Art, when it’s done well, can whisk you back to days passed but also offer a peek at all the promising ones ahead. That’s one way to consider the new season of the Dead Dialect Podcast. Time — its passing and how we hope it will gloriously unfold before us — is a big part of the new season’s story.
That’s because the show, produced by Dead Dialect’s dynamic duo of Brandon Clements and Julian Lara, completed its latest season in 2019. The first episode was released this year, on February 3, more than four years from its recording.
“It was right before COVID which changed not only the way the world works but the way me and this guy create stuff,” Clements told the Houston Press during a recent meet-up at Eight Row Flint. “By that point, our new season was shot. We immediately set out to make it the biggest. We’d learned so much about video from the podcasts that we’d produced for other people, from the work that we’d done for Volcom. Let’s now reapply this to our show.”
The podcast began in 2014 and earned a steady following and solid reputation for engaging interviews with notables like UFC heavyweight Derrick Lewis and many bands, including Tera Melos, The Fall of Troy, Cage the Elephant, The Mars Volta and Dillinger Escape Plan, to name a few.
In 2019, “We set out to make the biggest season yet,” Clements said. “Let’s pull from all of our resources and let’s find the biggest guests. And I think we did that.”
The season’s five episodes feature interviews with Fat Tony, Brendan Canty and Joe Lally of Fugazi, Dan Tracy of the post-metal band Deafheaven, Chris Guanlao and Nikki Monninger of Silversun Pickups and the iconic filmmaker and writer, John Waters.
“When we accomplished this season, there were so many reasons to be proud of it. Oh my gosh, we’ve got these amazing guests that I think we’d worked many years to acquire and be eligible for in a lot of ways,” Clements said.
So why did the duo sit on the episodes for all that time?
“It was surreal. It was amazing. And then, COVID hit. As we’re preparing to put this thing out into the world, COVID hit. And then, all of a sudden, all of this work that we’d done and all of this pride that we had immediately turned into this feeling of apprehension and resistance. Like, can we release this? Does the world want this right now? Do we want to put this out?” Clements explained.
“And, it felt all kinds of wrong. It least for that first six months to a year,” he continued. “In retrospect, it seems like that would have been the perfect opportunity to release this and really capitalize on the increased viewership. The podcast has always been a creative endeavor for me and Julian, but it’s also been a means to learn and improve and it didn’t feel like an appropriate time to maybe flex and be like ‘Look at how good we’ve gotten.’”
“There was also a lot of uncertainty about how we would continue because it was always a guest-based show and how are we going to get people in here?” added Lara, reminding us all of the unpredictability of lockdown times. “I think part of it was waiting for the right time, thinking it’ll blow over soon, and it obviously didn’t.”
“It just felt like this is the wrong time to kick off a marketing train to share this with the world,” Clements said. “And then, life hits, where we’re having to figure out our work situation outside of being journalists, which we did.
“We both got really, really good at other things because we couldn’t podcast,” Clements continued. “Personally, I worked for Reality (of) Wrestling for a year-plus, making video promos of wrestlers that appear on TV. This is of course under Booker T, two-time hall of famer, one of the greatest professional wrestlers on the planet. And then I got kind of passionate about video.”
Because live wrestling came to a halt during the lockdown era, Clements and Lara produced some cinematic content for Doomsday Wrestling, the longtime Houston-based wrestling outfit with which they’re affiliated.
“We made a whole 20-minute cinematic wrestling match to tide over the Doomsday fans and it was wildly successful, so much so that Reality Wrestling saw it and reached out to me and they were like, ‘Hey, we’d like you to come over here and start making videos for us.”
Clements said that lasted about a year, at which time he and Lara pivoted to a project which further delayed release of the podcast season but is the next big thing on the Dead Dialect horizon. Clements said their proximity to Booker T made them realize, “Hey, we’re around one of the greatest of all time. We’re constantly producing new stars through Reality Wrestling. That’s how good documentaries are filmed. You know, it’s right place, right time. That’s what we have been doing in this time. In lieu of releasing this podcast, we’ve been working on a full, feature-length documentary about one of our idols.”
“In the time since, the skills that we’ve developed, not only shooting this documentary but we’ve acquired jobs in production and videography as well that helped us elevate the skills that we can now put into future seasons ten-fold,” Lara said.
Clements piggy-backed that notion and said, “I think there’s also maybe that insecurity of ‘Hey, we shot this a couple of years ago, we’ve probably gotten a lot better at shooting stuff.’ That is almost a fruitless thing to think about because at the end of the day I think me and Julian are fantastic at what we do in terms of facilitating conversations and hearing guests and producing a really good podcast. I think we have the track record to prove that.
“We also are, in my opinion, the podcast of Houston, even though we haven’t podcasted in three years. I want to take that mantel again. I want to remind people that we’re here to support the scene, that we’re here to be those voices, that platform, not only for touring artists but for people that are here in this city.”
The new season has a little something for everyone but the John Waters interview, Clements admits, was mostly for him. His late mother was a huge fan of the director of films like Pink Flamingos and Hairspray.
“You know how important my mom is, I think I’ve waxed poetically many times. That was a personal achievement for me. I remember that being done and me stopping and having to compose myself and reflect. ‘What the fuck just happened?’” he said. “That John Waters episode, you can see at the end of it, I hang up and I just take a breath and go, ‘Whoa.’ I was on tunnel vision the entire time talking to one of the most iconic people on the planet, it’s inarguable. Wild, wild stuff.
“And of course, I told him, I had to, ‘My mom was a huge fan. The reason I’m a fan of you is my mom,’ and I think he said something along the lines of, ‘Well, she’s crazy.’ Yes, she was. It was great.”
The new season offers a nice look back at a time when the world wasn’t in the grip of a global health crisis. But it’s also a glimpse at the future of Dead Dialect, which is way more than a podcast in 2024.
“I think that’s what I’ve come to love about this season, being a snapshot of time,” Lara said. “I think part of the apprehension of releasing was the improvements that we’ve made in our skills in production but I think I’ve arrived to a point now where I’m excited to put this out as almost a set up for what’s to come.”
“If anything, I think that’s the most important point to make from us, is that Dead Dialect was a podcast and we’re not anymore. We’re just not. Now, Dead Dialect is 100 percent the creative efforts of Brandon Clements and Julian Lara. Whether that’s a podcast, whether that’s a full-length documentary, whether that’s a photography series. Whatever we choose to produce and make as a duo is what it is. We make stuff. And when we do, it’s quality and we care about it and you probably will, too.”
He said the next step is to finish the film – which Clements promises will be an emotional, gritty art film, more so than a sports documentary. One wonders when and how they’ll determine the film is done, given the years it took to bring the new podcast season to viewers. Clements said Dead Dialect will follow its compass of acting when the time feels right.
“I think it’s the plight of a creative person, without sounding like the most pretentious dude in the world, to overthink yourself out of things. This was a prime example,” Clements said. “I think if there’s anything I want people to get out of us releasing this is that art and creativity is always worth your time and someone else’s time. Regardless of where you’re at – if you feel you could do better, if you feel you could do worse – I think that it’s always a snapshot of the world and where you’re at.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
