Photo by John Borowski
Over its long, sordid history, the building that’s now home to Shaker’s Cigar Bar in Walker’s Point has hosted a speakeasy, a brothel, at least one murder and, if the staff is to be believed, dozens of paranormal encounters. That past is the inspiration for a series of colorful historical and ghost tours hosted through the bar, and those tours in turn inspired the bar’s latest endeavor: “Hangman Radio,” a series of original radio dramas recorded live at the venue with a full house band. Writer-Director Amanda Morden spoke with Off the Cuff about the company’s cheeky take on an old radio tradition.
How did you get the idea for an old-time radio noir show?
Bob Weiss, the owner of Shaker’s Cigar Bar, and I were approached by a radio station in Cleveland, Ohio, of all things. They came from Cleveland and stayed in our haunted penthouse and took a number of tours, including our ghost tour, and they said, “We really like your product. Would you like to do a show with us?” I think they were thinking of something more on the paranormal aspect of things. So we were thinking about how we would put that together.
Bob and I went on a trip and we were driving through this madcap dash through the Pyrenees, and we heard this crazy radio station with this vaudevillian-style, old-school, radio noir kind of thing. It was in multiple languages and they had a full band, and it was so captivating that we kept flipping the stations as we were driving to keep hearing it. So, from that point we said, “This is the type of show we should do as opposed to a paranormal one.” You know, paranormal is what we do—we have a haunted establishment—but that market is a little over-saturated, and it lacks in the creativity we were striving for.
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What’s the process like for producing a show like this?
Each show takes at least six weeks from beginning to end to put together. It’s not a typical podcast where you rap about something topical for 20 minutes. These are full-on theatrical productions, so it takes probably 30-40 hours of time to assemble the original source material, which I write. It could either be a highly dramatized version of something historical, like the burning of the Newhall House, or a story with an interesting twist on it, like our next radio show, which is a tale about a magician who finds himself at a bar in Topeka, Kan., as the resident magician. After that’s down on paper, it gets turned over to Sarah Laak, who is the person who turns it into an actual script for radio, which takes probably an equal amount of time. Then we do a walkthrough with all of our voice actors, then it gets turned over to the band, who take a full week to basically arrange a score for the radio show.
How does nostalgia factor into the show?
The nostalgia is huge for us. We set out to pick stories specifically set in the era when radio was king, although it tends to fall that way. Some of them are set in the 1880s, which was before radio obviously, but everything has that classic feel to it. It’s classic radio noir.
Why do you think that radio noir format faded away?
Well, it really declined with the advent of television. If you look at our own Miss Kittie Williams, who we did an episode on, she was the impetus for Miss Kitty on “Gunsmoke,” which started as a radio program then really took off once it became a television show. So I think people keep turning to the next thing, but I think this format is coming back; I think it’s coming back with the advent of podcasts. When people travel, they want to be able to bring something with them on that long drive or commute. They want to dig in and spend some time with a character they enjoy, whether it’s Howard Stern or somebody from a classic radio program. It’s something that people are beginning to appreciate again. Look at “Prairie Home Companion” or “Welcome to Nightvale”; those shows really speak to how versatile this format is.
Hangman Radio records its next episode on Sunday, Jan. 24. Episodes are available to stream at hangmanradio.com.
