High Above Grand w/ Brett Underwood Thomas Crone

All right, hey, we're back again, my name is Brett Lars-Underwood, this is High Above Grand and we're in the Killswitch Studios with producer R. W. Smith and Thomas Krohn and Stephanie Russell, both in town for a little bit from New Orleans, but they both have St. Louis ties, they both changed the city when they were here doing things. And I wanted to get off talking about 52nd City again, 52nd.com, it was also a print, you guys had a print edition, you said it came out in what, 2008? Oh gosh, you know I should have just put this up, yeah, it was in the aughts, and we did one online issue and then I think nine issues that had online component to them, print plus online of maybe three to nine extra pieces, and then we did one outro online only piece, so I think right about a dozen total. That's still online, right? It is, yeah. Wow. Funny enough, I get the bill once a year to go ahead and update, to go ahead and buy it through GoDaddy, and I go ahead and buy it every year, and if people go there or not, it was a really rewarding project to work on at the time, so yeah. You guys got some sluggers into that magazine and that project, so how did that all start, like in your heads and stuff, do you do, because obviously there's River Sticks at the top of the list, and then you got, everybody has zines and stuff like that, I don't know, I'm forgetting a lot of other stuff that happened back then, but yeah, how did that all come about? Yeah, so I had worked on a project called The Common Space, and that was thecommonspace.org, which I think also is still up. That was a three-year project, and I was on it the first two years with Amanda Doyle and Brian Marston, and they kept that project going for that third year, and because of that, I was interested in sort of online magazines, and I think in conversations with Andrea and Stephanie, Andrea Avery, who was the third person super involved in 52nd City, we took it from just the online version to online and print, so there was a little bit of something before it in my head that kind of made sense, and at the time, we were trying to figure out a way, we brought in a few advertisers each issue, just to, again, kind of keep a little bit in the coffers. It was an experiment in some respects. We did themed issues, and the themes were loose enough that people could adapt pieces to that. They weren't all very literal. I think we did issues like food, stupid stuff, space, food, open-ended, and it allowed people to kind of play with things from that. I mean, you took my stuff, and I didn't even have a computer at home. I think I was walking back from South Grand and writing a lot of that stuff on a computer at KTHX in the middle of the night and saving it into an email, especially that one that I wrote that was about being late-night radio, which is a space issue, I think. That's why I always remember the online part of it, because I think I was in print once or something. Yeah, yeah, and then I think we kind of, again, the theme idea was usually one word. I think foreign exchange might have been the only one that had two. It was, yeah, and again, at some point, it just became, you know, you would have a release, and then, you know, there was a bill, you know, and at some point, it became a little less interesting to deal with that bill, you know, as every zine at some point in time kind of has to make that decision whether you want to keep going. Yeah. Yeah, so at some point, it just felt like, let's do one more online issue, and then we'll write off into the sunset. You were involved with Riverfront Times. We're talking to Thomas Cron, by the way, involved with Riverfront Times way back when, too, and wow, everything's changed, of course, journalism and papers and everything. But you started out at Webster University, and then came in as, you know, you were the music editor at the Riverfront Times for a while. Yeah, I've been a cub reporter there for a bit. I was like, I was a two-time intern, and then kind of like just was relentless. I was so annoying. I think they just, yeah, they relented and finally brought me on staff, and then, yeah, yeah, I did music coverage early, and then, you know, occasionally, I would wind up in totally different beats. I think I got in trouble for a while, and I got put in the sports for like two years, which was kind of funny. I did a sports column in the RFP, you know, and there were a lot of like... You were on sports talk radio for a while. I mean, it was like, oh, I'm doing this column, so I mean... Speaking of comedy and like mediums mashing together, you know. Yeah, yeah. Those days are kind of funny to me because, yeah, you would drive out. It would be Tuesday afternoon, and I'd go to like just some jerk water sports bar out of nowhere, you know, and there's five people in the bar, but there were five people behind the booth, you know, doing the broadcast. It was a weird time, but I had a lot of different experiences working for the RFP, and that was one of them. Yeah. I don't know where to go from there because I don't know if we want to get into that too deep, but wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's real different. Yeah. Yeah. I've had kind of like nine lives with that publication. I'm not like super currently writing for them, but I've written for them in relatively recent years, and in like, I guess like 2018 to 2021 or so, I did a fair number of covers for them, and I actually enjoyed doing them again. It was kind of fun to get a couple of, I don't know, I guess I'm thinking about ghosts right now, but there were a couple of stories that they allowed me to kind of do that had been on my mind for a long period of time, so yeah. When the paper's doing its best, I think it allows for those kind of like single stories to get told. Yeah. Yeah. If somebody was going to start something like 52nd City now, do you think it would be, I mean, if you didn't have a whole lot of money behind you, would, I know a lot of people are doing like Substack and different kinds of, you know, and we have Facebook and all that crap, but I don't know. Or do you see that, where would that sit now? Yeah. So, you know, that was kind of an interesting, I started one project that lives only online on Substack, and so maybe I'll just kind of mention that, so like Artica, which is a longstanding event downtown, just north of the landing, and I think it's been in the news recently because they're going to move finally after 21 years, yeah. So basically I did a history of Artica, but it's more of an oral history style piece, and I guess the thing, you know, it's like one of those where like I got a small amount of grant money from Artica to do it, and found that putting it online was the most efficient way of doing it, you know, it was low to no cost, and you can get up information quickly, and at the length you want, there's no reason to, you know, if somebody wants to go on at length, you can let them do so, so yeah, it's funny, it's like, it's kind of come full circle to me, I was saying earlier that like in 2001, 2, 3 I think is when the common space ran, it felt like online was the best way to go, and like right now, not having to do paper, yeah, I think there's a role for both, I still love reading zines and publications, but yeah, there's definitely space for like really specific projects to exist online. This is High Above Grand, my name is Brett Underwood, and we're in the Killswitch Studios with producer R.W. Smith, joined by Thomas Krohn and Stephanie Russell. My name is Brett Underwood, did I already say that over and over? I don't remember, where else are we going with this? Yeah, I don't know, that was 52nd City, and I was trying to think what other, was Cluel in that? David Cluel was one of our big hitters, I don't remember if he was in one of your issues or not, but anyway, I'm getting kind of lost here. We had like, yeah, we had a few people that were like from outside the city, and I think, you know, I would say that like each of us did something, the three of us did different work on it, I would say Stephanie in some respects, definitely the poetry and probably the fiction, the micro-fiction, and then I would bring in some of the non-fiction, and then I did maybe some of the, you know, the runaround work, you know, picking things up and getting them to the printer and so forth, and Andrea did the design for the most part and did a really great job of making it look good, so it was definitely a, you know, a three-person effort. Sure. Yeah, and then we did open it up a little bit to people outside the city, but, you know, by and large, it was really a St. Louis publication, it felt like a St. Louis publication. Right, yeah. You were also around, since we're on South Grand, high above Grand, I should say, and you've been around, I've seen, you know, like, I remember you were around back when like Wayne St. Wayne was around, walking up and down the street, and what's the feel like when you walk down the street these days? It is, it is wild, you know, because I, you know, I have very distinct, very distinct memories of different, even periods on South Grand, you know, like the Mongia 3 a.m. days were different from the 30 days, you know, and when the upstairs was running, and yeah, it just felt like there was a real, there was definitely a different feel happening to this street for a, probably like a nice 10-year run when it was like some of the most vital stuff in St. Louis was happening on, you know, about a three-block stretch of South Grand, and no disrespect to anybody doing business here now, it's just, it's different, so everything's more expensive. Yeah. Oh my God, I remember when they used to have the buffet at Mongia twice a day. Yes, that's right, oh my gosh. I could eat twice a day for like $10, you know, except that we'd sit at the bar after that for, you know, many hours. Those were something else, those days when like you and I and Bob Reuter and whoever walked in the door, man, that was, that was great. Yeah. Still shining. Yeah, yeah. Bobby Putnam and a bunch of guys would be throwing darts right inside the front door, you know. Yeah, yeah, I don't, yeah, it's hard to explain South Grand to people anymore, not that I sit around and try to do that, but yeah. Yeah. It's been a hub, I mean, it's been one of the real neighborhoods in St. Louis, like you had the pharmacy, you had Streetside Records, you had the library, you had Jay's International, you had CBGB, of course, is going to be here forever, I hope, but, well, until I die, and then, but yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just the neighborhoods change a little bit and things are, things are different, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I've, and you lived like right, you had a house right off of Grand Yeah, on Connecticut, so I lived on the east side of Grand in Connecticut for, like I lived in a couple different houses over there over the years, but yeah, I mean, like this is a little bit of a, you know, coming back to town and then like sometimes when you're gone for some period of time, you know, this last round we were not here for a few months, which was odd, but you know, you go into Gelateria and all the baristas are different and it's just like one of those moments where you're like, oh yeah, I don't track that kind of, you know, worker by worker change at a place, you know, sometimes you just come in and it's like a whole new crew. Yeah. And so that's, that's been kind of interesting. And I don't know, I, I still love the neighborhood though. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, it still is a neighborhood, you know, it's like, I can't, the loop has gone so different too, but I remember, you know, I lived in Shaw for all those years and I could still walk up here and get all my stuff done, you know, and that led to a lot of writing too, you know, and that was why I ended up on KDHX because I was walking through the park one day and they were having a program committee or like a committee meeting and they're like, Hey, do you guys want to do a show? I'm like, well, yeah, four in the morning. Sure. Yeah. And for all of like, well, and not to get into any of the KDHX more recent news, but yeah, the fact that it was so close to this neighborhood, it did feel like there was sort of this, there was always kind of a channel between some of the places up here, like Mongia and that place, right. You'd see people coming off of their show and 10 minutes later here they were, right. Oh yeah. You know, I was still humble to make it last call when I was on at two in the morning. I'm like, yeah, yeah. So KDHX being a part of the South Grand neighborhood was also like, yeah, huge. That's something else. Yeah. And we did have literature, the halibut and poetry beat and all that stuff. And the talk show is going to get shoved into a podcast and all that stuff. But what, you know, whatever, I don't know, that's something I was actually on a program committee for a lot of that. And yeah, I thought people had to tighten the stuff up like that too, you know? So what else should we talk about? I don't even know where we are. We're on the Killswitch studios. This is High Above Grand. My name is Brett Underwood. We're here with Stephanie Russell and Thomas Cronin. They're visiting from New Orleans, but they've got deep ties in St. Louis, both as writers, poets, and editors even. Yeah. Yeah. That's something else. Riverfront Times, KDHX, St. Louis Magazine. You guys kind of had it covered there for a bit. Yeah. Well, I was, I was on the Killswitch yeah. Well, I was, you know, I was thinking about this, well, Stephanie and I talk all the time, but it was like, there was a period in, I guess, the 20, very early, about 2010 or so, where like, I was writing for multiple sections of St. Louis Magazine's website. Yeah. That was a really great website for, for a good, good while again. And I say this, you know, it's a bit self-aggrandizing, you know, when I was writing for it, it was great. But I just happened to be there at a time when it was, yeah, there were lots of good editors there and yeah, they give a green light to sometimes ideas that I can't believe they allowed me to, to explore. Yeah. So what are you up to these days, Mr. Crone? Oh, so on a writing perspective, I, well, I contribute to a national music syndicate called Last Word Features. The weird thing about that is I occasionally appear in publications I've never heard of, you know, in cities that I've never visited. You know, you interview someone and it might get picked up in two or three places in the country. And so that, that's been kind of a funny little superside gig. I write for the Salt Lake City Weekly, where I was music editor in 2022 when we lived there for a while. And I contribute mostly to them these days. And then occasionally in St. Louis, again, it's been a couple months for the RFT, right? Very occasionally for Feast Magazine. So if anybody will have me, I'll, I'll, I'll probably do a piece. Bands Through Town is what I should give a note out to Corey Weaver, who gives me a bit of work from time to time. Bands Through Town is what? It's a publication that, a music publication. Yeah, published by Corey Weaver and, you know, some, some other folks. But yeah, that's a little bit more of a, yeah, case by case. Last year, I went to the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, which I'd never been to and may never have gone to otherwise. So yeah, occasionally with them. What was the name of your radio show on KTHX, by the way? The last show I did was called Silver Tray. And it was on, it was Friday afternoons. Yeah, yeah, it was sort of like, I mean, I feel like there were different people slaughtered around me. I think Bob Reuter was around me at times. Maybe Andy Coco towards the end, probably kind of bumped up against his show. Yeah. Pat Wolf for a while with Medication when he was doing the New Wave show was just ahead of me for a while there. But I kind of had there too, I had a few different lives. Like, yeah, sometimes KTHX was more or less something I really wanted to spend a lot of, you know, time on. Yeah. And then when I finally got to the point where I was feeling like I was kind of mailing it in, I just left. Yeah, yeah. So you guys are probably busy with your own projects now. Are you any other ideas about starting up some sort of a small magazine or like a website or something? We just, you know, with the drive here is about 10 hours if you're, you know, middle aged and not a pedal to the metal as I now am. And so yeah, that gives a lot of time to talk about things. So I think, weirdly enough, like this trip, for whatever reason has kind of been given over to a lot of thoughts about what's next. All right. So there might be something coming in sort of a strange way, like out of this trip. I hope there's a little clarity to some some ideas. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So this has been High Above Grand. My name is Brent Underwood with the producer R.W. Smith. We're in the Killswitch Studios with Stephanie Russell and Thomas Krohn. Thanks for being here, guys. It's been a great conversation. Sometimes it translates that way. Oh, it's been really great to catch up with you guys. Yeah. And as someone who, I closed this bar once or twice, the bar a couple floors down to be up here. Yeah. It's a weird moment. It's like, yeah, the door opens to this other world. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you, Rodney. And we'll be back with you some other time for High Above Grand.