E224 Josh Lindley Returns

This week's guest is Josh Lindley, who joins us from Toronto, Ontario. This was Josh's second appearance on the show as he was originally interviewed back on episode number 28. Josh is a partner in driving force behind the Bartender Atlas platform. An online community of bartenders located worldwide, created for bartenders and cocktail lovers alike.

Josh returns to the show to discuss his latest project, a serialized podcast titled The Shaft, a five-part audio documentary from Bartender Atlas where Josh seeks out the story of The Shaft, a hometown cocktail that is claimed by both residents of Victoria and Calgary. In the podcast, Josh follows the story of the drink as well as the attitudes of the bartenders and the cities that call the drink their own. We also talk with Josh about local drinking cultures and his previous five-part podcast, The Blackbird, another local drink phenomenon specific to Toronto. We had a great time talking with Josh as we covered a host of other topics as well, including the Evolution of Podcasts, the ongoing work on the Bartender Atlas platform, the work involved behind organizing a conference, the Evolution and Misrepresentation of Classic Cocktails, influence of pop culture on the cocktail scene, the importance of not judging other people's choices when ordering drinks, and Josh's podcast plans for the future plus a myriad of other topics.

Josh was a phenomenal guest once again and you'll definitely love this episode, so make sure you check out BartenderAtlas.com and The Shaft and The Blackbird Podcasts, or check the show notes for all the links and enjoy the show. All right, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast, Kip and Dan with you as always. What's going on? I'm still hanging out with you.

Every time, man. Just every time. All the time. Glass half full.

Yeah. I just, really, this whole experience of doing podcasts with you is just inspiration for my own life. How can I get to be as awesome as you? I am a bottle for the people.

Yeah. That's what everyone says. It was the greatest role model right there. Yeah.

It used to be Wayne Griske. Now it's you. That's me. Captain douchebag.

Congratulations. Right. Well enough about you. Yeah.

Let's get through our little promo bag. We have a great guest that we want to get to him as soon as possible, but before we get to him, we should run through everything we want to tell you about, which is that if you are enjoying what we're doing here on the show, if you'd like to be a guest or provide support for the show, or you can email us info at the industrypodcast.club, follow, subscribe, rate, review, tell a friend. All of that stuff helps us. I want to give a few shout outs to some of our friends, especially Jean-Marc Dyches at the Inbiblia.

Inbiblia is the app. If you are a bartender or just a home bartender trying to learn about different craft cocktails, this is the app for you. I can't stress enough how amazing this platform is. Yeah.

The flavor profile visual tool is outstanding. Put in your ratios. We're looking forward. It'll come out with something you absolutely will love.

So once again, thank you to Jean-Marc Dyches at Inbiblia. We're also coming on their website to the industrypodcast.club. Industrypodcast.club. And we should also mention our good friend, Alchemists.ally, at alchemists.ally on Instagram.

You can hit her up for if you're hosting a party and you need someone to create cocktails specifically for your party and show up in bar 10 for you. You should teach us cocktail classes. You can salt for bar programs. Hit her up.

That is always a blinks to all that are in the show notes. Yeah. And then if you want to support me specifically, come to Kitchener Water Lue and come over a drink at Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar Downtown Kitchener. Babylon Sisters, App Babylon Sisters, Bar in Waterloo.

Check those out. I'm just going to find out what everything's going on at those bars. You can also hit me up kypp at Babylon Sisters.ca for Spirits from Allure Distilling Company or Wine from Malibu. Or Wine from Malibu or Winery or Terroir Wine Import.

So if you're a bar restaurant or if you just want stuff for your home bar and solo enjoyment, check those out. Hit me up on email and then you'll find the artwork from Zacana at Zacana.co. His graphic arts are amazing and he can help you out with all your graphic arts needs. Anything else?

I think we covered just about everything. Yeah. Not our best work there, but we'll do better next time. Okay, let's get to our guests.

I was enough of that. Josh Lindley is joining us. Josh Lindley from Bartender Atlas. How are you buddy?

Hey, great man. Also, given what you guys are up to, I'm here to like, I'm pulling this energy up here. Don't worry. Like we're going to, everything gets faster when I walk in the room.

Okay. Okay. Well, thanks again for joining us. One more time.

It's like the original episode was episode 28. That's right. You know, guys, I've never waited three years for a second date again. But when you come across such a special connection like we have, three years, it goes by like nothing.

The key is we never forgot Josh. Yes. You burned into our memory and then three years later we were like, what was it 23? 28.

28. Yeah. And then now we're two 24. Yeah.

We're just joining us so many years later. And yeah, let's talk about. Happy to be here. Yeah.

Last time we talked, I think we mentioned before we started recording that it was like right in the throes of lockdowns and I don't even know how we were doing this show back then. We were pretty drunk the first. Yeah. We were just barely hanging on.

Yeah. I mean, I'm still there. Yeah. But I think at the time you still had the little Amaro window that you were doing.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. I ran a almost legal pop up for about two months in a just outside of restaurant that I had been working at called Shonticleer.

And yeah, I had just gotten back from Italy right before everything got locked down. So I spent a lot of time at a bunch of different Italian distilleries came back and was like, okay, what do I do with all this stuff I learned? Right. And reached out to everyone I knew and just kind of had like Amaro and Peritivo Spritzbar standing on a sidewalk because we couldn't have anybody inside.

And luckily the guys in blue in my neighborhood didn't seem to care much, but that's what I was doing. So there we are. It's a cool idea. I remember thinking of the time like what an awesome idea especially because I fucking love Amaro.

So but yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

I live in breathe. Yeah. But basically your chief gig is as one of the founders and current owners, CEO, however you want to strive yourself apart to that with your partner. Yeah.

So on the way in, on the, in that intro when you're talking about in Biblioth and also, what's her name? cocktail alley. Alchemist alley. Yeah.

Alchemist alley. Yeah. Both of those tie directly in. So in Biblioth, obviously incredible resource.

So good. So good. And then, and then on the other side of it is Alchemist alley, honestly off the top of my head, I'm not sure if she's on the side, but bartender Alice, my wife, Jess and I created it going on nine years now. And the idea is that it's a directory of bartenders.

So like Alchemist alley, if you want to hire someone to come and make drinks for you or in my brain, there's like an imaginary person in my head who gets flown to Denver or San Francisco or, you know, Kelowna for some conference and they don't want to hang out with their nerd ass co-workers. So they want to go find a bar or a bartender to go sit with or, you know, you can see like, Oh yeah, look, there's Alex, Alex is in the Star Wars antique furniture. I'm going to sit at their bar and oh, they like rum. I'm going to drink rum.

Right. Yeah. That was why we built it. But as time goes on, you want to keep as many bartenders interested as possible.

So we do a ton of different stuff. We were in Montreal last week. I judged the Torres brand E zero challenge for the third year in a row. My wife, Jess is very, very good.

She's been a photographer for 25 years. So she's very good at technical stuff and capturing things. She's hired to photograph things. I'm judging in that case a business plan, but we organized different cocktail competitions and events Toronto cocktail conferences are big one, right?

Happening in 2025, but did happen in 2024. It's not happening in 2025. No, we're not going to do it this year. This may come as a surprise to both of you, but we sort of feel like a lot of the, a lot of our friends in the service industry are stretched pretty thin.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so as much as we love bringing people in and offering educational seminars and like a chance for people to hang out and get to know each other, we've realized that there may or may not be one of the biggest cocktail competitions in the world doing their global final in Toronto.

There are weekly and if not weekly, like bi-weekly events that are seminars and educational that go on around Toronto a lot. And we realized kind of throwing our own three day thing a little bit before a giant three day thing feels, I don't know, I don't want to put that pressure on anyone to feel like to have to show up to everything, you know? That's fair. That's a great thing that you created the Toronto cocktail conference.

I imagine like an insane amount of work on your end. It takes 10 or 11 months to plan and you're dealing with, you think about, you know, if you've done events at your bars, right? And it's just like, okay, so it takes like six weeks of emails to set up one booth to offer two extra drinks. I do that, but over the course of three days with 20 different brands and 450 different people.

And then in between it all, there's all the 10, 12, one year we did 18 seminars, flying people in hotels, all that. It is a lot of work, but also by the middle of day three, everybody has best friends and it's like, okay, yeah, this was cool. This is what this is. Yeah.

Well, and that's why it makes it worse at the end of the day. Like all these things are so much fucking work and then, but then you get there and like the, and you realize this is why we do it. Yeah, exactly. That said, going into this year is like, okay, everyone's stretched a little thin.

Things are pretty rough as far as booze is concerned. Will we be allowed to have American friends come visit? Who knows? So, so yeah, we were putting it on pause right now.

Bartender Atlas is still very active. We're working on a couple of different things based on when this is going to come out. Right now we're working on something that is a list of Canadian made spirits and lines that we're hosting on the website, given the ability or not. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we have access to American spirits next week. Who knows?

Who fucking knows? Apparently we have a 30 day re-prey of that as of today, February 3rd. I saw today because the big bully back down a little bit. We'll see.

Look at the six pack of schlitz then. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah.

What would we do without our schlitz? So one of the other things that you have been doing for as long as we know, and you at least is podcasting, you have a radio background. Yeah. That's how you started as a radio DJ, correct?

That's right. I graduated from college with a radio broadcasting diploma. Yeah. Whiskey and my parents gave me this voice and who am I to deny the people?

That's right. You do have an amazing radio voice. So Dan and I also used to grew up sort of in radio after university. We did a campus radio show and ours was much less professionals than yours.

Yeah. Well, you'd be surprised what went on at professional radio stations and your research. Professional with a hard scare quotes on that one. He found, Dan actually found some old episodes and it sent them to me a couple years ago now.

And there was one stretch where we just came on and we'd been smoking a bunch of weed and playing records and the record ended and the mic went on and we were just still laughing at the joke that we had been, like that Dan had told me during the time the record. The record stopped and it was just too idiot laughing. It's like, wow, we're really killing this. But also, who was listening and were they also kind of getting on the joke?

Ironically, it was like one of our friends was listening and told us about it. And he was like, yeah, that's what we do. That's what we do. That's right.

He said, I know you guys. I used to listen to you because I was driving home late at night and I would turn on this radio show. I was like, who are these guys that were clearly stoned out of their tree and just playing funk music all night. It's like perfect.

That sounds like a pretty good night. It was good. It was just fun. Yeah.

And now it's led us to this. Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Yeah. But what we really wanted to have you on to talk about now is I think the first time that we interviewed you used, there was a bartender atlas podcast. There was a site that you were interviewing. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So guys like you, Eric Castro, Sotig, there's a terms of service is the name of a different sort of industry bartending oriented podcast.

It was something that we kind of did. And I was trying to angle it a little differently where the people I was talking to were maybe not known to say whatever. And I want to say you guys do a really good job of reaching out to everybody, whether it's like, tales of war of a winner or whatever, or like some girl that manages the bar down the street and some guy that started brewing out of his kitchen. You guys are really good at covering all that.

And that was part of what I was trying to do with the bartender atlas podcast previously. And it would be like half hour or 45 minute interviews. Mostly it was just like my friends said I wanted to give some shine to. Yeah.

And I think I did 25 episodes of it and realized there's a lot of people doing that style of podcast that are maybe honestly more inclined and kind of better out of the me. So after doing 25 episodes, I sort of took a step back. I was like, okay, so now I know this is something I can do, but was looking for maybe a different angle of different concepts. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because that's how we started to do is just like trying to give our friends some shine of like, and like, and we didn't, what we didn't realize when we started doing it, saying this to you, I think is that there were way more people doing it than we thought they were because in my head, I was like, Oh, no one's doing this. This is a great idea for a show. Yeah. But yeah, it turns out a lot of people were doing it.

We've been doing it for a very long time now. So ours has grown and we're very appreciative for that. We were in the top 10 industry podcast now, I guess. So that's awesome.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, no, so, but we've also been doing it for what? 200 plus at least three years. Yeah, at least three years. So but now you have sort of jumped back into the podcast game and it started was the next one you did the bluebird blackbird.

Blackbird. Yes. The blackbird show was the next one you did after the bartender at this podcast. That's right.

They were me and my friend also named Dan as co-host of a podcast. We talked about the band Good Riddance for a year and a half. Okay. Just like for the fun of it, couple of old punk dudes locked in their respective other apartments.

We're just going to talk about it. But yes, as far as bartender at least an industry related stuff is concerned. So I don't know if you have listened all the way through the blackbird podcast yet or if you're familiar with the blackbird, but it's something that I am young enough to have been around when it first sort of was created and I knew where it came from and I knew how it was made. But so often I would go out and only in Toronto.

I would go out and someone's be like, Oh, yeah, you know, very nice. I was leaving sort of bartender handshake situation, industry handshake, whatever. Hey, you're leaving. Do you want a blackbird before you go?

Right. And 10, 12 years ago, I was just like, Oh, yeah, blackbird. Sure. Let's take, let's go.

And as time has gone on, different bars and different bartenders have sort of taken it on and changed what the recipe is or mixed up highly. We're doing it or, you know, I'm not going to give it away. The idea is that someone hears this and goes, What the hell is the blackbird and goes and downloads it and puts it in their podcast queue. But the point is I was tired of getting shitty blackbirds.

So so I decided to go around and what I did was I interviewed a bunch of my friends and a bunch of the bartenders around Toronto. Someone from like, you know, places like milestones and jackassers all the way to just like the dive bar at the end of my street and ask them what's a blackbird? Where was it created? Who created it?

How do you make it? And the wild array of answers that I got, it's just like it proved my point sort of right. Which is here's a drink that's less than 20 years old. I am six blocks from where it was created and still everybody is getting it wrong, which then if you want to get like, you guys smoke weed, right?

I don't smoke weed, but you guys smoke weed. Start thinking like, Okay, but if everyone got this wrong, how wrong is every cocktail recipe you've ever read? Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's interesting. Yeah. Well, I think it's funny because cocktail culture has gone back to this point now where we can actually research way back to the origins of so many cocktails that you now realize how mangled so many of what we consider a quote unquote classics are have become mangled.

Like I remember after Mad Men came out, the bastardization of the old fashion, like where people were like muddling like a full orange slice into an old fashion, right? Because that's what they saw on the show. And then you go back or even like the martini, a lot of people don't realize that originally the martini was definitely made with a twist. There was no olives, there was no, and with often with orange bitters, right?

Like, so all of these cocktails have become bastardized. And I think that specifically with the martini, I find that like, it's fine. If you want a dirty martini, that's fine. But don't call it a martini.

That's just a cocktail called dirty martini. And I think one of the recent episodes I listened to, if you guys got into it about martinis, who was Brit? Or Brit? Yeah.

From, uh, she works like good night now. I think you guys are talking about it. Yeah. So here's the thing.

I have very specific ideas and opinions about what makes martini what doesn't, but when it comes down to it, if someone wants a piece of shit drink, I'll make it for them and hopefully I'll make it. I don't live in someone's mouth. I can't tell you what you like. A very old friend of mine, I hesitate to call it a mentor because we really only work together for a month, but I learned so much of that month.

His thing was always like, no one likes dirty martinis. People like saying I'll have a dirty martini. Oh, right. And as soon as I heard it was like, yeah, I can see how like, yeah, that sounds badass.

I want a dirty martini. It's like, okay, like that feels good to say. Sure. It's gross, but like it feels good to say.

Yeah. Like a thing. If I can give you like any time I train a bartender, I'm just like, what are the four things that you ask someone if they say, hey, I'll have a martini for me. I'll have a twist.

And then like the rare occasion, up or down. Sometimes you get that person's like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm a martini on rocks. And it's just like, man, I'll just pour you three ounces of gin. It's fine.

Right. Or like the fancy name. I want like an ultra dry and extra dry vodka martini on the rocks. I was like, you want a glass of vodka on the rocks?

Just like, that's cool. Like go for it. You're just going into fifth gear right away. Yeah.

Like, let's just do it. Like just like, but I make maybe make some feel better to call it a martini. And it sounds classic. Just like, I just want three ounces of vodka on the rocks, please.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. Anyway, so the pop word. I don't know what happened there.

Let's re-group. But yeah, so when I made the blackbird podcast, when I made the audio, and I started also, whatever, to do it on another tangent right away. How do you guys feel about the word podcast? Sounds like that.

Yeah, should be ordering at the food court. I know how you feel about it because I listen to yours. So I think it's the situation that you know what the problem is. There's too many of them, right?

So like every single fucking person in the world has a quote unquote podcast, right? Which is why we can be in the top whatever 90th percentile of podcast. And we don't have that many downloads. Right.

Also, 340ish year old white guys complaining about podcast is a hilarious level of meta. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. Yeah.

But yeah, so here's the thing. I think podcast is one of those things that the name kind of caught on before. There was a definite idea of what it is. Right.

And so, you know, it's like Kleenex or Xerox or whatever. It's like a brand name that we just go by, but I don't know if they aren't all the same. And it's not necessarily a broadcast because it is recorded. So it's more like, I don't know, like a spoken word record that you've downloaded and the record of three guys talking over Zoom or whatever.

Anyway, so with the Blackbird, I wanted to make it more of an audio documentary. I feel like I'm not trying to class it up. I'm just don't like the word podcast is really what it comes down to. But I think that you're like, for instance, your, your specific shows about the Blackbird and then what we're going to get into is the chef is they are more like akin to like what you would refer to as an audio documentary than what our show is, which is very much just like a bunch of dudes talking or a bunch of bartenders and like men, women bartenders, people in the industry, whatever talking the industry.

So that's more of a lot. I guess what you're doing is like a multi part document audio documentary about a certain cocktail. So like I get it. Like I don't think you can call what we do as an audio documentary.

But you're documenting whatever ideas and whatever. I mean, obviously documentary is its own very specific thing. As far as it's like trying to say, oh, yeah, I'm a hip hop, soul, R&B country singer. Yeah.

Just like it's just like, yeah, exactly. It's like, okay, I can accept that everything is a podcast. It's fine. But I just think that like, you know, maybe it's time that we start thinking about, you know, what a podcast is.

Maybe we just need a different name for it because it's an apple thing, right? Right. But I do my understanding. It is for sure because that's where the whole thing comes from.

But I do think that what you do specifically with these two different shows is a document, or they both are documentaries and in an audio format because they're multi episode focusing on a single topic and you essentially trace the history of the cocktail that you're making that document about, right? So yeah, like that makes sense to me as an audio documentary. And I do think that's what you've done with both shows. Let's get into the more recent one, which I absolutely powered through in like two straight dog walks.

It was great. And I loved it. And before we start recording, I was the reason I told you that I loved it so much. You sent it to me and I was like, are you fucking kidding me?

Because I had just taken a trip to Victoria a couple of years back to visit one of my friends who has been on the show as well. She had to John Goldsmith. And we traveled through Victoria to, as bartenders do by bars and everyone we had the chef. And this is your new audio documentary about the chef.

And you do an unbelievable job of tracing or essentially exploring and almost like a detective trying to figure out the origins of the chef, where it came from, who came up with it. What is it? Calgary drink. Is it a Victoria drink because this isn't in dispute?

And yeah, I just found the whole thing fascinating. It was almost like a true crime documentary about a drink. I'll take it, man. That's what I kind of say.

Wow. All right. But yeah, so that was it with and I feel like this isn't a spoiler because it comes out in the first three minutes of the shaft. Yeah, I don't want to sweat.

Like, let's just say, before we get into it, let's just say everyone should listen to this. So yeah, listen to it. Thank you. I'm going to pause this specific show.

Go listen to Josh's show about the chapter and then come back and listen to the rest of the interview. I recommend you do that. But now, how do people find the show? What is it just called?

If you can find, yeah, there's a, we posted about it on Bartender Atlas. If you're an Instagram person, if you're a Facebook person, we just really cutting edge. We just started TikTok this week. So there's definitely posts about it all over all of the Bartender Atlas, Bartender Atlas.com.

It's all there. Also on Bartender Atlas.com. If you're looking for bars to go drink at and looking for people to go say hi to in Victoria, we've got 20, 30 bartenders in and around Victoria listed on the site as well. And it's available in all your podcast platforms.

Oh, yeah. To listen to it, yeah. Spotify, Apple, Simplecast is who we go through. Who do you guys do?

That's an op-op. We'll talk about that later. It doesn't work. Yeah.

Okay. So now if you're now back to listening to us after you've just listened to his show, which I hope you have, we'll continue. Yeah. So, so while I was putting together the Blackbird and trying to figure out what angle I wanted to play, what order was it going to go in, how was I going to cut apart all the interviews I did with all the bartenders around Toronto?

Jess and I have a handful of friends in Victoria. We went to go hang out and see a bunch of them. The trip didn't go quite as planned. I feel like that's a different story.

But one night. Okay. So Jess, who is my wife and partner and runs Bartender, she's definitely the organized one. She is also a deep, deep bird nerd.

She will wake up at five in the morning and go to a frozen pond to go find some duck that doesn't actually live in this part of the world, whatever. So when we're on Vancouver Island, she's just like, I'm gonna wake up early and go on a bird nerd walk after we have dinner with Jody. I'm gonna go back to the hotel. Jody is a friend of ours.

I know we're from Vancouver 20 years ago and she lives in Victoria now. So me, Jody and Jess go out, have dinner. Jess goes home. Jody and I go out to some pump bar, basically.

It's called St. Frank's. It's great, but it's moved since this interaction. So I sit down and just like in Toronto where someone's like, Hey, can I have a bottle of 50 in a black bird?

We sit down in Vancouver or in Victoria. Whoa, whoa, there's a lot of us. It's gonna be mad at me. That's big.

But sit down at this bar in Victoria and Jody's like, Yeah, we'll have a phillips in her shaft and I was like, what? And she's like, phillips in a shaft. The shaft is a phillips in Victoria thing. Just get it.

Okay, cool. And I get a phillips in a shaft and this like juice cup, you know, that's how I would describe it as like a eight ounce juice glass comes down in front of me and it's packed with ice and kind of looks like a, I don't know, almost like a white Russian sort of, but they're like, you know, like a boozy coffee milkshake sort of thing. And she's like, yeah, just drink it. It's a Victoria thing.

And I was like, okay, sure. But immediately in my head, lights start going off and I'm just like, is this season two of the black bird? Right. Yeah.

How much of this is a Victoria thing is it or is it just this bar where you drink it or whatever? And sure enough, over the next like three, four days in and around Victoria, like you were saying, every bar you go to has a shaft or some, you know, you go to the, you go to the Spanish tapas restaurant, they have a shaft, but they're making it with like, Sherry and Brandy, or you go to the, you know, the tropical bar and they're making theirs with rum and coconut milk. And so everyone has these different variations all around Victoria. But the weird thing about it is talking to my friend, Sean Sewell, who also has a great industry oriented podcast.

Yeah. He's also been on the show. Great guy. And we went to the ship.

I also went to visit him at what is it? Cliffs. Cliffs, Cliffs. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. But yeah, I mentioned something about the shaft of Sean and he's like, oh, no, yeah. I mean, it's Victoria's drink, but it comes from Calgary. And I was like, what do you what?

He was the one who was him. There was a woman, there was a woman named Rocky. She's not involved in the industry anymore, but she ran toward a tiki and also St. Frank's that bar I was just talking about.

I think it might have been her actually the first tip to me off that there's an argument, but it was Sean that told me specifically, it's like, no, it's Calgary. That said, approaching the shaft, I went about it when I went into it. When I approached the shaft, I was like, yeah, everyone's going to be carrying us when they're approaching the shaft. So this is the other thing is I was trying to do like a serious, not super serious, but a semi serious.

Yeah, but I can say this the whole time. Yeah. I'm not going to drink and the amount of times where whether it would be me saying it or someone I was interviewing saying it was just like, oh, yeah. So I just like gobble down the shaft and I'm just like, trying to play the straight and the whole time.

Yeah. Yeah. And that gets addressed in the audio documentary. I feel like there was like at least one or two jokes about that, but I think that that is an amazing amount of restraint on your part.

So man, working on the shaft was hard. It was hard work. I was. Feeling with the shaft and getting used to saying the shaft like the way the shaft feels in your mouth after a while is wild.

Plus it's bad motherfucker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, but there was a funny thing. So I went from the blackboard is funny because I sort of I knew the story going into it. I knew who created it. I knew where it came from.

I knew roughly when it was created. I knew how it was supposed to be made just because I happened to be in the right place at the right time, whatever, 15 years ago with the shaft. I didn't know anything. Right.

I had to figure it all out as I was going through it. And so I had to I interviewed. It was really funny the way I didn't realize until I went to edit all of the interviews together, but I had exactly the same amount of bartenders in both Victoria and Calgary talking about the shaft. Yeah.

It was like 36 interviews that I did in each city. Really? Someday I'll release like the megamix of 72 bartender interviews where I asked the same eight questions to 72 different people. Yeah.

For the real punishers out there. But yeah. But it was funny because going into it, not knowing about it, it ended up becoming a way different and maybe more engaging story than the blackboard because the blackboard I could sort of direct. Whereas with the shaft, it was just kind of I had to feel it out and understand what I'm being told and really take into account what everybody was telling me.

Yeah. That's interesting. You must come from it from both for both shows with an perspective because knowing already like the story of the one and trying to figure out the story of the other are two completely different shows, even though you probably meant them to be like just a sequel to the first one. Yeah.

And then you follow like not exactly the same, but you know, if you watch, you watch all six series or else series, sure. You watch all six seasons of lost or sopranos or something. Yeah. And they kind of follow a flow in an arc.

And that was kind of how I hoped to go about it when I was putting together the shaft. But like it ended up being a way different ride than what I had sort of planned. Yeah. Well, it's a totally different perspective, right?

Because like I said, one, you already know the story the second one you're trying to figure out the story, but it's kind of a good as a result of a great companion piece to the first one because they're similar but completely different. Yeah. It follows the same thing. If a big thing that happened and this is the thing with the shaft that makes it, I feel the superior of the two, even though obviously my heart is tied to the black bird is a Toronto guy from Toronto bars who drinks Toronto drinks.

But something cool that happened with the shaft is when I put out the black bird a friend of mine who and I think we talked about this the last time I was on the show three years ago, a guy who played in a band I used to tour with called me immediately and was like, what are you doing? I was like, I made a podcast, I made an audio documentary, whatever. And he's like, yeah, but you know that I run the recording studio now. Why are you recording this shit on your phone and on your like $110 best buy mic?

I have a whole recording studio. We can just do this together. And I was like, oh yeah, because I already have like 72 interviews with other bartenders if I have a season two. And he was like, all right, yeah, let's pick a day.

So anyone that maybe jumps in and tries to listen to the black bird and it's a little teeny or hard on your ears, don't worry, the shaft sounds so, so much better. It sounds really good. Yeah, and the whole thing is just well edited and well put together too because I also know because I've done, I luckily have Dan here, otherwise things will be way out of control on this show. But when I went and did live interviews at Tales of the Cocktail, for instance, I was going to make like interviews on my phone and then sending them in voice notes back to Dan and he still put together a reasonable sounding show but it's hard and you fucking think.

I'm sure Dan is telling me. And the shaft sounds amazing the whole time. Even though you're doing like interviews on the street, in a bar like the worst conditions. Yeah, there's there's fully interviews on both of those like the shaft especially where I'm in a Mexican restaurant and it's 1130 on a Saturday night and there's nothing but like Mary Autgevusic glasses clinking everywhere and still I'm so happy that I partnered up with.

It's at the studio was action packed but it's filled with two X's. I'll let you figure that out. But yeah, linking up with those guys and again they are both like it's a legitimate recording studio. They work on like RuPaul's Drag Race and My Little Pony and stuff.

So they have all of the actual gear that you know some hack like me couldn't possibly imagine putting together. And so I think the shaft actually comes out sounding so so good. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a it was a cool journey to go on and I learned some things and it's also funny to and this is kind of ties back into the whole idea behind bartender Atlas in the first place which is and you know you guys have talked about it on your show a lot where if you're in a city you don't know go to a bar. If you'd like to drink at that bar ask the bartender where they go to drink after work. And so putting together the blackbird a little bit but the shaft more was okay. Who do I talk to about this drink?

What bar do I go to next? Who knows more about this than you? Who knows less about this than you? Who taught you about it?

And so I ended up that's how I ended up going to swear every bar in Victoria Calgary as well. I don't know if either of you have spent any time in Calgary but man. Not for a lot of time. Any time I was in Calgary was when I was touring with bands and so a good few times like I'd hang out but you're mostly just staying on a friend's couch and watching Evil Dead 2 again.

So going back and bouncing around Calgary and like all over Calgary to come and talk about the shaft and where the shaft came from. Who created it? Who owns it? All this stuff.

Two great towns to go out drinking in. Yeah, I was at there a few years ago. It was probably like seven or eight years ago now. But I was surprised because the last time I'd been there previously was when I was in high school sneaking into bars and it was a shift kicker town.

And now it's like no it's a completely different experience. Lots of great bars lots of great cocktail bars. And yeah it was a completely different experience. Yeah you can still get into those shaker bars though.

Yeah. A lot of them won't serve your shaft though. That's another thing too. I think it's really funny is because Victoria being on the West Coast there and like let's be honest you guys are in Kitchener.

I'm in Toronto. The thing with the West Coast and this goes back 15 almost 20 years at this point is that the proximity to Seattle and Portland and even San Francisco, Victoria and Vancouver as far as Canada is concerned were way ahead as far as craft cocktails. Yeah again going back like 15 years. You know Victoria and Vancouver were way way way ahead.

And there is something to be said for the element of craft that comes into it and the care that really goes into creating a proper cocktail. Calgary is a little behind. It's up in the mountains and the advantage that Calgarians have is that Alberta is the wild wild west as far as liquor availability. If you want something you can buy 12 bottles of it.

Someone will bring it in for you. That 100% yeah. All that to say the shaft and we are encouraging people to go listen to the shaft and know roughly what goes in it and what the recipe is. But the shaft is not indicative at all of what drinking in Victoria or drinking in Calgary is like in 2025.

It's not the best drink on the menu at any bar. Of course not. No but it is a great drink. Yeah exactly that.

It's more about the experience than it is about the quality of the drink let's say. And when you say at the end of your journey and creating this documentary that you feel confident about where the drink was created and in which city it was created not just while I'm in. I am confident that I got to the bottom of it. Okay I am confident you did too.

I have since it came out I have been nervous as hell about the text message the email the DM. There's just like motherfucker. Yeah you're talking about the shaft and you missed out on this fucking guy. You missed out on this fucking bar.

You missed out on talking to this fucking person. And I'm waiting for it and honestly I would welcome it. I would rather it be fun than good but I'd rather it be right and fun. Yeah that's fair.

But again I like having listened to it and again I thought it absolutely fascinating if you are into Caco culture at all or if you're just into a ripping good yarn as I like to say then you should listen to this show because it's both of those things and having listened to the end of it like you did the research and it's edited in such a terrific fashion that like by the time you get to the end of the story it's like yeah I feel like you got it. I feel like you got to the end of the you got to the answer to this puzzle which was great. It's really a great listen. It's also a quick listen.

It's not going to take you a week to listen to all these five episodes or six. It's five episodes I think it's like two 15 minute episodes book and the book end three 30 minute episodes so you can do it in two days set up the bar. Yeah exactly. And how many hours of recording to involve?

Jesus. The interviews were all very short but when you stacked up 72 short interviews it's a lot. The actual the actual voice of it again as we talked about radio backgrounds and I was working in a studio with two guys who do this all day every day. It was actually it was actually really funny.

I did you know a couple of breaks for the first the first episode. I'm in the booth. I'm by myself. I haven't been in a booth to do voice work in years and got like you know maybe 45 minutes or an hour in and then Aaron who is my friend former roommate Aaron I talk about him in the podcast was just like Josh I'm going to give you a cigarette and I was like I'm not I don't smoke man he's like no I'm going to give you a cigarette you need to hold on to it while you're talking.

You need something you need to loosen up while you're talking a big thing with me and anyone listening right now is going to know I talk pretty fast and so to go through to record an actual audio documentary podcast podcast whatever it was so hard for me to slow down and still sound like myself so then so for the entire time anyone goes and listens to the chef now is going to imagine a cigarette between like a like a weirdo because I don't smoke so I don't know how to hold a cigarette properly but like pinching it between my two fingers and just like this only between your picky and your thumb. Yeah like an old person. I like the good one between the little fingers there we just like the the the the stock grip the stock grip yeah but yeah so I was holding a cigarette the whole time that all of the all the stuff that was recorded in the studio for the shaft I was holding a cigarette even though I haven't smoked I don't know I think the last time I smoked a whole cigarette there was probably a nine in the year. Well this is the behind the scenes shit you don't get from the actual show so.

Well I'm not joking I loved it I think the show is awesome and specifically spoke to me having just recently like within the last few years Ben to Victoria and experience the same thing I'd never heard of this drink before and my buddies just like oh yeah we got a shaft as well we do and then like I said I loved it so much the whole idea but I tried to bring it back to the city. Yeah. Or in this case too. In this case too.

Maybe you know if you go from our pom-pet I mentioned the shaft to him and he was like oh yeah I drank that in Lake Louise. What? Oh no. What have I gotten myself into?

One thing I do want to say I feel like as we're getting close to rapping is that if someone hearing this lives in a city and there is something that only your city drinks the black bird has expanded a little bit obviously the shaft has these two cities but like there has to be other cities where it's just like yep what would be mixed cranberry juice and the Irish whiskey and we could have a lot of fun and whatever. Do you have an idea for another sequel to the series that you're doing but I guess you're throwing it out there. Well I'm putting it out there because obviously with Bartender Atlas we're lucky we travel a lot. We get to go to different cocktail weeks and different you know as I mentioned we went to Montreal last week like we get to travel around a lot and so sometimes I'll see this stuff and sometimes I won't and there's obviously no one has been to every city.

I'm open to suggestions I have three ideas in my brain but it's a matter of funding. But you got to go. Finding the money to go state. Well yes yeah we were very fortunate.

The thing is with both the black bird and the shaft is a funny story that happened with the black bird equal sponsorship from our friends at Camp Hari Group Canada and Mark Anthony wines and spirits Canada. I'm trying to keep it a secret as to what the recipe is. But we got equal sponsorship and then on the on the shaft we got a sponsorship from Kalua which is great. It is funny though and this is a little inside baseball but the sales rep that formerly worked from our company who had signed off on the black bird had changed positions and started working for Corby so signed off on Kalua.

We love our novello friend. Very good to look at our first. But yeah there are other brands and other drinks that I have in mind. It's a matter of making that connection and making them excited.

I got nominated for a spirit award for a best podcast online social media whatever that category is I feel like it's very broad. But the black bird got nominated for that last year and I feel like that got me a little bit of weight if the shaft does well in the same respect. I feel like that's a way in if I'm going to talk to another brand about another city specific drink. And I should also mention before we let you go that one of the coolest episodes on the shaft is and I don't want to give away the rest of the either but you have you do a deep dive into the specific ingredients that go into the cocktail and and like one you wouldn't expect like if you don't know what the drink is made out of that gets very deep into something that's not even like really alcoholic beverage and I thought and I thought that was fascinating because that was something I don't know enough about so but you clearly do for some for some for some.

I mean I do now. Yeah yeah yeah but yeah it's an excellent show everyone should go listen to it and hopefully you keep doing more of them because and I'm gonna go back and listen to the blackbird one because I haven't even had a chance to do that yet so I got turned on by the shaft. Oh I thank you. I was like oh yeah well thanks again thanks for coming back on 200 episodes later and keep keep all the great work of Bartender Outless it's super important what you guys do like I think we're all in the same game which is trying to promote this industry that we all care about a great deal and maybe like doesn't get enough attention I don't know or.

Still I feel like I feel like in the last you know I've been doing this since 2005 and the entire time it's been like when is someone not gonna say what's your real job and I feel like yeah to an extent like it's much better now than it was in yes 2009 but sometimes though and maybe you encounter this too sometimes you get the people who are a little too serious about it yeah where yeah man you might know everything about Keystone but that's not gonna do much for the date that's going badly in front of you. Yeah I know well we had many episodes earlier in the show about Star Tenders and like the effectors and our tenders on the whole thing but yeah like at the end of the day like most of the people we get to talk to and I'm sure you as well through Bartender Outless are just like cool people who really care about what they do but don't take themselves too seriously. I just want everyone to drink better drinks and have a good time yeah you know and I feel like listening to something like the shaft is gonna be like oh this is some insight as to how you can have a good time. That's right yeah well it's a great show and yeah what's again we're getting someone to find the yes shaft podcast.

Yeah at Bartender Outless on Instagram is the best way to go about it as mentioned we're like cutting edge right at the front of social media landscapes we just got a TikTok. Yeah yeah I do a lot of industry podcast TikTok that's like yeah of course yeah just so the Chinese conspire me a little closer. Yeah sure I mean what I mean look if someone's good as I don't care who's spying on me. Yeah like what am I going to hide?

This is gonna be a great end note I for years when someone would talk about peeping Tom's I'm like man if someone's gonna go to the trouble of looking through the window to see me walking around my underwear good good for them that's all work. That's right yeah I hope you're not rewarded. Yeah that's something out of it you know. Thanks again Josh always fun talking to you we'll see you in 200 more episodes and keep the audio documentaries going definitely keep us in the loop when the next one drops and yeah I was listening to this and like Josh said has an idea for his next one.

Hit him up. Yeah let me know. Yeah thanks again Josh. Thanks so much guys.