A Wide Range of Talents, Jobs and Occupations
Dowd is a co-host of the growing Worst Little Podcast (tagline: Podcasting Live from the Recent Past). He’s also an organizer of musical events such as the Marianarchy Balls, which benefit a local person in need, started in honor of Marianne Psota , a local music promoter who died in 2004.
It’s difficult to keep up with and list all Dowd does. He’s had more than a half dozen different jobs this past year, many of them simultaneously. In late December, he announced he had just started working as booking manager at Dead Ringer Analog Bar on East 4th street. That bar is located in Reno’s newly anointed Brewery District, and says it plays only music from analog formats, including some of his favorites, rock, punk and metal. The eclectic mix of the bar’s vinyl music in addition to comedy, spoken word, hip hop, djs, goth, trance, funk, soul, experimental, puppet shows, performance art, tumbling and silks to name just a few fits both Dowd and Reno to a T.
Dowd, a fashionista whose facial hair and haircuts go through many of their own variations, is very much involved in many different aspects of Reno’s music, bar and theater scene, from bartending and holding nighttime bar services to playing music at big downtown events to managing entertainment Facebook pages.
Listen below to Drew Winkelmaier’s audio first person account of catching up with him:
A Slow Blowing up of a Balloon and a Simmering Pot
“It’s been this progressive slow blowing up of a balloon and I definitely think we are at a really critical point,” Dowd said of Reno’s thriving cultural scene. “You know, not quite before a balloon bursts, but when a pot is simmering right before it boils over. It’s really hot, it’s very creative. There’s a lot of people doing really great stuff here,” Dowd said.
The podcast which “has been mucking up the internet since 2010”, according to its website, was recently recognized by the Reno News & Review as Reno’s top podcast.
“We just kept doing it, putting our friends on and it got traction and we find ourselves here eight years later being a real repository of art and culture and people, with interviews of local creators. I kind of did some ballpark math and realized we’ve literally done over 1,500 almost 2,00 hours worth of interviews,” Dowd said.