Kevin T. Porter loves Bruce Springsteen

Kevin T. Porter, host of the Good Christian Fun, Gilmore Guys and Inside Voices, makes podcasts about things he's interested in, but he loves Bruce Springsteen. We talk about how he experienced love at first note watching a PBS pledge drive, the kindness of fellow Bruce fans, and how there is a Bruce for every season. And yes, we also talk about the Jeep commercial.

Follow Kevin T. Porter on

• Instagram
• Twitter
• KevinBakin cookies for LA County folks

Show Links (there are so many)

• The mindmap and blog post that I talk about
• Kevin on Don't Get Me Started talking about Bruce
• Out in the Street - Kevin's love at first sight video
• Seeger Sessions playlist
• Rolling Stone top 500 - Born to Run is #21
• Roy Orbison and Friends playlist
• New York Serenade
• Open All Night
• Jamie Loftus on Andy' Richter's 3 Questions talking about her Lolita Podcast
• The Queerness of Bruce Springsteen
• Trouble in the Heartland - the concert after Reagan's election

141 - removed music from episode and republished

Kevin T Porter  0:00  
Hi, my name is Kevin T. Porter, and my favorite thing is Bruce Springsteen. He's a singer-songwriter. He's kind of old now, but he has some good songs, and I like him a lot.

Announcer  0:14  
Welcome to the Finding Favorites podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones. 

transcript follows

----more----

Leah Jones  0:24  
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. This is a very special Valentine's Day edition of Finding Favorites. I don't know, every couple months that I've been doing this podcast, I make a big swing, make a big ask. And right before New Year's, I got very brave, and I sent an email to Kevin T. Porter, who's the host of "Good Christian Fun," and "Gilmore Guys." I asked him if he would come on Finding Favorites, and he said yes. If you remember the mind map that I posted to Twitter that became the origin story of this podcast, Gilmore Guys is central to my finding every podcast I listen to now. 

Leah Jones  0:25  
I listened to "West Wing Weekly," the "Gilmore Girls" reboot was announced, and then I'd heard, "Oh, there's this podcast where these two guys are rewatching the Gilmore Girls, you should listen to it." So, I started listening to the Gilmore Guys. Through that, I was introduced to Jason Mantzoukas. I listened to a couple episodes of his -- I found out about "How Did This Get Made?" I found out about Nicole Byer; about John Gabrus; about "The Doughboys." Gilmore Guys truly opened the door to all of my podcast friends. So, when Kevin agreed to come on Finding Favorites, and talk about something that wasn't Gilmore Girls or Christian pop culture or baking, I was so excited. And you will hear that in this interview --  I am nervous; I am keyed up; I am high on adrenaline. I was high on adrenaline for a solid 24 hours after this interview. So, I literally shout at him. 

Leah Jones  1:20  
"Yeah, right. Oh, my God. Cool! Yeah, love it!" approximately 8,000 times during this interview, and I tried to take out probably 70% of my random exclamations of adrenaline, but it's okay. We're all learning together. And I don't work in PR anymore, so I feel like it's okay to be excited about a guest. And Kevin is someone that I have a parasocial relationship with -- which means it's a one-way relationship -- because I have listened to hundreds of hours of his podcasts, and thousands of hours of other podcasts that I got to through that door, that hobby door, of listening to his podcast, and I was excited. And he was as nice, as kind, as interesting, as I hoped he would be based on the time I've spent with him in my ears, especially during quarantine. 

Leah Jones  2:22  
So, we talk about Bruce Springsteen. And during the edit of this, I went and found a bunch of YouTube clips of Bruce. So the show notes for this one are chock-full of Bruce Springsteen clips, and I'm going to use a couple instead of my normal music bumpers. I use a couple clips from different Bruce songs, short enough clips, that I don't get dinged by the copyright police. I hope wherever you are celebrating Valentine's Day, or Valentine's Day with your pals, or Presidents Day, that you continue to stay safe. So stay safe, stay home just a little bit longer, wear a mask, and wash your hands. And enjoy this conversation about Bruce Springsteen.

Leah Jones  4:23  
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we talk to people about their favorite things and we get recommendations without using an algorithm. To say I'm excited this week is an understatement. So, we're gonna jump into it. In my interview with Jason Mathis, we talked about this mind map -- this thing that I posted to Twitter. I was tracing the podcast I listened to and trying to understand the comedy I listen to today, and the relationships I have with podcasts. And the first stop was "West Wing Weekly." The second stop was "Gilmore Guys," and then from Gilmore Guys came literally everything else I put in my ears. And I am so excited to have on my podcast this evening, Kevin T. Porter from "Gilmore Guys," which became "Bonehead Bros," which became "Maizel Gois." Currently, the host of "Good Christian Fun," and one of my COVID favorites, "Inside Voices." Kevin T. Porter, welcome to Finding Favorites. How are you?

Kevin T Porter  5:32  
Oh, I'm so good. I love the qualifier of a COVID-favorite. It may not be an all-time favorite, but it is a COVID favorite, because I know what you're saying --  cause I've COVID-favorites myself where it's like, "This is why I discovered during the old 'demi, the old pandemmi," and I will remember enjoying this thing during this 16 months or whatever ends up being -- 18 months.

Leah Jones  5:51  
The only reason it gets the qualifier of "COVID-favorite" is I found it during -- I know you recorded some episodes of Inside Voices before, but were any released before COVID? 

Kevin T Porter  6:08  
Yes, we did. I think we started in January, I don't remember, January 2020. Because I'll always remember it because I went to New York and Washington D.C., specifically to record, which sounds so dumb now --  I went out of town to record a podcast -- because how else would you record a podcast --

Leah Jones  6:31  
-- there's no other way!

Kevin T Porter  6:32  
 -- unless you go to where the person is? So, I remember recording the last few episodes of that season with those people, and I remember my last in-person guests for that. Glen Weldon from NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour." When we met, he elbow bumped me. It was March 5, 6th. I was like, "Okay, weird. Why is he elbow bumping me? Who cares?" And I remember defiantly shaking the engineer's hand, the woman who was running the board at the studio, I was like, "I'm not gonna elbow," but, love Glen, he's a friend of mine, but I was like, "This is strange," and turns out #GlenKnew, he knew all along, and how dare I doubt him in that sense.

Leah Jones  6:32  
I listened to that episode,maybe two weeks ago, and you really apologize for the sound at the beginning. You're like, "There's all this sound of a cafe," and the studio was not quiet. It really sounds like you guys are just sitting -- are you just in the middle of a restaurant?

Kevin T Porter  7:29  
No, but it certainly sounds like it -- we were right next to a restaurant in a cafe. I won't blow up the the the hotel name or anything like that, but it's a recording studio. I assumed it was a recording studio, and truly what it is -- we have microphones set up and there's a glass enclosure. Is there soundproofing? No. Can you get split audio tracks? No, you cannot. So, it was just a lot of stuff. I'm like, "Well, all right, I mean, we might as well have just met at Glen's bedroom." It was just a funny thing. But it was the thing listening back to it of I'm not gonna hear this sound again for a long time, in terms of the audience of strangers enjoying themselves in dining. I'm personally, not going to hear that for a long time.

Leah Jones  8:17  
No, it's gonna be ages. And you did a big setup to the episode. And I was like, "Surely it won't," and I wanted to replay it immediately, because I miss sitting alone in a cafe or a bar and just having noise.

Kevin T Porter  8:34  
Isn't that funny? It'll be interesting to see how this generational trauma works itself out. But you know if some of our ambient stuff, that we listen to going to sleep, now, is rain forests and stormy weather or even the wind or something. Maybe in 15 years, it's gonna be cafes, crowded sports arenas. That will be what is comforting to us as we experience those things again. 

Leah Jones  9:00  
I think it will be.In grad school, I took a production class, and I forget what it's called, but there's a type of sound that you can buy, that's chit-chat, that's room noise. That you buy -- if you shot some video and it's too quiet, or you're doing an audio book, and you need the ambience, and it's got a really cute name that I'm not going to remember.

Kevin T Porter  9:26  
It's a cute name, but it's not a memorable name.

Leah Jones  9:28  
It's not a memorable name. And after I listened to that episode, I was like, "Maybe I just want to go and buy some audio of a coffee shop."

Kevin T Porter  9:36  
Might as well, I know I do miss that sound so much. Now, the sound of a crowded place is scary to me. 

Leah Jones  9:42  
It's so scary.

Kevin T Porter  9:43  
It's like a war zone or gunfire is going off in the distance, you know? Anyway, what a great note to start the show. I mean, it's good though, because we're talking about what our favorite things are to listen to. I remember when I was a kid, I would listen to episodes of "The West Wing," the aforementioned "West Wing Weekly," falling asleep. I ripped the DVDs; I owned and I made them mp3s and put them on my iPod and listened to those and would kind of internalize and memorize those episodes, as I fell asleep as a 14-year-old boy.

Leah Jones  10:17  
I fell asleep to a lot of "Love Line" when Adam Carolla was still on it in the late '90s, and I listened, and I got to meet Dr. Drew once, he came to the college where I worked to do an event, and I took a picture of us and then that was my Christmas card that year. But  it was kind of before Dr. Drew super went off the deep end.

Kevin T Porter  10:46  
Yeah, he's far from the shallow now. I'll say that much. He is what that song is about. 

Leah Jones  10:52  
Then, when I worked a swing shift, I would listen to Art Bell. Did you ever listen to Art Bell? 

Kevin T Porter  10:58  
I don't know Art Bell. 

Leah Jones  10:59  
Probably better that you don't. He does a lot of -- he's passed now -- but his show was a lot of conspiracies and shadow people and very spooky things, which, when it's three in the morning, and you can't sleep, it is not helpful to listen to an AM talk show about shadow people. Not good.

Kevin T Porter  11:19  
Man, he would have loved the past three years in this country, huh?

Leah Jones  11:22  
He would have been the king of it. This would have been his time.

Kevin T Porter  11:26  
Well, sad he couldn't see this today, where QAnon ladies were in Congress, or whatever.

Leah Jones  11:27  
It's so awful.

Kevin T Porter  11:39  
Who's your favorite congressperson listener? Right into the show! Finding your favorite congressional conspiracy theorist? Let Leah know!

Leah Jones  11:50  
We talked about it a little bit before I hit record -- So my COVID hobby is podcasting, and you started baking. How is that going?

Kevin T Porter  12:03  
Well, I had baked a little bit before COVID hit; the last couple of years, I would like to try out different cookie recipes. I always stuck with really safe little staples, like snickerdoodles, or just a regular peanut butter cookie. Then moving into this new place where I finally live alone, and just having free rein of the kitchen felt like such a luxury where it's like, "I don't have to be considerate of anyone besides myself." So, I started experimenting a little bit before COVID started. Then it was a thing where it absolutely plummeted right when it started, because there was nowhere for the food to go. This is before we knew a lot about surfaces and how transmission really works. 

Kevin T Porter  12:49  
So, after understanding that data and getting that information, it felt like a nice excuse to see people or to give people something and to maintain a connection with them where it's like, "I just left something on your doorstep," and ran away. Contact list friendship is what I'm in the business of now. So, that was kind of the aim and goal of that and it became a nice little rhythm and ritual to get into everyday -- getting up, exercising a little bit, coming back home, baking in the morning, and trying out new recipes and stuff. And then it ramped up eventually to -- I started a little teeny, weeny, itsy-bitsy little bake shop here in Los Angeles where people can order online, and I'll deliver it within Los Angeles County. It's a bad business model, even though we've had some success --  "we" is me, and my puppets here in this room. They're all my personal assistants.

Kevin T Porter  13:47  
That's actually been a nice way, when it hasn't overloaded. There was one week where I got 60 orders and I was like, "This isn't fun." But now, it's at the regular, maybe 7 to 12 orders in a week. And it's like, "Okay, this is feels good to go out and do three drop-offs in a day." It's a nice way to see Los Angeles County, because I would have no other reason, otherwise. To just get out of my car with a mask on, drop something on people's doorstep, ring the doorbell, run away, but still going to places in L.A. I haven't really made myself acquainted with the places I don't even know. Technically we're in Los Angeles County, places like Palos Verdes and La Mirada and places like that, that you definitely don't think of when you think of L.A. proper.

Leah Jones  14:35  
I got a car during COVID -- I haven't had a car in 18 years; I've been in Chicago for a long time. I ride my bike, I take the bus to take the train. And I was not willing to do that  once COVID started. So, I finally got a car. And then I'm like, "Well, I guess I'll go to Culver's in the suburbs," or I go for a drive-through that is not in the city anymore. Just because I've got to go somewhere.

Kevin T Porter  15:07  
You have a destination, you need a destination. Ifully understand that. And it's all invented stuff now. You're inventing all of your structure in ways outside of the actual physical and work obligations. Everything else is just, "I guess I'll make myself do this for fun and force myself to do this, for no other reason than I'm forcing myself to do it." So, I think the baking was a part of that invented structure. And it feels nice to have a little bit of baking homework every day, and it's fun. It's so fun to do. I'll stop when it's not fun anymore.

Leah Jones  15:45  
That's a good plan. There was a Christmas, once, when my mom -- what were they called? Cabbage Patch Kids! -- the year before they got really big as manufactured, there was a pattern that people could buy and make their own. And they got really popular in my hometown, and my mom spent one Christmas making those for other families. And that was where I kind of saw, "Oh, if you do a home business around a product, like a homemade product, and you don't control it, it can just balloon so fast." So that sounds like your 60 cookie week, or 60 delivery week.

Kevin T Porter  16:23  
60 orders, it was. I think it was upwards of 600 cookies; it was a lot. Usually a dozen, sometimes a couple dozen. Yeah, it was a lot. It got to the point where it's like, "Do I hate cookies?" But the answer is, no. It's just that anything in a certain context, for even as much as you enjoy, it can become toil, if you allow it. So, that was a good example of that. But I'm getting my groove back, I'm experimenting with recipes again. But that was one of those things where it's like, "I've made the same four cookies so many times." And when I want to do something for fun with a little bit of free time, my instinct now isn't, "Well, what about a Funfetti recipe," but now I'm kind of getting back into that groove with it. Fortunately,

Kevin T Porter  17:07  
The concept of my podcast is how did people find their favorite thing? And when we were talking about what the topic might be today? You do tend to make whole podcasts about your favorite thing. About things that are your favorites.

Kevin T Porter  17:25  
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, cause I'm thinking back, "Are these my favorite things?" I think I would even amend that just a little bit to say, I do make shows about things that I think are the most interesting that I like. But I think both in the case of Gilmore Girls, and the Christian pop culture stuff, it's stuff I have affection for, that isn't necessarily my favorite, but I think it's interesting that I like it, do you know what I mean? I think it's interesting that I -- the context of me enjoying it, for some reason, is interesting to me. Maybe it's not -- maybe it's the least interesting thing in the world. But it's not like if I made a list of my "Top 10 Shows of all time," Gilmore Girls would be number one with a bullet. 

Kevin T Porter  17:57  
But it is a trend, in this medium, that happens a lot. Where people -- where it's like, "I love whatever. I love Dawson's Creek, that's my favorite show. I'm doing a Dawson's Creek, re-watch podcast. I love football. I'm creating a football podcast where I talk about my favorite players, blah, blah, blah." And it does, just like I said about the baking stuff, anything can become toil in the right context; that definitely can become the case. If you're not careful with how you interact with that content, in that source material, that substance. That's one reason where I have thought, "Would it be fun to do a podcast about the thing we're gonna talk about," right? And I'm like, "Maybe, maybe not." Maybe that's my version of blasphemy where it's like, "No, well, you can't do that." I'm not enough of a scholar, and I feel like I might say something offensive. And I go in those spirals and rabbit holes.

Leah Jones  19:18  
That makes sense. I know the "Inside Voices" was  -- whatever. Like, do I want to acknowledge the incredible parasocial imbalance, which is you have spent hundreds of hours in my apartment in my ears? Yes.

Kevin T Porter  19:35  
Which I've never been to, but now, I see every --

Leah Jones  19:37  
-- see a little bit and my cats are coming over to say hello. 

Kevin T Porter  19:41  
Youthful plants, love "The Godfather" up on the top shelf, a terrific choice. Is that a VHS?

Leah Jones  19:48  
It is.

Kevin T Porter  19:51  
I love it.

Leah Jones  19:53  
I think I still have a VCR in a box somewhere, I'm not sure.

Kevin T Porter  19:57  
Well, those are coming back after the -- you know, the physical media apocalypse rains down upon us and all the Apple servers go down, you're gonna want to keep those, those VCRs, if you have a few.

Leah Jones  20:09  
But it did seem like Inside Voices was -- what I loved about how you manage those interviews -- you understand podcasting at a level that I don't think a lot of people do. You didn't go into those interviews cold, you knew a lot about people's careers, and you were also a fan. I thought that was a really interesting way that you took something that you had been doing professionally for so many years ,and turning it upside down as a conversation, and I really appreciated them.

Kevin T Porter  20:45  
Thanks, that's really nice to say. It was such a natural overflow into something that -- I think a lot of people in this industry -- I think other similar industries where people work alone are in their little Hobbit holes. Kind of apart from people; are not in a communal environment; where there is this sort of collective yearning for a break room conversation to go and make small talk, or gossip with someone while they're microwaving their Hot Pocket or something. 

Kevin T Porter  21:18  
And that would happen so much before and after recording episodes of shows I was already doing it. You would just talk about some annoying thing that happened or some weird thing or some listener thing or some gossip thing. So, it was fun to put it in a nice package where it became the text of the show. It was mostly just an effort of "We all work here, but none of us are talking to each other." Even people on my network where  I didn't really like, sat down and and just had it out.  I need to solve some some conflict with them. It was out of a desire to do that. So, hopefully we did that a little bit on the show. 

Leah Jones  22:07  
Well, I'm hopeful that it comes back.

Kevin T Porter  22:09  
Yeah, me too. We'll see. We'll see if Headgum wants it ever again. But I hope so -- maybe one day.

Leah Jones  22:16  
Cause I also thought it was good as a new podcaster. There were times where just in the conversation --  for example, in your interview with Rishi, when he talked about editing on paper, I was like, "Oh, that's how you pass off your audio to someone else." Him just describing how he edited West Wing Weekly. I was like, "Ooh, okay, I'm locking that away for a future."  I also thought that was great for the skills, there was some skills transfer in there that I really appreciated.

Kevin T Porter  22:46  
I know in interviews with people like Rishi, are where I'm learning, because his skillset is so fundamentally, probably better, but also so different from mine in the sense of the kind of shows that he makes. Because there's such a necessity, from the content he puts out, that doesn't exist in almost everything that I do. Where most of is sit down and talk with soundboard and some preparation and some long-form interview stuff. But in terms of sound design, the edit of that sort of stuff, in general, the aesthetic of East Coast podcasting -- like your Gimlets, your NPRs -- is so different from West Coast comedy podcasting. And I feel a little bit versed in the West Coast stuff.

Leah Jones  23:55  
We're not here to talk about podcasting. We're not here to talk about Amy Sherman-Palladino, or Christian Pop Culture. What are we here to talk about today?

Kevin T Porter  24:09  
We're here to talk about a singer-songwriter hailing from New Jersey, and his name is Bruce Frederick Springsteen.

Leah Jones  24:19  
I did not know that was his middle name.

Kevin T Porter  24:21  
That's his middle name. Bruce Frederick. I believe he was named after his father or his grandfather, I forget. Hailing from Monmouth County, born in Monmouth County Hospital, September, 23, 1949. 

Kevin T Porter  24:32  
What a loser! "This happened, I've memorized a Wikipedia," but it's the case, it's in there for some reason. So yes, we're here to talk about this gentleman today. Bruce, which listeners may remember from his work with such companies as Jeep, a couple days ago as of recording, this and the Super bowl ad.

Leah Jones  24:55  
I did. When you said Bruce Springsteen, I was like, "I guess I gotta watch that commercial now."

Kevin T Porter  25:02  
I have a lot of kind of weird thoughts about that commercial; it made me feel weird. It made me feel weird watching that.

Leah Jones  25:12  
It was real Christian, right? When they're in the middle and they just show a cross. I was like, "Okay ... all right," because I saw that my Jewish feeds -- so I converted, so I have a very Jewish Twitter feed. And when that commercial came up, people were like, "Whoo,  that's a weird one." It's not just the cross, once, they keep --

Kevin T Porter  25:42  
No, it's a couple of times. And it's a couple of different crosses. Well, especially because the commercial does take place -- the big centerpiece of it -- is him going to a tiny chapel in Kansas, which is reported to be the literal center of the country. And there's a cross over a silhouette of the continental United States that has an American flag on it, and then a cross over that --  which truly looks like Christian nationalism in a way that's sooo -- I felt very complicated about the whole thing on two levels, maybe three levels. 

Kevin T Porter  26:20  
One, he's never done a commercial before, ever. He's never lent his music, his image to any commercial anything, ever. The most he's done is political campaigns and then putting a song and trailers or intros for movies he wrote a song for. So, there's that, where it's like, "Okay, first commercial, you're 71, it's for *Jeep*" -- which of course, it's a car commercial. Two: the Christian nationalist imagery that is so subtle in a way that that feels even worse upon reflection. Then, the sort of the false dichotomy rhetoric of, "We need unity, we're so divided, we just need to listen to each other," that sort of thing. And it's like, your first commercial is a quasi-white nationalist, a PSA for "Oh, we need to be nice to the people trying to kill us." It felt a little disappointing. And that's why he's my favorite. [laughter] I feel like I'm coming out so negative, but this is it. It's like watching a family member make bad decisions where I'm like, "Buddy, just call me, you could have run this by me. We could have had it out."

Leah Jones  27:37  
It felt like it belonged in "Handmaid's Tale." Like when the government comes out of exile in Canada. I was like, "Oh, the reunited American or the reunited States with the star in the middle?" I was just like, "Okay, so that's going in Season Five of 'The Handmaid's Tale.'"

Kevin T Porter  28:03  
I know, it's so bleak. I find this to be a common theme with all the Super Bowl commercials this year. We're like, this is the year we all finally felt especially after this, brutal, traumatic year everyone's had. Growing up as a kid, if you were bored by football, the commercials were the fun part; maybe something interesting or silly would happen, maybe you would get the Budweiser frogs, maybe you'd get whatever. And now it's like, okay, Elmo and Grover are going to be shilling for the evil company, Door Dash, which is robbing drivers blind because of Prop 22 passing in the state of California. So, stuff like that. 

Leah Jones  28:46  
And, then it was *Daveed Diggs,* who is like a pretty -- what do you think of the things he's done outside of "Hamilton?" I think of him as being someone that would be on the side of labor and of the people, so for him to be doing Door Dash since that first Sesame Street, which is now on HBO.

Kevin T Porter  29:05  
No, it feels dystopian. This is the year that we've realized -- all the people that we admired for so long, are very at fault in their own way -- for not being a certain kind of progressive. Where it's like, Bruce was singing pro-union songs and working with local labor unions in 1981. He was a veterans' activist in 1984, he was thinking about police brutality in 1999, and in 2021, he's saying you know what, "Everyone needs to be nice to each other." It just feels odd -- it was weird to me.

Leah Jones  29:39  
But, let's time travel a little bit; go back.

Kevin T Porter  29:43  
Oh, let's go back in the past.

Leah Jones  29:46  
Tell me about the first time you can remember loving Bruce Springsteen, was it -- did you buy a first CD; was there a music video that caught you off guard; was he in the air you breathed growing up -- everybody listening to Bruce? 

Kevin T Porter  30:01  
So, there's not *a* moment. I think because of the generational gap, people assumed that my parents would have gotten me into it. But my first memory of it -- I found out later, that my dad was super into him, and he just never shared it with me. And it came five or six years into me being a huge fan and listener and going to concerts, before my dad was like, "Yeah, I love him." And I'm like, "What? You don't verbally communicate, Papa, come on." 

Kevin T Porter  30:32  
But my first memory of it, I will remember this forever. This is my version of love at first sight, and I'll remember it forever. I was in our home in Kingwood, Texas, the suburbs a little bit north of Houston, Texas. And there was a huge cross on the wall --  I'm just kidding. But it must have been, I believe, the year 2000. There was a telethon playing on PBS, and it was a pledge drive thing. And inbetween the segments where the people said, "Send in your money to PBS, we need it," they were playing excerpts from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band "Live in New York City." So, it must have been 2001, because it was in 2000 that that concert occurred. 

Kevin T Porter  31:16  
So, it's in 2001, and they played a song from it, and the song was "Out in the Street." I remember watching it, and for the first time, I didn't know what this band was called. I didn't know what this song was, I didn't know who Bruce Springsteen was. I was just experiencing the visual with the audio of this band with this kind of average, but very handsome looking Italian-Irish man; this red-headed woman; this insanely happy looking -- the African-American saxophone player; this drummer that looked like somebody's accountant. Oh, I think I must have known because of Conan O'Brien, cause it was Max Weinberg. And then, a side guitar guy that looked like a pirate, like a mobster. 

Kevin T Porter  32:03  
And I remember being so taken in a way where it's like, it was almost -- it wasn't sexual, but it was a feeling that you didn't have words for, but you had this innate attraction, drawn to this energy, at first. I really remember Patty in that song for some reason -- her playing and the kind of contagious infectious joy of that -- I remember watching that video and then loving it, and then never thinking or listening to Bruce Springsteen for four years. That was 2001, and I didn't start listening to him until 2005. How I got into him is because I got an iPod -- a 60 gigabyte iPod -- one of the white ones with the click wheel.

Leah Jones  32:58  
They I believe were only white the first year; I don't think there were colors, were there?

Kevin T Porter  33:05  
They were only white the first year, and then they started out rolling different kinds of colors in Gen 4, because you could get the metallic -- like the steel. You could get a black iPod, you could get the black and red U2 iPod with all of U2's music, up on it. I got this iPod, and at the time, my taste was only -- I love me movie soundtracks. I love score in songs, like pop songs from movie soundtracks. I was coming out of listening to Christian music, but it was at the point where -- this is getting less and less relevant, and more into the movie scores -- but then, there was 58 free gigabytes on the iPod. So I was like, "Okay, well, what is music," and I remember Googling "top albums," and I got to Rolling Stone's list of the Top 500 songs of all time. Which is a list put together by this Boomer generation of straight, white guys that all probably look like me; it's very tragic. It's like, "Number one: 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club'." The number one song, I think at the time, was "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan.

Leah Jones  34:07  
It would have been like, Beatles, literally Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen.

Kevin T Porter  34:16  
I believe "Born to Run," in that incarnation of the top 500 songs, was number 14, so I downloaded it. I think from some Russian mp3 website where you paid for it, but you paid in Russian money; it was 10 cents a song or something like that. I remember listening; I was l kind of into it. And then 2005, is when his album "Devils and Dust" came out, so I listened to that. That was a solo acoustic record, not typical -- more of a side project -- not E Street Band stuff. 

Kevin T Porter  34:47  
Then, I remember listening to the song --  the opening track on "Born to Run," "Thunder Road" -- on the way to theater rehearsal in the year 2005, listening to that song on the way to school, and I was like, "What is this song? What is this music?" And that was love at first listen again. It wasn't like,"Math lady" meme, where I was piecing altogether the songs from my childhood, but it slowly coalesced and snowballed into loving Bruce. It was a slow burn in a way, although I do remember -- because I know we're talking about the maps of how we get into favorites --  I was really into Bob Dylan before I was really into Bruce Springsteen. 

Kevin T Porter  35:33  
So, I guess when I was getting into that Rolling Stone list, I really got legitimately into Dylan -- watched the documentaries, read the books, got all those first albums on compact disc and listened to those. And I really, really liked it, but I didn't love it on a bone level, but I super enjoyed it. It's like a movie I'd love to watch, but it wasn't my favorite of all-time, but it was the exact right bridge to get to Bruce. I feel maybe someone even wrote this as criticism about Bruce, but it's like if Dylan was for your mind, and Elvis was for your body, Bruce combined those things to be for both. So there was no intellectual or visceral compromise in the sense of experiencing his music, which I really appreciate about it. So there was a little Dylan-esque poetry, but it did not come at the cost of any excitement in any way. Instinctual, bone-deep fun that you would have in something like Elvis.

Leah Jones  36:33  
Wow, it's such a different -- so, I'm 44, so I grew up on radio and CDs. But one of my earlier interviews -- on Sunday nights in Terre Haute, Indiana, there was "Alternative Sunday" and it was the alternative music show. And for six hours, once a week, we got alternative music. That was how I learned that They Might Be Giants, and Weird Al, or not alternative. And got into -- Jane's Addiction is burned in my brain as the first alternative CD I bought on my own. And then, buying a ton of CDs, but also just recording hours of the show onto tapes and listening to that. Somehow I kind of missed Napster, because I didn't have a computer or an iPod in the time, in that first wave of digital downloads.

Kevin T Porter  37:37  
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Leah Jones  37:39  
But I also had a big soundtrack movie score, Jazz ... I had a big, a lot of years where that's what I listened to, because a soundtrack gets you --  it's such an economical way to get a variety of music, if the director is good at picking music.

Kevin T Porter  37:59  
Yeah, it was like Quentin Tarantino made me a mixtape -- it's called "Jackie Brown" from 1990. So, it was great before Spotify playlists, a personal curation of sorts.

Leah Jones  38:12  
It's really interesting to hear you talk about seeing him -- you saw him on TV. But your reaction wasn't, "Mom, Dad, can we make a donation and get this VHS? Can we get the DVD that they're trying to woo more donations with Bruce?"  That it just lodged in there and was waiting to be rehydrated when you found it -- I find that so interesting.

Kevin T Porter  38:40  
I remember so little about my childhood and I guess I was 11 or 12 at the time that I watched it, but I'll just remember it forever because of the feeling that it created  -- and I don't get woowoo with religious stuff or anything else, but it did feel as close to cosmic or destiny as I've ever felt. In the sense of enjoying something where I'm like, "I'm not in control of this. I feel like something is choosing me in this moment." And that's a very strange and humbling thing to feel. 

Leah Jones  39:14  
That's amazing. So, then you hear through Rolling Stone's list, you get to "Born to Run," which is probably a more traditional way in. 

Kevin T Porter  39:26  
It's not like, "Hey, Mom, I listened to 'Devils and Dust.' I love Bruce now!!" It's usually --because "Born to Run" is one of his biggest hits, obviously. But it was still a slow burn, because what was that? That was 2005, and then 2006. I could literally go year by year -- so much of high school and college is just marked of, "What was Bruce doing then? And then, sort of, mark time?" He's just been with me since I've been 14 years old. 

Kevin T Porter  39:51  
But the next year, he pulled out "The Secret Sessions" band record, which is not his original music  -- it was a bunch of covers of folk songs with a huge folk band that he put together of two fiddle players, a banjo player, five horn players, and it was all very interesting Americana, Bluegrass, Country Western, sometimes Cajun, sometimes Swing, sometimes Gospel music. And those concerts are the best he's ever done in the 21st century; I still feel that way. But that was my first -- I didn't get to go to those concerts -- but that's why they kind of retain mythic status in my head, because I didn't even get to *see* the sessions, then. 

Kevin T Porter  40:39  
But "Live in Dublin," that was a live release that meant a lot to me. My first concert I saw was when him and the band, the E Street Band, toured together. For the magic tour for that album in 2007, I flew out to Philadelphia -- October 5, 2007, was my first concert that I saw, and that was one of the last ones ever featuring the entire E Street Band, before their organ player, Danny Federici, passed away the following year. Before Clarence passed away, before Danny passed away. I got to see in the flesh in Philadelphia on the East Coast. It was such a  privilege to see.

Leah Jones  41:24  
How did you end up choosing Philadelphia as the place to go?

Kevin T Porter  41:29  
My dad lived in New Jersey at the time. So I was like, "Well, go see Dad, and Philly's not that far." It was a little drive; it was like an hour-and-a-half or two hour drive.That was kind of the rationale behind that. Because my dad was also living in New Jersey when I saw them at Giant Stadium, three times the following summer. Most of my high school, in college years, I just remember being so marked by -- Bruce was on tour here, and I saw him here. And then I went to Tulsa, and then went to Dallas, and I took my three friends to Houston. And we sat on the front row for that show, nd that bonded us together, for life. Stuff like that, where now, there are relationships -- I promise you that I have maintained from high school -- not solely, but primarily because we saw shows together when we were kids. When we were 16 and 17 years old. 

Kevin T Porter  42:26  
Those would be Kelsey, Grant, Katie, Corey, Rachel, friends of mine where like we're bonded for the rest of our lives. It's like we had sex, like we experienced an intimate physical thing, and now, we're just going to have this knowledge together for each other. And then, it is a not now, but hopefully in the future. Again, it's an opportunity, an excuse to reunite. "Okay, Bruce is on tour. Are you flying out to California? Am I going back to Texas? Where are we seeing him?" So, that social excuse was very meaningful in that way.

Leah Jones  43:02  
Where those, when was that crew, like were those road trips to see shows?

Kevin T Porter  43:06  
Sometimes. Most of them were local. Most of them were Dallas, Austin, Houston. But we have taken road trips to Washington, D.C., or where else have we taken road trips? Arizona, we took a road trip from Los Angeles to see him in Phoenix or just outside of Tempe, I think maybe Tempe, Arizona. So, some of them were road trips, but a lot of them were just local events, which now I'm grateful for, twofold. Because I've seen him, I think, 24 times, 25 times. From 2007 to the last time I saw him, was 2016. And, I feel it -- it's been the longest stretch I've gone without seeing him in concert. And I feel it, isn't that so weird? And with the world we live in now, I'm so grateful I had that time. 

Kevin T Porter  43:13  
Then, too, it's just being a young man and being a kid, essentially. It's like, I don't want to travel to see him 18 times in a year when I'm 55. You know what I mean? I don't want to do that. Because there's men and women who do that at those shows, and you probably don't want to be friends with them. But, I want to take close friends of mine and baptize them in those live shows when we go together. That's what happened the last time I saw him here in Los Angeles, by luck of the lottery and luck of friendship. We were on the front row -- myself, Eric and Chelsea. And it's like, "I'm going to know and love these people for the rest of my life." I was going to already, but that cemented it in a different kind of way.

Leah Jones  44:47  
Was that a Hollywood Bowl show? What was the L.A. show that you went to?

Kevin T Porter  44:52  
The L.A. show was -- I believe it was the sports arena before they tore it down. There's a sports arena, that's just called the Los Angeles Sports Arena. It wasn't like the Staples Center -- I think that's why they tore it down  -- because there's no sponsorship, I guess. It was just outside of USC. It's not a Hollywood Bowl show, he's done Staples before, wasn't Staples, I believe it was Sports Arena.

Leah Jones  45:13  
And when you're getting a front row ticket -- because I do have a couple friends, former co-workers who are also really into Bruce -- is getting on the front row, is that, are you fighting your way to the front row or this is just like the clouds parted, and you clicked fast enough, you got front row tickets?

Kevin T Porter  45:34  
Well, it's it's a mixture, it's sort of clouds parting in a way, because you get a general admission ticket; it's a pit. Then there's the rest of the floor, there's no seats on the floor, it's just the arena seating, it's just a huge floor. And the little divider where -- the front of that divider's the pit, right in front of the stage. And if you're in the front row, there's no divider between where you are and the stage. If you're on the front row, your arms are on the stage. He likes it, where there's no security inbetween, no barricade. So, you get a general admission ticket, you show up to the arena that afternoon, between the hours of usually 2 and 5pm, here in America, at least. And you get a wristband with a number on it. Then all those numbers go into a huge bucket, and they pick a number. So if they gave out like 100 wristbands, and they pick 642, whoever has the wristband 642 gets to be in the front of the show. And then 643, the next one is 644. The idea of that, it's random, and then everyone has an equal chance to get in. 

Kevin T Porter  46:39  
It's just been kismet and luck, and especially that last time, too, Leah, because we were like 786, 87, and 88, and they chose 789. So, we were just cut off, and it felt so bad; it felt like someone shot me. But then there was this guy, Nigel, who we were talking to before the show -- before they called and drew any numbers -- we were just nice friends talking about our favorite musician. And when he went in, he was like, "Hey, those guys are with us, can they come in, too?" And the security guy was like, "Yeah," so we got to be on the front row because Nigel was such a nice man to us.

Kevin T Porter  47:17  
Ohhhhhhhh!

Kevin T Porter  47:17  
I know. I know. And that's been -- there's gross people at the shows and people where it's like, "I wish he went to therapy or loved your family at all." [Other people:] "I've seen him 104 times this year," and it's their sad stuff. But then there's a lot of people like Nigel - there's a lot of people like the woman I met in Giant stadium 2008 who said, "My cousin can't come to the show, do you want to take it? I'm not gonna sell it to you, I'm gonna give it to you for free." People like that, and people you see years apart. I saw that lady at a Los Angeles show in 2012, years late. That sort of community feeling, I do miss about concert-going in general, now. And not having any opportunity for that.

Leah Jones  48:01  
I got super into "Hamilton." And so "Hamilton," for me, was the moment where I was like, "You know what, I'm gonna lean into being a fan and it's okay. It's okay to just love something, and travel and experience it." Where before, there was an ironic detachment or a cynicism, of holding yourself a little bit at arm's length. And Hamilton was the first time where I was like, "Fuck it, I'm going all-in. I'm single, and I have a nice salary." So, I got to see the original cast. And then a friend of mine and I got up the day the tickets went on sale for the London cast. We got up at five in the morning, in Chicago, and bought tickets. We went with high school friends; a bunch of us went to London to see it, the year the Cubs were in the World Series. A lot of people didn't want their Hamilton tickets that week, so I went and sat in the fifth row. Because baseball took over Chicago, I could get more Hamilton. Then, I have also traveled  to see "How Did This Get Made" live shows.

Kevin T Porter  49:20  
Oh, yes. Very nice!

Leah Jones  49:22  
I used to feel a little sheepish about that --  traveling to see something. And now, in COVID, I am so grateful.

Kevin T Porter  49:31  
Isn't that so funny? Where, on some level, someone could say -- but that's any -- you know what? I feel like that's the outside looking in on anything. Because someone could say that about a "Hamilton" fan, someone could say that about a guy who goes to a million Dodgers games, in the same way that whatever the thing is that you don't personally connect to, it's so easy to be dismissive of. But understanding, especially now, the necessity of joy and peace in people's lives, and whatever the communal collective feeling. 

Kevin T Porter  50:03  
Because, I'm sure for you it wasn't just like, "I want to watch Hamilton -- me." It was like, "I want to be in a crowd where people are really enjoying the show. I get to see this cast."  The thrill of the hunt -- getting up with your friend early in the morning. 

Leah Jones  50:13  
Oh my gosh, it was amazing. 

Kevin T Porter  50:15  
It's truly like the rush of getting a general admission ticket for Bruce. Man, it makes me choke up even just thinking about scoring one for my friend in Los Angeles and getting to call her and told her, "I got it." "It's an adventure to be had in terms of hunting for that stuff. And I think that the connective tissue with Hamilton and Bruce stuff, is that both of those things are almost painfully sincere. It's so easy for people to dismiss them as corny, which is not even an unfair criticism, right?  Like that, "Oh, Bruce Springsteen -- it's -- it's just cars in America and a girl, and driving on the road" and Hamilton, is just like Lin [Manuel Miranda] biting his lip on Twitter -- whatever corny thing that people put on Hamilton now. But there's something really humbling about, especially trying to be an educated adult in the world, to enter into this place of humility, to receive sincerity without apologizing for it, and just be like, "Yeah, okay, it's corny. Yeah, I know, it's overly sincere. I know, it's earnest. But, this is meaningful to me, I connect with this thin