Transom Shows: Buffalo Turkey Tail

Buffalo Turkey Tail
Produced by Andy Raskin

Listen in Real Audio or MP3

Hollister in front of the magazine store on Polk St. where I first met him.
Photo: Andy Raskin

Notes From Andy Raskin
This is the first audio piece I've produced. I almost did not produce it for fear it would be seen as exploiting my subject, a man who panhandles on my street in San Francisco. Then I heard Carol Wasserman's "Love Letter" on Transom. By the time I got to the words "There is nothing wrong with you at all, except that you had not yet told your stories," I was crying. And I decided to go ahead, because I realized I was in love with this story and wanted to tell it, and I'd leave the judging about exploitation to others.

When I played this piece for my grandfather, he told me that one of my great uncles had a Jewish deli in Brooklyn and that their specialty was turkey tail. "People would line up around the block," my grandfather says. "He barbecued it, on a skewer. We used to call it 'the part that goes over the fence last.'" Fences, henhouses. Anyway, it turns out I've got turkey tail in my blood...

Powells
Equipment
My equipment was a portable Sony MD recorder (MZ-R70) and a Sony ECM-MS907 mic. I recorded the narration in my closet, and uploaded the audio to ProTools Free. My computer is an older Pentium II, so memory gets screwy every 5-10 edits and I have to close and re-open the program, but I'm down to about only one system crash an hour. Living in San Francisco is nice because I was able to pick up a Sony PCM R500 DAT deck and better mic cheap when an audio dot-com (Redband) went out of business. I'll be using those in the future.

About Andy Raskin
I am 37 years old, grew up in Brooklyn, New York and Long Island, and currently live in San Francisco. In 1994, I got an MBA from the Wharton School and landed a job as a management consultant. I had lived in Japan in my mid-20s, studying Japanese and then producing whacky Japanese TV game shows, so my consulting firm sent me to Japan a lot, and on the side I would write stories for US business magazines. In 1999, I founded a software company in San Francisco, and I was CEO until the day before the events in "Buffalo Turkey Butt" began. These days I write a lot for Inc Magazine and also Business 2.0 Magazine, and play trombone in a 15-piece funk band called Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra.

Like many folks who have gotten into audio production recently, I was hooked by This American Life. In fact, I submitted an early version of "Buffalo Turkey Tail" (no music, a different narration) there, and it was rejected. I was disappointed and didn't produce anything for months, until I heard Benjamen Walker's stuff on Transom. This was something so totally different from TAL, and made me realize there isn't one "right" way. I produced two pieces after that -- "Fancy Food" and "Chained Melodies" (at my Web site -- www.andyraskin.com ) -- where I experimented with different styles.

Now when I listen to "Buffalo Turkey Tail" and even some of my other stuff, I cringe a little because I hear my rather feeble attempt to mimic the TAL style. Well, as a musician I know you spend years imitating people who are much better than you, and then you find your own voice, so maybe it's not such a bad thing. I'm not really sure where these pieces will lead me -- all I know is that when I'm working on one I get so totally absorbed in it that I can't imagine doing anything else.