I'm a fellow travel podcaster and journalist (The Big Travel Podcast) and came across this podcast when reviewing other travel podcasts for an article I'm writing. Eric has such a lovely way of telling a story and a brilliant voice. Love it. This is exactly what I've been looking for and sounds amazing. Can't stress how great this show sounds enough. Great show + great host = Home Run Podcast. Subscribed! Fascinating! Love indigenous music and listening to Chuck’s vivid descriptions were as close to being there as possible. I am so intrigued with these off the beaten path places and this podcast offers a glimpse into realities otherwise unknown. He really captures the “spirit” and Eric, your podcast connects us to that world. Wonderful! e-travels with e. trules is a very informative and entertaining podcast about Mr. Trules travels across our planet over the past many years. But it's more than just that. It's also about his life beginning in New York and how he created a life for himself, his wife and now their adopted son in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles.
What's especially enjoyable about his accounts of his life is not just what's going on in the present but also the historical knowledge he imparts with a sense of humor.
He probably remembers Gene Shepard from many many years ago on WOR A.M. Radio in New York City and I as a young child back then would listen to him on the equivalent of podcasts back then. Younger people may recall the movie "A Christmas Story" and the famous saying about not getting a Bebe gun because he will shoot his eye out. Well that was written by and voice overhead by Gene Shepard.
Mr. Trules has a similar ability to tell a good story and to do so in such a way as to bring you right there.
I only recently discovered podcasts and this has got to be one of the best ones out there! Well worth a sub, DO IT NOW, i did! Listen to this podcast and the man who makes it. He will rekindle your desire for adventure, knowledge, and just maybe teach you how to catch a ride on the train of opportunity. I love travel and foreign cultures, and it was great to find a podcast that adds an entertaining, offbeat angle to a genre that can quickly become stale. Highly recommended. If you love travel you will certainly love this podcast! Eric is an amazing story teller and he will transport you to another world every time. I definitely recommend this podcast to all travel lovers. This podcast transports me evey episode to a entertaining adventure that lets me leave my current reality and allows me to see this crazy world as told by the euthusiastic, talented, and engaging storyteller, Eric Trules. I find his travel stories enlightening and very relaxing to sit back and listen to. Besides Trules mastery of telling his stories, the podcast is well-produced with excellent audio and sounds that help in making this such an addictive listen. Can't wait for more! This was a delightful and entertaining narrative. I tuned in thinking it was a podcast about one of Eric's wild travels only to find out that this was a piece about marriage, and a damned good one at that. Love the story telling aspect of the early episodes: the score, the performance. It's really engaging. As a podcaster, I love the behind the scenes episodes as well. Looking forward to where this show will go! Trules' voice and the sound design make E-travels with E-trules a lovely soundtrack when working. His stories will transport you to another world while you tap away at your cubicle. I hope he post more and more often! Highly recommend. Love the interplay between discovering new places in the world that are ancient and making new personal discoveries. Yes, he's crazy to be taking some of these trips, but what else is new? He's being truly Trules. His inner clown is always smiling.
Thanks a bunch.
Mark Berger and Rain Worthington A great listen. Transported me. Looking forward to more! I love it! 5+ I was lucky enough to be in Echo Park, Los Angeles this November and heard some of Eric's podcasts before they were even available on itunes. He has the perfect pitch and tone of the seasoned traveller and raconteur, I slipped comfortably away and was lost in distant lands and times. A real treat to hear Eric's voice among hoards of podcasts out there. His point-of-view, cadence, and energy makes for trascendent listening. LOVE it! Trules has such a great radio voice. Truly enjoyed the podcast, as it got me yearning to backpack again. Really high-quality production, with great music (and I dig the whistling at the end). Eric Trules is a natural born storyteller. He also happens to be an ever-searching, wonderfully curious, thoughtful and profound individual, with a unique perspective on the wide world -- a world which he's circumnavigated far more than I could even imagine. Though, after listening to his podcast, it's inspiring me to attempt to catch up someday and ramp up the timeline on my exploration of this mysterious, beautiful world.
As much as the travel adventures are wonderful to hear on their own though, the real treasure here comes in his thoughtful reflection on humanity in its many garments and idiosyncracies. He certainly could have been a cultural anthropologist if he didn't become a theatre professor...but I'm glad he went toward the stage; now we get the benefits of his runminations on humanity through the vessel of a uniquely gifted, entertaining storyteller.
I've seen him perform many times, but this podcast is a great reminder of how much character and warmth his voice carries with every phrase as a trained performer. Trules is a cultural treasure, and I can't wait to hear more installments of this powerful travelogue. The podcast is a delightful medley of travel, history, and Trules! His voice over the music and sound makes it easy to picture the fantastic stories. The storytelling is as hypnotic as the music. For those who love traveling but don't get to do so as often as you wish, this is the go-to podcast! Eric creates a sense of place like no one else. I felt like I was right there alongside him on all these amazing journeys. What an experience! Love, love, LOVE this! Inspires me to keep exploring the world with our new little family addition. Great first episode. Trules has a natural knack for storytelling, and exploration. Looking forward to the new show! The widely traveled Trules is also a gifted writer, performer and teacher — and this podcast benefits from all those talents Trulles is a unique, funny, and intelligent guide in the world of travel, life, and love. Between the music, sound design, and pleasant low rumble of Trules' voice, this is a podcast that will satisfy that craving for a story that lets you live by your mind's eye. In the introduction of the podcast, Trules begins laying down the different stories and inspirations that he has quilted together over his life. From his natural curiosity in history to his appreciation for the unforeseen, you get the sense that Trules has a narrative that bridges his personal discoveries with the shifts the world has undergone throughout his life.
I'm looking forward to seeing how these stories flesh out. I can tell that we're in for a treat. Really great and entertaining podcast. Hooks you from the first episode. I'm very impressed with the content in this first episode and can't wait to hear more of Eric's stories. I am thrilled that I came upon this podcast. Trules has a wonderful quality for engaging his listeners, and will transcend you from your living room couches to vast corners of the world. The podcast's professional quality, coupled with Trules' creativity and natural skill for storytelling, will keep you coming back for more. It's a must - can't wait for more! Based on the promo episode of this show, I've subscribed and am definitely looking forward to more! This podcast is extremely well-produced, with audio that excites and amuses. I love the concept of unique, personal and engaging travel stories from the host's real-life experiences, combined with audio scapes that bring listeners directly into the story. I have a feeling this show will be one to keep an eye on, as it holds a great deal of promise for future success. Can't wait to hear the many places Eric Trules will take us! Ooooookaeeeeeeeeey! Amazing podcast. It’s so great to hear travel stories and really unique histoires from Eric Trules life.
Welcome “Behind the Scenes” with Ethno-Musicologist, Chuck Jonkey
Listen Now
One of my favorite things about doing this podcast is the way one guest leads me to another. I actually met Chuck for the first time doing this interview. He was enthusiastically introduced to me by Jim Dorsey, my extraordinary explorer-adventurer guest of a few weeks ago… whose Episode 31 you can find in the library. Both Jim and Chuck are members of the Los Angeles Adventurers Club, where I went myself for the first time a few weeks ago.
Who’s the Who?
So today I’ll be talking with Chuck Jonkey, adventurer, composer, and musician who transforms his off the beaten track travel experiences into sound, music and film. Chuck’s exotic adventures have taken him to the furthest reaches of the human world. Referred to as an “ethno-musician-anthropologist”, Chuck seeks out some of the world’s most isolated tribal groups, embeds himself in their cultures, and records their music. His musical explorations have taken him from the deep rain forests of the Peruvian Amazon to the Far East Asian jungles of Thailand. To Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. As well as to West Africa, Borneo, Indonesia, French Polynesia, Morocco, Russia, China, India, and many more.
Chuck owns Sonic Safari Music, his own music publishing company, with which he has produced and published over 110 CDs of exotic and ethnic music from all over the planet. He has a massive collection of tribal musical instruments – including an entire gamelan orchestra from Indonesia, an extensive collection of rare African drums & percussion, and a houseful of unique and strange-sounding instruments from India, Nepal, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, and Peru. Chuck also makes many of his own instruments himself: like a glass marimba, a multi-stringed toucan, a balloon guitar, a one of a kind stringed harp, and other weird, sound-generating devices.
Like Jim Dorsey, Chuck documents indigenous cultures that are disappearing from our planet. He does it by recording and replicating their music, and by sharing his discoveries in the TV and travel industries with his documentary films and musical scores.
Chuck recently spent over 2 years working with Disney Imagineering – composing music for the new Disneyland in Shanghai, China. His music has been featured in the films “Rambo 4, “J.F.K.”, “The Doors”, “Mighty Joe Young”, and on the “Travel Channel”. He has performed and recorded with the Manhattan Transfer and appeared with Ravi Shankar at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Please listen to Episode 33 by clicking the ARROW at the top of this post – right below “Listen Now”.
To see Chuck’s vast musical library, go to Sonic Safari Music.
What We Covered
0:01 – Weekly Intro, Music by Amanda Yamate
0:25 – Introduction of Chuck Jonkey with his music, as Trules welcomes listeners to the podcast
4:45 – Chuck talks about building and playing his drum sitar and then about his musical background
7:20 – Chuck talks about the “spirit” of primitive and indigenous tribal music
8:40 – Chuck goes to hear the music of the Osing people in East Java and talks about how the tribe reacted to his recording and filming them
10:40 – Trules’ Indonesian wife no longer wants to live in Padangbai, Bali, but Chuck talks about Indonesian music through different eyes.
11:56 – Chuck’s first “aha” moment as a missionary Peru as he talks about the origin of Afro-American music in the Andes
13:50 – Trules asks Chuck about Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album, the first commercial “world music” album that won the Grammy in 1987
14:50 – Chuck gets a little technical as he talks about different tuning systems in world music, particularly about the Indonesian gamelan made out of bronze
17:31 – Chuck recalls his “special meal” of rat, far up the Amazon beyond Iquitos, Peru.
19:20 – Trules shares his own “eating rat” tale, an unwanted substitute for guinea pig, outside of Machu Picchu, also in Peru
20:22 – Chuck on some of the most exotic things he’s collected in South America including those made from an armadillo
21:28 – Trules remembers passing the hat for a roving Peruvian pan pipe band in the Andes
22:29 – Chuck recalls a Navaho-Ute sacred peyote ceremony in the American Southwest with a kettle-like water drum
26:09 – Trules asks Chuck about a “dangerous” or “life-threatening” adventure and a book on the ayauasca culture called “The Wizard of the Upper Amazon”
29:18 – Chuck recalls traveling to central Java outside Yogakarta, Indonesia, to record “cave music” played on stalactites 30:53 – Trules asks about Sonic Safari Music, Chuck’s music publishing company and his “balloon music”
32:30 – Chuck takes the “Trules Travel Quiz”
46:59 – Trules wraps up, thanking Chuck, giving contact information, and wishing the audience “Happy Trails”
To catch up with all the episodes from Season 1, to listen to my last off the beaten path travelogue, “Moon Over Chefchaouen” about my comical crossing of the Spanish-Moroccan border – by foot – or to hear all the episodes thus far from Season 2, please go to the Library on my home page. There you can listen to all the musically-scored, sound-immersive travelogues, as well as to the rest the “Behind the Scenes” interviews with fellow travelers, podcasters, artists, and friends.
Coming up in 2 weeks, “Moon Over Chefchaouen, Morocco, Part 2”, Episode 34.
Support the Podcast!
We’re still looking to complete Funding for Season 2, so to make an easy, monthly donation to the podcast, please just click HERE – or on the Podbean “badge” on my website. Or…. to make a one time Donation, go HERE.
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Enjoy Behind the Scenes with Ethno-Musicologist, Chuck Jonkey!
Please let me know what you think and…
Happy Trails…………
Trules
Production Credits & Episode Links
Recorded by Scott Barber at the Barbershop Recording Studio in Echo Park, Los Angeles
“e-travels with e. trules” Intro and Outro Theme Music composed by Amanda Yamate
Sound design by Alysha Bermudez
Produced by Harry Duran at FullCast
Contact Chuck Jonkey on Facebook HERE.
And find his Sonic Safari Music on the web HERE. ALL MUSIC “under” our interview is Chuck’s.
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The sale runs from May 29th – June 4th (11:59 PST) 2018
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