Nickelback’s Attorney and 604 Records co-founder Jonathan Simkin and his good buddy, Canadian country music sensation Dallas Smith are the co-creators of “Sticks and Stones”, a podcast that combines their love and knowledge of all things music and hockey related. The two friends sat down with 519 recently to talk about the podcast as well as the interesting story behind their twenty year friendship.
You recently started a podcast called “Sticks and Stones”, which is all things hockey and music, and for people that can’t figure that out, hockey sticks and The Stones right. What gave you the idea for this podcast?
Jonathan Simkin: One of the divisions of 604 is a division called Comedy Here Often, which does comedy records and that division started a podcast. And it wasn’t a network at that point, it was just two people doing a podcast but it started to get popular and then other comedians started approaching us and saying, “Hey, we have a podcast idea, could we maybe go on your YouTube channel?” and it just kind of grew organically. Suddenly we had a podcast network and at that point I had been thinking about doing something.
I remember a few times calling Dallas and saying, “Man, we should really do a podcast.” and one weekend, I was just sitting in my office and came up with the name and threw it off of Dallas and he said, “Yeah, I like it.” and it just kind of happened.
It’s very laid back, just two guys talking over beers and you do tend to lose track of time, too, don’t you?
Dallas Smith: Yeah, I’ve heard you say this before, Jonathan. Our intention is we’re not going be super in depth with analytics and stuff. We’re above casual fans I would say as far as knowledge, but our podcast is mostly about that relaxed sort of sports chat and how it intersects with music. A lot of our stories individually and how they come up, how we’ve known each other, they just come up as these conversations happen with people.