I conceived the idea of doing a podcast about the Seaway Valley last year, when I talked to my friend Derek Mason, known to his fans as “Chef Mayhem”. He is the former owner of the gourmet grilled cheese, burger, potato puff serving food truck that used to be at Archie’s Golf Course in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada.

Derek closed his truck during the pandemic due to uncertainty of the future. After closing, the pair of us began to brainstorm a line of spices, bbq rubs, and would go onto create cooking videos last year, and the year before. To clarify I’m not an owner of the business, that belongs to himself, and his wife Ashley, his parents also help out greatly with everything. I am more or less a marketing, and product ideas man, as well as a videographer, photographer, and musician. My name is James Hardiment, and I’m Cornwall based as well.

I talked with Derek about taking his charismatic, wholesome, family friendly personality, and starting a podcast talking about the local area, restaurants, food that type of a thing. In the end with home life (they have a wonderful daughter to raise) work life, and health issues with the pets, it just wasn’t a feasible thing to do. So I shelved the idea, as I do with many projects over the years, sometimes the timing isn’t just right!

Then a month or so ago, I decided to start to vlog, blog, and take the equipment I had built up from the cooking show we had made together, to start my own weekly podcast, in which I would summarize the blog posts of the week. After that I would interview a guest for the last 10-15 minutes, then post them for free on SoundCloud. So far, as of writing this, there are 4 episodes out, and I’m recording this weeks today. It’s called Bridge to the Seaway with James Hardiment. I named it that, in memory of the old Seaway International Bridge, which was taken down many years ago and replaced with a different crossing. The bridge connected Cornwall to Akwesasne Mohawk territory (Cornwall Island), and then another bridge links to New York State, United States.

I’m probably going to move the podcast over to my YouTube channel soon, and record it as well with video. Still looking into my options as I am using my iPhone SE, GarageBand music studio app to record audio only.

The microphones that I have been using, include a pro quality Shure SM7B, plugged into the phone using special adapter cables. I’ve also used my Rode Wireless Go Interview mic set too, which plugs into my phone. I think that going forward I’m just going to use that. It’s less hassle, at least until I can get a studio space of my own with desks, similar to a mainstream podcast, or radio show. The set up is ultra portable, meaning I can do interviews with guests pretty much anywhere. My first guest Claudine Trottier, of Focus Art Association, I recorded inside the art gallery room, my musician guest, Wade Barras I interviewed inside his car. One tricky one, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do it, is with phone call interviews. I can’t seem to be able to use my pro mics with the telephone, Facebook video call, or FaceTime. I know Zoom is a potential option, but I’ve read the quality varies depending on your setup. I could always record with two devices, and just have the phone on with headphones I suppose, worst case scenario. If anyone knows any good programs or apps for video podcasting interviews with iOS (Apple) please let me know in the comments below? I’ve downloaded one called Switcher Studio recently, gonna try that and see what it’s like, I still have a free trial left for a few more days!

I talk about all kinds of fun subjects on the podcast, my stories in music, creating it, the videos, the whole process. The cool people I meet along the way. I also love to talk about my journeys and travels across the Province, especially the local area. I really love to see my friends succeed, as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog.

Anyways, creating a podcast isn’t the hard part, it’s keeping it interesting, I love history, music, art, fashion, food, travel, and I think a lot of people do too. One thing I notice too is that a lot of people will usually just talk about the major cities and famous towns. What about the forgotten, or simply lesser known places? I thought it would be cool to shine a light on communities people worldwide may have never even heard of before, and the wonderful bunch of people that reside in them.

Anyways I got to get going, I have to record an episode of the show tonight!

James

My name, for those of you who don’t know, is James Hardiment. I am a singer/songwriter, as well as a filmmaker and actor turned vlogger/blogger. What can I say? I try to keep busy!

I’ve been making music, videos, and writing, since high school in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. My first original song was called “The Nitrogen Cycle”, I created the piece by plugging in my old Casio Keyboard into my old laptop back in 2008. I still remember the machine struggling to keep up with what I wanted to do, and it was a super rough recording compared to what I make now. The vocals were actually recorded with a half decent CAD microphone that my friend, Josh Hart, was using for his own project at the time. The song was for a science class project and that’s pretty much what I spent most of those school years doing, I even have an old album lying around that features 10 of the songs I created back then for various classes.

To create the music videos, I used to use an old Sony Camcorder that used DV tape. The tapes looked like mini VHS tapes that you would have to upload all the footage onto the editing computer using something called a FireWire. (So old school I know, I feel a bit ancient right now!) I originally edited videos with a program called Windows Movie Maker, but would soon upgrade to a more advanced program, Sony Vegas. I found I could do a lot more by upgrading to a more versatile editing suite. Eventually, my friend at the time, Brandon Rainey, would team up with me on certain projects and his camera used SD cards. The switch over from digital tape to SD was such a breakthrough in technology, I’m so glad we don’t use tape anymore it took forever in comparison!

After high school came university, I attended the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Brandon and I would team up to form “Vince Emerson Media”, it was basically my middle name and his with media at the end of it. It began with a couple of comedy skit videos, with various actors we had befriended in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program, basically a fancy acting school! They were interesting people to work with, and we had a lot of fun, when people actually showed up to shoots.

After first year came to a close, Brandon and I would split on a 1080p HD Sony Nex VG-10 camera, he also built a custom editing computer PC. We would spend the summer after freshman year, creating a feature film called “Windigo” with a huge team in the Cornwall area. It would eventually get over 1 million views on YouTube! A small portion was also shot in Windsor, once the summer came to a close.

After that, we would work on various projects until he would depart the projects in 2013 to pursue other interests. I decided to focus on my music projects again, since that was what I really wanted to do. 2015 rolls around, and I began to team up with my old high school friend, Josh Hart, to work on original music again. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, I worked on a pop album “Wine” with him that I completed in 2017. It was around that time I started to move away from using computers and laptops to create my music and start using my iPhone SE, which came with a program installed called GarageBand.

I was familiar with GarageBand, it was basically Apple’s base music editing program. I had used it in high school before, but I was more of a PC guy at home for the longest time. Upgrading my phone and discovering that I could now build all my music on my iPhone was a huge breakthrough for me. What truly knocked me off my feet was how smoothly the program would run on such a tiny machine. If someone had told me back in 2008 that I’d be building 30 track pop songs on a phone in 2017, I’d have probably laughed them out of the room, but here we are!

Eventually, I would invest in some more equipment, and today, I am able to plug in my keyboards, as well as my professional Shure SM7B studio microphone, used to record pro vocals. You really don’t need a huge studio anymore to create professional sounding music.

Flash forward to 2021, and I teamed up with Chef Derek Mason, in Cornwall, to create a cooking show YouTube channel called “Melted Mayhem”. I would shoot the videos on my phone, with a rode wireless GO lapel microphone hooked into the device for optimal sound. I downloaded a program called Cyberlink Power Director on my phone, and can edit the episodes with that. I’m so blown away by the jump in technology in my lifetime. My smart phone is my portable pocket studio and it still hurts my head thinking about it!

I am constantly creating now at a faster rate than ever before. I love the internet and I love smart phones for that reason.

Can’t wait to make more, until next time!

James

Pictured: James Hardiment creates music in the Garage Band program on his iPad Mini 4. He purchased that to use with his iPhone SE, as it has a bigger screen for playing instruments, but now just mainly uses the phone for convenience!

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