The podcast I have been sampling is titled “Randum Radio Oddcast” and is part of a website called the “Backwards of Maine.” Both are the products of the fertile mind of C.W. Lakeman, a graphic artist, musician and storyteller from the middle of New England’s largest and most rural state. The Millinocket paper mill where Lakeman worked for forty years went bankrupt recently, leaving him unemployed and with a lot of time on his hands. He filled this time by writing songs, drawing cartoons, creating a website, and recording a series of podcasts between March of 2006 and March of 2007. Between April and June of 2007, this podcast became a vodcast, and then ceased entirely, presumably due to Mr. Lakeman finding a new job.
The home page of the website features a colorful drawing of Lakeman in his fictional characterization as “Cuzin’ Waine Fromain,” seated on a wooden chair near an outhouse, with the snowy peak of Mount Katahdin in the background. All text on the page is hand written, with links to various pages of illustrated humor. These include a series of cartoons illustrating Rube Goldberg-type inventions such as a “Manual Snow Blower” (the user blows through a tube leading to a funnel mounted on short skis) and a disposable “Dixie” axe, made from “cast iron coated cardboard,” and dispensed from a handy “10 paxe” dispenser.
Most pages lead to stories and cartoons about outhouses, close encounters with moose and other folksy subjects. Somewhat more serious is a section entitled “How to kill a paper mill,” featuring wistful memories of a local industry that was bought out and dismantled by an outside corporation.
I especially enjoy Lakeman’s down-home take on website navigation, such as a link labled “Nutha’ One” to take you to the next page in a series,” and “Nuff” to return you to the home page.
The home page features a “His’try of Randum Radio,” in which Cuzin’ Wayne explains that he realized the power of his voice when he succeeded in making a moose dance with his moosecalls. A cartoon shows Wayne sitting in his privy, with the door open, calling to moose through a megaphone. Another cartoon below shows the privy renovated into a podcasting station, with an “On Air” sign hanging from the door and Wayne visible through a window, podcasting away.
In the “pile-it” (pilot) episode of his podcast, Wayne announces that his show “is broadcast originally from the new two-holed privy studio, in stereo of course, high atop a holding tank on Golden Ridge, in the legendary Katahdin potato country.” He states that his show “is a very serious show about, of all things, being silly. Silly is something not practiced as often in our neighborhood as it used to be when our paper mills were a family business.”
The shows are silly indeed, but Cuzin’ Wayne’s dry, sardonic New England humor keeps them crisp. In the pilot he advises listeners to “tune in occasionally,” and for those who want a more formal schedule, he invites us grab a pencil and a calendar and “jot this down as to when we’re on…here it goes…’EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.”
It strikes me that podcasting’s “once in a while” nature is very much in tune with the casual attitude toward time found in rural Maine. Many years ago my family and I stayed in a motel in Millinocket. On the TV in our room, we found a station that was broadcasting text messages of local news and a clock showing the current time — only the time was wrong. Because of this we missed an appointment to tour the paper mill – the very same one, I assume, where Lakeman worked. A bit annoyed, my father called the TV station to point out the error. A person there replied, “Yeee –ah. Lotta people been callin’ up about that. One a these days we ought ta do somethin’ ‘bout that dan clock.”
For all its folksiness, Lakeman’s website is fairly sophisticated (or at least it seems so to an old folk like me), with animated lightning bolts around the masthead and a choice of Real Player, MP3 or Windows Media files for downloading the podcasts.
The podcasts themselves are full-fledged variety shows, some running nearly an hour. They begin with a homey title song, followed by a chatty welcome from Cuz’n Wayne, often describing the weather and the scene outside of his outhouse studio, or “privio.” The first of many regular features on the show is Wayne’s “Stinky Little Rhyme,” a short poem, always on the subject of outhouses. Other segments feature guest appearances by neighborhood characters, played (with a few exceptions) by Lakeman himself. At one point, during a “call in” segment, Lakeman leans away from the mic and asks an imaginary assistant, “Is there something going on here? These people all sound the same to me.”
One regular feature pays homage to a venerable tradition of Maine storytelling: the shaggy dog story. Wayne introduces a guest named Warden Lovesay who sets out, in episode 46, to tell “The Shortest Joke Ever Told That Takes the Longest Time to Tell.” Lovesay gives the audience only one word of this joke per episode, prefacing this word with a lengthy, rambling discussion of his “slow joke” in true Maine style.
My favorite feature is a recurring segment in which Wayne gets together with some of his elderly neighbors to sing in an imaginary garage, achieved through the liberal use of reverb. Playing all the parts in an elaborate multi-track recording, Lakeman talks over himself as he simulates the chaotic babble of a group of senior citizens trying to organize themselves into a choir. In one episode, the group actually writes the lyrics of their song as they go along, arguing about each line and its meaning as they improvise. By the end, they are belting out their new song and scatting like an African-American gospel choir in a truly hilarious climax.
In April of 2007, Lakeman began a short series of vodcasts, featuring interviews with his actual neighbors. Unfortunately, the laconic side of the New England character comes out in these video interviews. Looking a bit like deer (or moose?) caught in the headlights, Lakeman’s subjects stare blankly into his camera and often answer long questions with very short answers. Cuzin’ Wayne continues to be quite entertaining in his off-camera remarks, but interactions with his real-life guests often fail to live up to those he has with the imaginary ones.
Lakeman’s podcasts and vodcasts ended abruptly in June of 2007. I wonder what happened. Perhaps, as I guessed earlier, he got a new job and found new ways to use his energies. Perhaps I should email him and ask what he’s up to these days.
In any case, I’ve enjoyed listening to Lakeman’s podcasts. It is certainly wonderful that podcasting gave this talented man a way to keep busy and creative after the loss of his career. It is also wonderful how Lakeman used the technology of podcasting to keep memories and traditions alive in a small community, way out in the back woods. I hope to hear more from Cuz’n Wayne in the future.
