Jeff Woods: Bi The Book

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Sound Off Podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast - starts now. 

Matt Cundill  0:13  
This week, my good friend Jeff Woods returns to talk about everything he's done since he was last on the show. And he was last on the show in June... Of 2016. Back then, we were posting the show on SoundCloud, I wrote two lines in the description, and while my memory told me that we spoke for at least 60 minutes, it was actually about 22 minutes. There was no video, no transcription, no producer, no website. And I think to myself, what was I doing? Jeff's got a radio show called Records and Rockstars, also a podcast of the same name, and a book that was released in 2016. And we fast forward to 2024 and Jeff's got a new book on the way, called Being Bi. So three things. One, you want his radio show on your station, no matter what country that station is located in. Two, you want to follow his podcast. And three, you want to contribute to his Kickstarter, because you get a copy of the book too. The details on all those things are in the show notes of this episode. Now, Jeff Woods joins me from Wildwoods Blue Studio near Collingwood, Ontario. Jeff, give me a history of the Records and Rockstars show since about 2015, when Corus decided that people didn't like to hear stories on the radio anymore.

Jeff Woods  1:25  
I love that. But one person, of course, who's probably been in and out of that building many times. Yeah, interesting story. That certainly is detailed well, in my book of 2016, my first book of nonfiction, in which I pulled no punches. So yes, Legends Of Classic Rock ran 14 years, as you know, and in 2015, summer of, somebody decided people didn't care about music history anymore. Quote, the gentleman in question. And that's fine. You know, it was the greatest gift I ever had was not doing that show for that company anymore. So the history is, that happened. And then I spent some time thinking, as one does after 18 years with a corporation, or 18 months, or 18 minutes maybe, and thought, why don't I relaunch the show with a different name? And effectively, it's the same show, only a little different. You know why, Matt? Because it was a classic rock show. And I have an interest, like a lot of people do, in a very broad selection of music. So I say untethered by genre, or era. And I basically focus on a theme. And whatever makes sense within that theme. It could be 1920s blues, it could be late 1990s rock, it could be anything in between. And if it relates to the theme, it becomes part of the show. So we are nine seasons in as of September 2024. And it's done really well. The best thing about it, to go back to my point full circle on best thing that ever happened to me was getting let go from a major corporation. They of course, as you know, generally, almost all the time, own everything a radio hosts does for the company, whether it's a show they do from mid days, or evenings or mornings, or specialty content, like interviews, and especially programs like Legends Of Classic Rock, or Records and Rockstars. And so I own all this stuff. So that's a wonderful thing to have as an independent content creator, so called, to own the thing that you do.

Matt Cundill  3:29  
And so you've got the podcast, but it also goes out to select radio stations, those who sign up for it and those who want to run it, weekly? Daily?

Jeff Woods  3:39  
The radio show has the vignettes, which are effectively promos for the hour long show, and there's five of those a week that relate to the week's theme, and the stations sign up and they play the daily features anytime they like, as many times as they like, and some of them run them three or four times a day. And then it all leads up to the weekly weekend show typically. And with the help of my good friend, Matt Cundill, you may have heard of him, we launched a podcast some years ago, which is three things that includes a reworking, somewhat, of the weekly radio show into more of a 20 minute rather than a one hour show. And it's been received really well around the world. And it typically is top 20 every week in Canada for music interviews, and in the top 100 for music across Canada on Apple. So I'm, you know, encouraged by that. And I'm really glad- I almost look forward to cutting the podcast as much as doing the actual show, because a lot of people can't listen when it's on the radio, so they can listen anytime they want from wherever they want on the podcast.

Matt Cundill  4:45  
So credit to you. This is a remarkable thing you're doing, in that- here's an hour of content for the radio. We can put some commercials in, but the podcast is- it's quite condensed. 20-30 some odd minutes. It's very bingeable. I've caught myself listening to it on trips, driving around town. And I'll be honest, I've never heard the show on the radio or terrestrially. So I didn't know that it was created so differently for different experiences.

Jeff Woods  5:15  
It's funny, once I started releasing it as a podcast, which wasn't until five or six seasons in at least, I started writing the show for radio a bit differently with the podcast in mind. Listeners wouldn't pick up on that. But it just works better for a podcast. And I think the best thing about that is, sometimes there's just too much to fit in an hour long show. So I have extra stuff that doesn't go on the radio, that's podcast only. I can go a little deeper and a little broader and a little longer digging into a theme when it's for the podcast. So it's like bonus content, as it were. I love doing that.

Matt Cundill  5:50  
So the money person in me is like, can't we get a mid roll into this show so that we can interrupt people's experiences and hit them with a mattress ad? Or a donut ad? And the answer is no, because you've written the thing to flow continuously as one long listen.

Jeff Woods  6:05  
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I try not to. And here I'm doing it right now. I try not to have pregnant pauses in a performance, which is, you know, delivering a radio show, just so that I'm not wasting people's time. A little pause is great for a little bit of drama. But generally, yes, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, done. Next. I respect people's time. And it's just my style, too, isn't it? After all these years,

Matt Cundill  6:32  
Give me the process on how an episode comes together. So when you and I worked together to do the six o'clock Rock Report, there was research writing, then you'd look at my writing, you'd send it back to me to say, can you rewrite this, we would do that twice. And then we would present it on the six o'clock rock report, at which point there was hope I would be reading the right story, which didn't happen twice. But this is podcast and also radio. So what goes into putting together the full show?

Jeff Woods  6:58  
Listen, before I say so. I'm happy to tell you. We had so much fun on the radio doing the Rock Report in Edmonton all those years ago on The Bear, and kudos to you for being a really fun co-host to work with. We laughed. Jake Daniels was my co-host in the afternoon, you became my co-host on the Rock Report. It was so fun. So that's where I kind of started doing these shows, music intensive shows with storytelling, because the boss there understood the value of music, and understood that people actually really did want to hear about the history of music, and some opinions around it, which more and more, Matt, has become my thing because anybody can get the information. That was maybe probably the point of that national guy at Corus. You can go on Wiki and get all that info. Why do you need to have a radio show about it? Because it's my perspective, my place in the world, I've been around a while. But putting the show together is so fun. What I say is when I do a regular show from noon to six on Sunday, I spend about eight hours putting a six hour show together. With this program, this one hour Records and Rockstars- see, I'm still going back to Legends of Classic Rock, old habits never die. I spend about a day and a half on one hour. Because you'll start so broad when you do research, you want to know everything there is to know, everything you can find, everything you can think. You want to investigate everything you can within a theme. And then you want to boil it down to what's the most important thing and you know who taught me that? Specific to writing books, but it's also specific to writing scripts for radio shows or television. It's what does the reader or the listener or the viewer need to know? What's important here? So you start so broad after three, four or five hours of listening and reading and thinking, you start a script, and then the script becomes smaller and smaller. So it can fit in the confines of a one hour radio program. That's what I do.

Matt Cundill  8:55  
In terms of research. Do you ever use AI? Or do you just use JWI?

Jeff Woods  9:01  
I haven't given in to using AI. You go on Google or whatever web browser you use, and it's always pushing it on you and I go, fuck off. Get off my screen. I click it off, because the fun of doing radio- wish Bob Mackowycz were here to comment on this, rest in peace, Bob. The fun of doing it is doing it. It's not having someone else do it for you. I've never really had a researcher and I certainly don't need AI to write my stuff. How can I become better at doing what I do if someone else is doing it for me? That's sort of my attitude. I like the process. I like the work.

Matt Cundill  9:36  
I mean, there's a risk if you use AI that you'll probably be fed your own work.

Jeff Woods  9:41  
There's that. That would be funny. I should try just for fun. And I have people doing demos for me all the time, saying check this out. It's so much easier. Imagine the amount of work you could accumulate and content you could build without all this work you're doing, and I'm like, well, it's not that much work. It's a day a week to do an hour long program, which becomes a podcast. That doesn't seem too daunting to me, I love the work. 

Matt Cundill  10:05  
Talk to me a little bit about Bob Mackowycz, because you just mentioned him. He was quite instrumental in your career, especially getting into Q107. And he recently passed away. But there were a number of people who I know, chimed in. I didn't- I only met him one time when he was pitching satellite radio in 2003, it was my only encounter with him. But talk about Q107 and you meeting him.

Jeff Woods  10:26  
Well, you know, the reason I got into radio in the first place, Matt, was late 70s, early 80s. Just listening at home in my bedroom as a teenager, thinking I wanted to get into the music business. That was a tough business to crack into at that time, because it was so highly lucrative, and everybody wanted in. So I thought, that's down the road, and it was down the road. But now what can I do? I was a musician, and I didn't want to go touring either. And I didn't have the confidence to do that yet, either. So I thought, what about radio? What about what Bob Mackowycz does? Because he was my favorite guy on the radio. He had great passion for music. He had great delivery. He seemed to be having a good life. He seemed happy about what he was doing. And he was really good at it. Nobody sounded like Bob, his delivery. Mostly his passion, though, and his knowledge. I mean, there are DJs that will tell you, radio hosts that will tell you, that they learned so much from Bob Mackowycz. I learned so much before I got into radio and so much after. The way it went down though- I was working in Halifax and I wanted to be back in Ontario. So without a job, I just moved back. I resigned and moved back. I work for my dad's kitchen cabinet manufacturing plant in Scar-beria, Ontario. But in the meantime, I sent tapes out and one of them went to Bob Mackowycz at Q107. And the phone rang and my dad came out and he had a big smile on because he knew Bob's name, and he knew how much influence he had on me getting into radio in the first place. My dad said, Bob Mackowycz, line one. And of course my face lit up. I had been making kitchen cabinets for six months as an interim gig. Bob had me in a couple days later and said I want you working here. You remind me of me, and I want you on the team, and I think you'll be great. And he said, you know what I want you to do? I said what, Bob? And thank you. But what? He said, Frost- Andy Frost does 9am to 6pm Psychedelic Sunday on Q. He goes, he needs a break. Who- he's on the air for nine hours live. Can you do noon to six and Andy can do nine to noon? Course I was in my 20s and thinking, that's a big shoes to fill. And the answer's yes. So the next week, I went to the radio station and started. Here's what happened though. This happens to me a lot in this business. All the businesses. Three months in, Bob resigned. He'd had enough of management and radio. So he left. I said you can't leave, you hired me. You're my guy. He said, I know. Will you help me pack the office? He goes, here's the keys to my Saab. I've had a couple of drinks, I need you to- I need you to drive my stuff to my house. So I thanked him. And then I carried on doing my thing. That's a whole other story that's in my first book, as you know. 

Matt Cundill  11:27  
Where did he go? 

Jeff Woods  13:08  
Bob then went where? He had a- he had a pretty colorful career after that, that meandered in and out of radio. There- was there some satellite involved? There was a station out west involved. He came back to me years later and offered me a programmer's job in Vancouver at a new station. And I said I just got back to Ontario, having already done my stint in Vancouver. As much as I appreciate the offer and you still believing in what I do, I don't want to go back out west right now, because I just got here. I'm back in Toronto, and I love it. And so I said, why don't you hire my good friend Patrick Zulanov? Or maybe my good friend Eric Samuels? Patrick got the job. So it's how good you are and who you know. And Bob knew that. We all knew that.

Matt Cundill  13:50  
How hard is it, with the show that you have, to get the attention of program directors to air the show? And what do they tell you when they're saying no? 

Jeff Woods  13:59  
You know, I don't do a really thorough job of trying to attract new radio stations. The ones that have come to me have come to me because they've heard about the show, or they've heard the show. And there's six or seven of them now, there's a station in the States, there's a bunch of stations in Ontario, and I could do a better job. But the ones that I have talked to in passing, seeing them at a venue in Toronto or somebody introducing you to someone- oh, you're the program director at name of station in name of province. Cool. Nice to meet you. I gotta show. He goes, yeah, I know you've got to show. I go would you like to run it? It seems to do quite well where it runs. Yeah. You know, our consultants say... The number one answer is we don't have budget for out of house content. So my counter to that, and it's worked quite well- could always work better- is I take barter, so they give me 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes an hour of their ad time that they weren't selling anyway in some cases. And I go direct to clients, people I know, like a motorcycle dealership or a boat dealership, you know, a marina, there's been six or seven or eight or nine or 10 clients, from music stores to motorcycle shops, that I bill directly and build their commercials with them. And they have great campaigns. And the station stays out of it. They give me the hour, less 10 minutes, less, and then they give me three of those 10 minutes that they're running commercials. And that's been going really well. Could I use 10 more stations? Absolutely. Back in the day, syndication was huge. And you could get 20, 30, 40 stations. And we did. I'm quite happy though to have the six or seven that I have. Because they get great results from the show. Rock 95 in Barrie, 94.9 The Rock in Oshawa, Classic Rock 98.1 in London, there's three for example, and they do really well with the show. 

Matt Cundill  15:52  
Why does the show do so well in Austria?

Jeff Woods  15:55  
It's a great point. And Egypt, and Ireland, and Switzerland, it charted in Switzerland last week as a podcast. Why does it do well? Because people actually still do care about music history. They care about context around music, you can listen to a jukebox till you're blue in the face. But if there's no body there to- warm body there to relate to you and the experience of hearing that record for the first time, loving that artists for this and that reason. Remember years ago- maybe you don't, I'll tell you- a Buffalo station, Rock 102. And we were kids, my brother and I, we were teenagers. And this new station came on the air and nobody talked, it was just- you're listening to Rock 102. And it'd be a lot of songs. And we loved it for a couple of weeks. And then we ended up missing the human element of having a live body talking about the thing. And we didn't listen to Rock 102 anymore. We got back to the Bob Mackowycz's of the world who told you something, and it was like it was like having company in the room with you without actually having a body in the room with you. And that's- I believe in the power of that still, it still works.

Matt Cundill  17:04  
You've always had an affinity for new music, you have a long standing LinkedIn resume that includes numerous music stints including that at Sony Music, so you've always had an ear for it. But you also have performers who come into the show, into your studio, to come on the show. And so what do you look for? What kind of performers do you seek out? Or do they seek you to come in, play a couple songs and have a chat and a drink perhaps?

Jeff Woods  17:30  
it's a bit of both. So where I'm sitting right now is near Blue Mountain Village, about 15 minutes west, in the beautiful town of Thornbury, Ontario. And I have a little attic. I've set up seven, eight piece soul bands in here, and three piece punk bands, and most often singer songwriters with a duo, or just a person with a guitar, or a piano, or a voice, all of those things combined. And what I look for is something that turns me on. It's that intuitive, right? You hear something, somebody sends you something, or you go find it on your own, which is usually the case. And Toronto bands typically, or bands in this region because Gray and Simcoe counties, Collingwood to Owen Sound. There's a lot of artistic people up here, a lot of great musicians. And I do like exposing newer artists that aren't really well known, because it's fun for me to say, I believe in you. And then they end up going and doing something great with their career. And again, untethered by genre or era, I guess the era is new because they're new. But in terms of genre, I'll do punk, I'll do country, I'll do jazz, although I haven't done much. I'll do whatever turns me on. And it's a pretty, you know, broad spectrum of music that most of us like, which is why they thought you know, AAA radio would work in Canada. And somehow it didn't, not because of the music, just because of the way they approached it, probably, more than anything.

Matt Cundill  18:51  
Oh, man, we could spend hours just talking about formats and why they don't exist in Canada. We can throw active rock in there as well. There's really- that doesn't exist. But the one station I do listen to, whether it's on an app, in the car, in the kitchen, asking my device to play it, is 107.1 The Peak, which is just outside of New York, and I love this format. It's all the stuff that we've either played, we came close to playing, or we had many arguments on whether or not we were going to play, in a music meeting. That sort of all culminates on one station. So you know, if you can get your hands on a AAA radio station and you haven't had the experience, give it a try.

Jeff Woods  19:31  
It's wonderful, and the main reason why, in my estimation and research, anecdotally speaking, because that was the AAA station in Vancouver that Bob Mackowycz was putting on the air and Patrick Zulanov ended up programming. 

Matt Cundill  19:44  
It was called Shore, wasn't it? 

Jeff Woods  19:45  
It was called Shore 104. And the frustration that usually happens is- it takes a few months to kick in, but it's usually sales saying, we don't have the listenership, we don't have the numbers yet, because we thought it was going to happen overnight. Getting people, as you know, to change their habits about anything is tougher and tougher as we have more choices in the world to spend with, you know? There's work time and there's pleasure time and there's drive time. And there's so much to do and see and listen to and consume, that people aren't changing overnight their habits until you give them a lot of reasons to do it. So sales comes in and says, we need to make more money quick, make it more palatable, make it more homogenized, make it less unknown, play the same 500 songs endlessly. And maybe we'll make more money. And that works for a while. But fuck, it's boring to work.

Speaker 1  20:39  
Transcription of the Sound Off Podcast is powered by the Podcast Super Friends, five podcast producers who get together to discuss podcasting. Sharpen your podcast and creation skills by following the show on the Sound Off Podcast's YouTube or Facebook page.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  20:57  
This podcast supports podcasting 2.0. So feel free to send us a boost if you're listening on a new podcast app. Find your new app now at podcasting2.org/apps. That's podcasting2.org/apps.

Matt Cundill  21:12  
Did the pandemic change what you thought you would have in the studio? Because I know when you were building it, and you took about five or six months off to build it. And you turned into I think, somewhere between Bob Ross and Tim, the handyman, and probably numerous trips to Home Depot, did you think it would be sort of a very busy place where musicians would come in maybe on a, you know, semi weekly, weekly basis to do recording, then the pandemic hits. And then you really sort of take a break, and you're writing at this point, you just eventually turned into a writer and content creator inside the studio?

Jeff Woods  21:47  
Well, you know, it was always built as a performance studio, not so much as a recording facility. There's lots of recording studios and people can, you know, adeptly record at home with their laptop. So it was more performance to me, it was always intended for what I'm still doing now, having bands come in and play so I could put it on my podcast, put it in my radio show. I was doing video, that's the only thing that's changed. While I think that video is a wonderful thing, if you have a team of really creative and professional people that are technically adept. I didn't. That stuff's expensive. And I really still love, as did Bob Mackowycz and so many of us, audio. I love the audio experience. It's better for the car, isn't it? I'm driving, I'm not watching TV, but I am listening to something. And I love the audio experience more than anything. So while I had a YouTube channel, where I'd publish Zoom interviews with bands, and I published a few performances in that studio that I built, my heart wasn't in it. I just wanted to talk to people. And it was the most important part of it, of the visual.

Matt Cundill  22:50  
Do you find that podcasts are closer to your written works than radio? I might also just suggest that maybe radio doesn't have enough writing in it.

Jeff Woods  22:59  
When I launched the podcast, some six, seven years into doing the radio show, which is nine seasons deep. I started giving the writing a different angle, different attention, a different mindset, more opinion, a little broader, a little more natural, I hope, than the traditional radio format, which was really beaten into us- get in and out quick. Don't offend anyone. We don't care about your opinion. Not everyone said that, right? But by and large, that was sort of the attitude, get to that hit.

Matt Cundill  23:31  
That's a standard air check right there.

Jeff Woods  23:33  
That's a standard air check, right? But I know that the listeners were not being well served, for that simplicity of that sort of direction. And so I'm thinking about the listeners, I'm thinking about people that are somewhere between the ages of 30 and 65. And what they might get off on, as it were, in terms of the information I might convey to them. And the stories I might tell them, and the artists I might feature in terms of interviews that I pull clips from. So it's a bit of a different animal for sure. I'm doing more of what I watch, not because I'm arrogant or stubborn, but because I actually believe it's working with the listeners that love the music that I play.

Matt Cundill  24:10  
How in the world do you have the time to do two podcasts? Because along comes the Blue Hotel, which is- I think we're a couple years into this now, but it's a completely separate endeavor. And this is something that I think did grow out of the pandemic because- and I'll let you sort of answer how it sort of all progressed, but I want to say, where do you find the time, but where do you find the time for the Blue Hotel?

Jeff Woods  24:34  
Matt, you know, I'll tell you about the Blue Hotel in a second. But the smartest thing that I've ever done, and I resisted it for so long, was got some training, mostly self training, in how to edit and how to do multitrack recording and how to mix music with voice. I've got a producer on the radio show, Records and Rockstars radio show, a wonderful producer, the best producer I know in Robbie Johnston. He still mixes the radio show, but then I take the content and make it into a podcast. But when I do artist interviews that we've just been talking about, they come in and play and we talk, I have learned slowly, but really effectively, finally, how to do the work that's involved in editing all of this stuff, and mixing all this stuff and putting it out so it sounds great, smartest thing I could have ever done. So I started working smarter and not having to rely on other people to do that work. And so I can work at 9pm or 3am, or 6am, whenever I want, get the thing done to my satisfaction. So then I thought, around the same time I thought about the Blue Hotel, what else do I want to do? I've been talking about music for 44 years on the radio, what else can I do? They say do what you know. Relationships, I've had a couple. Sexuality, sexual preferences, gender equality, all of that is of great interest to me. So I started really digging in and learning a lot about all of it, and thought I'll launch a podcast about relationships and sex, and put some of my fiction, mostly erotic stories within that context. Launched the Blue Hotel in 2022. And it's turning into a book, as you know, and I think we all have time for the things we love, to put it into context that everybody can relate. You know how they say, people come at you with text, I don't really have time, I didn't have time to respond, I don't have time to have coffee. We have the time for the things that are of great interest to us. We make the time for the things that we love, be it work or be it people that we want to see. Family, friends, lovers, we make the time if we're into it. I'm really into doing music radio, I'm really into doing the Blue Hotel podcast, I'm really into my friends. So I make the time for these things.

Matt Cundill  26:48  
A lot of people, they will get a couple of years through a podcast and they'll say, you know, it's not working, I don't have any money. I'm not making any money. There's no ROI here. And I will just say, you know, transcription's pretty cheap these days. Why don't you take the whole podcast and transcribe it? And that's a book.

Jeff Woods  27:07  
That is absolutely true. I've taken about, to your point, about 6, 7, 8 interviews that I've done on the Blue Hotel with relationship coaches, and psychotherapists, and kink and BDSM specialists, and people that are adept and accomplished around the areas of polyamory and non-monogamy, and all of these specialties that people are great at. I had them on my podcast, transcribed those conversations that are typically an hour long each, that became podcast episodes. And they become chapters in the book. I set it up and say, why don't we throw to a professional in this area? And the book went from- pretty quickly, the first draft- from 30,000 words to 55,000 words. And I just need another 20,000 words, and I have a complete book. And you know, the promo value of that is all these people that are in the book will promote it for me, too. So use the people that you know, and have an affinity for, and you can all promote each other. So that's a big sort of tenet of what I do.

Matt Cundill  28:10  
What was the moment when you said okay, I'm gonna write a book. 

Jeff Woods  28:14  
Well having already written the nonfiction story of my life, in records, and in radio, I kind of knew how to do when I self published. I got offered a publishing deal, but it didn't seem fair. Financially. I was doing all the work. They were having some meetings. They had better distribution, I'll give them that. But I did it myself, and I did it to great success, as it turns out, so I've already done it, I can do it again. What do I want to do it about this time? You can't rewrite your life story about being in radio and records. So I had to change gears. And it was an extension of the Blue Hotel that I thought I would write a book about sex and sexuality, and about being yourself, and about being okay with who you are, no matter what they say. So it's a book about that.

Matt Cundill  29:02  
The idea of coming out has always been kind of fascinating, because I had a friend- this actually happened on a podcast- who said that when you come out, you have to do it all the time, right? Because people don't know, you have to- you know, if you just say oh, by the way, I'm bisexual or I'm gay. You're coming out. So the process repeats itself over and over again. You got a bigger megaphone. What was the moment when you did so publicly?

Jeff Woods  29:28  
I was on another podcast.

Matt Cundill  29:30  
So it was the Toronto Mike podcast?

Jeff Woods  29:32  
Toronto Mike. And Mike is really good at getting in there.

Matt Cundill  29:36  
That'd be a good place to get the word out.

Jeff Woods  29:39  
Right. He really- I mean, his podcast was basically media people for so long, and he's extended it to musicians, as you probably know, but I was on previous to that, when I was writing the first book, and subsequent to that, and that was the time that he said, tell me more about you. Having heard or read or whatever. And I'm of two minds. And I've sort of gotten over the first mind, which was, why do you have to talk about your sexuality? It's the people that say, what about a straight Pride Parade? What about a hetero Pride Parade? I'm like, when you're demonized the world over, and sometimes, in at least two dozen countries I'm aware of, when you're thrown in jail, beaten, abused, and killed in many countries. There's someone being executed today for being gay, or being bi, or having same sex attraction. Just the attraction, just talking about it, not even doing anything necessarily. If that weren't the case, maybe I wouldn't have a lot to say about this. Maybe I wouldn't be coming out every day of the week, to your point. Maybe gay people and bi people and trans people and anybody in the spectrum of LGBTQ2S, they wouldn't have to do much if there wasn't such pushback around the globe. That's why we do it. Until there's acceptance and complete- nopt just tolerance. We'll put up with you, but it keep it to yourself. No. Until there's acceptance and some form of embracing of letting people be free and letting people be who they are, within the confines of the law, we'll continue to come out all the time. On that podcast with Toronto Mike, I thought to myself, if the tattooed, motorbike ridin', rock guy can do it, it might give permission to a bunch of other guys or women. But I thought of the bi guy who's closeted, it's the biggest letter in the in the spectrum, LGBTQ spectrum, is B. 60% of that spectrum is bisexual. I would hazard to guess, if you go on an app that caters to gay and bi men largely, and trans people. If you look at the grid, if you have 12 pictures of accounts, you know, all dating apps have- you get your picture there, right, your profile picture. If you have 12 pictures, usually half of those photos are missing, it's a black spot. And all of those are typically bi people. And all of those are typically down low and discretes. That's their profile, they're afraid to come out because they have a job that they're afraid about losing, or they have a partner that they're afraid about losing, or they haven't even told anybody. So they're doing all this stuff secretly. And I want to be the guy that says it's okay to be you. That's why I do the Blue Hotel podcast. That's why I'm writing the book called Being Bi, to relate to people. And people kill themselves over being gay, you know this, they still do, or being different, or being in a body that they don't feel comfortable in. The pushback around all of this stuff, and particularly drag queens and transgendered people. The pushback is so dramatic, I can't stand for it. I will always stand up for the underdog and the black sheep as it were. That's why I do what I do.

Matt Cundill  32:51  
So I mean, I did have a question down there that said, why does this book need to be written? I think you sufficiently answered it. But I sort of envisioned, let's say that you and I were on the radio, and you were talking about the book right now. If I were to go to the phones and say, do you have a question for Jeff woods? You and I both know, and I don't even think we need to be in Edmonton for this one. But somebody would call and say, why do I need to hear about it? Why do you need to talk about it?

Jeff Woods  33:19  
And yeah, I would say kind of what I said, because there's people that are ashamed of who they are. And part of the reason for their shame is the reaction among other people, be it in their family, be it politicians, be it at school, be it at work, there is a marginalizing of people that isn't really fair. It'd be like the gay and the bi person or the trans person saying hetero, that's so, like, yesterday. I mean, we're not pushing down anything. No one has to be like you to be accepted. But we don't need a straight parade. We don't need a hetero parade. We do need to see some respect for people and their freedoms around the world. And then people say, oh, you're exaggerating about the abuse perpetrated upon people that are not straight, and hetero normal. It's not an exaggeration at all. Take any Middle Eastern country, and not just Middle Eastern, take Texas, Florida, and 10 or 12 other states that are not only, you know, oppressing women, and their right to choose what they do with their bodies, but they're oppressing all the colors of the flag. And as long as I'm alive, I'll push back against that.

Matt Cundill  34:32  
So you got a Kickstarter that's underway now. And tell me a little bit about it versus, you know, you did mention that you went to a publisher and you looked at the publisher, it was like ehh, it's gonna be me doing all the work. What does that world like about- okay, if you want to write a book, you know, you're obviously going to be self publishing, I believe? 

Jeff Woods  34:49  
I'm gonna self publish again, because I figured out how to do it. You put a great team together and they're usually people that have worked at major publishers, publishing houses. So you have- you have the same level, the same quality from an editor to a layout and design person to a photographer to a printer. So that's my- that's my basic team, right? So I get all those people together on the team, and I send my transcript or send my draft, get it edited and go through the process. And three months later, you have a book. Once it's written. So I'm not looking for a handout. Although I used a different platform. GoFundMe is often used for if someone needs an operation, or someone needs help with their rent, but it was also used for creative projects. But I found out that more often than not, Kickstarter is used. It's the one, oftentimes, for people making records, people writing books, etc. anything creative. So I consulted with one of my guests on the Records and Rockstars podcast who came in and played here, Miss Emily, great blues artist from Ontario, not just blues, but soul singer. And I said, how did your Kickstarter go? She said, I did it, I got my 20 grand, I think she was asking for. Which isn't even the cost of making a record, it's less, but she got her backers, as they're called, to give money. What they get in return, and what the people that back me get in return for my book, is a copy of the book or a copy of the record. So it's like a presale more than anything, it's a presale that you give me the money now, I pay for all the people that are putting it together plus the printer who's printing it for me, and then I send it to you or hand it to you, and sign it to you when it's ready. So it's a wonderful thing, it's a great opportunity. And Kickstarter takes 6 or 7% of that money, which is pretty good, because they made the platform that gave us the opportunity to go ahead and reach our customers. 

Matt Cundill  36:37  
Will there be a book tour? 

Jeff Woods  36:39  
There will. I don't know how far and wide it'll be. It'll be local in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario. And there will be an exclusive book launch in Toronto at a really swanky sexy club that looks like the roaring 20s updated. I've done events there before with other people in the industry. And so we'll have 100-150 people come and hang out and have some burlesque entertainment and sign copies of the book. And that's one of the tiers in the presale. You get a signed book, you get a signed book to give someone, get to go to the event. And one of the- one of the things I'm offering is, I'll do a one on one with anyone who wants to talk about any of this stuff on Zoom, or one of those platforms. Because I've had people come up to me kind of quietly at different events I've been at, Matt, and the first one that did it. I'm like everything I've done around the Blue Hotel, and about writing this Being Bi book, was worth it for that one guy to come up to me and say, you helped me so much, because I had no idea. You? He goes, me too, because us masculine men with partners or not, and so stigmatized around who we are. And granted, it's a whole lifetime of belief that this isn't good enough or this is wrong, or this is the black sheep. This is outside of the norm. And they don't want to talk about it. But because I talked about it, they feel like they can now. So people come up to thank me all the time for what I'm doing. And that makes it worthwhile. That's largely why I'm writing the book. I also just really love to write.

Matt Cundill  38:14  
Jeff, thanks so much for being on the podcast again. Really appreciate your time.

Jeff Woods  38:18  
Thank you. It's always a pleasure, Matt. Thanks so much.

Matt Cundill  38:21  
And thanks for always being a good friend. 

Tara Sands 38:22  
The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski. Edited by Taylor McLean. Social media by Aidan Glassey. Another great creation from the Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.