S1, Ep 14: David Grossman of Southern Culture on the Fly

Marvin Cash (00:04-00:11): Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash. I'm the host of The Articulate Fly, and tonight I'm joined by the editor of Southern Culture on the Fly, David Grossman. Welcome to the show, David.

David Grossman (00:12-00:13): Thanks for having me.

Marvin Cash (00:14-00:38): It's going to be great. Before we get rolling tonight, I want to give a shout out to tonight's sponsor. Tonight we're sponsored by the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival. This event's going to be March 23rd and 24th in Plano, Texas. If you want more information, just go to the event page on our website at thearticulatefly.com, you can get all the details.

Well, David, I always ask all of my guests what their earliest fishing memory was.

David Grossman (00:40-01:29): Oh, gosh. It was in Midland, North Carolina. My family owned a farm. Not that we didn't live on the farm. We rented out the house and the farm as well. But there was a pond on it that my buddies and I used to go fish when we were little kids.

The first thing I remember catching out of there was a, well, to me at least, at that age, was a giant snapping turtle. Yeah, so that's probably my earliest fishing memory, is yanking on that snapping turtle.

Marvin Cash (01:29-01:33): How old were you?

David Grossman (01:29-01:33): We couldn't have been more than six or seven. Very cool. And the folks who lived on the farm made turtle soup, and it was delicious.

Marvin Cash (01:30-01:33): There you go. And so when did you move to the dark side of fly fishing?

David Grossman (01:35-02:07): I started fly fishing in 7th to 8th grade. We had an outing club at school, and we got to kind of pick our own adventures. One of them was up to the Davidson River.

I just really wanted to fly fish and borrowed a rod and a reel from a buddy of mine. His grandfather was really big into it and started taking him when we were that age. The hatchery section of the Davidson River, by the campground was the first place I ever fished.

Marvin Cash (02:07-02:09): Very cool. And who were your mentors?

David Grossman (02:12-03:23): You know, it's funny. I got taught a lot of wrong stuff intermittently by various nice people. I also, I'm an avid reader. Once I'm into something, I read every book, I read every article, I consume as much of the intellectual properties as possible.

So pretty much at a certain point, I was pretty much teaching myself to fish, based on Tom Rosenbauer's books and Dave Whitlock's books and Lefty Kreh's books and stuff like that and trying to figure it out that way.

When I was older, I wound up going to guide school and casting day at guide school. They pretty much told me that I needed to rebuild my entire cast. I was already like 30 years old at that point. There's a lot of places and had a lot of success catching trout. But yeah, I had some bad habits that I picked up that I kind of had to break everything back down and start over again.

Marvin Cash (03:24-03:25): That's funny. What guide school did you go to?

David Grossman (03:26-03:30): I went to Hubbard's Yellowstone Lodge Guide School in Gardner, Montana.

Marvin Cash (03:31-03:36): Very cool. And so you graduate from college. Did you start guiding immediately or just kind of fall into it?

David Grossman (03:37-04:49): No, you know, I've been on and off done a little bit here and there for a while, like for a while during the summers or in college and other times. I graduated from college and actually moved to Charlotte where I know you're at. I'm from Charlotte originally was down there for about six years.

I was lucky enough that my parents had a vacation home up here in North Carolina. So I was always fishing up there. I wound up keeping, I had a little inflatable boat that me and my buddy split a two-man pontoon that we bought when we were younger and we kept that at my parents place and started floating the tailwaters up in East Tennessee and that's kind of where I fell in love with everything with Toccoa and South Holston River.

I was in Charlotte for five or six years and then my wife and I decided, you know, before we had kids if we were ever going to do anything besides the South, it was time to do it. So we moved out to Colorado for two or three years. I bounced around between Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho and Montana as much as possible for those years. Then when I moved back, I started guiding full-time in Asheville while I was in graduate school.

Marvin Cash (04:49-04:54): Gotcha. Yeah, you were at Curtis Wright, right?

David Grossman (04:54-05:01): Yeah, I was the head float guy to Curtis Wright for a while, ran all their tailwater trips.

Marvin Cash (05:01-05:06): Very cool. And so tell me a little bit about the inspiration for you and Steve to start Southern Culture on the Fly in 2011.

David Grossman (05:08-06:28): Well, Steve and I met actually at Curtis Wright in Biltmore and hopefully Jeff Curtis isn't listening to this but he started coming in and we started hanging out, you know, wasting time during the day. Steve, my partner on the magazine is a full-time artist, does really cool abstract modern art that he sells in a lot of galleries around the country.

So he has, his workday is somewhat flexible. So he started hanging out in the shop and we started fishing together a little bit. He had never fished out of drift boats or anything like that, which is kind of what I enjoy doing most. So I introduced him to the Tennessee tailwaters and we were fishing a bunch together.

I was writing for a blog, a couple of different blogs at the time. And you know Catch Magazine and Business Fly have been out for a couple years so all of a sudden the model of a digital online magazine seemed somewhat viable and between my writing and Steve's also a great photographer and he has web design he does all our web stuff in house and all of our layout stuff in house so between our two sets of skills, it just seemed like it's the right time to do something like that.

Marvin Cash (06:29-06:39): Yeah. And what about like the niche in the South? Because I mean, I think, you know, one of the points, you know, was there's really nothing like your magazine, but there really wasn't anyone looking at Southern fly fishing or fishing in general, really.

David Grossman (06:40-08:38): Yeah, man, you know, like growing up fishing in the South and then, you know, fishing out West a decent bit and other places, I always found it funny. I personally believe the best fly fishers in the country come out of the South just because, A, our fish eat on a 12-month — I'm talking trout now, mainly, but our fish eat 12 months a year.

Also, our fish are located near huge population centers, so the pressure on them compared to Western fish is way more. Our fish see so much more pressure. So to catch fish around the South consistently, you know, you can, I feel like you can pretty much catch fish anywhere consistently because we have some of the toughest conditions to fish.

But the focus on the Southeast came from, you know, like I said, I grew up reading like fishing magazines and when fishing movies started, I watched all those and, you know, anything that had to do with fly fishing that was digital or print or on screen, I consumed and not a whole lot of it was about the South.

When we did get a token article in one of the national magazines, it was always some dude from Connecticut who had gone to the South Holston River and got guided. He gave the one, two, three formula for an article on the South Holston River. The Drake had been out for a while and the Fly Fish Journal, I believe, had just come out.

Steve and I just wanted to see good writing and good photography for the South because, you know, we think we have such a, and I know we have such a special fishery in this region between the saltwater, warm water and trout. We just never really got the attention. It wasn't so much about the attention as much as we wanted something aesthetically and intellectually pleasing for the people that lived in this region who are pretty proud of what they got here.

Marvin Cash (08:38-08:48): Yeah. And how did you get the journalism bug? Because if I remember correctly, you were an econ major undergrad.

David Grossman (08:49-10:56): Yeah, man, I was an economics major at W&L or Washington and Lee University. So I built houses for my other gig and I've done real estate development pretty much my whole adult life. My family has been in it since I was a kid.

But so at the college I went to, no matter what major you were, you were going to learn how to write by the time you graduated. Like even math majors, all the tests were essays almost, you know, so like you were going to learn one way or another, you're going to learn to write by the time you left there. So I was always a decent business and formal writer.

But I never really written creatively. I'm an avid, I've always been kind of a voracious reader ever since I was a little kid. So, you know, I was, I've read a lot of authors and read a lot of styles and, you know, I have, I've all kinds of weird references in my head, but I've never really put two and two together to write creatively.

And it's actually my wife who copy edits the magazine and is the best copy editor that I've ever met in my life. But she's also a great writer. When we moved back from Colorado, it was during the recession and I really had nothing to do when we got back. She was working full time. I was just kind of trying to figure out what the next step was for about nine months a year.

She was the one who encouraged me to start a blog on my own. She's like, you're kind of funny, you know, and you can write, I'm sure you can write, why don't you just write. So I started writing. It was when I started, kind of found my own voice to write in. I started writing how I speak and how I always like to think my writing is the same as an interaction with me verbally.

You know, if we're sitting around having a beer, I'm going to tell you the story just the way I would write it in a magazine. That's kind of where my sweet spot is. It kind of just took off from there. So, but it was completely out of the blue and I didn't find it till later in life.

Marvin Cash (10:56-11:06): Very cool. And so, you know, so you're 2011, you sort of see this niche to do a move into the electronic magazine business. What was your initial vision for Southern Culture on the Fly when you started to put it together?

David Grossman (11:08-12:01): I mean, man, I mean, Steve and I both had never, ever been in the magazine business, created a magazine or anything, anything like it. We, for a whole year, we just kind of did logos and branding and we went to fly fishing shows with handfuls of stickers and just kind of walked around giving out stickers before we ever put an issue out.

We always just wanted to have fun with it and, you know, we wanted to be, we wanted to be proud of representing the South and representing the South in the way we do in our magazine. Other than that we're always shocked that it's gotten to where it's gotten and we have as many readers as we do, and the people who trust us with their money to advertise actually do. It's a pleasant surprise every time we put an issue out and people dig it.

Marvin Cash (12:02-12:21): Very cool. And so your magazine, and I know this has become a trend in institution, particularly electronic magazines, to be more photographic. But was that really Steve's influence? Because if I think back about print magazines in the early 2010s, maybe The Drake was a little bit more dedicated to photography than the other ones, but it really wasn't that big a thing.

David Grossman (12:22-14:30): Yeah, man. I mean, before The Drake, everything was just grip and grin. Like, if you didn't have someone in the picture smiling, straight arm and a giant fish, the picture for you didn't get published. I definitely give all the credit to The Drake and the Fly Fish Journal and, you know, those type of folks, Steve Duda and Copey at the Journal and Tom in the early days and, you know, Mueller now.

They kind of made the concept of a fish not even being in the picture was a cool picture. You know, like just a picture of water and nothing else. Or a picture of a dude sitting on a tailgate drinking a beer putting his waders on all of a sudden became acceptable photography for media.

Our thing always was we knew we were digital. We figured our demographic was going to skew to the younger side. Because I don't think 70-year-olds are reading our magazine online finding it organically. I also tend to feel that people on the younger side of me tend to have very short attention spans.

So we do make an effort to keep our features to 500 to 700 words just because I think in a digital format, I'd rather the font be a little bit bigger so it's easier for folks to read on a screen as opposed to cramming a page with a lot of words. If you're not going to go down to a small font, you wind up with like 30-page features, and the book just gets uncontrollable on the back-end page count-wise.

So there was a give and a take, you know. But the other thing we always wanted to do was, you know, Steve's a great photographer, and we've worked with a lot of great photographers. We wanted the aesthetic of the magazine to match the written content of the magazine as far as impact goes.

Marvin Cash (14:31-14:42): Yeah, very cool. And, you know, when I think about Southern Culture, I always think about, you were talking earlier about logos, I always think about the mayfly and the Sasquatch. And how were they born, right?

David Grossman (14:45-15:43): Well, Steve is a pretty great graphic designer as well. We're pretty lucky that we do everything in-house. We both are big fans of Sasquatch lore and all that. The Sasquatch one was pretty easy.

The mayfly actually came from a European magazine, Fly Maj. They had a fly, like a house fly in a circle, just on black and white, which I always thought was a cool image. Then we wound up kind of tweaking it. The mayfly on the logo is actually a spent sulfur, a picture of a spent sulfur that was on the front of my drift boat that Steve took so many years ago that he turned into that mayfly. So that is a real spent sulfur spinner on the front of my boat that Steve just kind of tweaked until it became that logo.

Marvin Cash (15:43-15:46): Very cool. And when did the Clouser Sasquatch come about?

David Grossman (15:48-16:55): Oh the that thing we ran a lot like a lockdown. Yeah, you know, the Bob Clouser Sasquatch. Oh man, well I love Bob Clouser. Clouser Minnows are perhaps my favorite fly of all time. And you know he's up from like Pennsylvania Susquehanna region, you know. We met his son at a musky tournament and Bob Clouser's son looks exactly like Bob.

I mean, you can't, from more than 30 feet away, you can't tell the two apart. At the musky tournament, someone started calling them Tandem Clousers. But, you know, we did one of Kelly Galloup crossed with a tiger on one of those, you know, like Snapchat apps where you can put animal faces on people.

So we kind of were on this kick of, you know, of poking fun at big names. We love Bob and we love Sasquatch. So it honestly was done at the last minute and we needed to fill a page and just started spitballing ideas. And that's what came for us.

Marvin Cash (16:56-17:02): Very, very cool. So in the early days of the magazine, kind of what were your biggest and most unexpected challenges?

David Grossman (17:05-18:39): You know, I mean, I guess we've been kind of lucky, you know, like it just kind of built momentum and built momentum. Definitely like getting over the inertia of getting your name out there and establishing the brand as something that people want to check out. You know, like something interesting and some, like, it's almost at this point, like, the challenge is, is like coming up with fresh content because we are limited.

We try to limit ourselves mostly to the Southeastern content. So, as you know, you don't want to do the same story over and over. If you just kind of go on a fisheries focus, there aren't enough fisheries. I mean, we have a diverse amount of fisheries, but if you're just like doing fishery profiles, it's not sustainable over a long period.

So we've really kind of had to start thinking, you know, like the way we craft a story doesn't net. I don't necessarily I try to tie it geographically somewhere, but the geographic location isn't the main character in the story anymore. You know, when we first started out, we did Arkansas and write something about how cool Arkansas was.

Well, I can only write how cool Arkansas is, you know, over a three-year period before I need to write something else tied to Arkansas on the periphery, but has a different focus than something we've done before.

Marvin Cash (18:41-18:46): No, it makes a lot of sense. And I know a lot of the print magazines have fallen into exactly that rut, right?

David Grossman (18:47-19:17): Yeah, man, you know, it's, I don't know, we definitely, we love having people who are new to fly fishing or discovering fly fishing get into the magazine. It's awesome. But we've always tried to write it a little bit more from a perspective of the guy that kind of is a little bit more in the know than a beginner. So you've got to give those people something different because they've read the same article about the same place 20 different times at this point.

Marvin Cash (19:17-19:25): You know, I'm with you. And so as you're going down the path in the early 2010s, when did you and Steve know the magazine was going to be a success?

David Grossman (19:28-19:57): Honestly, we went to the International Fly Tackle Dealers Show, IFTD, the first time. And people actually within the industry knew who we were and said how much they liked the magazine. We sat there in awe, and we wound up booking some major manufacturers off of that first big industry show. That's kind of when we realized, wow, we might be on to something, so to speak.

Marvin Cash (19:58-20:06): Very cool. And so you put out four issues a year, and you say you do everything in-house. But can you share with the listeners kind of how you and Steve make the sausage?

David Grossman (20:08-20:21): Yeah man, it's super unimpressive and if we were actually professionals it would probably be much more streamlined. Four issues a year but so we just put an issue out on Monday you should all go

Marvin Cash (20:21-20:28): check it out it's very cool and you give winter a good lashing thank you thank you

David Grossman (20:28-22:14): I'm overwinter by a long stretch. But, so I like for the next, so for the next issue, I'll start putting together an edit plan and we do, we do take submissions. If anyone out there, you know, wants to submit writing or photography or a story idea, please email us. We're always looking for good stuff.

But I'll usually have one or two submissions kind of in the bag, that I've gotten throughout the year that I've kind of spaced. Then I try to take care of one feature, myself writing. Then Steve tries to take care of one feature of himself photography. So, you know, right now we're in the planning stages of what we're going to do for all that. What, who we're going to assign all the departments to, what poor friend of ours we're going to rope into it this time.

Then, you know, we kind of work on it throughout the three month period. I say that, and usually about a month out, Steve gives me a call and says, you know, it's a month out. We haven't done anything right. I say, yes, I know that. Then about three weeks out, he calls me and he says, Dave, you know, I'm starting to freak out about this. We're really behind. I said, I know, but it's not time to freak out yet.

Like on this past issue, it was about two weeks. Steve called me. He's like, is it time to freak out? I said, yes, it is time to freak out. Then we'd bear down and get everything done. Quite literally, the issue is put together on the Saturday and Sunday before the Monday it comes out. I am a horrible procrastinator with my writing. When I have a heavy writing load, I might be writing a session on Sunday morning.

Marvin Cash (22:17-22:20): So was your trip to Gatlinburg?

David Grossman (22:20-22:26): It's by the grace of God that it gets out. when we told our advertisers it would get out and we've never been late.

Marvin Cash (22:26-22:33): Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, because you got hard dates in your media kit. And so I assume was your trip to Gatlinburg slightly panic-induced?

David Grossman (22:35-23:33): Well, the trip to Gatlinburg was supposed to be Rand Hartz, who was here in Asheville, our staff photographer. Well, Steve moved to Florida, and we used to do all our stories together where he would take pictures and I would write. Once Steve moved to Florida, I also take photos for stories sometimes, but I find it hard to take photos and write a story. If at all possible, I'd rather have someone else take the pictures if I'm writing, or vice versa.

So Rand was supposed to take the pictures, which he did. Alan Gillespie, the owner of Three Rivers Angler, who I'm calling out on this podcast right now, Alan, was supposed to write it. A week out, I called him. He said he hadn't written it yet. He told me he had a soccer tournament with his kids that weekend. So I started deciding I was going to write it about Wednesday. I wrote that one on a Sunday morning before it came out.

Marvin Cash (23:34-23:41): Very cool. So you're in your eighth year now. How has the magazine changed over the eight-year period it's been in existence?

David Grossman (23:43-24:54): I think the main way is it's expanded with the expansion of our circle of friends. All the people we've met, all the people we've hung out with, all the people we've worked with, their print on the magazine is just as indelible as Steve and I's, no matter who it was.

We've worked with, for example, Louis Cahill a bunch. Whenever Lewis does a story for us, you know, it's very Lewis. With Steve and I doing so much stuff ourselves, we've just gotten to work with so many more cool people over the years and kind of expanded the voice of it, I guess, to a certain degree.

Yeah, I guess, you know, cool people want to help us out these days. So we've been really talented people and Paul Puckett, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention him, Mike Benson, who writes for us. You know, there's a lot of people out there that we're very privileged to work with.

Marvin Cash (24:55-25:01): Very cool. And as the magazine and you've gotten a little bit older, how has your writing and approach to the magazine changed?

David Grossman (25:04-26:04): Man, my writing is an ever evolving struggle. You know, some days it flows and some days it's like getting blood out of a stone. This past issue you know I was I felt like it was some of my like the bass piece and the island piece I just had fun with and those two were this issue was the most fun about writing in a while.

But I think it's like that for anyone who writes you know like sometimes like that idea is there and it doesn't even you don't even have to worry about writing it because as soon as you sit down to a keyboard, it's just going to get itself out. Other times I'll sit in front of a keyboard for three, four days, just blank and trying to figure out the angle. You know, once you have the angle of something, it's a little bit easier, but getting that right angle is where the, I guess, where the technical skill is involved.

Marvin Cash (26:04-26:10): Yeah. And it sounds like you write when the spirit moves you or that you try to write that way. You don't kind of have a set block of time periodically to sit down and say, I'm going to write today?

David Grossman (26:11-27:01): Man, I'm a procrastination writer. I got to be up against the deadline. Like if I have three weeks to write something, I'll write it the last two days. You know, I've had pieces published other places and like the journal and other stuff. I've written it the day before, even with a good two months lead time, you know?

Although I don't, I'm not the type of person who goes back and edits and edits and edits and edits my own stuff. It would probably be useful for me to do that, as my wife tells me, when she edits my stuff. But I edit as I go. I don't ever leave a sentence until it's pretty much exactly the way I want it. So I don't spend as much time on the back end as I do in the beginning, I guess.

Marvin Cash (27:02-27:18): Very interesting. Yeah, I'm sitting here while you're telling me this. I'm having this flashback to the guys I went to college with that were those last minute guys that would freak me out writing the paper in the last day or going to a Duke basketball game and road tripping back from New Jersey writing a 20 page paper in the back of the car on a laptop.

David Grossman (27:18-27:42): Oh, yeah, dude. That was me a lot of times. And I still graduated. So my favorite, though, is one time I was trying to write this philosophy paper. My buddy was in my room drinking and he was like, dude, I'm a philosophy major. He was like two years older than me. He's like, I'll just write it for you. But one condition, you're not allowed to look at it before you turn it in. I did not take him up on the offer.

Marvin Cash (27:43-28:00): Duly noted. So talk a little bit. I mean, you guys have had a huge impact on the fishing community in the southeast. As you look back over the eight years, why don't you tell us what you see as the editor of the magazine and kind of what the magazine's done to the magazine culture, but the fishing culture in the South as well?

David Grossman (28:02-28:48): I mean, man, you know, honestly, I think the fishing culture in the South is just as vibrant as I found it when I started the magazine. You know, I think we have an amazing fishing culture in the South. I just, I'm just, I always thought of us as just kind of a nice way to throw a little bit of recognition on it.

You know we definitely I'm a big believer in fly fishing is community and community is fly fishing the two don't exist without each other you know. We've been really proud and really humbled by the magazine being able to be a small vehicle I guess for some of that community like you know

Marvin Cash (28:48-29:01): showing itself yeah but I'm sorry go ahead oh no no go ahead no I was gonna say so It sounds like you kind of intentionally tried to design the community component into the magazine when you were putting it together.

David Grossman (29:03-30:00): Yeah, man. You know, I think I grew up on the Southeast fly fishing forum, I guess. You know, and then there was the trade forum. All of a sudden, like the Internet allowed, like gave you access to all these other weirdos where you didn't know their weirdos existed that were into the same things you were.

So I always came at it from that aspect. Like my favorite things about fly fishing or my fly fishing friends, the dudes I fish with and the dudes I hang out with and guys around the country that we don't see each other for two years, but, you know, we wound up being in the same place on the same river at the same time. No time has passed from the last time we saw each other.

The relationships for me are, I know it's cliche, but I'm all about community and the relationships in fly fishing. I don't think other people, there's anyone else in the world that gets me the way fly fishing people get me, you know?

Marvin Cash (30:01-30:11): No, that makes a lot of sense. And I see you doing a lot of stuff in Asheville around, you know, in terms of potluck dinners and beer ties and sponsoring events and really giving back too.

David Grossman (30:13-31:22): Yeah, man, you know, it's, if we can do anything to help the scene out, you know, make sure it's thriving in our own community, the more the merrier, you know? So we do, yeah, we do a tying night the last Tuesday of every month here in Asheville and they do it. Steve does a tying night down in Florida, down in Melbourne. Harry could splash up, help some out with that one.

Then we've done stuff with Project Healing Waters before, stuff with you before, we're the five rivers programming to you. I just got an email about today, they're putting out a digital magazine next year for the first time and we were talking about helping with that.

But we're a small community when you talk about fly fishermen. I mean like it is a niche within a niche within a niche you know so if we aren't there for each other there's not going to be anybody else there for us. There's a lot of, and there's a lot of stuff coming up that we all need to be present for and all be a unified front for if we want to take care of what's important to us as a fly fishing community.

Marvin Cash (31:22-31:37): Yeah, I couldn't agree more. This kind of Hatfield and McCoy stuff that we see in the fly fishing community really, really bugs me too. You mentioned challenges. What do you see on the horizon that we need to be vigilant for if we want to look after our sport?

David Grossman (31:39-32:31): I mean, access is pretty big. I mean, here in the Southeast, it's kind of the same old story. You know, like river access, pollution, water pollution. I know anyone who lives in the South knows someone, some house is straight piping into a river instead of into a sewer system or a septic system.

I mean, I don't want to sound I don't want to get anyone riled up. I am I tend I tend to be a progressive liberal. So everybody knows. But I think climate change is going to hit us pretty hard in the South and not in a good way. So, you know, anything we can do at this point to limit the trauma, I think it's time for all of us to take a hard look in the mirror and start thinking about doing.

Marvin Cash (32:33-32:49): Yeah, I mean, and it's an important thing. I mean, particularly kind of in that Southern sporting culture, it's multi-generational, right? So, I mean, you know, I think we, if we want this for our kids and our grandkids, we really need to kind of pay attention and, you know, protect the resource and look after our, you know, look after it for future generations.

David Grossman (32:51-33:25): Yeah, man, you know, I mean, and it's definitely hit me more since I had my own children and started thinking about their future. But like, when I think about what fly fishing has given me in my life and what space in my life that it takes up and what important block of my life it is, you know, I can't even imagine my kids not at least having the opportunity to have that same same experiences I did. So, you know, whatever you can do to make sure that happens is probably a good path to pursue.

Marvin Cash (33:26-33:32): Very cool. Well, listen, in 2019, what can folks expect to see on the horizon with the magazine?

David Grossman (33:34-34:05): Well, you know, we're going into our ninth year. We're kind of talking about maybe 10 years and seeing what, re-examining where we are. We are going to be talking to some publishers, book publishers, about putting together an anthology of SCOF over those 10 years, sometime in the next couple of years. But other than that, probably more of the same and maybe a little different.

Marvin Cash (34:06-34:19): Very cool. And so you talked about 10 years. Are you kind of thinking about maybe doing something different in 10 years or passing the torch? Or is it just a nice number that's divisible by 10 or 5 and you want to think about it and then keep moving on?

David Grossman (34:20-35:43): Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't think — no decisions have been made. I don't think we'd ever pass SCOF off to someone else just because I think Steve and I's voice is the magazine, and I think it would be weird if — for the magazine to exist without our voice in it to a certain degree just because it's always been kind of a — My wife told me this last issue was the most self-indulgent issue we've ever done.

I kind of started thinking about, really, the whole magazine is an indulgent endeavor for Steve and I. It's what we want to do when we think it's funny and how we want to portray it. But thinking of someone else doing it, I'm not sure. But, you know, who knows? There was a little bit of a talk of maybe us going into a print magazine format on top of the digital a while back. That's not in the works right now. But who knows? But we'll see what happens.

I feel like there's a creative arc for any creative project, you know, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and just naturally. So I would hate to push SCOF. I don't want to be 60 and making dick and fart jokes and wearing a flat and wearing a flat brim hat telling the kids how cool I am.

Marvin Cash (35:44-35:51): You know? Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Anything maybe on the video front? Short film or something like that maybe?

David Grossman (35:53-36:32): Yeah. You know, I've got friends who do video stuff, and we've been kicking around the idea over various campfires over the past couple years about doing some sort of Southeastern movie, kind of a Southeastern showcase movie. That might be in the worst after that. Man, you know, I got two kids under the age of 10. I build houses full time, and I do the magazine every other time I have. So we'll see what happens. But, you know, either way, it's still fun. I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't because no one's getting rich doing anything in fly fishing.

Marvin Cash (36:33-36:40): Yeah, I agree with that. Before you go tonight, why don't you share with us your favorite Southern Culture on the Skids song?

David Grossman (36:42-36:44): I'm a big fan of Banana Pudding.

Marvin Cash (36:45-36:56): There you go. You heard it here, folks. You know, I can't imagine you'd have to have been living under a rock for the last seven or eight years not to know how to find your stuff, but just in case we've got some new people out there, you want to tell folks where to find you?

David Grossman (36:58-37:30): Yeah, man. If you just go to southerncultureonthefly.com, everything we have is on that homepage, from the magazine to our Instagram account and everything else. Also, we have our subscriptions there. It is a free subscription. So if you hit subscribe, put in your email address, the only time we email you is when the issue comes out. We don't email you every week or every day or anything like that. So please subscribe. It helps our advertisers weren't giving us more money.

Marvin Cash (37:31-37:36): Very cool. Yeah, guys, you should definitely check it out. Well, David, I appreciate you spending some time with me this evening.

David Grossman (37:37-37:40): Well, man, always a pleasure. And get up here and fish some time.

Marvin Cash (37:41-38:00): Absolutely. I'm working on it. Well, listen, folks, everyone have a great evening. I appreciate you listening. Would love it if you give me a review in iTunes. You can find us anywhere podcasts are found. If you want kind of the easy way to do it, if you sign up for the mailing list, we'll send you an email once a week with all of our blog posts and all of our episodes. Everybody have a great night. Tight lines. Have a good one, David.

David Grossman (38:01-38:31): Oh, you too, man.