Shaun Keaveny: Podcasting is a bit intoxicating

Shaun Keaveny’s first foray into podcasting, The Line-Up, was a natural progression from his years on the radio hosting the 6 Music Breakfast Show. Now it seems he’s got a taste for the medium!

His second show, Shaun Keaveny’s Creative Cul-de-sac, sees Shaun explore creativity – and the lack of it – by riffling through 20 years worth of old ideas trapped in notebooks, on old hard drives, scribbled on the backs of beer mats and the like. He then asks creative people – from Vic Reeves to Greg James – to do the same, and share with us those ideas they themselves have clung to, that never saw the light of day.

The show was launched in February alongside Shaun’s Community Garden Radio, a new radio station available through a Patreon page, with money generated going towards the podcast. We spoke to Shaun to learn more about the inspiration behind the new show, and the Community Garden Radio.

It seems you have the podcast bug now! What do you love about podcasts?

There is a freedom to podcasting. Like ALL freedoms they’re not always intrinsically positive, however in pod world they mostly are. Freedom to talk to whoever you want, say what you want within some mostly self-set limits, and freedom of form and length etc. It is a bit intoxicating after the necessary strictures of radio.

Which finished idea – and it can be anything in the world – do you wish you’d come up with?

Ooo good one… I feel like most good scripts dramas and comedies I feel that about, as, despite having tried a few times, I have never been able to get that part of my brain going. Anything from Schitt’s Creek to Cheaters, Blackadder to Breaking Bad... I would LOVE to be able to think structurally like that, and deliver the actual dialogue too. I think it’s an amazing skill. I also wonder at the people who invented musical instruments… I know it happens evolutionarily over time but, imagine thinking up a fucking guitar!!!

What would you think if someone listening takes one of your abandoned ideas and makes it into a massive success?!

Oh CHRIST I haven’t thought of that….(calls patent lawyer) Hmm… I suppose it’s better that it’s out in the world as opposed to in a notebook at the bottom of my Mahogany Box of Dreams. That is kinda the whole beauty of the idea, releasing ideas like doves at a Rolling Stones gig… only for most of them to be brutally slaughtered by predators minutes afterwards…

Can you tell us a bit more about the Community Garden Radio?

This is a beautiful thing. On my last ever link at 6 Music I basically made the point that people should not see radio shows as “just radio shows”. They are a community, a gathering point for like minds. They are beautiful, organic things. I used this phrase, “community garden”. Yes there is a person who starts the thing, but then all these other people come and contribute and tend to the idea, the concept, they buy in. This then flowered into an entity when my producer Ben Tulloh said in an offhand way “ya know, we have the tech, we could do a radio show on the Patreon”… and the rest is, if not history, a lovely weekly collection of some of the people who loved what we did at 6.

The Friday shows are kind of free, wild, silly, and it is growing all the time. There’s music, carefully curated by me, and loads of bits of daft shite I have thought of as the week has gone on. Listeners get involved and it’s just FUN. It’s going to get better and better.

Lastly, what are your go to podcasts when you’re specifically looking for inspiration?

I am a terrible old stick in the mud, I have my faves and I don’t deviate too much. I LOVE music stuff like Rockonteurs, Andrew Hickey’s History of Rock in 500 Songs, Nina Conti’s Richard and Greta, Now Where Were We with the late great Barry Cryer, Alex Lowe/Clinton Baptiste’s Paranormal Podcast is hilarious. I need to pick up some new habits so I will take some tips from you guys…

Listen to Shaun Keaveny’s Creative Cul-de-sac on APPLE PODCASTS, SPOTIFY and other popular podcast players.