Santa Fe Reporter: "There's A New Tour In Town"
"It's a deep dive into the fascinating history of the little town. You'll find interviews with locals, some of whom have lived in Madrid their whole lives, and a narrator with a soothing voice ...
One might be skeptical of the accuracy of the GPS, especially when all the buildings are so close together, but that's not the case; it works exceedingly well ...
Every building in Madrid, be it a little jewelry shop or a public bathroom, tells a story."
-- Santa Fe Reporter (October 22, 2018)
the story behind these stories
I got the idea for the Madrid tour while researching a different audio project. It occurred to me that my hometown has such a fascinating history, and so many incomparable storytellers, that this tour could be both an introduction for the curious visitor as well as a vault for Madrid's collective chronicle. The advancing years of many old-timers was an added consideration. In sad fact, a distressing number of voices on the tour have deceased -- yet with great humility, I believe that a small part of their stories live on here.
I realized that to achieve the production level which this documentary deserved, I would need funding to pay the storytellers for their contributions, buy recording equipment, and promote the project. So I organized a crowdfunding campaign, Bingo at the Mineshaft Tavern and Kickstarter. It was so successful that I was able to expand the project's scope, and ultimately recorded over seventy hours of interviews. Cutting down all those interviews into a tidy two-hour walking tour, I was forced to leave out a number of especially picante tales. Some of these may be found in "Too Hot For Tourons," now available through discreet inquiry.