Note from April 2023: I intended to get all these interviews with music “journalist” Ginger Babczak shot and posted before getting into the real skits of the show, but it didn’t pan out that way and only the first two in the series with Nick and Pádraig ended up getting made. So, rather than drag it out when the show’s been underway for over a year now, or spend time on shooting and editing these old interviews rather than new skits, I decided to just post them as text.
Basically: some background info and extra jokes on the characters. And I backdated these to when they were scheduled to appear originally.
Why no commentary from Nick and Sally on these interviews, unlike the videos? Well… you really think Nick can read? LOL…
Enjoy… I hope… and of course the standard show disclaimer applies…
(We are sitting in the live room of Studio 4 at Nick’s Starboard Sound recording studio. Ginger sits in one chair facing Jason, who sits on a sofa across from her, busying himself with untangling and properly re-rolling a huge clump of cables Nick left in a messy pile on the floor overnight.)
GINGER: So, how’d you come to work here at Starboard Sound?
JASON: Well, ma’am, there’s not much of a story. I was wrappin’ up my audio production course at Cloud 9 a couple years back and Richard Browne came in to give the class a talk about mixin’ hard rock, eh? And of course everyone crowded around wantin’ to make connections. They mostly wanted him to put in a good word for ‘em at Bryan Adams’ studio, but I asked him if he knew of anywhere that really needed a good hard-workin’ assistant where I could make my mark and he said Starboard Sound couldn’t seem to hold onto their interns and invited me to send in my resume.
GINGER: How come they couldn’t hold onto assistants?
JASON: Oh, I dunno. The pay sucks but it’s like that at every studio. I guess ‘cause Carrington hasn’t got much goin’ on with the live music scene like Vancouver does? Plus I heard Nick kept sleepin’ with the assistants’ girlfriends, sisters, and moms… basically anything in a skirt.
GINGER: He didn’t try to sleep with yours?
JASON: My mom’s back home in Calgary, eh? And I don’t have time for a girlfriend.
GINGER: And your sisters?
JASON: Haven’t got any. Just my three brothers, eh? And none of them wear skirts, ma’am… at least not that I know of.
GINGER: Oh, well, that’s lucky. So you and Nick hit it off, huh?
JASON: Yeah, Nick’s alright once you get used to him. The key is to be interested in his yacht stories. And to be willing to really put some effort into keepin’ his yacht racing trophies polished up.
GINGER: Do the other assistants at Starboard also polish his trophies?
JASON: No. That’s why they keep gettin’ fired. Well, except for Mike, but technically speaking, he doesn’t work for us, he works for Martin Johnston directly.
GINGER: Do you ever get to work with Martin?
JASON: Only if Mike’s sick and Nick’s away on tour. Otherwise, I simply fetch the lunch orders, place them outside the Studio 4 door, and text Mike to come and get them.
GINGER: Why don’t you just take ‘em in?
JASON: Martin’s very particular in how he runs the mix room and he hates being disrupted in any way.
GINGER: Isn’t that kinda weird?
JASON: Have you seen his Wikipedia? His credits list speaks for itself: Martin knows what he’s doing, eh?
GINGER: Does Nick ever interrupt Martin?
JASON: My job is to make sure he doesn’t. And if I’m up in Studio 3 assisting Richard, then Sally makes sure Nick stays distracted so Martin isn’t.
GINGER: How do you get on with Sally?
JASON: Oh, we’re a great team, eh? She keeps things running smoothly with the schedule, she deflects all the phone calls from the various wives, mistresses, and girlfriends so there’s less drama at work, and she keeps Nick busy.
GINGER: And that’s vital to keeping things running smoothly?
JASON: Yes, ma’am. Y’know, Nick’s an old-school alpha male and after 40-odd years of being a big rock star, he’s used to everyone dropping everything to cater to his whims. But we’re trying to run a studio here with outside clients, eh? Like last week when we had the local symphony in Studio 1’s live room, we couldn’t have Nick deciding that he wanted to bring his band in that same afternoon because he suddenly felt like recording a new song. Even though it’s his studio, y’know?
GINGER: So…
JASON: So Sally ran interference and told him she thinks the new song idea is brilliant but that it really needed some Latin percussion on it. She took him down to Long & McQuade to find just the right set of conga drums. And then she remembered there’s a new pizza place Nick was wanting to try out. The one where the waitresses wear hot pants and it’s on the other side of town, eh? And then she asked him to show her his yacht again. That sorta thing.
GINGER: I see.
JASON: Of course, if all else fails, Sally just sneaks Nick’s phone out of his pocket and texts something nasty to his wife and then the resulting nuclear war will keep him busy ‘til the clients are finished recording.
GINGER: Wait. Sally deliberately causes trouble in Nick’s marriage?
JASON: It’s for a good cause.
GINGER: That’s absurd!
JASON: We’re the only local studio large enough to accommodate the symphony. Besides, they pay well because they get government grant money, eh? I know Nick’s always sayin’ he bought the studio for the tax write-offs, but we’re still tryin’ to not run at too much of a loss each year.
GINGER: I just can’t get over Sally texting Mrs. White something nasty. I mean, what sort of things does she say? And Nick never tells her he didn’t send those messages?
JASON: No, actually. They fight all the time and he’s got a bad memory so usually he assumes he did send them.
GINGER: But what do they say?
JASON: I think the last one I saw said something along the lines of “how do you expect to keep a man satisfied when you can’t even cook?” Or there was the one last month that said “for someone who spends so much time with a personal trainer, you sure have flabby thighs”.
GINGER: That’s awful!
JASON: I guess, but Nick doubled down on both of them. The flabby thighs incident in particular led to him sleeping on the sofa in his office here for a whole two weeks.
GINGER: It just seems wrong to cause a rift in the Whites’ marriage just so as to avoid a disruption to a client session. Why can’t Sally just tell him to wait til Studio 1 is available?
JASON: Sally’s afraid to cause conflict, eh?
GINGER (laughing uncontrollably): What? Afraid to cause conflict? Look what she’s doing!
JASON: Right, but that conflict doesn’t involve her.
GINGER: Yes, it does! She starts it!
JASON: Well, but the actual yellin’ and screamin’ is between Nick and Joanne. And Sally just comes up to Studio 3 to avoid listenin’ to it.
GINGER: Jesus fucking Christ… you don’t see anything wrong with that?
JASON: Meh, it’s normal in this business.
GINGER: No, it’s not!
JASON: One day when I was a student at Cloud 9, y’know how that place is run by George O’Riley? Dude has almost as many platinum albums as Martin… anyway this one day I guess George’s wife Leanne found some girl’s thong in George’s desk and she chased George around the school with a revved up chainsaw. It happens, eh?
GINGER: Um, did anyone call the cops?
JASON: No, why?
GINGER: There was a crazy woman chasing a man with a chainsaw! No one did anything?
JASON: Well, the new engineering class set up some microphones to get samples of the chainsaw revving. Especially when she was chasing George up and down the stairs, because there’s really great reverb in the stairwell, eh?
GINGER: You people are out of your goddamn minds!
JASON: Look, ma’am, I wasn’t sampling the chainsaw noises. I was too busy tuning vocals for one of George’s lesser projects, this chick named Lexie from our class who was trying to get her debut honkytonk pop album recorded.
(Jason pauses his cable wrangling and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling a moment.)
JASON: Y’know, now that I think of it, that might have been Lexie’s thong that Leanne found in George’s desk.
GINGER: And none of you said anything?
JASON: It’s not an assistant’s place to say anything. None of my business, eh?
GINGER: He fucked a student and his wife chased him with a chainsaw, and nobody said anything?
JASON: No, ma’am.
GINGER: I’m beginning to see why you and Nick get along so well.
JASON: Like I said, I also listen to Nick’s yacht stories. That helps.
GINGER: Good God… well, tell me about Richard Browne.
JASON: Richard’s alright, just wash your hands if you touch anything he’s touched. This one time, I touched the Studio 3 trackball mouse after Richard without wiping it down first and didn’t wash my hands right after and I got a weird rash up my right arm that took a month to go away.
GINGER: Eww.
JASON: But Richard’s cool. I learn a lot from him.
GINGER: Like what?
JASON: Toms aren’t there too much, but when they’re there, they have to be king, so mix ‘em loud and compress the fuck outta ‘em. Don’t roll joints on a book, do it in a tray with a lip on the edge to catch all the little extra weed crumbs and by the end of the week it’s like you get a free joint just out of that. And strippers can’t tell the difference between an American 20 and an American 1 in the dark, so use American money but always make sure you sit with tourists so they don’t know you’re the one who gypped them.
GINGER (aghast): Lovely.
JASON: Look, ma’am, I don’t make much at this stage of my life.
GINGER: Well, I guess that brings us to the strippers next door. Tell me about Atlanta.
JASON: Atlanta’s awesome! She lives in the same building as I do, so does their DJ, Pádraig. It’s a little run down but it’s only 2 blocks away. Anyway, Atlanta’s real cool, eh, she and her boyfriend Brad grow weed and they’re saving up to buy a farm on one of the islands and then they can go off-grid.
(Another thoughtful pause.)
JASON: Man, I wish I could find a girl like Atlanta. She has a cousin, Summer, who’s nice enough, but just doesn’t have that earthiness like Atlanta does… Although Summer is definitely much more into the whole “free love” thing than Atlanta is.
GINGER: Oh. I see. You used to date Summer?
JASON: No, ma’am, I just fucked her in the upstairs bathroom here at the studio a bunch of times when Nick was out of town so she couldn’t hook up with him. I think Pádraig used to fuck her in Luigi’s office, too, but he got sick of her pretty quick.
GINGER: And this sort of slut-sharing is common in the studio?
JASON: Look, ma’am… I’m all for women’s liberation. If a girl wants to fuck like a man, and I’m the man she wants to fuck, who am I to say no? And it’s not like Summer’s my girlfriend, eh?
GINGER: You didn’t try to make her your girlfriend?
JASON: Look, she’s a nice girl and all, I just… I mean, I can’t bring a girl home to meet my mom whose Facebook cover picture says “ROCK STAR CUM: YUMMY YUM YUM!!!” Mom wants me to find a nice girl to marry, eh? And not just a nice girl like personality-wise, but a “nice girl.” Y’know? And I will… just not yet.
GINGER: What does Atlanta think about her cousin having a Facebook photo like that?
JASON: Atlanta thinks Summer’s kinda dumb and she’s always trying to introduce her to good guys. But Summer’s a free spirit. And a cock collector. I think she said she’s just 1 dick shy of having fucked every member of Guns N Roses ever, but Izzy Stradlin has these free-range pit bulls that patrol his property, so no luck there yet. And of course she was born far too late to ever have a complete collection of the Beatles.
GINGER: Wow. Um… so tell me about Betty over there. Do you know her well?
JASON: No, ma’am. She’s nice enough to me, but Nick tells me all sorts of awful things about her. Richard too. I guess they all knew each other back in the 80s.
GINGER: Yes, Nick seemed to not think very highly of Betty.
JASON: Well, she doesn’t like him either, ma’am. I just try to mind my own business, eh?
GINGER: What about Paris?
JASON: I can’t afford Paris.
GINGER: I’m not talking about a trip, I’m talking about Paris Cartwright next door.
JASON: I know, ma’am. I can’t afford Paris Cartwright. She won’t even say hello to a guy for less than $500.
GINGER: OK, well, what about Pádraig? You and him and Atlanta all live together.
JASON: Oh no, we don’t live together, just in the same building. We all have our own tiny little studio apartments, eh? Funny thing is Pádraig actually owns a nice house in the suburbs, but he has it broken into three suites and they’re all rented out. Kinda makes no sense to me why he doesn’t live in one of the suites, but I guess it would be a long commute at the end of the night, eh?
GINGER: He’s somewhat of an entrepreneur, I suppose.
JASON: For sure, eh? He’s got that house, plus he owns four stone cottages on the Irish coast that he rents out to tourists and his mama looks after all that for him, also he trades crypto.
(Jason again pauses to ponder the ceiling a few beats.)
JASON: Pádraig’s a real go-getter. I wish I had Pádraig’s money sense.
GINGER: Don’t we all?
JASON: I think he’s even set to take over his Uncle Seamus’ fireworks business when Seamus retires or loses his last 3 fingers, whichever comes first. But I kinda hope he just sells the company instead. He’s a cool guy to have around right here in Canazuela, it would be a shame if he went back to Ireland for that. I mean, I know the men in his family have been in the surprise demolition business since 1916, but surely there’s a cousin there who can keep the tradition alive instead of Pádraig, eh? Besides, Pádraig is always bitching that the only thing worse than Canazuelan taxes is Irish taxes.
GINGER: Well, he has that in common with Bono, I guess.
JASON: Oh, jeez… Don’t say that to Pádraig, eh? He’ll blow your car up!