FORSTER, NICK. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1905 This radio program was recorded for KGNU and aired in 2012 on the program “A Public Affair.” It later was donated to the Maria Rogers Oral History Program for archiving. The interviewer is Richard Kiefer. The interview was transcribed by Joan Nagel. ABSTRACT: Nick Forster, founder and host of the radio show eTown, talks about the program, which is produced in Boulder and broadcast on many public radio stations. He discusses the history of eTown, including its inception; how it got its name; and its mission, both in the Boulder community and beyond. He also talks about its new venue, eTown Hall, which was under construction at the time of the interview, delving into the architectural history of the building and the changes made, such as acoustical treatments, to outfit it for its new use. The interview also includes a brief appearance by Helen Forster, Nick’s wife and partner in producing eTown. NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. [A]. 00:00 [Music] The eTown Radio Program orginates in Boulder, Colorado, and is heard weekly on over 300 AM and FM stations across the country. eTown presents a wide variety of music and conversation connecting people with common interests and values. For the past 21 years the show has been recorded in the historic Boulder Theater in downtown Boulder, but starting in June 2012 eTown will have its own permanent home with a recording center and music hall. eTown Hall will open with a 200-seat auditorium, a recording studio and radio production facilities. Nick Forster, eTown’s founder, producer, and host, tells us about eTown Hall and the eTown mission. (We’re at the corner of 16th and Spruce in downtown Boulder at the location of the new eTown Hall and I’m with Nick Forster. Nick, this is quite a project. This is a big deal.) Yeah, it’s a bigger deal than I think anybody who got involved with this anticipated actually. (How long you been under way on this?) Well, it depends on what you mean by under way. (Well, let’s say construction—planning was probably quite a bit more than just construction.) OH 1905, Interview with Nick Forster about eTown, page 1 of 12 Yeah. I think construction’s been going on now for a little more than two years, two-and- a-half years. (This is a very attractive building right now. I’m looking at a nice glass foyer, metal work, stucco finish. What was this building before you bought it?) Well, it went through a funny evolution. It was originally constructed in 1922 by the First Church of the Nazarene and it was, what I would call, [a] rustic Romanesque stone church. And then in the ‘40s they kind of changed their whole program and they added cement block and modern building materials. They covered the whole thing with stucco and it sort of lost a lot of its original character. (From the pictures on your website, I think it looked better as a stone building. Didn’t it?) It looked pretty good as a stone building. (Did you consider going down to the stone?) Not really, because all the way around the perimeter of the building there was about five feet of cement block that wouldn’t have been—you know, had we revealed the stone, we would have also revealed that. And it got so significantly altered that the original charm was gone. (So at this point how many square feet is the building all together?) Well, all together it’s 17,000 square feet. (When do you think the main performance hall will be open?) We’re hoping late June. (And so this becomes the new home, permanent home, of eTown radio program, right?) Yeah, not an exclusive home. I think one of the great things about our history is that we’ve got such a deep connection to the Boulder Theater and it’s a resource that I can almost—I can just about see the corner of from here. (In fact, we’re just down the street from the Boulder Theater—about two blocks away.) Yeah, a block-and-a-half from the stage door. So the reality is our shows will still—we’ll still do a lot of shows from the Boulder Theater. But what’s interesting is eTown Hall represents a new era for—not just for eTown but I think for the music community in Boulder, too. (So, you’re going to be able to seat how many people in this hall?) OH 1905, Interview with Nick Forster about eTown, page 2 of 12 Around 200. (And how many can you seat at the Boulder Theater?) 864. (Oh, okay, so a much larger crowd. So some shows you’ll want to do over there anyway, just because the capacity won’t handle it here.) That’s right, but curiously it’s not just because we’ll have either better known or more famous artists. What the smaller venue does is it gives us flexibility. Sometimes it enables us to use artists—you know to put artists on eTown who are less well-known, less famous—either emerging artists or older artists from other countries or, you know, we can be a little more adventurous programmatically. And secondly, some of the higher profile artists, when they’re playing in Denver anyway, have a hard time convincing everybody that they can do an eTown at the Boulder Theater and that it won’t affect their ticket sales. So in reality, eTown Hall will be also more attractive to some of the bigger names because it kinda keeps them below the radar of commerce. (With a crowd of just, say, 200 people or something.) Yeah, a couple hundred people in an old church is not something that’s going to scare a promoter away from saying, “Oh sure, you can do an eTown.” (Well, let’s walk around inside a little bit and see what’s happening.) Yeah, let’s take a look. [Music] (So we’ve just walked into the main performance hall in the new eTown Hall building and we’re really under construction in here.) Yeah. This is a— (We got plastic all over. We got workmen.) The stage, you can see, is the original stone from the original stone structure. We added a lot of steel, so we made the stage aperture—I don’t know if you remember that photograph of the old small stage. (Yeah, much smaller than what we see here. This stage is what—twenty-five feet across or so, right?) 05:06 OH 1905, Interview with Nick Forster about eTown, page 3 of 12 Yeah. It’s a good-size stage and it’s nice and deep, and so we actually have the capacity to put on basically any show we can. You know, we can put any kind of band on that stage. (And what’s the size of this room?) Oh, I’d say including the stage, it’s about 3200 square feet. (Have you designed this with acoustics in mind?) Absolutely. We spent a lot of time and effort and energy. Basically we defined failure as raising the money, completing the building, and having it not sound good. (Yeah, I see for example a concave ceiling here. Is that part of the acoustic design?) Well, that was the original ceiling when they did the remodel in the ‘40s. It included these curved bottom trusses and—except this was covered with plaster and lath, which was an acoustical problem—so by removing the plaster and lath we can actually just reveal the structure, which is what we’re going to leave as our ceiling. And then we can do acoustical treatment above it. And the back wall, we’ve built a custom diffuser out of salvaged lumber. These are the old floor joists from this floor that we took out, and we’ve built a whole series of acoustical diffusers to cut down on slapback from the stage to the back wall. So this is all acoustical treatment up there. This asymmetry around the front-of-house mix position and the lighting control is designed by our acoustical engineer. So we’ve spent a lot of time—we’re standing on a floor sandwich that’s about six inches thick that includes all kinds of acoustical materials to make sure that there’s no vibrations. (So we have sound isolation in basically all directions?) In every direction. That’s right. I think the goal is you want a balance of reflection and absorption. You don’t want a room to sound too dead or too live. You know, if it was completely covered in ceramic tile, you get that feeling, and if it was completely blanketed in foam, you would feel like you’re inside of—you know sort of a dead space. So it’s a balance that we hope we are going to achieve. We’ll know in a little while. (So a balance intended for acoustic performance, not so much amplified performance then, right?) I think that actually, the science works for whatever kind of music you’re going to perform with the possible exception—our first show that we’ve scheduled is a chamber music performance in conjunction with the Colorado Music Festival—and typically they OH 1905, Interview with Nick Forster about eTown, page 4 of 12 like a nice bright room and nice reflective surfaces.