Finding Your Voice with Aubrey Calaway

Lisa Belisle: Hello. I am Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching our video podcast Radio Maine, where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today it's my pleasure to be speaking with Aubrey Calaway, who is the director of Foghorn, which is an audio collective and coworking space based in Portland. Nice to have you here today.

Aubrey Calaway: Thanks so much for having me, Lisa.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm excited to talk to you because obviously you and I have a lot of overlaps with our interest in audio and storytelling, and I know we met at the Portland Art Gallery because you happen to be there for an event around travel that we were working on with one of the members of our community. I guess let's start with audio. What's so special about the talking, the listening, the creation of this kind of space that made it possible for you to want to focus on this full time in your life?

Aubrey Calaway: We could go back to the beginning of humanity, I feel like, is where that story really begins. When you're talking about the power of audio storytelling, I think a lot of people trace it back to sitting around the fire, oral tradition, or you can trace it back even to being in the womb and the fact that fetuses respond to the mother's voice, and that that's one of the first points of contact we have, is with the vibration of a mother's voice. And so that's where the story of the importance of audio writ large starts, and why it taps into something fundamental and has been around forever and will be around forever in different forms as technology changes. For me, I think the story also starts with my mom playing NPR in the car when we were driving around and me being in the backseat, and my sister and I playing pretend NPR. We would have our own little NPR shows just in the backseat, kind of mimicking what we were hearing on the radio. I also grew up as podcasts were growing up as a medium, and when I was in high school, that was really when audio storytelling through this new streaming and on-demand on our phone technology was also maturing. And so that's what brought me to Maine. I decided that I wanted to be an audio producer. I was interested in making podcasts, I was interested in radio, in audio storytelling and documentary. So I moved to Maine to attend the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Lisa Belisle: There's so much about what you're saying that I really love and resonate with, because knowing that you were evolving as a person at the same time that the medium was evolving is really important. When I first started talking about podcasting, people were like, podcasting? They had just gotten used to the idea of blogging. It's amazing to think that we've come so far in such a relatively short period of time, and that you were there as this was happening. So how about early influences? I also grew up listening to NPR, and Nina Totenberg and Scott Simon and the great interviewers and their voices and the larger stories. It does have an influence as you're thinking about what you want to do with your life. Talk to me about some of those influences, and who in particular did you feel like, I really want to be, maybe not like this person, but I can see myself going in this direction?

Aubrey Calaway: You have to give props to Terry Gross and the amazing interviewers who've been holding down NPR for years. I think those are influences, even if I'm not thinking about them on a daily basis, just because they've shaped what radio is in American culture in such a significant way. And I think Ira Glass also has to be in there. This American Life set the template in a very real way and was kind of the bridge from radio to podcasts in a big way. I think it lent prestige. They were innovating on the form at the same time that they were bringing in the legacy of radio in American culture. And honestly, I think when I got to Salt, and when a lot of the students that I later taught as a teaching assistant at Salt arrive at the program, we're doing a lot of work to get them to not sound like Ira Glass, because that's just been such a fundamental influence and has shaped the tone and the rhythm and the story structure of long-form narrative casting, that we're having to get people to stop unintentionally mimicking the cadence and inflection of Ira Glass's very distinctive voice and style. And then I was also coming of age with more people who were bringing more experimental forms into podcasts, as the servers and the software were becoming democratized and people could do it for cheaper. So shows like Welcome to Night Vale, which is still going, it's been around probably for 10 years, and it's an independent, actually fiction podcast set in a fictional desert town. It's kind of Lovecraftian, it's kind of a horror, kind of surrealist story. I don't listen to it anymore, but I was listening to it in high school, and that was revelatory at the time of, okay, it doesn't have to just be interviews or even traditional narratives. We can be using audio, which is such a nimble medium, to be telling all kinds of weird stories in wacky ways.

Lisa Belisle: I am glad you brought that up. Obviously that was one of my early obsessions, because there really wasn't anybody else in the space. And then later on Krista Tippett came along and she did On Being, which was a really different kind of podcast. But I also think it's fascinating to hear that you then had to help people unlearn, because it's audio. There's a mimicry that happens that's maybe unintentional, maybe it's intentional, but with audio it's especially strong. So I guess that's one of the areas that I want to go with first with you, which is, how do you help somebody unlearn vocalizations or even a narrative approach? How do you do that as a teacher, or even as somebody who is doing what you do now that's more production and more kind of helping shape and form a structure?

Aubrey Calaway: Finding your own voice is hard, I think, in a lot of realms of life, but especially in podcast production. And I think your point is really good that humans are very good mimics. So I think first you have to teach the fundamentals of storytelling. And This American Life is great for that, because they've got it down pat. They know how to have a strong beginning, middle, and end. They know how to identify stories that translate in radio. They're great reporters, and they also have a very famous kill-your-darlings philosophy there. Half the stories that they produce never make it to air. And now, as a producer, I've been on the other end of that. I haven't produced for This American Life, but I know many people who have, and they're brutal over there. They just have a really high quality that I think is worthy of mimicking in a lot of ways. But one of the tricks that I often had to pull out of my bag with students to get them to stop sounding like Ira Glass was, most of the time for Salt stories, you'll write out a script, you'll do a bunch of reporting, you'll record, you'll select the best tape that you've gathered, and then you'll write around it. And writing for audio is a very specific form and very different than the type of writing that we learn in school, essay-based writing. So we have students write things out, they're crafting their story, they're finding their narrative arc, their tension, all that. And then they start reading out what they've written and it's sounding stilted. It's awkward. You can tell they're reading, and it's often sounding like the things that they've heard on the radio. So after they've written out their stories and they've found the core threads and the beats that they want to hit, I'll often encourage them to go into the studio, to bring a friend or another producer who's in the course with them, sit down and have them just tell the story, not looking at what they've written, not looking at notes, just explain as if you are literally sitting in front of your friend telling them the story. I have them do this at multiple stages of the reporting process and the final narration step for production one, because I think it helps people identify what they're actually excited about. And I'm sure people can relate to this outside of the specifics of audio storytelling: when you're having trouble finding a path in life and you sit down, you talk to a friend and you start listing out ideas, both you and the person you're telling it to can hear in your voice what you're reacting to, what you're most excited about. Our bodies are part of our voice, and when it gets too stuck up of, my mouth is just a conduit from my brain to express ideas, things can get rigid and stilted. But when you return to the roots of audio and of sound and of stories as a social phenomenon, you can figure out what's interesting to you, which is easy to lose sight of when you're writing, and you can figure out what the most natural way to tell it is, to use slang, to have pauses, and to be searching for words. All of that, I think, adds texture, even though it is not as shiny and clean as some, especially novice producers, are seeking, to feel like they are polished and professional. But the gritty, very human texture of just social speech, and maybe this is just a point of taste for me, that's where I think audio storytelling really shines.

Lisa Belisle: I'm glad that you brought up the idea of finding one's voice, and I love that this is the context. It's literally finding one's voice, as opposed to other contexts where you're finding your way in the world, let's just say. In this case you're actually connecting with something physical to find the voice that is more uniquely yours. So turning this back to you, we've heard your early influences if we're talking about your own narrative arc. Tell me about finding your own voice. As somebody who has done both things, I've been a writer and a podcaster, an interviewer, an editor, and then I've had my own story. And sometimes I think you get really good at that first thing, that you're bringing the story out of other people and you're putting that story into the world, and sometimes it causes you not to focus on your own thing. So tell me about your experience with where you are now or where you've been when it comes to that.

Aubrey Calaway: As a producer, your first job usually is to get good at being a conduit for someone else's voice, at least when you're not the host. I have hosted some of the work that I've done, but most of what you're getting paid to do is working with, at this point, a lot of celebrity guests, hosts, or bigger-name journalists. They're the face. You are behind the scenes, you're learning how to write in their voice, which is a great and marketable skillset to have. But finding my own voice is a great question. For me, there's a strong personal element of, I've been transitioning over the last few years, and so my voice has physically changed. My vocal chords have physically thickened as I've been on hormone therapy. And so I listen back to the narration that I did a few years ago, and it's a different person. I've played it for other people and they haven't believed that it was actually me. So I think I've been finding literally my own voice in that way, which has been really special as an audio producer. And also finding what exactly I am interested in, what kinds of stories I'm actually interested in telling. And that's been a pretty long journey. I started out doing a lot of environmental-focused journalism and reporting, which is something that I'm passionate about. So that was the entry point into my podcasting career. And then most recently, I was a producer on a show called the TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones, which is a trans-focused culture, politics, trans rights interview show. And that's obviously another area of interest of mine, and that was great. But I think through all these experiences, I've realized I'm not really interested in making podcasts for nonprofits. It's great that they're doing it. I'm not really interested in trying to hone policy through communications. And then I go to TransLash, I realize I'm not really even quite a journalist. That's not it either. And recently I've been returning to my roots. The reason that I got into audio, fundamentally the reason I came to Salt and came to Maine, was documentary. It's the practice of documenting. It's non-fiction storytelling. And so I've been developing a new project that will actually focus on trans documentary. I'm developing that idea right now and hoping to create some kind of physical center for focusing on that.

Lisa Belisle: It's an important point that sometimes the way that you find something is by figuring out what you need to leave behind. And sometimes that is hard, because there's a reason they call it kill your darlings. There are things in our lives that we do because we're good at them, and other people will tell you, oh, you're really good at this, Aubrey. And then you think, well, I'm good at it, but it just isn't the thing exactly. And so as you're describing, that was good, but it's not the thing. There is something elemental about getting back to the thing. It also requires a certain amount of faith in your own ability to understand what your thing is. And talk about voices, there's a lot of voices coming at us all the time from lots of different places that are going to tell us what our thing is or isn't. How do you make sure that you stay focused on what it is that you want to be exploring yourself?

Aubrey Calaway: All of that is really true. And I think it's especially tough. The podcast industry is not in a good place right now, writ large. There was a bit of a, I kind of compare it to a dot-com bubble burst. There was, I think 10 years ago, kind of a huge influx of cash and interest in what this new medium could do for brands and businesses. And now that's kind of leveled off as people have realized that it's not actually that easy to make money off of podcasts. And so the industry has been in a tough place for the last few years. A lot of really talented producers have been losing jobs. A lot of really important and impressive production outfits have been folding. And now everything that we see with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, radio is now at risk as well. So there's been a pretty intense sense of scarcity in the industry, and certainly in myself as well, of, I can't turn down work right now because there's so little of it. So I'll take anything that I'm getting paid for, and people tell me I'm good at it, and it feels good to be paid for doing something that you're good at. But it's really only been in the last few months where I've been stepping back from that and saying, all right, it's great to get paid, it's great to be good at things, but if it's not feeling right in your body, it's not feeding your life, then that's not what I need to be doing. And just recognizing that there's a trade-off. Life is trade-offs. There's not going to be one perfect career, one perfect job. It's about, if I'm doing this, that means I can't be doing that. And sometimes it's worth it to say, no, I don't want to be doing that. I want to keep doing a thing that is paying my bills and all of that. But right now, I'm at least feeling in a more risk-tolerant, brave place. And honestly, I think just the chaos of the world for a time, our political moment, was encouraging me to stick to what I knew, to ground myself in the supposedly dependable and consistent. And something has switched in the last few months where I've just realized that consistency, dependability, are fundamentally illusions. A job that's paying good today may not be around tomorrow. And I think the decline of the podcast industry is a testament to that. Our political situation is a testament to that. So I'm interested in taking risks, and I think that's actually the exciting part of the decline of the heavy hitters, big players in the podcast industry, like Spotify closing down several of their outfits, Audible, and even the crumbling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All right, so the big institutions that we thought were the places that we could go to that would always be funded, that would always be doing work, those aren't around anymore. So let's just make what we want to make. And when there's not really much money to be made, it kind of brings back the artistic sensibility, the risk-taking that made this such an interesting medium to begin with. So I'm throwing caution to the wind, I think, right now. And I can do that because I've been in the industry for a while and I feel confident in my skills. And also honestly, because Portland is an amazing place to be an audio producer, because we have so many amazing producers here. We gather in space. I help run Foghorn. We can talk more about that. If I was just floating alone in the ether, it would be a lot harder. But having all these producers around me feeling the same way, talking the same way, is an emboldening experience.

Lisa Belisle: I think that is a great next thing to talk about, which is Foghorn. And I wanted to offer also, in reflection, just in the career that I've had in podcasting, I started radio and audio podcasting, not video podcasting. So it was entirely about the sound. And I still to this day remember some of the earliest pieces of advice that my audio producer shared with me, and they were absolutely invaluable. It's like working with a good editor to hone your message. And so I also agree that working alongside other people who all have a passion for that particular medium is incredibly important. But before I started doing this, it would've been easy to be like, oh well, you just show up, there's a microphone, you talk, what's the big deal? So I just want to give huge props to the people who are audio producers, because the ones I've worked with over the years, including the current one that I work with, who happens to be my husband, who is entirely self-taught, have only made me better. And you can't do these things for yourself as well as you do them with other people. So if anybody's asking, if anybody cares, that's my deep respect for the people that you are working alongside in the collective. But now I'd like to hear your experience. I think it's a really important thing you're bringing up.

Aubrey Calaway: I always say that I think Portland is the best place to be an audio producer in the country, maybe even the world. I have a theory that we have the highest per-capita audio producer rate in the country. I don't have any statistics to back that up. I think Brooklyn could maybe give us a run for our money. But we have so many people here, mostly because of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, which I've referenced. It's a graduate certificate program that's now run out of Maine College of Art and Design, although it's been around for 50 years. It started as a literary magazine at a high school Downeast and has had this amazing arc of change over the years, and is now this one-semester certificate program. Basically an amazingly intensive program where you learn everything you need to know to be an audio producer. They also have a film track that runs alongside it, and it's really well known in the industry, really well regarded, and it happens to be in Portland, Maine. So when I moved here, I was just looking to improve my skills and also improve my resume. I had heard from people all around the industry that this was the place to go if you really wanted to level up in your career. So I came being like, what a random place, Portland, Maine. I'd been to it once, and I was like, it's a very sweet town. It's kind of on the edge of things. I'm not sure really what's going on there other than lighthouses and all of that. And then I came and was immediately just like, oh wow, there is a rich community of audio storytellers who love being here, who love Maine, who love art. They don't just happen to be in Portland because they want a job, because there really aren't many audio jobs located here in the same way you would move to Brooklyn or move to Chicago to work in the industry. People move here often for Salt. They fall in love with Maine often through the process of reporting on it for their Salt projects and then stay. And that's what happened to me. That's what has happened to probably 10-plus people in my community here. So once I decided to stay in Maine, and I was doing all these remote jobs and struggling with the disembodied nature of that work, a few of my friends came together who were also audio producers and decided, we need a physical space to gather. We're all doing remote work, but we don't want to be doing it at our kitchen table alone. And so they found a little office on Congress Street and just set up a very casual, totally unofficial coworking space where we were all just chipping in a little bit of money every month to have a place to go to do our work and to talk and to talk shop. And that was about three years ago. Since then, we've moved into a new office space, a much nicer office space in the State Theatre building. We maintain about 18 members at a time. And that's not even all of the audio producers in Portland. It's a fraction of it. So we're a coworking space. We have people coming in doing their work every day. We also host events. We do documentary screenings, we do skill shares, we do creative projects together. And we host some famously good office parties as well, because audio producers are just fun. They're fun people because they're very social people. They're thoughtful but extremely interested in other people. So you go to a party filled with audio producers and you'll be asked the best questions that you've ever experienced at any social event, and people will be listening to the answers. So I adore my audio community, and getting to be the director of this physical place, bringing these people together, is just such an amazing delight. And we're constantly being fed new blood through Salt every semester, bringing new students, new producers in. So it's really an incredibly vibrant community.

Lisa Belisle: So we've talked about the beginning and the middle, and obviously hopefully the end of your narrative arc is way, way out. But let's assume that most of us in our lives have multiple narrative arcs, because most of us live enough years. So what do you see the end point as of right now? Or, what do you hear in your mind as you're developing your voice and you're developing what you want to do? What do you want that to look like for yourself?

Aubrey Calaway: Big question. I think I have pulled some threads of core truth from a lot of the different professional experiences I've had over the past few years in my audio career. One being what I've learned from Foghorn, really, is the importance of gathering in physical space. I think in a lot of ways, sometimes audio is a means to an end of just connecting, of just the basic human desire to listen, to be listened to, to be in deep conversation, to understand someone else's experience, to be told stories, to tell stories. And podcast apps and YouTube and streaming are all kind of amazing tools to be able to do that. But I know, and I think a lot of people are feeling a bit disenchanted with digital experience right now. It serves a purpose and will of course continue to serve a purpose. But I'm most interested in gathering people in physical space together, and listening together and talking together, warm body to warm body. And so I'm hoping to do that. I think that's core. And then the mission-driven work, I think, is there too. And right now I'm especially compelled by the mission of understanding, representing, defending trans life and trans culture. We're at an extremely dangerous moment for trans people right now, the most dangerous I think we've ever been in. And it's also a moment where stories are being negotiated in a very public way around what it means to be trans, what trans-ness is, and what place it should hold in our culture right now. Obviously, the right has a very specific story that is fear-motivated and also very much a means to an end for them politically. Trans people are the scapegoat du jour, and the far right are very good at crafting narratives that spread well through digital media. And so I'm really interested in how can I use the skills that I have, the storytelling that I have, and the powerful act of gathering in physical space, of actually saying, we've had enough of the digital culture wars. It's much harder to demonize people in physical space. So I'm interested in bridging these two things, or three things really: gathering in physical space, storytelling, and the fight for trans lives and liberty.

Lisa Belisle: Those are big. So I guess it gives you lots to continue to work on for yourself. And I want to double down on what you said, that this idea of, when you have a human who is in front of you, who is next to you, the ability to demonize them as a concept, it is hard to uphold, because they're a human. And I think I've learned this through years of really being a family doctor, where I show up with patients who come from all different backgrounds. So it's one thing to have somebody in a digital form be like, oh, I'm going to represent this person this way. But I think you're right. If you can share people in their own voice and shared narratives in a way that supports people understanding the shared humanity, that's going to be very powerful. So I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring forward. I think it's really wonderful. I'm going to send lots of positive energy your way. Anything else that you think it would be helpful for people to know about you, or about audio production, or about your view of the world?

Aubrey Calaway: No, but I would just say keep tabs on what Salt is doing, on what Foghorn is doing. I've been describing it as a pretty insular-sounding culture. We do a lot to support each other, but fundamentally this is about sharing stories in Maine with Maine. And so Salt is often hosting really great public-facing events. Foghorn is hoping to do more of that. So tap into the incredible audio storytelling work that's being done here, not just for producers, it's for everyone.

Lisa Belisle: Well, Aubrey, I appreciate your being willing to come in and share at least some part of the story of you and of the work that you're doing. And I really appreciate the work itself that you've been doing this number of years. So thank you.

Aubrey Calaway: Thank you so much.

Lisa Belisle: I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today I've been speaking with Aubrey Calaway, who is the director of Foghorn, which is an audio collective and coworking space based in Portland, Maine. Aubrey is also an audio producer and a community leader and so many more things. So I really look forward to people who are hearing this or seeing this who would like to communicate with Aubrey. What's the best way, Aubrey, for people to find you?

Aubrey Calaway: I'm really doing a digital detox right now, so they can email me, and they can also look up Foghorn on Instagram at Foghorn Portland.

Lisa Belisle: Very good. I would also hope that Aubrey will come and join us at one of our future Portland Art Gallery events. So maybe you'll be there, and hopefully people who are listening will find some way to get in touch with you. All right, thanks, Aubrey.

Aubrey Calaway: Thank you.