Unteathered Talks

"Here I am, in my kitchen," Daniel says as we start our talk recorded back in November when the first of the rains were coming in. I've been sitting on this recording for too long, like I think it's a fine wine waiting for the tannins to settle. Never mind any silly reasons for the delay: I am no longer hoarding one of my favorite conversations-- with Mr. Daniel D'Agostini (: A farmer, teacher, writer, photographer, among many other things, this OG Amadorian is not only dynamic but Bio-Dynamic, which we learn is a holistic and sustainable way of stewarding the land. We talk at his 'stead, the Abbondanza Lavender Farm in Amador's Shenandoah Valley, while (appropro-ly) sipping Zin and slurping split-pea soup. "True stories are easy to tell because they're true," as he begins telling another one. As always, I wish I talked less and let my guest talk more, but Daniel maneuvers around my interjections with such grace and insight. I learned. I laughed. I truly enjoyed. And I hope you do too! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/heather-strobel/support

This Halloween edition may be my most untethered episode yet! Traditionally on here, I go pretty in depth with one person for a couple of hours --but this was recorded at a live tarot reading event and we get to meet multiple people throughout while I sit with my guest (or am I hers?). Aunt Johanna is aunt to Break Even owner Kevin; a Wiccan since high school, she awesomely refers to herself as “an old witch”. It's a little wacky listening at first with so much going on but if you close your eyes, it'll feel like you're there having your cards read at the tavern, eating Chef J Lew's Spooky Popcorn, kid and puppy noises abound. Within the lovely chaos, we learn more about Aunt Johanna and how she made her way to the county, something I'm always curious about. She was living up in Washington when her nephew Kevin asked her one day, “want to come down for one more adventure?” Those sound like famous last words to me! We also meet a fair amount of fellow Amador Citians, including an OG inhabitant of String Bean Alley. As the evening wraps up, I do a few readings myself from my golden tarot deck and we even get a visit from the rad lady Ginger of Small Town Wine Bar. Thanks to everyone who came out and participated—that was so much fun! Happy Halloween! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Sat down with Jake from the Break Even Beermakers' team located in Amador City to "talk nonsense", as he says. Originally from Kirkland Washington, Jake has an action sports background from his exposure to HO Sports where his dad was a graphic designer. We discuss the difference between board and plank sports, some punk and a bit of funk, and what it's like being dad to little Lemmy, one of the coolest babies (now toddler) I've ever met. I had a lot of favorite quotes of Jake's: "the best boot out there is the boot that fits you" or "drone dancing is probably less lame than dating in the metaverse". Lady Jen joins us on the side from time to time throughout this live 'cast recorded at the Break Even tavern. Did you guys know DMX has a cover of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer??? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Welcome to the pilot of a new format Unteathered Talks has adopted (not exclusively but very excitedly!). This is the first episode of a series of "Tavern Talks" recorded LIVE for fellow audience members to listen in real-time and join-in at the Breakeven Brewery in Amador City on certain upcoming Thursday nights in Fall 2022. I am happy to introduce our first guest, local mayor Anne Kel-Artinian, whose self-professed "hair flows mellifluously as she rides her e-bike down Amador Creek Road." Okay lol this quote was in the context of Anne using a new word we learned in a sentence, but the description does her such justice! And it's also how the two of us met: at a bike event last spring, the Poppy Pedal --also thrown together by Breakeven, so it seemed even more fitting to have our conversation here. We are joined with cameos from fellow BE brewer Aaron Wittman and his lovely event coordinator Jenn Anderson. You may even hear Red the Shred say a thing or two in the background. We discuss how Anne came to the county, how it feels to see your name on an official ballot alongside names likes Joe Biden, and the lost art of actually reading a book-- as we sip Shrub Soda, a non-alcoholic yet delicious offering available at the tavern! Anne speaks of her travels to cities such as Yereman, Stockholm, and Bangalore. We learn she has five sons and how walking miles and miles of beach on the Southern Oregon coast is what's nourishing to her soul. The next talk is scheduled for September 8th; hope to see you there! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

On this episode we are joined by fellow podcaster Cory Faust. Cory grew up in the county, was able to "escape" for most of his young adulthood, and has recently returned to what he says is pretty much “exactly the same”. We discuss how to beat the heat (Amador County stays in the mid to late 90s most of July and August), feel-good video games, remembering how to actually read a book, and how dangerous Shia Lebouf can be in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Cory tells us about what it was like to attend yet not quite complete Air Traffic Control school: “I was just a broken person they were trying to mold.” You can also hear Cory, along with former guest Brandon Carroll from our Episode 4: Love in the Time of Covid, on their podcast “Talk Good!”. Thank you for joining! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Excited to present Chef Tim Blankenship whose tasty treats I hope you have had the chance to imbibe. And if you haven't, it can be a little hard to convey the hearty delight of his Japanesey Tex/Mex fusion fresh tapas. Tim can be found chefing at local taproom Provisions and is now offering wine-paired foods at Yorba's tasting room just around the corner! You may also remember his bomb breakfasts from the days of Element or before my time here in Sutter Creek when J&D's Steakhouse was still around. This isn't the first episode to be recorded in two parts (see "Truth about Cats & Dogs of War" with Kevin Conklin who is also mentioned in this chat), but it is the first two-parter recorded in the same day and my very first episode to have music in the background--which is one of my favorite things about being untethered: we can do whatever we want! Tim is an avid sports fan and our podcast was scheduled the same day as the Texas elementary school shooting that happened a little over a month ago. After we finished the first interview, Steve Kerr, a coach of one of his favorite sports teams who was playing in Texas that day, released a statement that inspired Tim to want to hit the record button again. And I'm really glad we did! Part I has the feel of a daytime interview; we discuss how he arrived to the county, what made him want to be a chef, and how he gets creative about working without an industrial kitchen. Part II shifts to a casual evening vibe, where discussion gets a little more philosophical and a LOT more sportsy. I can't help but relish Tim's disdain at how little I know about sportsball(: Accompanied by Timothy's vinyl pick: "The Dead Set"-- Hope you enjoy the talks! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

If you've walked the backroads between either of our two towns, you've undoubtedly run into Cort Strandberg. Affectionately referred to by his former high school Spanish students as Supreme Cort, we discuss the various work he has had since coming to the county, how three-year old's birthday parties are "the only place you can shit in your pants and puke without causing any trouble" and what happens when you mix LSD and an M16. From Jersey to Mexico, the bay to the hills, Cort readily brings a fresh wit and perspective. Hope y'all enjoy! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

I am here with my dear friend Kevin Conklin. (Partner to Miss Kelsey Mort featured in Episode 3!) This episode is a two-parter that began on Veteran's Day with surprise guest interviewer Stephanie Sittner, where we discuss Kevin's time in the service and what it's like to punch through a wall or get punched in the face. I also learn that one of our local MMA instructors Paul Smith helped start cage fighting! My most ratchet episode yet, I actually had to remove huge chunks of this recording #earmuffs In our later one-on-one, Kevin and I talk about the challenges of adopting rescue dogs, the eternal question of what's worse: #1 or #2, big dick energy, the end of Mandalorian, and how his Anatolian Shepherds sound like a cappuccino machine when they pee. Kevin says that when the winter blues hit, “just rock your unicorn onesie.” And, watch out Amador County!—There may be plans in the works to create Jurassic Bark, a monster dog-dino riding zoo. Stay tuned!… --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Meet Will Pritchard! He is co-owner (along with his lovely wife) of Amador Brewing Company, locally and lovingly referred to as the ABC. We chat in the shaded brewery breezeway on the last day of August about craft beer and the county, but I ultimately wanted to know how the ABC came to fruition. May sound cheesy, but I simply love learning how others manifest their dreams (especially against challenging tides!), so this is yet another episode about a rad human doing awesome things. A combination of vision, team building, brand marketing, hard work, and good flippin' beer has led to their success. I admire Will's approach to business and very much enjoyed hearing the journey of how the ABC got to where it is today, how they're handling the tides of 2020, and where he wants to put the focus moving forward. Will shares some fun beer blending tricks like making a “Dirty Kölsch” and we find out a Pine Grove taproom is in the works--set to hopefully open soon! (I didn't realize) the population of Pine Grove and Pioneer combined is over 3,000, so this new spot will serve the upcountry locals even more so than those that may be stopping through on their way up or down Hwy 88. All the wins. Yay. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

April Hughes says she started studying tarot cards to prove it was a way to take advantage of people. Little did she know she would soon meet her own reading guide and follow a calling towards intuitive consultation and divination. April can be found working out of a cute and colorful little shop in downtown Sutter Creek aptly named “On Purpose”. Not only did we have a really great discussion about the history of tarot, what it means to be a spiritual being in a physical body, and how to best navigate life's waters, but April also does a reading (and Reiki healing!) on me. Even if you don't drink the spiritual Kool-Aid, or in a more positive sense “bathe in the waters” as April calls it, there's still some good self-helpy mystical life advice here that requires no other underlying belief system. Because the “life path is a very wide stream, [the guide world is] trying to get that narrowed down so that it's a smaller place for you to navigate, as well as everybody else.” How to dial it in. Focus the navigation in your little life boat. “Hands on the wheel, foot on the gas” April kept saying. I'm honestly just so happy I have this chat recorded so I can go back and listen to it for my own purposes. Hope you enjoy too! Much love to April for the support. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Excited to bring you Justin Lewis of JLew's Food and Justin's Pantry. He is a Community-Supported Kitchen and Hospitality Professional, a local cook, sommelier, entrepreneur, aspiring musician, and man about town. Justin is husband to Britnee Lewis (who you may remember joined us on our pilot!) and he and I share a co-associate Kelsey Mort (from episode 3!). Among other endeavors such as the Pay it Forward program or Savoring Sundays, he also works with Yorba Wines, an oft-mentioned local tasting room and grape grower up at Shake Ridge Ranch. Justin calls Shake Ridge one of his favorite places in the county or maybe even the world! It IS a pretty special place (: I very much enjoyed relistening to this conversation because we talk a lot about process and mind set, especially manifesting your dreams into reality. Leaps of faith. Gig industry life. Following your heart. How to make your own luck. Justin says, “it's like a muscle you have to work to listen to, otherwise you won't hear the voice”. There is a lot of inspiration and good life reminders alll up in this chat, as well as some pretty word marketing and content creation tips from J. Hope you enjoy! Cheers - "Pantry Helper Heather". --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Red the Shred rejoins me on a special FaceTime edition of Unteathered Ears. Recorded over a week ago, I wanted to wait to post until I was safely out of quarantine and didn't have the ‘Rona so as to not jinx myself (: Because Red and Brandon Carroll are good friends, some of the conversation here is his reaction to topics Brandon and I previously breached (on Episode 4!) such as their podcast together “Not Another Critic”, the power of comedy, and what it's like to live in a ghost town. We wind down some philosophical corridors about science and its limitations, thalassophobia, how conspiracies “muddy the waters”, living in echo chambers, and how to compensate the loss of non-verbal communication in the age of masks. Red reflects, “I look like a menacing person to someone who doesn't know me, all covered in tattoos.. People hold their children closer when I walk by. And now I don't even have the ability to at least smile at them.” We also talk about death.. a lot. Oh, and it's Red's birthday this week so to celebrate (but also to maybe make his nihilist heart cringe lol), I did his natal chart reading! Stick around to the end if you want to hear some of that woo woo. Word (: --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Super stoked to bring you another local rockstar Casey Sexton who rolls with “big dick energy” -–former radio host of Highway 49 Radio and co-owner and purveyor of musical talent at our favorite tap room Provisions in downtown Sutter Creek. She tells us how dreams come to life by “following the marrow in your bones” and how she and her crew are keeping things afloat amidst 2020's hard hit on the live music industry and small business. If you aren't privy to ProV's offerings, prepare for the trifecta of sensory overload from Darin's craft beer selection and Tim's culinary goodness to Casey's heartlandrockabilly line-up. She describes her musical selectivity as heavily curated and one of my favorite things she says is: “I'm not whoring out my stage! If you're on my stage, I LOVE your music.” We also talk about some of the ruts of small-town life and Casey's fear of NOT changing when change is kind of the only thing you can count on, especially these days (: --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

On our fourth episode, I bring on local comic Brandon Carroll and we shoot the shit while smoking a bunch of weed lol by our town creek. (Okay.. I'm finally starting to channel Joe Rogan.) We enthusiastically discuss a wide array of topics from the dark side of comedy to living the California dream, touching on ghosts and psychedelics, while also learning why Brandon loathes Beanie Babies. Bouncing between a cadence of silly and philosophical, he says that the art of stand-up comedy is like “carving your niche through the audience”. If you stick around until the end, BC flips the script on me and we go into untethered territory where I spill some personal bits about my open relationship. [I debated editing this part out, but it fits too well with the podcast's theme (sorry honey!

How do we balance worldly awareness with our own personal sanity? This year more than ever, Miss Kelsey Mort finds solace in the mushroom “promise lands” in our little chunk of the Sierras. A county native, she can usually be found sharing her wealth of knowledge with locals and tourists alike at the Yorba tasting room, where she and I have carved a relationship of deep conversations based on curiosity and jest. In this episode, Kelsey shares insight into the magical world of mushroom foraging: “Until I see that first morel of the day, I always worry that I can't see them anymore. It's like magic how they almost come into being like ‘there you are!' and until you see that first one you always worry that maybe you don't have the magic anymore.” We also discuss small town life, leaving things better than you found it, and how the movie Zoolander was way ahead of its time. Kelsey says, “Rewatch it now, Nerds, ‘cause it's going to hit a lot of buttons!” Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, we get a brief cameo from Lucy the Dog and the Yorba meister herself, Ann Kraemer, which is hopefully a foreshadowing that we can get her on the show eventually, too (: And, if I didn't freaking say it enough throughout this episode… mushrooms are aliens. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

It's been two weeks and a day since George Floyd's murder and California is in Phase 3 of reopening businesses after the Covid shutdowns. Recorded on June 9, 2020, Episode 2 brings musician and artist Red Martin to the mic. Red grew up in this small rural community but was afforded a different worldview by touring in a metal band over the last decade. We discuss the current shit show of events and how they relate to zombie movies, virtue signaling, satanism, Jehovah's witnesses, and open relationships. Favorite quotes of his from this chat: “Facebook is a fucking garbage fire right now.” “We're playing a video game and we still don't know what the rules are yet.” “We should understand our lizard brains a little bit more and not think we're fucking arbiters of truth.” AMEN. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support

Our pilot episode begins on June 2, 2020 #blackouttuesday, a critical time in the Black Lives Matter movement. My first guest is Miss Britnee Lewis, a badass lady in the county where we live in Northern California. We discuss wine country, her background, and then delve right into the raw bits about what privilege means and the current wave of civil rights protests. She says, "there's always going to be this feeling that we're not doing enough, until the whole community feels like we've done enough. And that's okay." At the end of the recording, we were both surprised by the sense of healing we felt from our open dialogue--not that either of us are immediate victims of the injustices, but we both want to honor and hold space for anti-racism, and this episode did but a sliver of that.. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-strobel/support