FEATURE: The View from the Top Room: The Joys of Shaun Keaveny’s Community Garden Radio

FEATURE:

 

 

The View from the Top Room

IMAGE CREDIT: Shaun Keaveny

The Joys of Shaun Keaveny’s Community Garden Radio

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RIGHT through 2022…

I am going to write about podcasts, music shows and series that are worthy of committed listening. I didn’t do that too much in 2021. As I have been relying more on podcasts and radio more than ever (like so many others), I feel I need to pay something back and promote those who I take great comfort from. I have written about it before, but one of the most heartbreaking events of last year was when Shaun Keaveny left his BBC Radio 6 Music show. None of us saw it coming before he made the announcement. In truth, it wasn’t entirely a mutual decision. One feels that he could have been in his afternoon slot for years to come. As BBC Radio 6 Music turns twenty in March, it would have been great to have Keaveny being present on the 11th when so many of the broadcasters get to wish the station a very happy birthday. He was with BBC Radio 6 Music for fourteen years, and he was one of the main reasons why I discovered the station and stuck with it. To me, the weekday was not complete and proper without tuning into his show! It was gutting listening to that last show back in the summer. I am going to get to the main point of this article soon. After leaving BBC Radio 6 Music, Keaveny has been busy with podcasts and other projects. His own podcast, The Line-Up, is one that everyone needs to listen to, subscribe to and review. It features guests selecting their own festival line-up (complete with catering, design and a name). He has also appeared on other podcasts…so the man has been keeping himself pretty damned busy!

Before writing about his latest endeavour, I want to bring in a couple of interviews that Keaveny has given since leaving BBC Radio 6 Music. Whilst at the station, he did the odd interview here and there. I think many of us wanted to read what he had to say after departing a station that he had made his home for so long – and, being such a popular figure there, he won so many fans and a huge audience for them. The Times spoke with Keaveny back in October. Although they incorrectly say that he was ‘axed’ by the station, he does get the opportunity to talk more about the decision that BBC Radio 6 Music made (they, essentially, wanted to move him to another slot which would not have been ideal or fair):

“I am a BBC super-fan, but there is a lot of heat on the BBC at the moment that makes it really difficult for clear-headed decisions,” he says. “Because there’s a lot of pressure from other sources. The effect of that sometimes is that it can trickle down, make people second-guess — not confident about decisions they’re making editorially. As a member of staff, I was expected to be non-partisan. But I do have opinions and they sometimes seem a little strong to be put out when I was also a BBC guy. At the end of the day, that wasn’t why I left. But that definitely exists. The BBC wants the people who broadcast to be as impartial as possible.”

But it’s intense,” he says. “I was at the Beeb for 14 years and it felt like I was the pilot light of national radio — I’m burning, but it’s a low light. But it’s constant. Chris Evans is a huge fireworks display. With our programme, it was the least amount of fuss and hassle. And on it went.”

Until, of course, it did not. So now he is on The Line-Up, in which Keaveny and a guest run through their fantasy festival line-up. His would be James Brown and Aretha Franklin, James Blunt in a comedy tent far away from a guitar. Soon there will also be Shaun Keaveny’s Creative Cul-De-Sac, another podcast in which he and a guest will run through ideas for sitcoms, novels and such that were never made.

It will be interesting how many of his listeners follow him to these podcasts and, indeed, which radio he does next. Last weekend he sat in for Liza Tarbuck on BBC Radio 2, while he has also been narrating Rockanory on Absolute Radio, a show about apocryphal rock’n’roll legends. Do people listen to a radio station or a person?

He remains in shock, as anyone would when cast off from a job they thought they were doing well. “I’ll always want to do live radio,” he says, sadly. He pauses. “Please continue to give me some work.” Radio gave him confidence. He says that he created a “little bubble of people that love you” and feels he did exactly what 6 Music wanted him to do when he started working there in 2007”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Shaun Keaveny with his former BBC Radio 6 Music colleague, Matt Everitt/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

There is a lot of positive stuff to talk about in a minute. There is another interview, this time from Far Out Magazine, where Keaveny talks about the BBC (he has a lot of love for them and what they provide in spite of a difficult split):

“What’s great about it The Line Up is its dead simple. Really, all we’re talking about is your favourite bands, your favourite festival experiences. We’re asking you to imagine what it would be like to have Paul McCartney and NWA next to each other on the bill. We’re talking about your favourite carbohydrates. Then we end up just talking about emotional experiences because music is emotional”.

In the New Year, he is beginning another new podcast too, Shaun Keaveny’s Creative Cul-De-Sac, which he describes as “me sitting in my top room going through all my stupid old ideas and talking bollocks, then I do that with a guest”.

Although he’s enjoying the foray into podcasting, radio will always be his first love, and Keaveny is already plotting to return in the not so distant future. “I’m keeping my hand in,” he tells Far Out. “I’ve not burned a bridge at the Beeb because I’m still doing bits and bobs here and their super-subbing, but I’ve got plans to come back somehow next year. But, it’s a hard landscape to get into. It’s like selling your house in London, moving back up north, and trying to get back into London”.

The BBC remains close to Keaveny’s heart, and he does worry that the institution is at risk of abandoning what makes it great in a bid to rival Spotify with BBC Sounds. “The BBC almost doesn’t understand what it’s got,” he says from a place of love rather than bitterness. “It doesn’t understand how unbelievably great it is, and it’s the world’s best radio provider. I think it’s so important that whatever happens next, they protect that, and they don’t just put everything on BBC Sounds and make everything about mixes. Other people do that, and arguably better than them,” he adds.

Despite Keaveny no longer being an employee of the BBC, it’s clear that he still has the best wishes for the corporation in his heart, and he doesn’t want them to be just another broadcaster, which they are potentially sleepwalking into becoming.

Whether Keaveny will make a permanent return to the airwaves in 2022 is unknown, but surely if there’s a commissioner with a grain of common sense, the wait won’t be too much longer. For now, the second series of his binge-able podcast, The Line-Up, is airing weekly until the end of the month before he invites us to his Creative Cul-De-Sac in the New Year”.

One of the best Christmas treats was hearing the first broadcast of Shaun Keaveny’s Community Garden Radio broadcast. For those of us who loved and tuned into his BBC Radio 6 Music afternoon show (prior to afternoons, he had a long-running breakfast show), he has brought some of the best elements to his new slot. At the moment, every Friday at 3 p.m., we get to tune into a much-needed dose of his impressions, (in his own words) slight clunkiness and amazing and unflinching love for his listeners and music. Armed with his legendary cartwall (that has various clips and sounds that listeners know and rely on) and jingles, it is pretty similar to his afternoon show. The Christmas show was Keaveny broadcasting in his top room in North London. One thing I love about the Community Garden Radio (and what we will hear when his Creative Cul-de-Sac podcast/show takes flight) is that this is a homemade and humble show. When he was at the BBC, you knew he was in a bigger, professional studio and was broadcasting to a massive audience. Now, Keaveny is at home and speaking to us from his top room (see the photo below).

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Tulloh

Yesterday (7th January) was the first ‘proper’/post-Christmas broadcast of the Community Garden Radio. Alongside Keaveny was producer Ben Tulloh, who was on hand to ensure that things flowed smoothly. Although the show is going to become slicker and a bit closer to his BBC Radio 6 Music show, it is great to, essentially, hear the cogs moving and experience this sort of raw and very homely broadcast! The intimacy one gets from listening is clear. I would recommend people become a Patron, so that you can listen on Fridays at 3 p.m. What one will hear is an hour of great music, chat and Keaveny’s proprietary blend. He is a broadcaster that is much-missed on the BBC airwaves. My hope is that he gets a permanent gig on a station like BBC Radio 2 (he brilliantly stood in for Liza Tarbuck a couple of times last year). Actually, if he gets more Patrons, I guess we can have an even longer Friday broadcast. It is the perfect way to end the working week! The sense of community and togetherness means that, from the second the show starts, you feel warm and embraced. The music selection is top-notch and awesome (yesterday, he played song from, among others, Madonna and Cleo Sol). He reads out listener comments/emails, and there is that reliable mixture of his impressions and stories.

After such a sad departure from his BBC show, we did wonder whether we would hear Shaun Keaveny on the air again. This is a much-welcomed return. I am sure he will be getting some big radio offers this year. Let’s hope that he has the time to continue delivering the essential Community Garden Radio on a Friday. Rather than this simply being a promotion piece or something fawning, the reason I wanted to write this – apart from directing people towards the show – is to highlight how such a respected and experienced broadcaster has managed to build something of his own after leaving a long-running show. Keeping his loyal listeners and recruiting new ones, I am excited to see how the Community Garden Radio grows and sprouts. It is early days, yet the past couple of broadcasts have been so soul-lifting and nourishing. 2022 is going to be a very busy one for Shaun Keaveny. Although he can do podcasts like The Line-Up from his home and do others from there, I reckon there will be other jobs and offers that will take him to new places and stations.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Tulloh

It was a shock saying goodbye to him when he said his final words on BBC Radio 6 Music back in September. The weeks and months after that must have been strange and upsetting. It is wonderful to see that Keaveny is as busy now as he has ever been. With another podcast coming and other projects in the back of his mind (he has said how he is writing a book; maybe a sitcom could come from him?), the man won’t have much time to rest! I forgot to mention that, this year, there are two huge musical birthdays happening in June. Paul McCartney (who Keaveny loves loads and does a great impression of!) is turning eighty on 18th. Four days earlier, Keaveny turns fifty. I am not sure what point I am trying to make, though it is kind of cool that we have these birthdays to look forward to. An early birthday gift for him would be subscribing to his Patreon and listening in to the Community Garden Radio. It is a weekly hour of gold that gets you ready for the weekend. Although the seeds have been planting and these are early days, before too long, we will see the radio garden…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Adams

IN full bloom!

Sam Liddicott