The Nashville RockNPod Expo will take place March 17-19 and is part convention, part trade show, part concert, and an overall great time. The event is organized by Chris Czynszak of Decibel Geek Podcast who recently took some time to talk about the event.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Chris Czynszak –
On what fans can expect at RockNPod – So for the fan side, there’s a lot to offer. There’s gonna be a great concert the night before the convention on Friday, March 17th on St. Patrick’s Day, we’ll be at a place called East Side Bowl. If you’re familiar with the Brooklyn Bowl chain, it’s similar to that. It’s like it’s a music venue, but there’s also bowling lanes and a diner, and it’s a really cool venue, it’s pretty new here. There’s gonna be what we call a Rare Hair show. My friend Tyson Lesley, who plays and manages Vixen, he puts these together with it’s like a full list of pro Nashville musicians, and they’re going to be backing up different Expo guests that we’ve brought in for the weekend. So it’s a bunch of great cover songs, some deep tracks, some of our guests, including Jason McMaster from Dangerous Toys, Steve Rachelle from Tuff, and Eric Martin from Mr. Big are all gonna be jumping up on stage and doing a couple of songs, and we had a great time last year doing this, and I think it’ll be great to get in this time. Saturday is the RockNPod Expo, and then with the convention, it’s a mix of things. It started off more as just a podcaster event with podcasters coming to network with each other, it’s still that at base, we even have a podcaster coming from England for this one. The music podcasters come in and they set up shop, they record all day, they do interviews with the artists that we bring in. If you’re a fan, you can kinda see how this gets done, there are also gonna be panel discussions and live one-on-one interviews with some of our guests, including Eddie Ojeda from Twisted Sister, Eric Martin’s gonna do one. We’re looking to do a panel on the Decline of Western Civilization, Pt. 2 movie, because some of our guests were in that film, so I think it would be kind of cool to have their memories of making that film, also tons of vinyl, memorabilia, toy, and comic vendors. We’ve really expanded this time because I’ve got a partner coming in who’s also doing a pop and comic convention the next day, so some of those vendors will be doing both days, so it’s not just rock and roll, it’s kind of pop culture, nerd culture, I guess is what you would call it. As were all nerds anyway. A lot of signing sessions, meet and greets with fans, it’s a very fun hang and most of the guests just hang out all day, so they’re very accessible, it’s a little bit less stuffy than a typical convention where everybody is herded around like cattle, it’s more loose and open. Then Saturday night is KeelFest 2. Ron Keel has a label called RFK Media, he’s gonna have his Ron Keel Band, the members of Keel are going to perform, a sort of reunion of Steeler with Rik Fox and Mitch Perry on guitar, also Crashing Wayward from Vegas and the Fifth from North Carolina are gonna make their debut Nashville performances. Both really great up-and-coming bands. Then Sunday, we have the comic and pop culture convention going on throughout the day at the fairgrounds, and then we just announced it, a thing called Punch Lines and Back Lines comedy show. It’s comedians, Courtney Cronin-Dold, Craig Gass, and Don Jamison from That Metal Show, doing stand-up sets, but also Eric Martin will be doing stand-up for the first time in his life, and then that’s followed up with a full live acoustic show from Eric Martin and his bandmates, We have a movie screening thing, we’re gonna announce probably later today, but that’ll be a screening of the home video from the 80s Kiss Exposed with the comedians doing Mystery Science Theater-type commentary on it. :47
On if fans can mingle with the music guests – A lot of them will have their own merch tables and they’ll be doing meetings with fans all throughout the day, and then some of them just like to walk around and catch up with their friends. With all the guests we bring in, it’s kind of like a family reunion for them. It’s just fans and rockers just getting together, kind of celebrating the music that we love, and the most important thing, I mean, obviously, I try to make it a great event as far as networking and business and stuff, but it’s just a great hang, everyone just has a great time, and it feels like our family just gets bigger every year. 5:12
On how the event started – I’ve been doing music podcasting since 2011, this is my 12th year doing it with my co-host, Aaron Camero, we do have a show called Decibel Geek, and just over the years, especially back in those days, it was mostly Skype that we all would talk to each other on. I would get to know these other podcasters, because as you probably know, one of the tricks that’s different from radio is work with each other, appear on each other’s shows, it helps build the fan base on both shows. So we would have these great conversations then I’d be like, “Well, I’d love to grab a beer with you, but I can’t do that because you’re 600 miles away”. One of my fellow podcasters, BJ Kramp, who does a great show called “Rock And/Or Roll” and actually just wrote a great book on Cheap Trick called “This Band Has No Past”, came to me in 2017, and was like, “Why don’t we just try to organize some sort of a meet-up?” And I was like, “Well, if we’re gonna do a meet-up, how are we gonna pay for that?” He’s like, “Well, we can do crowdfunding”. I was like, “Well, if we’re gonna crowdfund it, then the listeners that are paying for us to meet each other should be able to come meet us too”. A lot of 80s rock guys live here in Nashville, and I’ve been lucky enough to interview a lot of them, so I just started calling in favors, going, “Would you come to this and meet fans and do some interviews”, and I got a lot more “Yes” than “No”. Then also vinyl was really having its resurgence around that time, so I was like, Let’s get some vinyl vendors in there, and it just organically turned into a convention, it wasn’t initially going to be a convention. We did it through crowdfunding, the first two years and very small venues and just trying to build up, and I wasn’t even intending on it being an every-year thing, it was just, “Let’s meet up once” But everybody had so much fun, and then by the year two, the artists were also thanking us for putting it together because a lot of these music podcasts are a great outlet for them to promote their stuff because mainstream media doesn’t really cover them like they used to. From year three and four, it wound up going into being more of a legitimate convention, going into hotel spaces and stuff like that, and it just grows year over year. Obviously, 2020 shut us down with Covid because we couldn’t do it. Nobody could do anything. 2021 was hard to navigate all of that, but we made it happen and it was as big as it’s ever been, and then this year we’re going into one of the new buildings at the Nashville Fair Grounds, it’s like the biggest space we’ve ever had. So every year, I try to swing for the fences and make it grow. It’s like walking a tightrope. It’s stressful, but my wife likens it to pregnancy, it’s like it’s a pain, you’re exhausted., you say you’ll never do it again, then you see the result, you’re happy, and then you do it again. So every year I say, I’m never doing this again, but I’ve learned not to take myself that seriously because once it’s over, I’ll probably start planning the next one. 5:48
On what podcasters can expect – For the podcasting side, we’ve also expanded into content creators of all types, because there’s a lot of YouTube shows that do really well. To me, It doesn’t matter the delivery system, if you’re going out and you’re promoting rock and you’re talking about the history of it, we’re interested in you being a part of it, so that’s another thing, and then also we have an education track that we’re working on, and that’ll be a separate area of the room that I’ll have panels and speakers and workshops talking about best practices, editing, marketing your show branding, or even gear, even just how to get into podcasting. There’s a lot of people that want to, but they have no idea how to start, so that’s another thing we’ve built over the last couple of years, is let’s provide some real quality info that podcasters and wanna-be podcasters can take away from this and make their shows and their brands better. 9:36
On how you can attend – Just go to Rocknpod.com. That’s got pretty much everything on it. If you’re a podcaster there’s a registration on there, as pretty much today, when we’re recording this, the Platinum Package is done as far as getting your own table and your interview spots, we have to cut that off at some point because then the massive task of scheduling all the interviews with the guest takes place. I’m also wrapping up my guest list this week, but also, but there’s other podcaster levels that you can register for. If you just wanna come check out the event, go to the education track, and get some added benefit from that. We have a cool cocktail mixer for podcasters and VIPS that will happen the night before at the pre-party show, and then there’s different levels of tickets. Our two higher VIPS are sold out now, there’s the lowest VIP is still available, there’s plenty of general admission and early admission available, and then I have a few more spots for vendors, but we’re just about full on that. The biggest thing is if you just wanna come and see what is this about. Get a general admission ticket. It’s only 20 bucks and you can come hang out and of course, all the concerts around the event are always fun too. 10:41
