I just uploaded the first 2006 RanchoCast podcast.

I play some good, off the beaten path songs, including one off Dan Zanes’ first solo record, a Scruffy the Cat number, an excellent John Starling song and a song about my son Luke’s favorite pastime.

I did a new installment of our RanchoCast podcast last night.

The theme is hard to find. I played some rare and hard to find songs by The Del Fuegos, Dancing Hoods, my friend Steve Young, Fever Tree and The Judys.

A word about the music files: I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I am trying to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. These are low bitrate MP3s. I am experimenting with podcasting as a way to promote alt. county music. Go buy these records. You’ll be glad you did.

I did another podcast last night.

This episode contains a short review of the Rolling Stones concert and songs from my three new discoveries: Bucktown Kickback, Chuckanut Drive and The Cigar Store Indians. It also has a classic number by Jesse Colin Young and one by my friend Baker Maultsby.

A word about the music files: I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I am trying to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. These are low bitrate MP3s. I am experimenting with podcasting as a way to promote alt. county music. Go buy these records. You’ll be glad you did.

I did another podcast last night.

The theme for this one is cover songs. I play some great covers by X, Iris Dement, Gerald Collier and even a cover of a song that Ronnie Jeffrey and I did a few years ago.

A word about the music files: I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I am trying to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. These are low bitrate MP3s, and none of our prior podcasts are archived. In fact, the only RanchoCast that will ever be available is the then current one. In other words, I am experimenting with this technology as a way to promote alt. county music. Go buy these records. You’ll be glad you did.

I’m starting to get the hang of this podcasting business. First a word for those of you who don’t know a podcast from a forecast…

Podcasts are audio files that can be downloaded and played on iPods or other portable music players. You can also listen to the podcast over the web (e.g., at your computer) by simply clicking the Listen icon on the podcast page (see the link below).

If you are new to podcasts and want to try to take one on the road, you need a software program to download the podcast and transfer it to your music player. I recommend iPodder, but there are lots of other programs that do the same thing. Remember, you only need this program if you want to listen to the podcast on your portable music player. To listen while working at your computer all you have to do is click on the Listen icon.

In that regard, I have done Beta 3 of our new RanchoCast podcasts. On this one, Cassidy and I play 7 songs, including a rocker by the Drive-By Truckers, some Richard Buckner, the song Cassidy is named after and a live John Prine song that will blow your socks off.

All in all, I’m pretty sure I can make some good podcasts, as I get more comfortable behind the mike. What I don’t know is whether there’s an audience for this sort of thing. Time will tell.

A word about the music files: I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I am trying to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. These are low bitrate MP3s, and none of our podcasts are archived. In fact, the only RanchoCast that will ever be available is the current one. In other words, I am experimenting with this technology as a way to promote alt. county music. Stated simply, please don’t let your record labels sue me.

When it rains it pours. I did another beta of our RanchoCast podcast tonight.

Update: Here’s the list of the episodes that survived.

This one actually has a discernable theme- great songwriting. It has songs from Steve Pride, The Star Room Boys and others. It even has a musical history lesson about Jesse James.

So far it’s just me on the mike, but Cassidy has promised to do a podcast with me this weekend.

Feedback is welcome- if the sound is bad, let me know. If I sound like an idiot, I already know that and am working on it.

I trashed my first stab at a podcast and replaced it with the beta version of the now renamed RanchoCast.

Update: Here’s the list of the episodes that survived.

This one only has 3 songs, including one of mine- Haunted House, which I co-wrote with Ronnie Jeffrey. It’s still in early beta, so we’ll see if and how things progress.

I am beginning to formulate a plan for how this podcast might work. Cassidy recorded some on the microphone tonight and seemed to enjoy it. My plan is to implement a family podcast, with everybody selecting a song each week- sort of like Fred Wilson does.

It’s going to have to be fast and easy for me to do it regularly. I’m not there yet, but the fact that I’m considering a regular podcast shows that I’ve come a long way.

After I crapped all over podcasting, I went and tried to make one.

Here is the very alpha version of my first KentCast. This is just 5 songs that happened to be in my Playing Now window when I hit the button.

I’ll post more later, but I believe the combination of the soon to be released version of Media Center, which I have used for years as my primary music player and highly recommend, and King Sparta’s Podcast Creator Plug-In may just be the tools needed to make podcasting easy enough to be useful.

We still have the elephant in the room, and I’ll take this podcast down after I test it in favor of some other stuff that I might actually have the right to podcast. But at least I can now create a podcast with a push of a button. Now if I can just find something I can legally podcast that anyone would want to listen to.

UPDATE: I tested and deleted that podcast and replaced it with the beta version of the now renamed RanchoCast.

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