Hyperfixed - Two Birds, One Hundred Stones

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Become a premium Hyperfixed member today to get access to bonus episodes, our discord, monthly AMAs and much much more.http://hyperfixedpod.com/joinThis week - Keenan always had this question about his mom's past, and he turned to us for help. And then we turned to him for help. A very special episode of Hyperfixed.If you are a hyperfixed member, you can see some supplementary photos for this story by following this link. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. And I don't know about you, but with food prices as high as they are right now, I'm really looking to up my game with home cooking this year. And to help us on our culinary journey, I cannot recommend enough one of our newer Radiotopia shows, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Kenji and Deb are J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perlman, two of the best home cooks out there. Maybe you've seen Kenji's YouTube channel or Deb's iconic blog, Smitten Kitchen, and

between them they have seven New York Times bestselling cookbooks. They've helped millions of people eat better at home. I'm a big meal planner, so whatever is on tap for the week, I always make sure to check Deb and Kenji's recipes before I shop and before I cook, because I don't have the time or money to make big kitchen mistakes. Thanks to Kenji, I know to coat my chicken in mayo before grilling, and I swear by Deb's brisket every holiday. On the recipe, Kenji and Deb talk about the essential ingredients and techniques of a

beloved everyday dish, say macaroni and cheese or meatballs. Little things that really make a dish shang. Beware they have very different styles and sometimes duke it out over methods. You'll have to figure out what works for you, and as a result you'll cook and eat better. From Radiotopia from PRX, the recipe with Kenji and Deb, listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Why do people commit themselves to the things they do? Why are people so worried about sport?

Why wine? Why video games? I'm Brian Lowry, and in this season of my podcast, Know What You See, I'm asking a simple question, but a really big one. What's the point? In conversations with people with a variety of passions and obsessions, we give the chance to look through a window and see what it means to truly focus on a realm of human experience. Join me on Know What You See. New episodes begin November 26th. Hey everyone, this is Alex.

Really quickly before this episode starts, I wanted to ask you to consider signing up for Hyperfix Premium. I'm asking for two reasons. The first is because I genuinely think that if you like this show, you'll probably like the bonus content. It's five bucks a month, 40 bucks a year, and you'll get two bonus episodes a month, access to our Discord, which is really shaping up to be like a nice little community. I'm getting to know everybody and they're all really cool.

We do a monthly AMA with me and the team, and like, if there's bonus content you are dying to see from the show, I am open to suggestions and I am not hard to contact. But the second reason is that by becoming a Hyperfix member, you're supporting completely independent media and giving us the ability to make the show bigger, weirder, more fun, more exciting. I have been incredibly lucky to have assembled an amazing team of producers who have all agreed to work for way less than they're worth because they believe in this weird little show we're making. And if you believe in it too, I'm just asking if you would consider heading over to hyperfixedpod.com slash join. Your membership will allow me to bring on new staff, bring on guest reporters to help us

solve problems, make more ambitious episodes, make more bonus content, and seriously so much more. And we'll just keep solving problems until there are no problems left to solve and we'll have created a lasting utopia. That's my goal. Again, that's hyperfixedpod.com slash join, and I can't thank you enough for listening. Here's the show. Last week, Hyperfixed performed our first live story at On Air Fest in Brooklyn. And in most cases, if we did a live version of a show,

we'd probably re-record the entire thing for broadcast. But in this case, the live aspect was simply not replicable in the studio. So we wanted to play you the story as it was performed at On Air Fest. It's a story about regret, fear, and ultimately the courage it takes to just try. Here's the story. Okay, this is a story that we produced especially for this, and I'm just gonna launch right into it and we'll see how it goes. Thank you all so much for coming, I really appreciate it. And before I get started,

I really need to do one thing which is I need to shout out my team and you guys should give them all an amazing round of applause. Our engineer Tony Williams, Saris Offers-Sukenek, Amore Yates, Emma Cortland who sadly couldn't be here. Thank you guys so much. This is impossible without you. Here we go. I am Alex Goldman. This is Hyperfixed, our first ever live taping.

On this show, listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. These words that I have just said to you are the words that start every episode of our show. And I like them because they provide the listener with a sense of calm and order.

Like, Alex is here to solve problems. He's going to guide you from the beginning of the story to the end. Everything's going to be chill. But when I wrote those words a week ago, I had no idea if we were going to be able to pull off what we're attempting to pull off today. And if I'm being totally honest,

I still don't know if we're going to pull it off. But there's only one way to find out. So this week, two birds, 100 stones, a live podcast in six chapters. Chapter one, the first bird. Okay, so I have my camera set up on a bunch of VHS tapes right now. And I'm going to use those to hold this thing up. So hold on.

Why do you have a bunch of VHS tapes? Because I'm a giant nerd. This is Keenan. He's a Toronto native. And if he is a nerd, he is the very best kind of nerd. He is a media nerd. And not just the kind that obsesses over stats and trivia. Keenan is the kind of nerd that attends as much to the social world of the art as the art itself. He spent years working in record stores, concert venues, he has an insane collection of physical media, but there's one artist whose work continues to evade him and that artist is his mother, Megan. What is your relationship with your mom like? Like, are you guys pretty candid with one another?

Do you have an easy relationship? Is it difficult? Is it weird? Like, what kind of relationship do you have? I would say it's all of those things. That's totally fair. Yeah, I love my mom to bits. She's been a very emotionally honest person my entire life. Like, there's nothing that she really hides or holds back on. When we have any kind of personal difficulties, like we can talk about it. She's not a very closed person.

She doesn't hide things. So that's why I think that we have a great relationship. But there is one thing that Megan has been reluctant to talk about, her young dreams of being a songwriter. Over the years, Kenan's heard the story in bits and pieces, but the broad strokes of it goes something like this. In the early 80s, Megan was a waitress

at Second City in Toronto, and she was writing songs. A friend of hers, Second City's house piano player, said, hey, I have this friend, she's a singer-songwriter, I guarantee she would love to perform your songs. Her name is Katie Lang. Let's record some songs. You can give her your tape. I'll put in a good word for you. She was a massive Katie Lang fan. She saw her perform at the Cameron House, which is like a not very large music venue here in Toronto. She did a week long residency and my mom was there every night,

sitting in the front row by herself. Anyway, she has a cassette tape of her songs and she handed that to Katie Lang at one point and never heard back. It was gone. After that, Megan was so devastated by the apparent rejection. She sold her piano, she packed up all her music, and she charted a new career path for herself. Megan started working in film and television,

and that's what she still does today. She doesn't need a megaphone. She's the person on set who is just saying, like, and we're rolling, and she's five foot nothing and just commands everybody. She is in charge of the set, And that's what she's like. These are some photos of Megan from her on set stuff. This is her with Don Johnson, Brian Dennehy, Rutger Hauer. For all intents and purposes,

Megan has lived an extraordinary life. She's worked with tons of celebrities, Jason Priestley, Billy Zane, Gabriel Byrne, and she has a massive amount of insane stories about everyone from Leonard Cohen to Robin Williams. But Keenan has always sensed that somewhere inside his mother, there's still a person who longs to be a musician, or at least part of her that regrets that she stopped trying. Basically, she gave up on doing this. After the tape didn't lead to anything, after Katie Lang never called her back, she just was like, fuck it, it's never gonna happen. I'm abandoning this completely. That kind of bumps me out. I feel like... Yeah, me too! Me too! She really felt as though she had something to say through these songs and other than a handful

of people, nobody's ever heard it. And I truly feel like that lingers. It still lingers with her. that lingers, it still lingers with her. So, I wanted to bring her some resolution to this thing that she always wanted and never had. Jared Sussman Also, for a woman who sounds like kind of brassy and willing to talk about anything, the fact that there is this one component of her life that she steadfastly refuses to talk about anything, the fact that there is this one component of her life that she steadfastly refuses to talk about, it must feel like a gap, a knowledge gap in this person that you, I think, know pretty well. Yeah. I have never heard these recordings.

Never. They exist on a reel-to-reel tape that is sitting in a box somewhere and then there's sheet music for all of them all of the songs that I've never seen I have memories of this one song that she did sometimes It was about her friend. That's all I remember because we're going back over 20 years at this point So I would love to see this tape get restored. And I have absolutely no, I have no knowledge of how to do that. It's a grimy old tape that like would need to be cleaned up. So that's where Kena reached out to me. He had an instinct that I could get his grimy tape cleaned

up for his mom so she could hear her music again and be inspired. And he was right about one thing, I am the type of guy who has a reel to reel in his attic. It's because I'm cool. But I had a feeling he was wrong about something else, which is that I don't think that this project was entirely for his mom. Are you more interested in hearing this tape yourself or in her hearing it with you, I guess would be the way I would put it? Uh, that's interesting. I mean, I want to hear it because I've, I've never heard it. So I'm definitely interested in hearing it for myself. But like, I guess I would say I am doing this for her as well.

So I guess both. I would love to get her to talk about it more. It's one of the few things that she doesn't want to talk about very much. And maybe that's just because I haven't asked the right questions. I'm always hesitant to kind of bring it up. Also, there's not many reasons for it to come up in conversation necessarily.

Keenan told me his mother is coming to visit him in a couple of days and that she'll be staying for a week. So the plan is for him to bring it up sometime while she's there. Are you worried about broaching this with her? Like, are you worried that it might upset her? Yeah, but I think that it's not gonna be... I'm hoping that me saying, you know, what we're doing here, I tell her this story,

that might excite her. Like, I'm leaning more, I am worried, but I'm hopeful. I'm also worried, this is another major thing that I need to bring up, I'm worried, but I'm hopeful. I'm also worried, this is another major thing that I need to bring up. I'm worried that these songs are bad. I'm worried that there's a reason she didn't get signed, but I have no idea. I have vague memories of one of the songs that I remember sounding pretty good when I was a kid,

but I'm like, all I know is that my grandmother truly believed in her. How's your grandmother's taste? Oh, my Nana was the best. Do you worry about us recording this and then going to her and being like, hey, we talked about this deeply personal thing that you consider a failure in your life,

and we want you to revisit that thing that you consider a failure. Do you worry that she's going to be like, what's your problem? Like, why would you bring this up? A little bit? I mean, like, you know her well enough. What do you think her reaction to this being revisited would be? being revisited would be? I'm leaning more towards the side of this could potentially excite her. I also think maybe she'll be like, well, I'll do this for my son, you know? I want to believe the reason that I haven't told her about it yet is just because one, I wanted to have this conversation first. and two, I didn't want to necessarily have her shut it down right away. So I wanted to have something on paper to be like, I've already had this like interview with these people who are interested in talking about it, because she's somebody that like,

if, I'll secretly record a video of her doing something ridiculous because she's a very funny person. And she'll be kind of embarrassed that I did that. And then watch the video and she will kind of acknowledge that she is very funny in it. So I think with a push, perhaps she will be on board. But I'm gonna have to tell her and I've got a whole week with her. Like this couldn't have timed out better. So we'll see.

My advice would be talk to your mom and then I guess we'll just see what happens, you know? Like how she feels and if she's comfortable with it. And I would love to talk to her about it. I would love to at the very least hear the tape and see if it's salvageable. That's daunting, but I'm not afraid to ask the question. Let her know that some strange guy from the internet is interested in hearing her music. Chapter 2, The Second Bird.

So I didn't tell Keenan this because I didn't want to put any pressure on him. But while I was trying to help Keenan solve his problem, I was standing waist deep in a problem of my own. And I was beginning to wonder if Keenan could help me solve that problem. So back in November of 2024, I'd been contacted by the organizers of On Air Fest about doing something for the 2025 festival. And I said, of course, because even though we'd only made two episodes of Hyperfixed at that point, and the team was only just starting to learn how to work together, the festival was four months away.

Also I have a policy of saying yes to everyone who asked me to do podcast stuff unless they're fascists. So anyway, I agreed to do the show. And then I mean you guys know what happened. November turns to December and we're like we should probably start talking about On Airfest and I'm like oh yeah let's add it to the agenda for next week and then next week turns into next week and that week turns into Christmas and Christmas turns into New Year's you get it. And we

were able to come up with a few decent ideas and if you were eagle-eyed you might have even spotted the original idea we were going to come up with a few decent ideas. And if you were eagle-eyed, you might have even spotted the original idea we were going to do for this on the On Air Fest website. But between January and the beginning of February, every permutation of every idea we've had for the show has fallen apart. So by the time I hang up with Keenan on February 4th,

which is what? Today's the 20th, so that's 16 days ago, my hands are empty. And if we can't find a story, we will have no choice but to stage our doomsday option, which is titled, On Air Fest Presents Alex Goldman Attempts to Make New Friends. Honestly, even the thought of that makes me shudder. It's as bad as it sounds.

The idea was that I would bring people from the audience on stage and become friends with them during the session. But I have another idea, and it involves Keenan. So two days after our first call, I shoot him an email to ask him if he has time for a quick conversation. Which brings us to Chapter 3, The First Stone. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

Hi, Keenan, you are muted. You're going to have to unmute yourself there. Can you hear me now? Yes! Amazing. Yes. At this point, Keenan's mom is at his house. She's just flown in from Nova Scotia. She's staying for about a week and the visits going fine. But Kenan hasn't told her about the podcast yet. So he has snuck out into his backyard to talk to us. I'll keep

this brief and it's crazy. This is this is crazy. It is totally fine. If you're like, there's no way this is going to work. Okay, I just want to get that out in front I'm excited to hear it so I tell him the story I just told you about how I committed to this thing and then totally shit the bed and About how I'm exploring alternative options for this live show, which is scheduled to take place in two weeks And I thought maybe this is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. And then I very tactfully asked him, I was wondering, considering your mom truly desires an audience. Do

you think she would like we could make this a story where in two weeks, the look on your face is mad skeptical. We can I can compose the story and then at the end she can come out and sing for us. Oh my god. Uh that is. I I totally understand. Just think about it. No pressure. I know that's like a crazy thing. Do I want it to happen? 100%. Do I think it could happen? Big maybe. If I don't know, I don't think she's done it in years. Again, totally fine if this is not a thing that is possible. I just want her

to know that like if she feels comfortable doing it, I would love to give her the opportunity to sing the song She felt like she wasn't able to sing to other people. Oh I I will ask her I'm still trying to think about how to Broach this information to begin with but I have a whole day with her today And again, I apologize because I'm also putting pressure on you by doing this. I know this is nuts I mean And again, I apologize because I'm also putting pressure on you by doing this. I know this is nuts Technically you are but this is like

If God if this could happen, I would be like just over the moon But yeah, it'd be so cool two weeks is like, ah, I understand. Yes. I understand. I will talk to her today I mean, I got a broach the story thing first and then I'll I'll I will tell her. Okay, let's see how it goes. Can you can you hear the desperation in my voice? Can you hear it? It's so bad. Listening to that gives me secondhand embarrassment for myself. myself. That's wacky. Okay, Chapter four, the first bird part two. So a couple days later, we get an email from Kenan saying Megan's agreed to talk to us. And we're like, holy shit, this is gonna work. Megan's dream is going to come true. Kenan's going to get to hear his mother's music. We're not going to get banned from on airfest. And best of all,

I'm not gonna have to embarrass myself trying to make new friends in front of a bunch of strangers. Everything is coming up Goldman. And then we get on a video call with Megan, and without saying it directly, she very clearly conveys that she does not want to even be talking to us. You good, Mom? Yeah, I'm really really great Kenan. See what I mean? Now under normal circumstances this would have given me pause because the last thing I want to do is force a spotlight on someone who genuinely wants to avoid attention even if it means that I'm going to walk away from

this with nothing to show for it. But Kenan cautioned me about his mom that while she may hate the idea of attention, once she warms up a bit, Megan actually kind of loves it. So all I had to do was warm her up. So I'm wondering just to start, if you could introduce yourself. My name is Megan Banning. I am the mother of Keenan Tamlin who started this kerfuffle. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a beautiful coastal town in Canada. And I'm here to visit my son. Pete And he's ruined your whole trip, right? Mary Well, I wasn't in the door, like, I think it was like the first day and I cried and I don't

cry very, very rarely. I was like, this is so personal, how dare you? And it's a part of my life that breaks my heart because it's a shodokodawooda. Right, well, I wanna ask you about that. Like, how did you get interested in music? I came from a very dysfunctional home. My mother was bipolar, my father was an alcoholic. But we had love and music and we danced.

On a good day we danced, but music was always a thing. There was a piano in our home. My mother tells a story, I just clung onto the piano and everything shut out. It was my piece. And I could play anything I could. I played by it, I could hear everything I could play. And I could write music instantly.

I went to another place. I went to a place that I was calm and it was like I was in another world. It was my world. It was my music. I played every day, probably eight hours a day. Eight hours? Yeah, I played, that's all I did is play music. Now I just play euchre online. For the next 45 minutes, Megan told me about her life and her music. She told me about her dreams of becoming a songwriter and about how when she didn't hear back from Katie Lang, she decided it meant she wasn't good enough to be a professional musician. So she sold her piano, stashed the last of her recordings in nondescript boxes and drawers where she expected they'd stay until long after she died. Keenan would later tell me this was the most he ever heard his mom talk about her music, and even though

it was clear that revisiting these memories was indeed very painful for Megan, it also seemed like the process of actually doing that, of sifting through these old painful memories, it was almost liberating for her. It reminded me of that thing that Mr. Rogers used to say about how if it's mentionable, it's manageable. Like, as long as we can figure out a way to talk about it, we can figure out a way to carry it. And I think for Keenan,

watching his mom talk so openly about her music also kind of freed him to talk about what the silence around this music has meant to him and why he started this whole thing in the first place. I guess it mostly came from a desire to hear those songs. desire to hear those songs because my mom is a very, very open person as you can hear. And this seemed to be one of the only things that she didn't want to talk about that much. And every time I said, can I hear those songs? No. No. No. They were all there on a only on a reel to reel tape. And that's going to take I don't know how to clean that up.

And I got the sheet. I don't know where it is. And I didn't know how much of this was true and how much was her holding back? And I thought maybe all this story is, is my problem is that I need to get this tape restored. And that way I could present it to her, and then I could listen to it, and that was that. And then now the story's kind of become a lot more about her, which I love, because she has a story.

I think that because this is one of the few things that she is hesitant to talk about, it seemed like an unfinished chapter of her life and it could be a bit of a bookend to that story, but not necessarily the end. Yeah. Can I say, let me tell you what this means to me, that my son, who I love to tell it. I hope so. Oh, yeah. But I didn't under I didn't get how much he knew, how much it meant to me until he did this. I never thought it mattered to him.

I didn't think he...to me it was just something I did. I didn't realize that he paid attention to it. And when he said, Mom, I got this about your music, I went, what about my music? Like I cried, I was mad. Ask him. I was in tears. I can't talk about this. He said, can we talk? I went, no. It wasn't until today that I would let him talk about it. Because it's so personal because it's, when you let yourself down, when I didn't do something that was I should have done, I didn't do something I was supposed to do. And it's a regret. But in my heart of hearts, I'm a musician. By this point, we'd been talking to Megan for over an hour. And I feel like I understand everything that Keenan told me about his mom. This woman has not had an easy life. She'd

been knocked around, beaten down, but there's still so much fire inside of her. And yes, she spent decades carrying the weight of her regrets and fears, but I am a firm believer in the idea that it is never too late to change your life. And also, Kenan had told me that all his mom needed was a push. So, I decided to push her. I say, Megan, I don't want to beat around the bush. You're a musician with songs that nobody's ever heard and I'm a

podcaster with an empty stage and an audience hungry for something that stirs their souls. Would you do us all the honor of performing your music live at On Air Fest in Brooklyn, New York. Oh, not happening. I'm not, that's never going to happen. I'm never going to be on the stage and sing my songs because, hey, I can't sing anymore. Like I can't. Like, like my voice, I smoked fucking Marlboro's. Just because you don't sing like Katie Lang doesn't mean you can't sing.

No, I don't want to fucking sing like her anyway. She's too twangy. No, fuck. No. Um, just could not do that. But here's what I could do. I would love to have someone else sing, like have my music heard and my song heard. That would be, I would die to hear that. Yeah? I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. It would be, it would be a song. If there was one song that we could get someone to perform, what song would that be?

It's called Room. Rooms, Megan told me, is a song about a feeling she had years ago after her then-fiance broke off their engagement. It's about that singular kind of heartbreak you experience when you're by yourself in the same spaces you used to share with someone you loved. When the volume of your sadness and anger is only outweighed by how much you miss being in a room with them. What would it mean to you for people to hear that music?

Would it mean anything at all to you now? What would it feel like to have people in public hear that music? Would it mean anything at all to you now? Like, what would it feel like to have people in public hear that? It would take you back to me back then. That young, I was never sweet. I can't say sweet. No, but that part of me that still exists to hear that music until I, and is it to hear that music, it's all right.

And is it good? I mean, it could be shit. I mean, I haven't listened to it for so long, but I just know heart in my heart. I know it's good. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapter five, 99 stones. Okay, so we spoken to Megan. She told us she wants to do this and that when she gets back to Halifax on Tuesday, she's going to send over the sheet music and the cassette and all of this is great. We say goodbye, we hang up the call and then all we can do is wait and pray that at some point between now and then Megan doesn't change her mind. Because if she does, we have no backup plan for this live show and no time to figure out an alternative. And if you think I'm simply mentioning this simply for the sake of ramping up narrative tension,

one, you're right. Two, let me remind you, this woman has not let anyone hear her music in nearly four decades, including her son. And now we're expecting her to turn over the only recordings via snail mail to a bald stranger whose end game is to share it with the world. So needless to say, I did not sleep well on Monday of last week. I spent the evening imagining what the organizers of On Airfest would do with this programming slot if I failed to fill it. My most fantastical idea would be that there would be an Alex Goldman effigy contest, during which the most realistic Alex Goldman would be strung

up right there in the main hall so attendees could take turns beating it like a pinata. When I wake up on Tuesday, I set about finding a singer. I don't know a lot of musicians in New York, so I texted my friend Eliza MacLam, who lives in LA. Eliza is a musician and a podcaster. She hosts a podcast called Binch-Topia. But her voice, guys, her voice, it's somehow delicate and cuts right through you. She sounds like she could sing you a lullaby and eat you alive simultaneously. And honestly she would have been a perfect

for this, but I was hoping she could recommend someone in the city. And when I got in touch with her she told me she had actually just moved to the city. And immediately I'm like, oh this is meant to be. So I got on my knees and I started begging and she was like, calm down dude I'd love to sing Megan's song and I'm like great as soon as I get the music I'll send it over. We check in with Keenan throughout the day Keenan checks in with Megan but by 7 30 p.m. there's still no news. Megan's told Keenan that she knows exactly where the cassette tape is, but that the sheet music might take a bit longer to find.

And as for the reel-to-reel, which contains the only copies of the studio recordings Megan made for Katie Lang, that was completely MIA. So we agree to circle up on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning, there's good news from Keenan. The sheet music and the cassette have been located. But the sheet music is just piano chords. The lyrics were written by hand. Megan has no way to play the cassette. And...

And... And... There's a huge snowstorm coming to Nova Scotia. So we scrap the idea of sending the stuff through the mail. Keenan starts calling audio nerds in Halifax, coming to Nova Scotia. So we scrap the idea of sending this stuff through the mail. Keenan starts calling audio nerds in Halifax looking for someone capable of converting his cassette into a digital file they can send to us.

Obviously, this is not an ideal situation, but then again, none of the work we've done on this project is ideal. And yet it is starting to feel like we have inadvertently assembled a small army of people who are deeply invested in the outcome of this operation. Like within hours, Keenan has made contact with a legendary local musician named Rich O'Coyne

who has the gear to get the job done. And Rich is like, yes, bring me your tired, your poor, your busted tapes, I will convert them. And then we can get them to Eliza. But due to the storm nobody is able to get over to Rich's until Thursday. Thursday. At 7 a.m. on Thursday Keenan texts to say that the tape is on its way to

Rich's and at this point we are exactly one week to the day from our show at On Air Fest and the organizers of On Air Fest have started sending us follow-up emails reminding us that our scripts and our clips and our photos are due by Friday, aka tomorrow. But the thing is we don't have any of that stuff because this whole story hinges on a single song, a song we've never heard, and at this point there's a pretty good chance we never will. Because remember, this tape that's heading to Richard's, it's nearly 40 years old, and it's been hiding at the bottom of a box filled

with all kinds of other shit, and there's really no telling what kind of condition it'll be in when it arrives, or if it'll even be salvageable. So when sends this photo of the cassette, our hearts fucking sink. The tape is visibly bent, twisted up inside the cassettes plastic casing, and as I'm looking at it there's a brief moment where I wish I had quicksand near my house. Then I could just take a walk and end up accidentally buried up to my collarbones and explain to passerby that unfortunately I will not be able to attend the On Air Fest 2025, the premier festival of sound and storytelling featuring intimate conversations, performances, and live podcasts because I'll be here in quicksand. Anyway, about an hour later,

Anyway, about an hour later, the thought evaporates completely. Because Rich, he goes in manually, re-reels the tape with the kind of care and precision one might expect from a man who's deactivating a bomb. And by noon, we have digital copies of Megan's songs in our inbox. And the moment we hear them, it's like, look, I don't believe in destiny, but over the course of my life, I have experienced, I'm gonna start crying. But over the course of my life, I've experienced alignments that certainly felt like they were faded.

And when Megan sent music to my friend Eliza, I felt like I was in the middle of one of those things where a hundred crazy elements suddenly and inexplicably aligned precisely the way they were meant to. So without further ado, I'd like to invite Eliza Mclam to join me for the sixth and final chapter of our show, the song Rooms by Megan Banning. Smoke filled rooms and lonely afternoons Empty faces go in nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars, no introductions needed I've been here before

Nowhere once forgotten Nowhere once forgotten I'm ambling on and it's all gone wrong cause I'm missing you I'm missing you I can't complain, it's been a gambling game I'm just a few cards short So I'll wrap myself up in your memory Just to get me through the rough spots I'll leave my glass to survival Meanwhile I'll be missing you I'll be missing you Smoke-filled rooms in lonely afternoons

empty faces, going nowhere places idle chatter as we gather at no name bars, no introductions needed I've been here before Thank you. So what you're hearing right now is the recording from a boombox on top of a piano from 1983, I think. So what you don't know is that Keenan and Megan have been watching via a Zoom call, which is being held by my producer, Sari, this whole time. So... applause

applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause

Um, I'm wondering if I could just bring the phone up real quick. Yeah. Yep. Hey guys. How you doing? Hold on a second. I'm going to put you on speaker.

No, I don't know how to put you on speaker. Can you help? Oh yeah, you have to unmute yourselves. Can you unmute yourselves real quick? Can we bring the music down, the house music down? Hi. Hey guys how you doing? How was, what did you think? That was something. Eliza thank you you did a great job sweetheart really great. Kenan's breaking my heart. He's on Zoom.

We've been to Toronto, I'm in Nova Scotia to see his sweet little face. We both broke into tears and thank you. For someone who I was like, this is not happening. Really quite something. And Alex and all your team, I appreciate it. It was a bit much pulling this off in a week going in a blizzard and finding all this memories

40 years ago of stuff I never thought would happen to and the fact that there's people that are hearing this song. I mean I got five more they're even better by the way. Very much like her to say something like that. There's more. And they're great. And Rich McCoyne who helped me out, this strange man I just ran up and said hi and blizzard here's a tape good luck Chuck bye and ran off. He happened to live five minutes away from her too. He lived five minutes away and he wasn't home.

He's like Kenan this is enough and there's a snow farm I'm in Alibaba. This is the wand, really. Alex, you convinced me. I was like, this is not happening. It's a lot and I am blessed. The love of my son who remembered and kept the memory of my music and remembered because I forgot. It was in a box in the basement that I spent four hours looking for. It was in a box in the basement that I spent four hours looking for. And it's been quite an experience. You know, that poor 23-year-old that wrote it so many years ago. So what has inspired me is I'm going to go buy myself a keyboard and get back to my music. Because I'd love to play the piano.

But the music is still in me. Alright guys, well I'm going to hand you back to Sari because I'm running out of time. No, you're great. Thank you both so much for sharing this party. I'm going to start crying again. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate it. Not alone.

Thank you so much for coming. Stay tuned to the end of the credits to hear Megan Banning's original recording of Rooms from the early 1980s. It's really beautiful. You got to check it out. This episode of Hyperfix was produced by Emma Cortland, Amor Yates, Saris Afersukenek, and Tony Williams. It was edited by Emma Cortland with some help from the rest of us. It was engineered by Tony Williams.

The music was by me, with the exception of Rooms by Megan Banning, which was performed by Eliza McClam. You can find Eliza's music wherever you listen to music. Her debut album, Going Through It, came out last year, and it's amazing. She's the best. Seriously, go listen to it. Special thanks to the team at On Air Fest

for helping us perform this show to a live audience. Mandana Moffiti, Scott Newman, Ephraim Jenkins, Tom Tierney, Paul Cuccero, Obis Cruz, and Andrew Brown. Special thanks to Rich O'Coyne, who digitized Megan's tapes just under the wire for us. If you want to see pictures of young Megan with celebs and other visual components for the episode, we're going to make those available to premium members on the Hyperfixed website. You can become a premium member to see that, as well as get bonus episodes, join our Discord, and much, much more at hyperfixedpod.com slash join.

Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for Rooms. The End Smoked filled rooms and lonely afternoons. Empty faces go in nowhere places. Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars. No introductions needed cause I've been here before Nowhere once forgotten Nowhere once forgotten

Well I'm ambling on, and it's all gone wrong, cause I'm missing you Whoa, I'm missing you I can't complain, it's been a gambling game I'm just a few cards short So wrap myself up in your memory. Just to get me through the rough spots, I'll be missing you I'll be missing you I'll be missing you The Smoked Filled Rooms and Lonely afternoons.

Empty faces go where nowhere places. Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars. No introductions needed, cause I've been here before