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Welcome and Setup
Speaker: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m talking to, uh, a new friend of mine, Kyle Orla, and I’ve been watching his YouTube channel for a few years now, and I decided finally to start asking some of , the folks that I follow on YouTube for interviews Kyle has a guitar. finger style tutorial kind of channel. And I started seeing ’em on my feet a few years ago and just watched more and more you know, people that. Watch YouTube videos or listen to podcasts. I feel like I know the guy, you know, he’s out there making videos and teaching and I’m like, oh, this is great.
And I look forward to, you know, more videos coming out. So anyway, I’ll, I’ll tell you his bio in a second, but I wanna let you know there’s kind of two parts to this interview. The first part is about being a. YouTuber and how he started some of the, the details of getting better, monetizing. He has a Patreon that is going very well for him. Then the second part of the interview, kind of the sound check, we just talk about guitars. So we went on longer than I expected, and I think we could talk about guitars for all day long, several, many hours. We could do a whole, you know, podcast series where we only talk about guitars, so we had to cut that short.
But if you dig. Old acoustic guitars, you’ll probably find it interesting if you don’t. We are very into those kind of guitars, and I think you’ll hear our enthusiasm. So check it out. I mean, I think it’s entertaining regardless. And if you like guitars, then you will really, really love the soundcheck portion.
Kyle Orla Bio
Speaker: Kyle Orla is a folk musician and educator from Duluth, Minnesota, an ever student of early folk traditions. Kyle threads the needle between old medleys cloaked and relevant aesthetics. His guitar playing is adventurous, unburdened by convention, but deeply marked by the golden age of the twenties and thirties repertoire.
And Kyle is equally versed as a solo artist, as he is as a collaborator. He has a couple releases under his name. And he recorded, uh, fiddle and banjo for Charlie Parr’s. , Last Red House Records album, I ain’t dead yet. Kyle has a awesome YouTube channel and we’re gonna link to it. You could go check it out.
His Patreon page is for folk guitar enthusiast and is one of the fastest growing archive of tabs and play along videos for finger style players. And that’s how. I got turned on to Kyle. It’s just the finger style, , tutorials and other, you know, cool videos in that kind of area. Super fun interview. I hope you enjoy it too.
Thanks a lot to Kyle for spending a lot of time with me. We talked, I think probably another half hour, um, before and after the recording and yeah, super nice guy and I’ll just send it to the interview now.
Interview Begins
doug: Hey, Kyle, it’s been, uh, good chatting with you this morning. How are you doing today?
Kyle: I’m doing good. I was telling you that, you know, we, I woke up to like, uh, over a foot of snow in my driveway, you know, but, um, you know, which is still fun. We had a great morning. Just unex, a little unexpected.
doug: Yeah, and I, um, around here in Colorado, it’s been, um, super warm.
So like I’m wearing shorts and it’s gonna be like. 65 70 today, which is really strange for early March. So yeah. And
Kyle: that ain’t right.
doug: I wanna let people know that we geeked out on guitars for about 20 or 30 minutes. I think this, the soundcheck portion is about 20 minutes. It’ll be at the end. So if you wanna stick around for that stuff, I know it’s not.
Why we’re here specifically, but it’s one of the reasons why I asked you to join me today.
Pandemic Guitar Boom
doug: So I started getting into, I guess like finger style guitar and more, um, like traditional music and wanting to play it around the pandemic timeframe, which is I think when a lot of people were either picking up the guitar again or picking up the guitar for the first time and over.
Mm-hmm. Oh. You know, little time your video started popping up for me and I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Like I’m trying to do some finger picking, and they were great videos. So I decided to reach out and wanted to talk to you about starting on YouTube, growing your channel. You have a Patreon, which you have, um.
A decent number of patrons. It looks like I started, um, contributing to you here recently and just dig into the details, including like maybe some of the analytics and some of the burnout symptoms that people sometimes face when they’re looking at metrics all the time. And you own the big B word.
Kyle: You just laid it down, man.
doug: There. It’s, you know, and you’re, you’re creating content around music and learning. Yeah. And you know, you don’t get to share that on your channel. So I know sometimes it’s an outlet for folks. So anyway, kind of welcome to the show and tell us a just a little bit about yourself and what you do in Duluth, and, um, then we’ll get into the YouTube stuff.
Kyle: Yeah. Well, I’m grateful to be here. Thank you. Thank you for asking. It’s crazy to know, like, I don’t know, I just. When I started the channel, I didn’t ever expect to, uh, you just, music is universal, so of course it reaches people from all kinds of corners where you wouldn’t expect it. Right. So marketing, the marketing side of it’s like, wow.
Right? Of course.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Everybody plays music, everybody plays guitar. So it’s, it’s been one of the coolest things is getting to like, chat with and meet all kinds of people from literally the all over the world.
Northerly Music School
Kyle: Um, for as far as what as I do here in Duluth, what I do here in Duluth, um. Well, right now I’m in my wife and I own a music school, and I always say it’s a, it’s a school with a lowercase s um, it’s, it’s, it’s just a place for guitar lessons, well, more than guitar, but, you know, private lessons.
Uh, we do workshops and we have five other people who teach here and they subcontract or the subcontractors. And so that’s kind of my day to day. You know, I teach guitar Monday through Wednesday. Uh, I teach guitar, I teach fiddle, I teach banjo. Uh, mainly kind of all styles, but through, um, through the YouTube stuff that we can talk more about.
I’ve been able to kind of garner, you know, a crew of folks who are into. The exact styles that I’m inspired by and, and, uh, you know, for whatever reason, like the way I have the offer, so I’m doing, I’m doing a lot of teaching Monday through Wednesday, and then the rest of the week, you know, Thursday and Friday I try to just focus on the Patreon page and uh, the YouTube stuff.
And as far otherwise, you know, I’m just, I try to practice guitar as much as I can. Alright. Um, I feel like I’ve never, uh, uh, I’ve been more excited about learning guitar than even now, you know, so. Yeah. Yeah.
doug: How long has the school been around? I mean, you’re running a, a small business, you, you’re giving people jobs and stuff, which is a whole other thing to
Kyle: manage
doug: Yeah.
In like,
Kyle: yeah,
doug: it’s a lot. So, yeah. How long
Kyle: has the
doug: school been around?
Kyle: Um, the school, it’s called the Northerly School for Music. And then it’s been around, I think, you know, as a business three years. Maybe, you know, somewhere in that, uh, we haven’t hit that five year mark yet.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: Um, but before that I had a, I had a private lesson studio and that this grew into, so, um, just a quick summary.
Around the pandemic. I was a, before the pandemic, I was a touring, just traveling gigging musician. And then around the pandemic I pivoted to teaching and uh, I also was doing repair. I have a history in repairing guitars, building guitars, and so I started a little business ko string works that essentially was just any avenue of me being able to make any dollar.
With music that wasn’t gigging. And so part of that was private lessons. Part of that was guitar repair. Part of that was an online thing that, um, ended up becoming this YouTube channel on the Patreon page. Um, but really it was just any avenue I could just kind, you know, find somewhere to like, you know, make a living scratching a living, playing music.
And the, the, the lessons thing kind of. Snowballed out of my ability to keep up with, as did the repair. And then soon, recently, the, the Patreon page is starting to actually, you know, uh, build into a thing that’s more than paying for itself. And, uh, so part of my response to that was, actually, I’ll give it to you this way.
I, I think I’ve said this before, maybe on the channel, but you know. I didn’t know I was going to become a, a business person, right? Accidentally. Here I am having to know about QuickBooks and having to know about, um, clients and, uh, retention and all these things, right? It’s not what I started.
Scaling Without Saying No
Kyle: I just needed to make, make ends meet through the pandemic, and, uh, I asked some business people here in town.
I asked them, they’re, they’re very great. A great family, uh, of, of, of, uh, entrepreneurs. They own a bunch of stuff here in town and we were just chatting one day ’cause they’re just local folks and asked them for some advice with my predicament of not being able to keep up with the demand of lessons and of repair and their response, um, probably works well in their corner.
Um, but it wasn’t the thing I think works for what I do. And the response was, you know. Either you’re not charging enough or you just need to say no more. And I’d be curious to know from you, like, you know, uh, if that is the, the average person’s way of, of growing their business, but in the, in the, in, in the service industry, which I think teaching and repair is a part of.
Uh, that didn’t work. I can’t just say, no, I’m in here. I’m here for you. Right? So if I say, no, that’s not gonna work. And um, I can’t necessarily charge more because that shoulders out a market of people that need support and care. And, uh, so what I decided to do was start the northerly. This is a very long-winded answer.
Sorry. Start the Northerly School for music and then, um. That would allow me more time to just do repair. Unfortunately, you can’t just find anybody to repair your guitar. So I kind of had to just, I had to just keep shop there, um, and then continue to work up, you know, my traps on video editing. And that was really like, that’s the thing I love doing is, uh, thinking about creative ways to teach, which YouTube was an outlet for that on so many levels.
And we can talk about that as much as you feel like, but, um. So I basically northerly, uh, we spread out the, the student load. We actually now were able to really find, you know, tailor fit you the right teacher, um, which is as if you’ve ever taken lessons. Sometimes you don’t find the right teacher. And it’s cool.
We have five options and that actually just happened the other day. One of our students, it’s just like, wasn’t working out and so let’s try a new teacher and we’ll see how that works, right? Instead of just leaving. Um, so yeah. Anyway. Okay. That’s, that’s a little bit above that.
doug: Kyle. That was a great answer.
You’re a storyteller, so like that’s perfect. And you did, I don’t wanna, I’m not gonna make it about me the whole time, but mm-hmm. The, um. Uh, my initial gut reaction is similar to what those entrepreneurs in your community mentioned, which is you can control the supply and demand by raising your prices, which is one way to sort of scale so that you can earn enough money, especially if you’re good enough that you can charge more.
However, it has the downside that you described. And then the other is saying no, which is something I really now enjoy doing because. There’s not enough time to do everything.
Time Limits and Priorities
doug: Have you read the book? 4,000 Weeks? Do you know this book?
Kyle: No, no, no. I’ll write it down, man. I’m an avid reader and I’m a nerd. So
doug: good.
Okay, so 4,000 Weeks is by Oliver Berkman. Essentially 4,000 weeks is the average lifespan, so something like 74 years. Oh my God. And punchline of the book. I kind of told like, you don’t have enough. Time to do everything you wanna do. Even very good choices of using your time. You don’t have enough time to do all that.
So you must say no to some very good ideas that you should not spend your time on. And as, um, as I’m getting older, uh, past middle age now, I’m like, ah. You know, I’m not like, I don’t need to spend time on that. It needs to like really be distilled down. So it, um, it kind of changed my outlook after I read that book, so.
Mm-hmm. Definitely worth checking out.
Kyle: Yeah. Well to your point on that too, I ended up, the repair thing was recently cut out and I do enjoy Yeah. Saying no, but I can’t, I mean, it’s a personal thing probably too, but like
doug: yeah.
Kyle: If the tool is there. May in this instance, if the bench is set up and I have the tools and somebody’s like, my guitar’s broken, I’m gonna do it.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Uh, and it’s just my nature. And I got a great, a great line of advice once from a video maker, uh, who’s also a freelancer. This is when I was gigging more, this is a long time ago. I was, I was in college and I was taking these shit gigs, uh, playing bass in like cover bands. Um, and jazz band, and I love jazz.
I love a good old cover band, but it, it was too much of a, of a, of a mediocre thing. And then it just soiled the whole deal, right? I didn’t have a, I didn’t have a enough creative outlets that really nourished the, the deeper thing. So, um, it was comp, we know we’re, we’re talking shop about freelancing. And I was like, man, I’m just tired of these shit gigs.
And he goes, oh, just sell your base. I was like, I can’t set my bass. Actually, I was at my major, my principal instrument in music school was bass. But have you ever seen me play bass in a video?
doug: Never.
Kyle: No. I think about, I think about music from the bottom up, right? So it’s no matter what you do in life, it’s never to me like it’s, if it’s educational and it was good for your moment in life, I don’t think it’s time wasted.
Um, but you gotta let it go. When it’s time, then you’re wasting time, right? Like I’m base served what I needed. And it wasn’t serving me anymore at that point. So he goes, sell your base, and uh, then when they call you, you literally can’t take the gig. And so I did, man. I sold my base bass major. Don’t have a base to this day.
I don’t own a base. Well, I, the studio has a base.
doug: Yeah, yeah.
Kyle: Um, I have one bass student and she’s awesome. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, I’m glad I can play bass, but all that to say, bringing it back to repair, um. His voice was in the back of my head, you know, so I, I didn’t sell my repair stuff, but it is in the depths of my garage and, you know, every few days I’ll get a text from an old client or a buddy, and I’m just like, Hey, man.
I can’t, I literally can’t do it. And I should have said that a long time ago. ’cause to your point, the 4,000 weeks, like I, Hey man, I don’t got enough time to fuss on that. Like I gotta fuss on my guitar.
doug: So you did your time and I was about to ask if you went to music school. So the answer is yes on that.
And I realize I need to push the interview along to get to the YouTube stuff. Um, otherwise we won’t get to ask the. The meaty question. So yeah.
Video Structure Secrets
doug: One thing that I observed, and we got an example in your question before, you’re a great storyteller and you’re a teacher as well as you’ve explained, and one of the things I noticed in your videos is you structure them really well and you say, we’re about to learn this.
You go through it and you’re like, oh, we did learn this. And by the way. Maybe check out some other videos on this specific topic, which is kind of a playbook for creating videos. So I want you to talk a little bit about how you. Approach the content ideas at first, and then how you structure that into a video.
And that’s a, it’s a lot. So you could answer part of it. Take a pause, catch your breath if you need to. Yeah. And just tell us about it.
Kyle: I’ll try to break it up, man.
Learning Video Production
Kyle: And I’ll try to leave room for your curiosity because, um, well, I’ll just start by saying I had bef, I started this idea through the pandemic as I maybe briefly mentioned.
Um, prior to that touring a giga musician, but I need to just give you a bit of context. A touring giga musician who was very much like a Luddite and old school. A part of that is like, um, maybe partly in by my, by nature. I just never really liked. I like older things, and so an iPhone doesn’t fit that mold.
Um, now I did have a phone, but it was a flip phone. Um, but I, part of it too was just. When you get into music and, you know, I’m curious if you had this feeling yourself, but like a part of it is embodying the whole thing. It’s a whole, it’s, it’s not just the chords, it’s not just the notes and it’s putting yourself, of course, you’re never gonna have the scenario that somebody had like, but.
Part of it is just like, Hey, you know, I’m into music from the 1920s and I just wanna roam around and hitchhike around the country and just have that life experience in my own way. Uh, connect me to the music. So, um, when I started doing the YouTube stuff, man, I had no idea what I was doing. Um, I had done some, I remember doing like a video project in high school.
That’s it. Uh, so I ended up, I got a phone, but I. I didn’t make my first videos with that. I made my first videos with the, the Sony ZVZV one. You familiar with that camera? I don’t
doug: know. I’ve heard of
Kyle: it. Don’t recommend it. Okay. I don’t recommend it. It looks fine. It doesn’t look that much better than your phone.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Um, but it has a lens that’s integrated and it stopped opening. Right. Wow. And so that’s dumb.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: So I ended up getting the Sony ZVE 10. Got a grant to do that. The whole thing was grant funded in the beginning, so my time was paid for. Yeah, it was the pandemic. Minnesota’s great for grants, so I was able to like right out the gate, have a project that was paid for.
Now, I didn’t have any plan. I didn’t know how to make videos. I didn’t understand anything about it. I knew they sucked. Okay. I had taste. But I didn’t know how to execute it. And uh, so I just spent a lot of time. I just, I, I’m gonna steal a line from one of my students. I’ve gotten good at things before, and I know a part of that is sucking bad, uh, and just sucking through the suck.
Right? And so, um, yeah. Anyway, one thing that helped me. See, this is just my nature. This is how the videos are, right? I gotta build some context, but this is the context. One thing that helped me though was realizing my strengths. And I know how I know that. One thing that makes a good song, a good song, or a good chord progression, a good chord progression is tension and release.
And that’s evident, that’s self-evident in music. Like, so if you had a C chord and then you move to this chord. Right. That’s tension. But if I go here, that, that, that made that tension all worth it, right? So, um, I try to frame my videos like that. I think about it musically. Um, and I try to lead with curiosity and that everything leads to another question, right?
Because that’s how music works too. Every chord leads to another chord that’s. Questioning. It doesn’t mean it has to be tension. Like this is tension, but tension can be this, right? That still leaves me with a, with a sense of, uh, openness and questioning, like, what’s gonna happen next? Oh, didn’t do what I thought I was gonna do.
Right? So that’s how I think about my videos. Um, and it’s literally an endless, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t like script things out like word for word. But I do, I do draft out question and answers, and then from there, I just spitball as we’re doing right now, right? You ask me, it’s almost like I’m interviewing myself, I guess, but I ask myself questions and then I answer them, and I try to answer them in a way that leaves things resolved.
Not enough to like confuse anybody, but the resolution is, is okay. Now you have an awareness of something that you didn’t know about, which should give you a new question. So that’s kind of how I think about videos. It’s probably weird. I bet most people don’t think that way. But
doug: how many, how many videos do you think you recorded and published before you thought these are getting pretty good?
Kyle: Well, I still think they suck, so I don’t know about that. Why not suck? But I still, when I watch it back, I’m like, I didn’t hit it. Okay. What can I do next time? Um, that made sense to me, but on, on the playback, I think someone’s gonna be confused. Oh, next day there’s a comment. Someone’s confused. Um, so I’m, I’m, I’m pretty, uh, without being overly critical, I.
I’m somebody who I have a knack for, like self-assessment. Even after teaching in person after this interview, I’m gonna self-assess like, what could I have said clearer or did I need to run on that tangent? Did I even come back after that tangent? Um, so, but to answer your question succinctly here, I think probably 50 videos or something like that of.
50 videos of giving a shit. Let me say it that way, because the first videos, I didn’t give a shit. I just, I had a grant to fulfill. I had no idea what to do. It was really fun. It was the funnest thing I’d done since learned guitar, you know what I mean? And the editing part was fun. And, you know, a few years later now that, you know, I, at one point I can, we can talk more about when I started giving a shit and why, but at won eventually I did.
And I, uh, you know, I. I got really into the editing part. I thought that would help the storytelling, it probably did, but turns out the, it started to get less fun. Um, and so now I’m kind of like at a point, and I very recently, um, where I feel like I have enough traps that I don’t have to edit it so much.
Um, I know a little bit more about how to. Create a arc that makes sense, where it’s not just like, here’s the thing, take it or leave it. Like, it’s like, well here’s the thing, do you know the thing? Because here’s why it’s the thing.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: Okay. Here’s the thing. Yeah. Yeah. But it took me a long time. I, I suppose, but, um, I maybe had, I had a leg up in like being a folk musician.
A part of being a folk musician is context is the story. You have, you know, how many. John Prime concerts. Did he talk more than he sang or whoever, right? Like rambling Jack Elliot, he’s called Rambling Jack Elliot for two reasons, right? One is the traveling, the other is the, the storytelling. So.
doug: All right.
Monetization Evolution
doug: So you did, you, you did feed me a couple questions here, but before, before we get to when and why you started giving a shit. You mention, or sorry, I went to ask you about the business model because mm-hmm. Um, in the beginning you said, ah, I, I got a grant. I was gonna make videos, lockdown was happening, so you couldn’t tour and stuff.
Everyone. Well, we didn’t know what was going on, so now when I look, I see. Okay. Um. YouTube is a, a funnel for a lot of stuff. It, it gets recognition. You’ve built up a great following. You can get, you know, local students if they happen to be around, but more likely you get, you know, the Patreon supporters or other, you know, members on your channel.
There’s a lot of ways to, you know, in air quotes, monetize and make it worth your time so that you will continue doing it. ’cause the fact is like, even if it’s really fun, if it costs money, and I, I was telling you before. My other show, I, I was like, I’m not covering costs, like I need to do something or I’m gonna quit.
’cause like this.
Kyle: Yeah.
doug: Only 4,000 weeks. Right? I’m over halfway done. So, shit. Don’t say that. Well, you had to think about it all the time. I
Kyle: know.
doug: And no, it’s. Um, anyway, you have the business model in place now. So when, when did you think, oh, so I see that some people, um, are earning money and I can make this fit into your overall, um, business and livelihood.
Kyle: Well, it’s YouTube’s funny that way too. ’cause the people who get all the attention, the Rick Beatos, ret Shoul. It seems completely unattainable, millions of followers and probably takes millions. Um, and then even like, I feel like Rick Beato, I don’t think his videos are monetized even because of the labels.
And he’s, he’s a moving target, right?
doug: Right.
Kyle: Um. I’m not sure that could be incorrect, but either way you, you see that and it’s like, oh God, I don’t want, I mean even like Rick’s the top dog and like he seems like he can’t even make a dime. Right. Um, of course then you think more clearly he has courses, right?
He has probably old royalty check. I mean, there’s so many different ways. He’s probably doing fine. He’s got a lot of gear. He is probably doing fine. I don’t think that wall of guitars has shrunk at all. Yeah. Um, anyway, I remember, you know, seeing that, and actually I didn’t really know YouTube, I didn’t, I will say this.
When I started making the channel, I didn’t know about YouTube channels. I didn’t know that a Elle channel was a thing. You could make money that was discovered through. My project of doing this, like, and that might lead to your next question, so I’ll, I’ll, I’ll leave that one. But, you know, I think eventually what happened is the grant money ran out and, um, I had infrastructure, you know, I had the camera, I had the computer, I, I had the stuff.
And I noticed that a lot of my friends through lockdown who were doing this very thing. Once gigs, once gigs start up again, it’s like shut it off. Like they shut it all down. And I didn’t have, at this point, I didn’t have a vision or anything with the YouTube channel, but I did think it was weird to just shut it down.
I was like, I don’t think I’m just shut this off. Like just started it and it’s kind of fun.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: And so, um, the business model, if I’m answering your question here, the business model just started through an evolution of enjoying what I was doing. Uh, realizing that it took a lot of time and I had started this whole, remember this whole KO string works thing where it’s any way I can kinda, I had a meeting with a business person once and I remember asking her.
In the meeting when we’re making this whole LLCs thing, just like, so I do like gigs and I do repair and I get some online stuff like, is that okay? Again, no, I got nothing. I’m coming into this completely cold. She goes, it’s your business. You can do whatever you want. So that like sat with me. I was like, cool, I’ll do whatever I want.
And um, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just kind of slowly. As the chaos Dreamworks thing grew, um, realized, okay, this is supposed to be part of my little business, and can I make it a way that it’s actually, you know, fulfilling a, at least paying for itself, right? Can I make a way where it’s paying for itself?
doug: Right.
Kyle: So that’s kind of how the thing evolved. Yeah.
doug: And then the, yeah, the other portion is like, and I think you were leading into it. When and why did you start, you know. Giving a shit, you know, some, the grant money ran out and then gotta pay bills. Yeah. So what happened?
Kyle: Yeah.
When It Started Working
Kyle: two things. One, one, it started to work a little bit, right?
I wasn’t just screaming into the void. Um, there were a few people that were early, uh, pro, uh, early, uh, um, what’s the word? Adopters or whatever, adapt. Like they saw what I was doing, like people that I admire and they were like, Hey, this is cool, you should do this. Um, Charlie Par was one. Um, Nat Myers. I dunno if you know who Nat Myers is.
I
doug: don’t, I
Kyle: don’t think I do. Nat Meyer. Oh dude, check Nat Myers out. Okay. He used to play Kalamazoo. I don’t think he does anymore. Uh, a few other people, Tony Polo Castro, just people I admired were like. Hey, this is cool. They probably were like, it’s not very good, but there’s something there, right? I’m, I’m, I can only guess ’cause the early stuff, man, you watch, I watch it back.
I’m like, I can’t, my God, so bad. Um, but that’s a, remember you gotta suck through the suck. You just gotta suck for a long time. And so, uh, that’s part of it. I definitely have to mention that, but the, the real thing was having a kid, we had our first kid and that’s when it’s less about my 4,000 weeks, you know, and more about his.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: And it’s, that’s it, man. So if I’m gonna do anything, it’s better, better make his 4,000 weeks kick ass. And so, um. I, I made the choice then to like, okay, I liked in the videos, is it as fun as it was? No. Um, but it’s still fun.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: And I do see the reach now sees, okay, I’m not screaming to the void.
You know, like there is a little more reach than before I see the potential. And, um, what I decided to do was I gave myself, like, I kinda gave myself like a timeline. Um, I don’t remember if it was six months or a year, but it only took six months less where I was like, I’m right now my YouTube channel, you could even call it that, is just essentially the Kyle Show and I can put on it what can put whatever I want on it.
Maybe it’s gonna be finger saw guitar, maybe it’s gonna be guitar repair. ’cause I was doing that at the same time. Uh, or maybe it’s gonna be an interview with somebody. And it was just the Kyle show. Uh, I, I tried, I said just focus on finger style. You have an audience there. I have endless amount of repertoire to talk about and concepts to talk about.
Like literally probably could go forever doing that depending on how, how deep you wanted to focus into, like how, how narrow, stay narrow but go deep kind of thing. Right? Um, so anyway, I. I thought, let’s just try that. And then, you know, six months or less it just worked. Uh, the Patreon page, like went from like.
You know, a hundred people or something, um, who are probably like in the true fan, fan part of the thing, which is important, right? Um, to just like bring in the opening the door, who’s coming in. There’s finger style stuff here. Doesn’t even matter that it’s me. Maybe it there slightly does, but mostly I actually had something to give them.
And, uh, so yeah, having, having our first, having our kid and then. If I can figure out a way to make this work, I’m all in. Otherwise, probably gonna just kind of be a thing I might do sometimes and uh, ’cause it’s his 4,000. Weeks. Yeah. Yeah.
Publishing Cadence Workflow
doug: The, um, let’s get into some of the like nuts and bolts of like, publishing.
So how often were you
Kyle: publishing
doug: Yeah. During that six month period because, um, yeah, and we’ll just, we’ll do some sort of quick hitter thing kind of thing.
Kyle: Yep. So we’re
doug: publishing pretty often.
Kyle: Publishing once a week, uh, on YouTube, plus on Patreon would’ve been probably three, three times a week.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: So, so I would do, I would do some kind of thing for my.
Kind of middle of the road supporters. We get something on Sunday, which is essentially just a song that I’m analyzing. And then middle week would be like a teaser for the, the main tutorial. And then the main tutorial also includes like materials that are only available on Patreon. So really four things a week.
Um, actually five, sometime one, one time a month would be five things because that middle of the road supporter gets like a longer in depth concept lesson. That’s something like this, just like talking. Yep.
doug: Got it. Interesting. Okay. And then when you were. You’re, you’re publishing on YouTube, you’re publishing on Patreon even more to make sure that the folks that are supporting you are actually getting like extra, like more stuff.
Kyle: Yeah.
doug: Like how long, if you could estimate, were you spending just like creating the content and editing, like was that like 40 hours? I mean, you’re doing a lot of stuff, right?
Kyle: Right. Well, that’s part of the, like I’m trying not to be an editor anymore. I do like the bare minimum, anything that helps the storyline be concise.
If I ramble, chop it, um, or whatever, text on the page, if it’ll help little people, like the little guitar grids, you know, I’ll do that sometimes. Um, but yeah, just, yeah. Yeah. How many hours I have, I don’t, I probably should know. I’ll say this, I recorded on a Friday. I record it. On Friday, I, and I try to chop it up and make it pretty much done Friday too.
And like on Monday I kind of just, I give it a once over and then it, it’s done, you know, so. Okay. That’s like a full day on Friday, like a full workday. So we’ll call that eight hours plus maybe like another couple hours or something on Monday. Then I’m still thinking of ideas. It’s a, it’s an endless thing, but that’s how my mind, mind works anyways and endlessly thinking of things.
So, um, but yeah, so yeah, it’s, I I probably should, I was given that advice once too. As a self-employed person, you should count your hours to make sure you’re making the value you need. Um, I’m not there yet. I’m still just in the, just doing enough to do enough. Um.
doug: Right.
Kyle: I don’t know. Yeah. Probably not Very good advice for your clients, your, your team to hear there.
Sorry, but
doug: No, no, it’s, it’s all good. I was gonna say, like, I, I don’t pay too much attention now. However, I think it could be an interesting exercise just one week, what you mm-hmm. What you would be looking for is like, am I wasting time on a thing? Like am I spending a lot of time where, when I actually shouldn’t spend any time at all?
And you may figure that
Kyle: out.
doug: Yeah. But it
Kyle: seems like you’ve
doug: refined it. Friday,
Kyle: I refined it and I, I’ve kind of like given myself almost blocks like these. All you get is Friday and you get some of Monday better be done. If it’s not done, then you gotta squeak in hours early, early morning, or late at night.
And that’s on you. Yeah. So I’m kind of hard on myself a little bit, I guess, but it, it works. I give myself these heavy parameters because it gets it done good enough is good enough. Um, but you know, there. There are other things I want to be doing too, that are, that are, like, practicing guitar is more important to me than editing a video.
Um, but editing the video is, well, it’s of course, important, right? But I, I gotta get it done. I have to get that done. Um, so I’ve kind of recently, um, kind of in the new year actually giving myself very. Uh, more of a schedule.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: Uh, Woody Woody Guthrie has this great New Year’s resolutions thing. I made a video with Charlie Par about it once.
It’s fantastic. Um, one of ’em is work by a schedule, and if Woody Guthrie said that, and Woody Guthrie was. I mean, he was hustling stuff left and right, man. I mean, yeah, he wouldn’t call him an entrepreneur, but he was, and uh, Charlie Power talked a lot about this with me once where we, I think Woody Guthrie would have a YouTube channel if he was alive.
He would have a YouTube channel because it’s a way to talk to people as yourself, with nobody in between. And that was not an option. For, for a long time. Right. It’s pretty special.
Meeting Charlie Parr
doug: How’d you meet Charlie? That was one of the, or some of your videos with him are some of the first that I saw, I believe.
Kyle: Oh, sure.
doug: Cool. On the channel. And, um, yeah, I love slide. I have a couple nationals and, um, that, that was like what sucked me in, um, like playing again and finger style and all that stuff. So yeah. How, how did you guys meet? Oh,
Kyle: nice. Uh, well he is from Duluth, you know, I dunno if you knew that. He’s from my hometown.
Okay. So, um,
doug: you saw each other
Kyle: Well, yeah, I would’ve saw him. Well, I mean, basically, not to give you the whole story, but I was coming up, going to the bar he played at when I, I was underage, but if you went in early, you could stick around. You just were upstairs and hide out. Yeah. And then you could sneak everybody’s beer that they didn’t finish.
Right. This is great. And um. Anyway, I got to know him through that. He actually, eventually he noticed me, and I don’t even know how he knew I played music, but his washboard player would take a break. He would, he, Charlie would just play for three hours straight and I could, like, I would sneak in and during play washboard, during the washboard player’s break.
And uh, that was fundamental schooling for me, um, sitting in there and that. So anyway, long story short, we got to know each other just through the years. Charlie is a very, one of his gifts is just. He can recognize people’s strengths and interests and he, his bullshit detector is fantastic. So I think he, I think he just realized that I was kind of in it, you know, I was signing up for life with this music.
So, yeah,
Burnout and Analytics Pressure
doug: jumping back, I alluded to it before, but burnout is a real thing for creators, especially for people that. Are, are listening and watching, like basically we have a lot of analytics and then our livelihood is coming from the content we’re creating. And then you get so much data on analytics and there’s pressure to create more.
And you’re like, well, maybe I’ll publish two videos per week or three per week. And then everything goes up and you’re like, well, I better keep this up. And it’s, it’s hard to balance it and it can be very stressful if you don’t get out ahead of it. And. I’m curious if you’ve faced that and how you’ve dealt with it over time.
Kyle: Yeah, I have had burnout not from YouTube yet, um, but I hope I never will because of the lesson that I got from before. So I got burnout as a live musician right at the pan, right before the pandemic kind of shut it all down. And that might’ve been part of why the YouTube thing felt like so good. Just to be creative and it, it, you know what I mean?
Like, just felt, I felt like, oh, I get, I feel creative again. Um, playing live music in, in a bar room all over to nobody. You know, it’s just like I. Crush your spirit too, too much of that. Um, you know, again, too much of like a, a mediocre thing. Just, it, it will make, it’ll ruin the whole thing, so you have to have some wins.
Right. And I wasn’t getting any, and so I had burnout as I, I just didn’t want to go to the gig.
doug: Mm.
Kyle: Um. So, and I didn’t wanna practice. It was over. I just, I not thought I knew I, and quitting was not on the table. I had no other skills, but be a dishwasher. And that’s the thing, I still say to myself, it’s this or the pit, it’s, it is this or the pit.
Because that’s the only job I’ve ever had. And I could prob, maybe I could get a job doing something else, but like my resume is self-employed musician, dishwasher. So. So anyway, I had burnout from that and it sucked. Um, I dunno if it was clinical, but you know, it sucked. And, uh, as far as like YouTube thing, how do I maintain that momentum without getting, feeling that same thing?
Um, I’m just, I think part of it might be this like strict kind of like, Hey, you only get to do this this much time. Make sure you’re spending time doing the thing. You also love spending time with your family, you know, um, if you’re. You know, if you care about things, you have to care about them.
Care For Your Gear
Kyle: Right? That seems, mm-hmm.
Obvious, but say that to yourself. Sometimes you care about your wife, you need to care about her, you care for her, your kid, your instrument, care for your instrument. You care about it, right? Tony Paul Castro’s did a great one Once. Don’t leave your guitar anywhere. You wouldn’t leave your. A baby, right? You didn’t care about that thing.
Would, would you leave your baby in your car? It’s negative 30. I hope not.
Analytics Versus Community
Kyle: Um, yeah, so, you know, that’s a part of the self-care thing and, uh, I, I don’t really, I don’t mean to say I don’t look at analytics, you know, when I post a video, it’s, your curiosity is, it’s right there. Just look at it on your phone.
You can, it’s very easy to see how video does. Um, usually the videos, I really like that. I’m like, man, this is cool. Don’t actually do that. Well,
doug: yeah.
Kyle: Um, like I did one on, uh, the Jacob Collier tuning and how to convert it to six string. He has a five string tuning. I saw that Paul David’s interview and I was like, man, that’s sick.
But you know what, you could do that with a six string and, um. It was just like not, my audience was like, who the heck’s Jacob Collier, I’m here for Blind Boy Fuller. Yeah. Even though I did, I did kind of package it in a way that was like, this is actually very similar to an old time banjo tuning, but again, that’s old time banjo, not finger style guitar.
Part of my thing though is like, you know what? I just still, I’m not doing anything I want. Like I’m not making a video about, you know, filing my nuts lots now, or like, I’m not doing guitar repair. But I still think it’s important to like be true to who you are in your interests. Mm-hmm. And so I do post things that I probably know at the gate won’t.
You know, whatever. Sure. Won’t be a, a banger. But like, then there’s the other side too, where something that’s not a banger, but like I’ll get Patreon emails like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I got a bunch of new patrons. And so that’s the thing I’m really interested in now because you’re building a community.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: And like that’s what I, I look less at the analytics on the YouTube video that that is telling, but also like an old video might just take off too. So it’s actually not that telling. But the analytics for the emails of YouTube, it’s like if I, if I post something and then that same day I’m getting like a bunch of new patrons, that tells me I, that was probably good for everybody.
Yeah.
Chasing What Works
doug: So when you, when you find that and, and you’re like, oh, this, this one was good.
Kyle: Yeah.
doug: Do you then look at that top, do you figure out why, and then do more of that? Like, are you taking it to that level?
Kyle: Yeah, sure. Why? Yeah, why wouldn’t I, you know, I think that’s, you’d be silly not to, it’s like having a, a hit song.
It’s like, oh, you gotta figure out why wagon wheel worked better. Do that one again.
doug: Yep.
Kyle: Um, so yeah, I, I, I try to, um, I’ve gone as far as like, almost just duplicating the right title, the same title. You know, just like, try it again. New video. It works
doug: most of the time, right?
Kyle: Yeah. Kind of. It depends on, there’s such a, the creative other, the creative aspect on YouTube too, that’s outside the video is the title, marriage with the thumbnail thing, and so it’s like you, sometimes the title works really well for the other video because of the thumbnail, because that particular title and that particular person, right?
It’s just like, oh. So, like, I’m trying to think of an example. Like, I think I had a, uh, one video I remember did really well, like right away, uh, how Bob Dylan wrote the perfect Folk song. And then there’s a picture of Bob Dylan who writes folk songs and then a thing that’s above his head that said he, he broke all the rules, right?
And so there’s kind of a fun, like perfect, you know, playful thing about that, right? It’s like it was perfect ’cause he broke all the rules and it’s, there’s his face. But if I did that with a video about me. How did I write the perfect folk song? I broke the rules. It’s not gonna do the same, you know? Um, so there is, I gotta like, you gotta look at all the ingredients.
Um, and that’s, that sounds like burnout. Yeah,
doug: it sure, it sure does. Um. Interesting. So I can, I have, I think I made it through like four of the questions. Um, ’cause there’s, there’s so much to talk about. Um, but I know we only have a little bit of time left. So a couple others.
Formats Long Versus Shorts
doug: Um, long form versus different formats versus like your own interest.
So you do interviews sometimes. I do you, uh, publish one with, uh, you mentioned, uh, Tony and Charlie. So you guys were sitting around and it was just like. Y’all hanging out, which was fun. Yeah. And um, other times, I guess since Charlie’s roughly in the neighborhood, he can record with you sometimes. And other videos are more of a, you know, a format of 10 minutes, you cover a thing.
So how do you decide on what the format is gonna be while understanding like. Some people are not gonna watch like a 40 minute interview or whatever.
Kyle: Right. Um, well I’m still figuring that out. You know, I think like that Tony and Charlie video, I just, I, you know, I mean, if, if you don’t know who those people are, I guess we should.
Double down on that too. Like T Charlie Parr is like a nationally round folk singer, uh, guitar player. And, and Tony is a guitar player as well, but he has, uh, a YouTube channel. I think he’s got like 500,000 subscribers and he has his own platform called Tony’s Acoustic Challenge, which has like 15,000 members or something, you know, so getting those two together.
The same right place, right time. I was like, I gotta do that. Right. So there’s some things you just have to do, even if it doesn’t work for your, your, your weekly shows format. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I don’t really do do shorts. I’ve tried that. I tried it. You know, I was in a season of trying a lot of stuff, especially in those earlier days where I was like, this is fun.
I wanna, sure. I’ll do a short, I’ll make a comedy short. Um, don’t do it. I don’t watch shorts. Um, the things I do, I’m trying to, you know, the things I do watch, you know, the channels I watch are, man, they’re no edits. One cut long, you know, deep dives. Yeah. Um, and that’s the stuff I really like. So I am kind of, I am going longer, a little bit less cuts, um, ’cause that’s the stuff I like.
So, you know, probably end up, end up that way a little bit too. But yeah.
doug: Alright, so we are coming towards the end, so I’m just making sure we keep everybody around here. So we got one.
Three To Five Years
doug: Uh, where do you see this in the next three to five years? If you could predict, I hate these kind of questions, but if you have an answer we can, we talk about it?
Kyle: I could predict.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Well, I don’t know, but I’ll put it this way, I guess. I know things have like a, you know, you, you have a, a much larger audience on YouTube than, than I do, but it’s like I had 10,000 subscribers last year, and I only know that because I went on tour and I advertised that in the bio this year it’s almost 40, starting the year with almost 40.
So that’s a simple math, right? Mm-hmm. In a year. Now, will it always, what is that Triple will always do that, I don’t know, but like. You know, um, I, I do see it, you know, getting to a point where it’s sustainable, you know?
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Um, and, um, hopefully I’m able to, you know, we’ve got the northerly here too, right?
And so that’s our music school with the lowercase s and uh, hopefully it would be cool to buy a building or something like that, get to a point where we can like, you know, be more in control and have more studios. We only have three right now. Um, and it’s so multi-use. I still don’t have a situation where I can just have a camera set up.
Like I have to set it all up and like, you know, this is my light, you know?
doug: Oh,
Kyle: okay. You know, I’m just, I haven’t invested fully, you know, I, my cameras all right. I got the Sony fx. That’s good. 30. Yeah. But, um, yeah, just, I’d love to be at a place where I can just turn it on, be creative, um, and not have to worry so much about like, ah, dang it, the light.
Yeah. You know, because I am an artist, so I, I do care about that stuff.
doug: Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle: More than I wish I did, but I do, I want it to look nice. So yeah, it’d be, that would be cool. Three to five. That would be amazing if we bought a building, but I don’t, I dunno. But that would be sweet.
doug: Yeah. And I, I mean, the trajectory you’re on, it seems totally, um, like within reach and every business is different, but just.
From my experience and my observations, like you, you have like some cool growth, probably more than you expected in a year. Like Yeah. Things when you’re at the level that you’re at, like they could grow much faster than you expect, and you’re like, oh, shit, I, I,
Kyle: right.
doug: This exceeded expectations by quite a lot and everything’s really good.
Um. So if, yeah. You know, the algorithmic gods smile upon the channel and keep pushing it. I mean, in your Uncle Al Yeah, uncle Al. Um, okay.
Writing A Better Book
doug: I did see, um, you’re working on a book, is that correct?
Kyle: Uh, I’m working on a lot of, of books. I,
doug: I, if you wanna talk about it, I like, uh, I’m curious how the process is going.
Kyle: Yeah, it, I realized how hard it, how hard it is. It’s really, yeah. Yeah. And, and, and there’s ano, there’s a lot of options out there for finger style Blues by Fred McDowell. Right. What does the world need with another one? Who cares that I wrote it? They’re already out there. Um, and so if I’m gonna do it.
Well, it just needs to be better than the other ones. Not better by like, I’m a better guitar player, but just, I just, the bar gotta go up. I’m not going to put the same thing out. And when I was making it, I was like, this isn’t better, it’s worse. And I need to just like, through making videos, I gotta know how to get good at it first.
I’ve slowly been working up concepts for a book and through that it’s something different than it started. Um, so the book things kinda. Tampered down. Um, but I have a bunch of ideas. Um, Amanda, a lot of stuff more than old blue stuff, you know, it’s, you know, maybe a misconception that I’m creating is that, that I think that’s the best.
And my main mission for the channel is like, I truly believe in like these everyday guitarists and that were, you know, recorded in the twenties that are maybe like unsung. In the same way. I believe in you as an unsung everyday guitar player. But that doesn’t mean that I think Blind Blake is more important than Joe Pass, even though Joe Pass has more eyes on him.
Right. And one thing I wanna, maybe this circles back to your last question, is I want to expand my idea a little more than I, I, I’ve kind of had some clarity recently really, about what it is I’m sharing and, um. I wanna be able to expand that a little more beyond the 1920s stuff that I’ve shared a lot about and that I, I sh I’m glad I did because there needs to be more eyes and people need to know these stories.
Um, but bringing it back to the book thing as I drafted it, it’s like, oh, this is a lot bigger than, this is a lot bigger than just a, a book about cool blind Blake licks. Um.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: So, yeah.
doug: Very good. Well, I’ll, um, I, I worked on a book with a friend, um, for, it was about a year or so, but funny enough, it was about anti productivity and laziness.
Nice. So, uh, we haven’t finished it, so people ah, we really, which is a true thing. We have like a draft, but eventually both of us were like, I don’t know, fuck it. So we, yeah, we, uh, we pulled back. So yeah, book is a. It’s a big project, especially when you are, when you go back and you read it, doing
Kyle: everything else.
Yeah.
doug: Yeah. Well, yeah, that too. So.
Where To Find Kyle
doug: Okay, Kyle, this has been super awesome. We’ll hang on, um, and chat just a minute After we finish up here. We’ll link to everything, but if people want to, um, learn more about you, what’s the number one place to go?
Kyle: Oh, it’s definitely YouTube. I dunno if you’ll learn about me.
Yeah, you will. I end up, I end up sharing personal stories too. Um, yeah, YouTube, you know, every week, almost every week, sometimes two a week. Um, I’ll have a YouTube video on that, but if you wanna, and if you find yourself, you know, I would definitely recommend if you gotta be kind of in the guitar Yeah. To dig into it.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Robert Johnson or the old Blues players, the idea is that even if you don’t know who those people are, it exposes you to it. And that might be the door to the rest of your life. You know? I mean, so yeah, that if you get in one of the doors you can get into from YouTube.
My YouTube channel is my Patreon page and that’s got resources beyond resources, so.
doug: Awesome. Kyle,
Kyle: this
doug: has been super fun. Thanks a lot,
Kyle: dude. Thanks for having me.
doug: I see a couple guitars on the wall behind you and, and other stringed instruments, but, um,
Kyle: there’s a lot.
doug: Yeah.
Vintage Parlor Guitar Story
doug: What are some of your favorite guitars? Like that’s the one you pick up most of the time
Kyle: is this one.
doug: Alright, tell me about it.
Kyle: That’s the one, it’s um, I can’t give you a ton of info about the actual history of it ’cause it’s elusive.
Um, it’s called an ion. That’s the stamp that’s in there. Um, but it was one of those catalog subsidiaries of Line and Healy Okay. A Chicago company that’s still around and actually Line and Healy just started making, uh, catalog a guitars again. Cool. They’re, which yeah, it’s cool, but it’s also, they were like.
The affordable option, you know, and we’re talking about like the, uh, turn the century, right? The 19 hundreds, uh, that century. And, uh, they were like, you know, all the blues dudes and dots are playing on catalog guitars and I don’t know what they costed two bucks or whatever, you know, and you can get it in your Sears Row, buck magazine and send it mailed order to your house.
I mean, it’s Amazon, right? Um. And so Lion and Healy started making them again because they actually are incredible instruments. Um, but they’re not cheap anymore. They’re like, they’re like, I don’t know, you know, a, a fair price, like three grand or something.
doug: Right.
Kyle: Uh, for what they are. But, um, yeah, things have changed.
Okay.
doug: It’s kind
Kyle: of like, but yeah, this, yeah, go for it.
doug: Oh, and it’s kind of like the, the Waterloo, um, which is like the Subbrand of Collin Collin’s. Right.
Kyle: Um, yeah. Which is a playoff of the Kalamazoo of Gibson. Yeah. Which I see you have. Um, yeah, so, but this is an Arianne, which is essentially line and Healy I think could be a regal though.
And that gets confusing because, um. If I wanted a company and I wanted to call it Ian, I could just hire Line and Healy or Regal to make it for me, and then I would distribute it and it’s, I don’t know, I can’t think of a super clear, like, like analogous to the market today, but I maybe, like if you go to Target and, um, what’s that?
Uh, it’s like first act. Is that the, well, not even instruments. I’m thinking like, um, you know, what’s that show? Fixer Upper, what are the, what’s that couple called? The Magnolia thing. Oh, okay. Do you know what I’m talking about? No. So Magnolia is the big brand. Okay. Which they have like a network channel.
They have restaurants. Right. They also have a Target brand, and that’s called something else. Right. It’s got a different name. So. They have this team or whatever this, this infrastructure that makes it, and then the brand is different depending on where it’s marketed or sold or something like that. Anyway, is that the right analogous?
I don’t know, but either way, re N could have been made by um, right. Regal or Lion and Healy. But distributed under the name REM, that is true of a ton of these, like, um, ca catalog, a guitar companies. Got it. You could also, like, if you had a music store, do the same thing. You know, if you wanted to make Doug music, you could have had Line and Healy make you a guitar and you could just put Doug Music on it.
Right. Interesting. And that’s sort of like a par parlor, uh, shape. It’s a small body. It’s pretty wide neck as well. Yep. It’s very wide neck. Um, not too deep. It is extremely light. I mean, it’s in the three pound, but maybe less.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: Anyone who picks up this guitar is like, why? Where did it go? Why is it so light?
Um, and that’s because of a few things. Well, it’s dry and old. That’s one of ’em. Um, but it’s just very lightly built. The sides are so. Thin that I, I actually like leaned in on it one time and just cracked.
doug: Oh no.
Kyle: And I could see how paper thin it was. Thankfully, I have a background in fixing stuff, so it’s no big deal.
Yeah. Um, and that’s another reason why this guitar is so special is, well it’s the first guitar I bought I bought that wasn’t given to me. Uh, my first guitar was like a gift and it was cheap, so that’s why I bought it. I didn’t know how cool and vibey it was, but it was cheap and. I eventually got into doing repair stuff and this would’ve been, this was my first like full on restoration job.
I needed everything because it was my first one. I had to do everything twice as you do. So it’s had two different fret jobs. The next been reset twice. I made that bridge, you know, when I was like 20. Um, but it plays really well now. Um, and it’s got a really good just airy sound. Um, it. It’s not as loud as like a dread knot, but it has that like woof to, to the notes that like a big body guitar would have.
And part of that, a contributing factor to that is it only has one brace. Oh. So I know it’s, and it’s called a transverse brace. I don’t know everything about why they would’ve done this, but it it does tell you it, it does date it. And if, because it. It’s doesn’t make a lot of sense longevity wise. Right.
It seems like it’s gonna implode on itself.
doug: Mm-hmm.
Kyle: Uh, especially if you put steel strings on it. And so companies stopped doing that and you know, went with the ladder brace and X brace. Your guitar’s probably ladder brace, right? Yep. Kalamazoo. Yeah. Yeah. So this is just a transverse brace. One brace here and there is one brace right there in the back.
Braces, one piece back two. Yeah. Very nice.
Strings Bracing And Tone
Kyle: And then what do you string it up with? Just speaking of, you know, it being so warm and lightly braced? I string it up. I’ve tried everything, you know, I’ve actually, I actually was dumbass and I put mediums on it at one point. Ooh. Um, yeah, I got this thing when I was a kid.
I just didn’t think about stuff, you know, it sounded great. Um. I actually for a while had I had gut strings, like real gut strings on it. Uh, that was pretty cool. There’s a video of me playing April kisses by Eddie Lang on YouTube somewhere like deep in the, in my videos. Um, that’s on, that’s on this guitar with gut strings.
We actually have a gut string manufacturer here in Duluth. Okay. They make, they make gut strings for like. Uh, you know, more renaissance era instruments, early music, so loots and, you know, rabos and stuff like that. Uh, but they also make strings for guitars. They make, they make banjo strings. So they, they’re, they sound cool.
Um, yeah, I ended up, now I, what I have on here is these string joys.
doug: Okay?
Kyle: Um, they’re soft touch strings. And they’re, they’re essentially just like a really light gauge string, but they still, however, whatever voodoo they put in these strings, it still kind of maintains a pretty good tone. Uh, like, like a lot of base response still there.
So, you know, if you put super light strings on, the thing just goes, you know, it doesn’t really do anything. Um, so yeah, that’s what I have on here. I, I forget. It’s like 10 and a half.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: By, by like, I think it’s like 49. It’s like a weird number ratio. Okay. But yeah.
doug: Oh, in
Kyle: between. Yeah.
doug: Very cool.
Kyle: Yeah, there’s
doug: some videos on your channel so people can go check it out and
Kyle: Yeah.
doug: Recognize that, that guitar. Very
Kyle: cool. Yeah.
Telecaster And Kalamazoo Tales
Kyle: I play when I’m not playing this guitar, uh, it’s in the case here. I can pull it up if you wanna see it. It’s um, it’s straight there, but it’s a, my roi, which is a pretty great guitar. I also just recently got my first Telecaster.
doug: Oh yeah.
Kyle: And so I’ve been playing that.
Man, that’s funny. I, I, I got it. ’cause, um. We have a 2-year-old and I’m trying to keep my practice up, you know, so, you know, I get up at like 5:00 AM every day and I try to put in two hours before he wakes up. Doesn’t always work out. And, uh, so it’s actually my quiet guitar, right? It’s, it’s just quieter.
It’s, it’s then this. Um, but I haven’t plugging it in. Uh. I did play my first show with it, and I’m just doing the finger style stuff that, you know, I, I share a lot about online, but, um, it just sounds amazing on a telly. Sounds ab I put flat one strings on it. It sounds amazing.
doug: That’s
Kyle: so
doug: cool. And, uh, I’ll, I’ll tell you a little story about my, um
Kyle: mm-hmm.
doug: Kalamazoo back there, so I. I don’t wanna go back too far, but I was, I was thinking about when I first was like, I think I wanna get a nicer guitar. So I was looking at, um, just smaller body guitars. ’cause the, the dread nut that I got 25 years ago, just a little too big and I’m like, ah. I’m not, I don’t need to play that loud anyway, so,
Kyle: right.
doug: Eventually I got a, a Gibson, a new, uh, LG two, which was really nice. I lived pretty close to Wildwood, so I actually went in there during the pandemic and, and got it. And then, uh, I started investigating the history, which led me to some of the catalog guitars in Kalamazoo, which is a Gibson maid. So I got a.
Uh, KG 11. I found it on Craigslist, like two pictures, no explanation. Mm-hmm. And I was like, is this a scam? I don’t know, but it looked like it could be. Okay. Emailed the guy who. Had a studio and I think he traded a jazz master for it. Didn’t really know much about it. So I met him at a guitar center, got got it for a pretty good deal.
I think like 900 or something like that. Uh, as far as I could tell, uh, there were no cracks and. The frets were pretty flat. I don’t think it needed a next reset. Again, I’m not an expert, but when I was looking at it, I’m like, this actually plays pretty decent. Mm-hmm. And I don’t think there was any overspray or it, it mostly original from what I could tell.
Um, so I got it and I, I thought I could play pretty well, but maybe I would need some work. ’cause the bridge was, um. It’s in rough shape. Like it was kind of coming apart a little bit. Yeah. But it had 11 like elevens on there or something like that. Anyway, I took it down to, it’s uh, it’s like the Arvada, it’s like the old town pick and parlor.
Mm-hmm. Which is a nice shop. Do you know those guys down there?
Kyle: Uh, there’s one in Minneapolis, but is that the one you’re talking about?
doug: No,
Kyle: this is not,
doug: there’s one in Denville. There’s
Kyle: probably one.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: They’re all over. Yeah.
doug: Um, but there was, um, a guy that worked at Gibson Custom shop for a short time or something.
Kyle: Oh,
doug: nice. And, and anyway, he, he likes to restore these, whatever, pre-war old Martin and Gibson. So, um, he did recommend a Refre, which. He did an awesome job, like total game changer, like it feels amazing and then rebuilt the, the bridge and I think, yeah, it’s like under, when I weighed it, when I got it, it was under three pounds.
It was like two and 14 ounces or something like that. Yeah. So like you said, I’m just like, whoa, this is so comfy to play. And where is it
Kyle: man?
doug: That’s
Kyle: great.
doug: So yeah, and I was a little, you know, you Reed that one, but I know some people will. They are more protective. They want to not fret it, but I’m like, I want just play it and
Kyle: you know.
Yeah,
doug: it’s fine.
Kyle: No, man, you gotta regret it. If you want to play it, you got, I mean, you get lucky sometimes, but
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: The frets are, if the frets aren’t right, doesn’t care how good it sounds. Yeah. You have to have the right frets. Yeah.
doug: Yeah. So
Kyle: it’s not cheap. And it what, what we would do back when I was doing repair.
We would just save the frets in a little baggy.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: And he’d say, here you go. There’s the original. You know, it doesn’t anybody who’s gonna buy this guitar, you know, that’s, any museum would understand. Like it has new, you know what I mean? It’s just like you gotta put the new fret on. It’s like not even brake in your car.
Right. So yeah,
doug: yeah, yeah.
Kyle: You can’t change the original brake line. It’s like, no, you can’t. You have
doug: to. Yeah.
Kyle: It’s a safety thing. Yeah.
doug: Yeah. And it, I mean, like you said, it is pricey. I mean, it’s a, it was a lot of work and it, it took a little while, but, um, yeah. Totally worth it. And yeah, so fun to play at place.
As good as the. New, like the brand new LG two. Um, yeah.
Modern Fraulini Gig Guitar
doug: Do you have any like newer acoustics or do, do you just stick to the old, old
Kyle: stuff? My fraulini is new here. I’ll pull it out.
doug: Okay. Yeah.
Kyle: Um, one sec.
doug: Sure.
Kyle: So I think it’s a 2007.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: Um, but it looks,
doug: yeah, it does.
Kyle: It just looks like the same. Right. But they’re like the same. Pretty
doug: much. Yeah.
Kyle: Just this one’s extremely light. Yeah. This body is a little bigger of the lower bout, like a little bit bigger, but they’re essentially the same. Um, this would’ve been like the kind of guitar that Blind Blake was playing.
Um, but it’s, it, it’s what I gig with. I don’t love gigging with that one, you know? Right. And this one sounds great with a flat pick or a thumb pick. It’s really even. Um, so yeah, this, I have a pickup installed in it. K and k pickup. Okay. So it’s a gigger, you know? Yeah, very
doug: good. Yeah. Super nice.
Kyle: It’s great.
Yeah, it’s great. It, it’s, it’s Todd Camio, uh, he’s a guitar builder behind the name for Alini, um, outta Madison, Wisconsin. And so he makes, he made this particular one for himself and then he sold it to a mutual friend, and then I picked it up from him. So. It’s only been three owners, um, but, you know, pretty special guitar.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always been owned by, you know, somebody into this style of music too. So it’s really only had rags and folk music and, you know Yeah. Jazz, early jazz played on it, so that’s so awesome. Yeah. But he, you know, he made it, Todd made a guitar for slash uh, I think Ben Harper has one. Like, he, you know, uh, Bruce Springsteen has a Fraulini.
doug: Okay.
Kyle: You know, so he’s like in the, in the world of. F guitar geeks. It’s understood that Todd is the best. Right. And you don’t have to be into pre-war stuff to, to play his stuff. It’s just his stuff’s. It is, it’s so good. It’s the best you and you’re supporting a, you know, a, you know, family man and you small maker.
And so yeah, he makes him one at a time. His, his sons have helped a little bit. I don’t know if they stuck with it, but I know through the pandemic they were helping out. And, uh, yeah, I have another one of his, um, uh, 12 string that thing’s a beast, so, oh yeah, I’ve got two frais. I got, um, the old RN I sold, I had a Kalamazoo.
I recently sold it to a student of mine, um, who’s, who was looking for a vintage thing. And um, I was looking to let go of that one. Um, so I moved that one along, but that was a fun guitar. Funny enough, I ended up using it for. Flat picking stuff primarily. Um, I got it hoping to kind of do like blues or I thought it’d be a great blues box.
And of course it is, but I already have a really good this thing’s, the bluest box there is the the old one. And so I was like, well, this thing’s actually got a really even clear, loud voice almost. Almost like an arch top. And so I ended up doing a lot of stuff, you know, on that, in, in that realm. Uh, but anyway, sold it, you know, you move things along.
So right now I’ve just got the. The two parlors, 12 string and then that tele, those are my, those are my guitars.
doug: Yeah. Alright. We could go on and on about the instruments. Um, but final question
Kyle: here. I’ll do it.
doug: Wait. Yeah. We’ll have to, um, have a whole other show for it. Uh,
Kyle: yeah,
doug: dude.
When To Sell Guitars
doug: How do you know, how do you decide to let the guitar go?
When is it time, like that Kalamazoo that you sold?
Kyle: Well. I got that thing. I made a video about it too. I got it. Just because like the prices are going up. Gibson’s, it’s interesting how like, mark, if you watch the market and if any of your, any of your listeners are obviously like into like, you know, into watching how money works and investments and stuff.
Watch the guitar market. It’s interesting.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: Gibson and and Martin are just kind of switch places. Yeah, interestingly enough, and I, I know a really, really, uh, a fantastic guitar player and he’s also like kind of a, like Roy Bookbinder, the late great Roy Bookbinder. We just lost. He was telling me he, he didn’t make his money playing folk music.
He made his money selling guitars on the road while he was playing folk music. And there’s a few guitar players in the world right now doing stuff like that. Uh, and this particular guy, um, was telling me that he. He can’t ask what he used to ask for Martins, but he’s getting to ask more for Gibson’s and I noticed that Kalamazoos on reverb and I’m checking the sold listings, you know, not the asking price, but the sold kalamazoos just kept going up.
So I was like, I better get one while I can. And a buddy of mine had a few, he, anyway, I wanted to try one out, that particular one, how did I was ready to sell it. It was just something I wanted to try. Okay. And I knew I wasn’t gonna be married to it. Um, and that’s probably how most of my guitar buying is right now.
It’s, it’s like getting, okay, what are these all about? And, um, just recognizing that I’m not trying to be a collector. Um, some things I hold onto of, you know, like, okay, this is a good investment and maybe I’ll, you know, hold onto it. And then I just, you know, at some point it’s just like. You know, I, I actually don’t have any real investment guitars right now.
I’ve just sold them all. But I do buy some, some, like, hang onto to things sometimes for a while with that in mind. But I’m just not very good at, um, hanging on to stuff.
doug: Yeah.
Kyle: I hang onto to the stuff that I know it can gimme, serve me, um, and if it stops serving me. You know?
doug: Yeah.
Sentimental Keepers Wrap
Kyle: This is probably the only guitar I’ll probably never sell, even though it’s the most finicky, this is this old one.
Right. I, I don’t think I would sell the, the fini either. Um, unless it was to like the totally right person who I know would just continue the lineage, uh, in the, in the way that I doesn’t have to be old time, but just like. A player, you know, who’s gonna gig the thing? And the 12 I have too. I don’t know if I’d sell that.
’cause it’s, it was a gift from Charlie Parr. It’s just like,
doug: oh
Kyle: wow. Yeah, he gave it to me. That guy can’t hold onto anything either. Yeah. He’s worse than me. So, yeah. Anyway, so there are things that are sentimental. I’m not super sentimental person, but maybe I am about a few things. And um, so yeah, I think just like.
Mainly if it stops serving me, the things I’ve moved and I’ve moved a lot, I’ve owned a lot of guitars. Mm-hmm. I’ve a lot. Yeah. Uh, if it stops serving me, I just, I move it along. Or if I’m like, Hey, you know, I could, I doubled my money on that, I could probably, I mean, definitely makes sense to sell it, so,
doug: yeah.
Kyle: You know? Yeah.
doug: And it makes sense, you know, like you said, if it’s going to a good home or it’s gonna get played and respected and all that stuff, like
Kyle: totally about that do. Yeah. You can’t, I can’t sell a wall hanger. I won’t do it. I won’t do, I won’t sell a wall hanger. Yep, yep. I won’t sell it to a house.
I know is full of just, you know, you know, a bunch of guitars just hanging there. I couldn’t do it, so.