The Debris Show: 'The Core' Is Not The Cure

Summer drudged on, and we didn't hear from Ric for several weeks. I started to think we probably never would. Bridget and I had been planning to continue the show at some point, if we could ever figure out exactly what it was we wanted to do. It was going to take some planning, because David had designed, more or less, the entire system with which we did our shows. It was going to be a "from the ground up" type of project. But not hearing from Ric kinda kept us at bay on moving forward; we both wanted him onboard but neither of us knew if he would ever contact us again.

Having Tavis us with us for the Summer, we stayed very busy with day-to-day kind of stuff, with frequent visits to my mother's place as well as almost daily swimming sessions. I was busy at work as well, so the show wasn't really a concern for a couple of months. Then one day, I got a message from Ric about maybe getting together and figuring out something show-wise. He invited the three of us to his place for dinner, and to discuss new ideas. We had a great time, enjoyed great food, and started the groundwork for what would be a new effort for a show. The three of us still had a bad taste in our mouths from how it had ended a few months earlier, and we were all wanting a fresh start. We decided to change the name of the show, and to fine-tune our content. We wanted to be smarter, less low-brow, and wanted to attract more viewers as well as guests. Basically, we wanted the show to grow up.

I had come up with the name "Core" a few weeks after the Debris Show ended, but had kept it to myself. I didn't want to just say "hey guys, I got this name" and then nobody else even have a say in it. I waited until we all decided to consciously try and come up with new show names, and then presented it to the others then. Everybody loved it, and it wasn't even close. So now we had a fresh start, new enthusiasm, a new platform, and finally, a new name. That September, "The Core" debuted. The initial response wasn't overwhelming, but we anticipated that because we'd been away so long. Our second show back, we planned to do a live show from Wakita, OK to cover the 15th anniversary celebration of the making of "Twister". It was a well-planned and coordinated endeavor, save for one small detail: none of us considered the fact a small town in the middle of BFE would probably have less-than-stellar internet coverage. We set everything up, but Ric struggled to get a solid connection most of the day, which ended up in a frustrating "we give up" moment of defeat that afternoon. We moved the show back to its regular time and did it from our hotel room that night. Still, we weren't really generating the response I was looking for.

The show continued into Fall, and we began alternating broadcast locations between our place and Ric's. It was a cool deal, because each location had its own setup, based on what we had to work with. Plus, we really liked hanging out at Ric's anyway, so doing shows from there just added to the fun. To our eyes and ears, the shows went well, and were quite similar to what we'd been doing with Debris towards the end of its run when Ric was part of the show. But for whatever reason, our numbers weren't growing. Had we been away too long? Were people just not interested in the medium anymore? Were we getting too far away from what we'd been with Debris? I even wondered at one point if not having Reimer around any longer had cost us viewers.

On the surface the shows were running great, but for me personally, I started to feel robotic during broadcasts. I found myself constantly trying to remember and focus on what exactly it was we were trying to be, trying to do. I started to feel torn between going with my instincts (which was what Debris had always been) and trying to maintain a certain level of professionalism and composure (which was what The Core had been founded upon). I started to wonder if maybe I was becoming more worried with trying to increase our numbers than I was actually doing the show. I became obsessed with the pre-show music lists, and those became a bigger focal point for me each broadcast than the actual show content. It became such a crutch for me, that if anything went wrong during the pre-show to interrupt or upset the music, it would completely mess my head up. After a while I became so bad, the others would get visibly upset by my tantrums. I was worried about a half hour of music that no one else cared about, and wasn't giving a second thought to the actual show. My heart just wasn't in it any longer because at that point, regarding the show, I didn't know who I was, what the show was, or who we were supposed to be targeting.