If you want to learn more about Plant City and the people in it, there’s a pair of podcasts you’ll want to press play on now.
Blesspool Podcast and Hello Plant City share two goals. One is to highlight people from (or who are strongly connected with) Plant City and bring their unfiltered experiences to audiences’ attention. The second goal is to give others a platform to share their knowledge and perspectives.
That’s where the similarities end, though, as the shows take very different paths to get where they both need to go. But a podcast, like life, is all about the journey and these two shows have made theirs memorable since their episodes started dropping in July.
BLESSPOOL PODCAST
The best way to describe Blesspool in brief is like an unfiltered conversation between friends that can dredge up any emotion at any time. You never know what you’ll hear next in this free-flowing show hosted by Shaq Mitchell, Jeremiah Cooper and Kayvious Campbell, but all of it comes from the heart no matter whose turn it is to speak.
“We’re trying to keep it raw and uncut… I wanted to open it up to where we could talk about anything,” Mitchell said. “It’s raw, unstructured a little, but that’s how I wanted it to be. I wanted people to tell their truth.”
A friend of Mitchell’s gifted him a microphone for his birthday and encouraged him to start his own podcast. Though he wasn’t big on the idea at first, he eventually changed his mind and called Cooper about joining him on the show. The name came from an idea he’d had for a while and the podcast seemed like a perfect fit.
“Blesspool was a name that I thought about a while ago as far as, you know, you have a ‘cesspool’ and that’s a bad thing,” Mitchell said. “The opposite of that would be a ‘blesspool.’ It’s like a pool of blessings that we can all bring to the table, a great vibe, environment, everything positive instead of the negativity.”
A Facebook post got the show its first guest, Brian Dexter, and Blesspool was born in the blink of an eye. The second episode led to the show as we know it today: Campbell was brought on as a guest to tell his life story and join the conversation, and he had an offer to join the group full-time as soon as recording wrapped.
“It worked out perfectly,” Campbell said. “At that time, I had just left my job and I was looking for something while I was looking for a job to pass the time, use creative energy and stay focused. I definitely didn’t anticipate it going the way that it did. All the stuff we have working, all the connections we’ve made — it’s been a lot of fun.”
One of the hosts’ goals for Blesspool from the jump was to learn more about people from Plant City in their own words, whether those conversations were easy or hard. The show has accomplished that thus far. But doing the show has also taught them more about their hometown and things they haven’t experienced until this time in their lives.
“It kind of opened a lot of doors, actually,” Mitchell said. “I didn’t feel comfortable going to downtown. We would go away to Ybor. But now it’s like, let’s check out downtown and maybe if we were to come… it would start a thing and open up doors for everyone to feel comfortable. That was a big thing that opened a door for me, just starting a podcast.”
Mitchell, Cooper and Campbell are open-minded and ready for any conversation, whether it’s one they’ve had on their minds from the minute they booked a guest or one proposed on Facebook by one of the show’s listeners. They want to compare and contrast their perspectives on an issue or topic at hand with their guests in a way that everyone — the hosts, the guests and the listeners — can learn from. They’ve talked to artists, activists, business owners, educators, influencers and more. The guests may be friends of the show, people the hosts were interested in hearing from or even people hosts were inspired by. One example in the upcoming Season 2 is Dale Rice, a longtime teacher and coach at Plant City High School whom several generations of Raiders revere.
“We wanted to bring him on for the music enthusiasts that we are and have some casual conversation,” Campbell said. “Mr. and Mrs. (Leslie) Rice, growing up when I was in high school, were like my saving grace. They’re part of the reason I pushed myself to go as far as I did. Mrs. Rice was a big force in getting me to UF and making sure I was comfortable in that climate. At that point I really didn’t know what I was gonna do, coming from my background and all that stuff. It probably wasn’t possible to go to college. She made me push myself and Mr. Rice was the same way. They picked my little brother and me up on the weekends and we’d go to book fairs, there would be records and stuff. That’s what actually got me into collecting records and listening to music, too.”
They’re not just looking for big local names to join the show, either. Local listeners may hear from a guest whose name they don’t know, someone whose voice was unheard until doing the show, but the hosts know that people who haven’t been given a platform sometimes have the most compelling stories and fresh perspectives.
“Having someone who can obviously carry a conversation — and I don’t want it to be like a screaming fight — having a conversation and giving each other perspective, hearing each other out, I think that’s the most important thing to do, especially with everything going on in the world,” Campbell said.
Season 1 of Blesspool is currently on SoundCloud and each of the eight episodes has a runtime of at least 54 minutes. The group is putting the finishing touches on Season 2, which will also be on SoundCloud, and the next goal is to get the show on Spotify by Season 3. You can also follow the Blesspool Podcast page on Facebook.
HELLO PLANT CITY
You could say Arley and Adrian Smude are on a quest for knowledge about their hometown and the people in it. But that only tells part of the story. Hello Plant City is an idea that came to life when the Smude brothers came to a realization: both wanted to do a podcast, even if their ideas for a show were completely different.
“I think the pro of us having different purposes for this and coming together, I’m sure Arley’s gonna have no idea who my people are just like how I have no idea who his people are, and we’re gonna find them super fascinating,” Adrian Smude said. “The goal of a podcast for other people is happening between the two of us and it keeps it very diverse. It’s really something for everyone because we’re trying to get a diverse group of people.”
Arley Smude first got the idea to make a podcast when he moved back to Plant City in 2016. He loved the idea of using that platform to not just tell people that Plant City is unique, but to show them why it’s unique and who makes it that way. It would be an avenue for him and the audience to learn about interesting people from here or with strong connections to here, either way bringing a spotlight to the area.
“Most people everywhere focus on national issues and dialogues, and they don’t appreciate the local community as much as they should in a way that people sort of used to with things like WPLA,” he said. “When I first thought of the idea, I thought the first perfect guest would have been Al Berry. Traditional old-school radio to 2020 radio. Then he passed away and I kicked myself. Same thing happened with Mac Smith. I met him at the Photo Archives and heard all kinds of cool, interesting stories. It reinvigorated the idea that I need to do the podcast.”
Adrian Smude wanted to learn about people as well, but he was more interested in learning about the average “hidden” person next door than a well-known name in town. His idea was to preserve their stories in a way he and their families could hold on to long after they’re gone
“I do yoga at the Y and it’s me and 60, 70 and 80-year-olds,” he said. “Some of them work out more than me in more hours than me and are arguably in better shape than me… I just want to know — they’re always happy. They have every quality I want to have in their state of life and I just want to know why, how and what it is. They’re awesome people doing what they should be doing at that state of life, and they’re just that person next door that’s successfully retired. They have to have an awesome story. There’s no way they don’t.”
Though they could have easily gotten two different shows out of their own ideas, they felt joining forces to be like “accountability partners,” as Arley Smude put it, was the best move.
The podcast has released five episodes thus far. Listeners can hear from and learn about Berry (by way of his daughters), world boxing champion Chevelle Hallback, local artist Dave Letterfly, living World War II veteran Harrison Covington and DACA Dreamer Enrique Ibarra, who is the subject of the second most recent episode and spoke at length about life in a migrant family and Plant City’s relationship with its migrant workers.
Two of the episodes — Covington’s and Berry’s — were produced in a partnership with the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center. Making Covington’s episode paid off not only in educational value, but also for every episode following it.
“Harrison Covington, it’s nuts how incredible this guy is,” Arley Smude said. “I learned about him through the Photo Archives. Anne Cardenas from the archives has a ton of podcast experience and is an oral history expert. She helped with it. She helped show me how to edit and how to bring it all to the next level.”
Hello Plant City will cover all kinds of ground in the 20 episodes the brothers have planned (and more if they’re still having fun at that point, they said). The Smudes have several interview guests already lined up and couldn’t be more excited for what they’re going to learn.
“I just want to know what they did because I want to do it,” Adrian Smude said. “I would love to be them. I think more people should know that. I think it’s very relatable when it’s just the person next door.”
Hello Plant City is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. Shows are posted every other Thursday, meaning you can listen to a brand new episode right now. You can follow the show’s Facebook page for more episode links and information.
WANT MORE?
Blesspool and Hello Plant City are not the only podcasts in town. In fact, there’s another podcast from Plant City that’s designed to help you find even more of them.
The Podcast Discovery Show does exactly what the name suggests: hosts Zach Howe, Josh Howe and Kirk Griffin analyze a different podcast of any genre each week in a format that’s set up kind of like a book club without the books. It’s available on all major podcast streaming platforms and you can read the Plant City Observer’s 2019 feature on the show online at plantcityobserver.com/welcome-to-the-podcast-discovery-show/.