A Brief History of Barnaby Druthers Part V

As the idea of Barnaby evolved, one story concept stuck with me: if Sherlock Holmes as a character was relevant in any time period, why not Druthers and Adler? With that in mind, I thought of where Barnaby might be a true “fish out of water” and determined the nature-loving world of Oregon in Modern day would certainly give the amateur detective pause. So I penned “All We Bring To Bear” a four part mystery who-dunnit involving an assortment of ludicrous characters. This would be the first Barnaby we would attempt to record online.

One would not consider the concept seamless as the audio quality of participants varied depending on whether they had an individual microphone or used the one on their device but on the whole this story allowed us to learn how to record during the Pandemic and move our show forward.

With an Oregonian story, it made sense to reach out to stations in Oregon to see if there was interest in our audio theater program and we found a home with KCIW in Brookings. The wonderful tight knit group of dedicated volunteers were actively engaged in making the community radio thrive in their hometown and it was and is an honor to be associated with them!

The idea of community radio is worthy of a specific topic/post and I’ll do that separately.

In August 2020 we found great interest in Barnaby Druthers as a show, separate from Nutmeg Junction.

Nutmeg Junction is the anthology series that enjoyed the ability of doing different stories, genres, characters from week to week. We’re still going strong since 2018. (see https://nutmegjunction.com/) But what we found was that Barnaby Druthers was a specific series with an understandable concept and individuals at the stations could easily decide whether the show was for them or not.

The program grew as interest grew.

We built the Barnaby Druthers program, which is 28 minutes.

And we built the Barnaby Druthers Mystery Hour which is 56 minutes including Barnaby for 28 minutes and Nutmeg Junction audio theater in the second half.

Things were on a roll. I’ll stop the history for now and in the next post, discuss something about the creation of an episode.

A Brief History of Barnaby Druthers Part IV

In order to appreciate the ability of remote recording due to COVID-19, one must understand the amazing opportunity we enjoyed of rehearsing and recording at the community radio station studio.

Imagine if you will, you’re an actor who has received a script and a role. You arrive at the station and are let in where your fellow actors are waiting for you at the long meeting table. After warm meet and greet conversation, the table read of the script begins. At this stage, the director may make a suggestion on delivery or change a line, but there is a familiarity with the story and the rapport among the team is evident. Often a line is understood more fully within the context of the delivery at the table read as opposed to the page.

Then, when all is ready, you enter studio B with the rest of the cast where there are three microphones set up. Depending on the script, two actors are at each microphone.

The microphones are checked, the levels are checked and then we record the program. On more than one occasion, the recording ends with applause for a job well done amongst the team. The audio is saved and stored immediately and we return to the large table for wrap up and for further discussion about future events. The camaraderie and fun of this method of recording is extraordinary.

I miss it greatly.

But as you can see and well imagine, the small area of studio b is not suitable for teams of individuals to remote at shared microphones. Even before the studio was officially closed to visitors, the decision was clear that we could not record in this method until it was safe to do so.

I know we recorded the Priceless Manuscript in February 2020 but it aired later than other classic Barnaby stories. We recorded the Chuzzleby Carbuncle as the last show in the studio and had a fun photo shoot.

We recorded many Nutmeg Junction episodes remotely that were not Barnaby Druthers related. We found the program ZOOM helpful and participants began to order and then use stand-alone microphones instead of the ones embedded into their laptop, phone or tablet.

Our first Barnaby story done remotely was also another change. We brought the characters into the modern day, and had our first modern Druthers adventure called “All We Bring To Bear” which we brought to KCIW in Brookings, Oregon. But that is for the next part of the story.