Guided by Voices GRIFFIN MCELROY REVE ALS HOW A SIMPLE PODCAST WITH HIS T WO BROTHERS GAINED A CULT FOLLOWING—AND JUST BECAME A T V SHOW By Brittani Sonnenberg Photographs by Matt Conant
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childhood imaginary friend? Most of us had one. Mine went by the spunky name of Judy Polly. The rest of her has since faded, but I suspect we nurture imaginary friendships as adults, too. Maybe you’ve got a badass guardian angel. Or you invented a boyfriend so your sister will quit bugging you about meeting someone. Or maybe you, like me, feel like the voices of your favorite podcasters form a circle of invisible intimates. You take long walks and drives with them, and they offer advice and crack you up. Sure, they do most of the talking, but you’re in more of a listening mood with them anyways. What’s it like to be that imaginary friend, the weekly voice in our heads? When my friend Peter mentioned that his buddy Griffin taped a podcast that enjoyed a devoted following, I had to inquire
further. “Devoted following” turned out to be an understatement: “My Brother, My Brother and Me,” (Or MBMBaM, as it’s shortened) now in its seventh year, enjoys a cool 5 million downloads per episode. Like a humble taco truck turned brick and mortar foodie darling, their audio show recently became a TV show. The premise is brilliantly simple: three brothers offer listeners “advice” and opine on burning Yahoo Answers! topics like “Will the Loch Ness monster get into Christian heaven?” The podcast was also conceived as a way for the brothers to stay in touch; they live in three different states. McElroy, who lives in North Austin’s Wooten neighborhood, kindly agreed to meet me at Genuine Joe’s and shed light on the life of a podcast baller. He’s been having a good year. There’s the TV show, a new baby, and, oh yeah, showing up on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Media list for his work
as founding editor of Polygon, Vox’s gaming site, in addition to his four podcasts (including “Rose Buddies,” a Bachelor “fancast” with his wife, Rachel, whom Griffin describes as “the funniest person I ever met.”). Over a cappuccino and a sandwich, he told me about a childhood steeped in comedy, his biggest podcasting lesson, and the challenges of developing a TV show. I love the brotherly banter of your podcast. Is what we hear on the show what it sounded like at your house, growing up? More or less. We engaged in a kindspirited contest to make our parents laugh. We cracked jokes whenever we were going through tough stuff. Comedy is a central part of our DNA. I have a eight-month-old son, so I’ve been thinking about what cultural stuff I’ll wind up passing onto him. Our dad passed on his love for Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Second City. It’s how our family communicated. Our dinner table was basically like a sitcom writing room. We’ve tried to mimic that in the podcast. That’s intense. Did it feel competitive? Not in a painful way; it wasn’t like we were keeping score. There was an expectation to come out with something good, not to just make the first obvious joke. I didn’t talk that much as the youngest, I had to pick my moments. We each have our own discrete ways of telling jokes, our own styles of humor. It was harder to make my mom laugh: Dad was always cracking jokes, so her expectations were sky high. tribeza.com
| AUGUST 2017
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