doing a swing through Florida to play a few gigs. Tonight will be her first live performance after taking some time away from the road to write and attend the Banff Centre’s Singer-Songwriter Residency in Alberta. She says she loves the landscapes of her travels, weaving them into her songs, and that she also portrays them on canvases as a painter. Her fourth album “Forest Fire” is described as a collection of songs about burning things down and building them up again. 

Episode 56 - John Siddons

John Siddons was born in Switzerland, but lived most of his early life in the UK. He got his degree in French Language and Literature from University of Grenoble in France and served in the Royal Marine Force Voluntary Service from 1958 to 1961. At one point his bio says he “Introduced the King of Saudi Arabia to the concept of high value thematic gifts” in the mid 1970s. He says he was later responsible for equipping a number of palaces in the Middle East with banqueting items of glass, china, silver, and gold. His business dealings in that part of the world came crashing down when the Gulf War began in 1990...and that’s pretty much where we’re going to begin.

We came across John a while back when he was visiting the station - turns out he used to be All Things Considered host here at WGCU when the station was first built on the Florida Gulf Coast University campus - that’s when what used to be WSFP turned into WGCU. We got to talking and Richard and I gave each other a look that meant we knew John was eventually gonna join us in studio.

 

Episode 55 - Nir Kabaretti

Maestro Nir Kabaretti is best known in our part of the world as the Music Director of the Southwest Florida Symphony, but he’s better known around the world as the Music Director of the Santa Barbara Symphony, which he has led since 2006 and he was recently appointed Music Director of the Israel Sinfonietta Be'er Sheva chamber orchestra. Maestro Kabaretti graduated from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and was then appointed Chorus Master of the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, and since then he has done a whole lot - go check out his wikipedia page, for real.

NOTE: in the episode we refer to the Israel Sinfonetta Beer Sheva Festival in Israel. The festival is 3/26 - 4/1 and more info can be found here

Episode 54 - Robin Maher

Lieutenant Colonel Robin Maher is a winged Naval Aviator who has flown Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama as part of the Presidential Helicopter Squadron. He moved to San Diego in 2011, was deployed again in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and commanded Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 361 from 2014 to 2016. He now works for US Special Operations Command up in Tampa.

Robin has been married to his wife Aubrey for 20 years and they have three daughters 14 year old Clarinda, 12 year old Aslynn, and 10 year old Lily. He ends his bio with “I like to surf, run, and perfect my sarcasm.” Robin was two years behind me in school, and his sister Carrie was in my class and we hung with the same kids, and I worked with his mom Connie for several years back in the early 90s - so we go way back, but I haven’t seen him since then, when he he was...well, sort of a pipsqueak, which is I assure you he is no longer.

Episode 53 - Joshua Johnson

Our guest today is Joshua Johnson - a name most public radio listeners are probably quite familiar with by now. Joshua is host of the daily show 1A that’s produced out of WAMU in Washington, DC and distributed by NPR. Joshua was born and raised across the state in West Palm Beach, and he graduated from the University of Miami and got his start in public radio there in Miami.

He hosted the radio series Truth Be Told at KQED,and taught courses in podcasting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

In September 2016 he guest hosted The Diane Rehm Show for two days, and then in November she announced he would be taking over her time slot at the beginning of 2017. We are so, so honored that he agreed to do our little show.

Episode 52 - Mike Kiniry

Mike Kiniry is the co-creator and usual host of this show! Mike is as southwest FL native as it gets, and here in Ft Myers he has worked in Golf shops, tended bar, worked PR for the Alliance for the Arts, and of course, been a radio reporter and host. He has a 13-year-old daughter named Guinevere (who is awesome and has helped produce episodes of this podcast) and if you want to know more about him, START LISTENING!

Episode 51 - Year 1 Review

 

Next week is the show's anniversary and we thought it might be fun for the three of us (Mike, Richard, and Tara) to sit down in the studio and talk about how the year went, what we learned, and which songs from our guests are now part of our own musical histories. 

Episode 50 - David Baker

Lieutenant Commander David Baker retired in 2013 after nearly 44 years of continuous service in the Royal Australian Navy, which he joined as a 16-year-old junior recruit in 1970. Over those decades he served in many different roles and positions, including postings on at least 8 different ships. He's been to South-East Asia, South-West Pacific, the Indian Ocean, Hawaii, Africa, India, Antarctica and the Middle East. He also captained the Royal Australian Navy shooting team, and even once had lunch with the Queen.

We were sitting at a bar downtown one Monday night and I asked him how he had met his wife Marty, who is also a semi-regular film festival attendee, and his response started something like, “Well, I was in Iraq in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces…”

Episode 49 - Megan Kiniry

Our guest today is Megan Kiniry...my little sister.

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Episode 48 - Frank Mann

Commissioner Frank Mann began his career in public service in 1974, when he served eight years in the Florida House of Representatives and four years in the Florida Senate. In 1986, he was his party's nominee for Lt. Governor of Florida.

He and his wife Mary Lee have been married for 58 years. They’ve got a couple of sons who are still local, and five grandkids his bio says he loves to spoil. If Frank Mann is the "dean of Lee County political figures", his mom Barbara B. was the queen of Lee County art figures. She left a whole lot more of a legacy in the local arts community that just her name on the performing arts hall at Florida Southwestern State College. Frank is an active member of Covenant Presbyterian Church, where he has been a member of the choir for more than 50 years.

Episode 47 - Jim Gustafson

Jim Gustafson holds a Master of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University in his home town of Evanston, Illinois and an MFA from the University of Tampa. He is the author of Take Fun Seriously, Driving Home, Unassisted Living, and Friar Fred’s Diary - the first two of which are essays, and the second two books of poetry. Jim teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University. He and his wife Connie live in Fort Myers, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

I first started getting to know Jim during my time at the Alliance for the Arts, where I worked for a while, through a project he spearheaded called Broadsides: Poetry off the Shelf, which combined works of art that were inspired by poems with the poems themselves, creating finished, printed broadsides.

Episode 46 - Bill Metts

Our guest today is musician Bill Metts. Bill started playing finger-style guitar during the Country Blues revival of the 1960s when he fell in love with the music of Taj Mahal, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson and others of that ilk.

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Episode 45 - Rob Preston

Rob’s an airline pilot, with more than 25 years of experience in the sky. Predictably, he’s always on the move. I feel like every time I see him, he’s getting back from Chile, and on the way to Munich, or something like that. Also predictably, he makes the most of his time at home spending it with his family - that’s his wife Amy, and their kids Zach, Sydney, Noah, and Ava. He’s got one of the friendliest families I’m fortunate enough to know, and I’d understand if I only ever saw Rob in passing.

Episode 44 – Charlie Whitehead

Charlie Whitehead was born in Ohio, but raised in Tennessee and Kentucky with three siblings and what he describes as first-class parents. He went to college in Kentucky and South Dakota, playing football and basketball. He never graduated, but says he knows a lot of uneducated folks who did. Charlie worked in the ag business in northern Colorado for a few years – everything from truck-driving to equipment operator to working the pickle docks.
 

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Episode 43 – Leila Mesdaghi

Leila’s an Iranian-Colombian artist who was born in New York City, but raised in Tehran, Iran, before moving back to the U.S. after graduating from Tehran’s Islamic Azad University Law School in 2000. After moving to Florida in 2005 and practicing real estate for 9 years, she took a break from her business to take art classes, where she met artist and professor Dana Roes, and decided to academically pursue her long-time passion for the arts. In 2017, Leila joined the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island as a full-time staff member.

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Episode 42 – Matt Keller

Matt Keller is mostly known as the lead pastor of Next Level Church, but he’s also a writer, podcaster, leadership coach. Like a lot of people in southwest florida – Matt was born in the midwest – Indiana to be specific. He moved here in 2002 when he founded the church – they started in a cafe and then a movie theater – now there are 3 locations here in town. Matt lives with his wife Sarah, sons Will and Drew, and he’s in the exclusive club of people who were on the original guest list of the show.