<\/p>\n
Ed Prevost Jr., Jen Swanner, Sara Van Buskirk, Kam Franklin, Kenny Hopkins, Nick Walton, Evan Escalante.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mark Beebe<\/p>\n
Above, from left to right: Peyton, Mark Beebe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Anderson<\/p>\n
Kam Franklin as a guest with host host Mar[k Beebe on ‘Late Night at the Lagoon.’<\/p>\n
Screen shot by Cary Darling<\/p>\n
On certain Sunday nights, Midtown record shop\u00a0Sig\u2019s Lagoon turns its heavily stocked music haven into a talk-show set for \u201cLate Night at the Lagoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Debuting in April on YouTube, this mini-talk show is a silly 15-20 minutes that features interviews and performances filmed on the store\u2019s first floor. Nick Walton, an employee and \u201ckeyholder\u201d since last November, created \u201cLagoon\u201d with producer\/musician Evan Escalante, the son of owner\/executive producer Tomas Escalante.<\/p>\n
What: A series from Sid’s Lagoon record store in which Houston musicians are featured in an interview format<\/p>\n
Where: YouTube<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started, they were mentioning that they’d been wanting to do video content for a while,\u201d says Walton, who handles directing and editing duties. \u201cI have a background in radio, television, film, and music. So I was like, well, I can cook something like that up.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Using Adult Swim shows like \u201cSpace Ghost: Coast to Coast\u201d and campy old-school variety programs like \u201cThe Paul Lynde Halloween Special\u201d for inspiration, Walton conceived \u201cLagoon\u201d as a kooky, offbeat time-waster with random, absurd bits (one running bit, \u201cCaptain Snarl vs. Lil Drippy,\u201d has two masked figures competing in miniature games around the store) and kitschy retro clips (some provided by Houston Public Media\u2019s archive) in-between the talk-show segments.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe show is, like, heavily edited,\u201d says Walton. \u201c\u2029It’s by no means a free-flowing conversation kind of show, even though I’ll let long parts of answers play at times. But I’m definitely chopping a lot up and rearranging things and editing for flow. So, that takes me three to four weeks to do, pretty much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting good guests<\/p>\n
So far, they\u2019ve done four episodes, with host Mark\u00a0Beebe (\u201cthe owner\u2019s keyboard player,\u201d as the announcer credits him in the intro) interviewing an artist for each installment. R&B singer Peyton, guitar virtuoso Kelly Doyle, jazz bassist John Koozin, and The Suffers’ frontwoman Kam Franklin (who recently released her solo debut \u201cLand of the Neon Sun\u201d) have all conversed and performed on the show. (As an added bonus, all guests have their albums displayed on a \u201cFeatured On\u201d shelf next to the front door.)<\/p>\n
Walton admits to having a loose criteria when it comes to booking guests. \u201cI mean, as we were getting started, it’s just kind of been \u2018Who do I like? \u2029Who can I reach out to?\u2019… And then it’s like, do we have any means of contacting them? Are they a reasonable guest? You know, there’s been a bunch of people I’ve reached out to that I\u2019ve not heard back from \u2013 Morris Day being one of them. He lives out in the Woodlands, trying to get him on the show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Sig\u2019s employee\/sound mixer\/graphic designer James Garcia, who has gotten a few requests from performers about getting on \u201cLagoon,\u201d says guests must have something worth plugging.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some things that we want to prioritize the guests having, so that it kind of fits within the structure of the show,\u201d says Garcia. \u201cI mean, I think everybody at the shop at this point has probably been approached by somebody to do it, which is cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keeping it old-school<\/p>\n
Walton is well-aware that people may compare \u201cLagoon\u201d to another YouTube show featuring artists doing stripped-down performances in front of a cluttered-physical media backdrop, “Tiny Desk Concerts.” But don\u2019t forget that \u201cLagoon\u201d is still a loopy musical trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s that element of \u2018Tiny Desk\u2019 in it with the performance,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut, in my head, it’s almost more like an old, late ’90s\/early\u00a0aughts, Adult Swim kind of thing. That’s how I’ve been. Every edit I do, I keep Adult Swim in my eyes, just that level of comedy and absurdism. So, it’s like trying to do all those things that are pervasive on the internet right now, but in a more cohesive, old-school package.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The fellas behind \u201cLagoon\u201d are working on making the show a more recurring affair. They have episodes with local supergroup Ancient Cat Society and mulit-instrumentalist Geoffrey Muller ready to be edited. They want to drop those before they move on to conceiving special holiday episodes. These guys don\u2019t expect this weird little thing they do to go viral, but they would like it if more Houstonians tuned in. \u201cMy goal isn’t to do some viral internet program, getting just hundreds of thousands of clicks and everything,\u201d says Walton. \u201cI really do want it to be just a cult Houston show, you know, that locals know about and want to watch and think is fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd \u2029we spotlight local acts, and kind of emphasize that part of the music scene in the local community,\u201d adds Garcia. \u201cBecause I feel like there’s not a lot of light on it in certain areas, which is good all around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ed Prevost Jr., Jen Swanner, Sara Van Buskirk, Kam Franklin, Kenny Hopkins, Nick Walton, Evan Escalante.\u00a0 Mark Beebe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-434747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}