Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to the DIY Garage. I'm Brian Joselin and we're coming to you today from SEMA 2024 in Las Vegas. With me today is Brian Brennan, editorial director at in the Garage Media who publishes Classic Truck Performance, Modern Rotting and all Chevy Performance magazines.
Before we get talking to Brian, I just want to remind you that you can catch the DIY Garage on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and all other popular podcast platforms. You can also catch us on YouTube in video format and you can go to Eastwood.com garage and click the podcast tab to see us in either format. Either way, we hope you'll join us and subscribe to get every episode. So welcome to the Garage here. We have a lot in common with that name. It's great to have you here.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Well, thank you for making your name Brian too. It's easy for me to remember you're.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: The second Brian we've recorded today too. So it's a common name. Yeah.
I gotta ask, how many SEMAs for you because I know you've been in the business a while.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, technically my first SEMA would have been in the early 70s, so let's say 72ish, 3ish. And of course I've missed a few over the years, but by and large I've been here every year. The fun part is I remember the SEMA show one year it was at the Anaheim Convention Center.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Very few people before he came out to Vegas.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And at the time, Dick Wells was the head.
He ran the marketing arm of SEMA and whatnot. And I actually took a drive out here with him the day he made the presentation to the Chamber of Commerce.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Hey, we do this trade show, it's called sema and this is what it does. And it's regards the automotive aftermarket. And we're growing and we'd like to come to Vegas because we need more space. Well, the fathers in Vegas gave it some thought. Well, you know, we can give it a try. We'll see if it'll work.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: It's working out pretty well for.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: I think that's.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I think a lot of people may not even realize that it hasn't always been in Vegas. It started in Southern California. SEMA's based in Southern California.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And the earliest, earliest shows people will even remember Dodger Stadium out underneath the stadium structure, the seats that was in the hallways there that get you around the stadium. So it has a storied past and it's got some great names. Some of the first companies that were involved, they are the core of this industry and many of them are still around. And that's good. Yeah, very good.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: I know you've been in the publishing business us a long time. Give me a little backstory on how you got to in the Garage Media and your magazines because I know, I know that wasn't.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Well, deep well, in the garage media, as you said, produces the three books, Modern Rod and Classic Trip Performers and and all Chevy Performance. And we came about. We are a product of the beginning of COVID and we are also a product of the fact at the time, Boater Trend was the company name and it had all of the car magazines, the top of the farm magazines, about 20, 22. And they decided to just stick with their video format, their film format. And so they parted ways. They raised all of the. Well, they raised 19 of the 21 books. So they went away. That's when all of a sudden I became unemployed and thought it's Motor Trend and autism.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Those are the two remaining.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. But the reality is there's some speaking and I believe will occur here shortly where Motor Trend and Hot Rod magazines have been purchased. And so that's going to change now that that takes us from COVID up to now.
But prior to all of that, I spent 25 years there with the motor trend company, which before that was all sorts of names, but it was based in Peterson and I did Street Raw and then I had my own group of boas. So there was Street Grader and Vet magazine and Classic Trucks by Caina, Chevy High and then Super Chevy. So I, I headed up that group. A bunch of guys who I still to this day work with a number on. I mean Rob40A, who was the truck book back then, is doing our truck F now. Nip Licata, who was doing the Chevy books back then, is doing a Chevy book now. And some of the ladies in the office, I say ladies, I'm trying to be polite, but they're so much younger than me. I call them Turles Airtight.
They worked with us while we were at the other cutie and it was a seamless transition, but worked with CSK Publishing, which I was an east coast based company that did Muscle Mustang to Fast forwards.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: There were a lot of integrations over the years.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And what happened was is it became K3 and they had purchased CSK and then it started growing and it was actually CSK, that organism that was purchased Peterson. And then some of the books went away and some did this and some did that. But since the early 70s I mean you and my Harbucks. Yeah, these were all of us growing up before we became famous. By it was just guys that got together and you gotta do something to pay the rent.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yep. So you made a cautious decision. Stick with print as and it's part of the format.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Talk about that a little bit.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: What people have to understand in the early days there were print magazines. That was pretty much it. How you got here information in this day and age pic. I mean you have social media, you have websites, you have YouTube, you have all types of personalized forms like Instagram, that type of social media. And then you have RIP magazines. But just so everyone understands, yes, we do lovefully print magazines. But this same magazine is in a digital format and it can be delivered to your iPhone, your iPad and your computer wherever you want. We understand that in this day and age, print is not the only way to get your information. My favorite wheel, the American five spoke mag wheel. Think of the consumer or the enthusiast is the center of that hub. It's what holds the wheel together. And the difference folks are you got print, you have digital, we have website, you have social media, you have YouTube, you have all of that. And then throw in events and live events. And of course we're at all the live events that we have video clues that film the live events. We have the editorial degrees such as myself who go out to events and handle the print. So yes, we do crip much, much larger.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Some publications have abandoned their credit altogether. For you what's the value? And I'm with you, I show value as.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: It's a valid question.
Remember one of the founding books of the whole industry that got it going was Hot Rod. And then after Hot Rod you had rod and custom and whatnot. And as time grew on a book called Street Grotten, well they, they cultivated an audience.
Now that audience is on the higher end of the age spectrum, but they haven't stopped doing the sport and they still prefer to get their information input.
Having said that, we understand the younger guys coming up. They're used to having their cell phone with them and they're used to getting their information immediately and seeing it on their cell phone. So that's why we're appealing to the core audience strength. But we understand the future is electronic so we're blending them together.
Interesting aside, there's no question the future's electoral. We understand in our. I just produced our. Well, there it is. I made a little play on words. It's the 50th issue, not our 50th year anniversary. That's four and a half years. And we have now proven it works.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: A monthly is a very.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: It's a strong commitment for a couple of guys who fund this for their own money. It's been an experience.
We have found that the core audience is supporting Steph. Well, what did that mean? Well, that mean we have to prove to the advertisers that we have in the book that if you. You print with us, that's still a viable term for your dollar. Right.
But we explain to them you're not only getting we're also including you out of the digital.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Looking around the whole.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yes. The whole kratz. When they sit down and they get. People have now been exposed to electronic media, social media, et cetera long enough to where okay, it's not the new kid. I'm the locked. It's one component that I need in a market. Protein.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's interesting. I printed a Land Rover Ivy about four years up until co vineyard assure. Interestingly, I'm a turning point for a lot of people on and we were print oliva. You know, people loved eating that disappeared with magazine. There wasn't another screen in their face. Right. And we got a lot of respect for doing a wren magazine out of the gate. It was not a cheap advert at all, but it was a great product. And I think a lot of people still enjoy disconnecting from the digital world from time to time.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: You mentioned about getting away from a screen and getting in your dark room and relaxing and they have a book. There's something about the tactile feeling of having printed pages, which is one of the reasons why we went with a slightly oversized form.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: That's a nice part of the book.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: And we went with a better grade of paper because we wanted to enhance that experience.
Invariably when you get to the car feature site, I am here to tell you there is no if, ands or buts about it. A guy wants his car or truck in print on magazine because there's so few in a given year.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: It's like you've had to run a gauntlet and you were fixed and you made it here. It's like anything else, whether you're doing it electronic, a digital website, etc. No matter what you're doing or whether you're doing print, if you have an original idea. People love origins. I'm not saying I discovered print. Well the Taika materia covers originally but it's the way we present it and it's the Enthusiasm we bring from past and our enthusiasm to participate in the hobby going forward. That's what's do it. Yeah. I know what you're saying, but believe me, there's a lot to be said for crit.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: And the quality matters a lot more these days. The ones that kind of fell into comic book kind of blew it out. Small formastic fields. Anybody may or.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Well.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: And it's not a. It was at a $9 cover price with. So it's a more expensive.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Endeavor for the reader so that they're getting value.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Well, what we used to say when electronic media first came on the scene to print and they were competing, the one thing we always. We tried to point out to the advertisers was understand that this. There's a financial commitment to this.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Our cover price of wine Dot. There's a financial commitment. So the guy buying this must like what he sees, must be an enthusiast and he has every intention of doing this for a while and building project.
Whereas if you get the casual viewer on live.
No disrespect, but that's what you get. You get volume, but you get a lot of azure. That's about it. You don't get that firm commitment. And so that's what we believe we bring to the car. We believe we bring committed enthusiasts.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: I can talk magazines with you all. Don't trust me. One of the other reasons I wanted to have you on because you've been in the industry for so long and been part of SEMA for so long, just to talk about what you're seeing as a magazine publisher. I'm also an attendee here in terms of new trends within a very mature kind of market. Right. The street routing. It's not a new market, but it's constantly evolving. So how has that changed in recent years and what do you see on the horizon?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Well, you bring up a very good point.
The way something moves forward is it evolves. So that means it has to change. And that's what the SEMA show has done. It's evolving. It's changing the people we see in the halls here. Yes, there's a lot of familiar names. There's a lot of new names to the point where I had no idea what some of them are. So I got to sit there and read heads and notice. I said read.
I've got to read about what they're doing and they're producing. And I go, oh, that's a cool idea.
But at the core value of our hobby and the industry is something called creativity.
Everybody Thinks they've got the next best widget. And so we have all these car builders out, and they have a vision. That fundamental idea has not changed since day one. There is a young guy who is now an old man now and a longtime builder, but there's also that young guy hasn't really built his first successful project yet. They both have. You're at the core. They're built to say that desire to succeed and be creative and show the world what they can do. I see things and I go, whoa, that's cool. And it's because someone much younger than me and much newer to the industry has taken his creativity and what he's learned, and he's pushed that bar just a little bit higher. He's opened a few more doors. I walked the show this year at first, and I went, okay, and then I started looking a little deeper. And what I'm seeing as far as trends, there is no question that what's being built is being built at higher level.
The technology that's being used and the tools is advancing. So the end product is even more than debt and whatnot. I am very excited about where everything is going in the future, knowing full well I may not get all of it and I may not understand it, I may not even like it, but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is this is the next iteration.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yes. Have you seen any trends from the past that have been younger generations of discovery?
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And the funny thing is, it doesn't look the same.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: But when you look at it, you get it. That makes sense. And I see that with everything. I don't care. Now this. This is a, you know, C2 Corvette.
That's something that's from the 60s. You know, that. That era. But you take a young builder, Chris Ryan, you built that. Now, he's. He's not a young builder, but he's not one of the older builders. He's right there in that evolving mixture of builders that quite good and a lot of good ideas. And he can take what I might have done 50 years ago, but he's using what's available to him today, and he's taking it to that fixed level. So, yes, I don't care if it's an early car, whether it's a Corvette, whether it's a later model truck, whether it's a C10 from 67 to 72, or maybe it's something from, you know, the 78 and later or 90, they're all being blended in together.
It's actually quite fun to look At.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
With you being based in Southern California and this culture really evolving largely out of Southern California. Are you seeing other kind of regional friends that Are you seeing cars come out of places other than selling Southern California at this point? Oh, all the really high quality stuff.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, when the trends and all of this first started, let's say in Southern California, the fact of the matter was there were guys in the Midwest, Darryl Starper, there were guys in the south builders who were building cars. Or the east coast.
What the west coast builders have that no one at the time.
And this is where immense technology of lovable place.
All magazines were produced in Southern California. So I'm working behind a desk. I gotta go do your story. It's pretty easy for me to get in my car and drive to Burbank, West Hollywood or to Orange county or crevard to a builder and get a story. So who's getting the egg? The local cars. And so that's when the first street rod events, the first one being in Peoria and then, you know, we all are familiar with the National Street Rod association and good guys.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: All of that. It was those events that started bringing individuals like you and I in their own cars out of wherever we live and forcing that force, but causing us to come to a different area. I can look at your ideas, you can look at mine. And we went home and we ended up with different iterations of that idea. But if it's the idea, we shared something. Well, the big time builders came together. Well, people don't realize how good a friend these builders are to one another.
If you go to there's an event called the Trooper Crown of Rotting. And it brings in a lot of the really great cars in the country. That's a given. But what it also brings in is at any given time there'll be 15 to 20 major builders. It's the. With all due respect to SEMA, it's the only show that I have seen that's had this many high profile names in one place one time. You could actually talk to me. I'll ask my dumb question, but I get an honest answer.
And so the electronic media, the best thing it's done for us is its lever playing field nationwide.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: I was noticing some of the violets both ends in there. And it seems like maybe I'm not familiar with the names, but it seems like you may be bullying people that already have a following of their own. Social development.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, the fellows who write and take the pictures are. Many of them have Been around a long time.
Some of them are newer, younger guys that are coming up. We're cultivating what they're doing. Nothing replaces it.
I don't care how much technology you have at your fingertips or how good you are for even how creative you are, there is something that comes from having been there, done that, and that's what a lot of these guys bring to the tape. And. And it's the stories you never hear about. Like when we're shooting either this cover or this cover here. John Jackson, he shot like he shot both, I believe.
What went on at that shoot. What funny story can you tell? And was it a good experience with the car owner and the car builder? And does having seeing it in the magazine now can only discycle there? There was one time, like poor Bobby Alloway, we were shooting a cover of his car and it was a car that was being debuted here at SEMA and it was going to be at the HRIA banquet and it could be on the COVID of Screenwriter magazine and partake in the photos that it was a driving shot.
And we kept telling a little faster, a little faster until it went a little too fast and he clipped the what's called the brow on a 34 roaster down here at the bottom and it ruined the pain.
Abby, to this day has never forgiven me. It keeps reminding me how much time that cost him to fix that so they could get the car back in the trailer and get it out here to the Seaman Show.
Another one that I'm on the Alloway stories right now. But there was another one that had at the 49th annual Grand National Roadster Show, Bobby's car that he built once. It was the last of the boycottings and bodies that he was doing. On the COVID I put the COVID blurb, is this America's most beautiful Roast? Well, the magazine came out the safe time of the show that was all by design, but people interpreted it different. Meaning I knew the car was going to win and oh my God, the flag he got from the show promoters and whatnot. But it's those kind of behind the scenes stories that every magazine cover has. And that's something that maybe at first when you look at the magazine, you don't realize it's all the untold store that are fantastic. And that's why things like podcast are fun for me because they allow you to sit down with any number of people and you get to pick their brain and invariably that story comes up that you never would have seen or heard about. And now you get to present it to the world. And that's what make podcasts so interesting is you get at the moment or recollection in someone's mouth that didn't make it anywhere else. One last seat.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Thought ahead.
All the talk about younger generations not being interested in cars. Are you saying that or do you have open future of no. The auto well depicted hobby in general.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: On a broader circuit the simple answer is no. It's exciting. Everything is going good. There's lots of future out there. What I am seeing though from a social context when I was growing up and I was 14, 15, 16 years old, I couldn't wait to get my driver's service. I didn't care what I drove as long as I could drive my grandkids. That just gave away my age. My grandkids are past the point of having to get dry beats. They don't rely on cars the way we might have because a lot of their traveling can be done electronically.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yes, I have an 18 year old daughter. I know.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Okay, all right, you get it. Now having said that they're just going to come back into it and they are doing it in their way. So they do spend too much time on the electronic media but they're getting exposed to a lot of AIDS and when they and they'll settle in on on Tapis. I don't care if it's nitty now I notice there's a little bit more interest. You know it is a little bit but it'll grow and when that happens that's such a such a good feeling. And so short answer your question is yes, I feel good about Tahabi and I know we didn't talk about Eastwood at and all of that but I had such. They worked very closely. We worked dry lower to the nick over the years. Oh Kubinsky for years and years and we had our tool column where we did lots of fun stuff and I still have all my tools that he and I, he helped me get. Still have them in the toolbox. Still have them in the garage. Still there. And that's something that is missed in all of this. It's the hands on feeling that the personal satisfaction you get from working in tools and it's a way to save money. So you buy tools and you work to do something. It's a good thing. But it gives you so much personal satisfaction and I think what it does is it enhances your core of your self worth. Absolutely. And then that evades out into how you do your daily job, whatever that might be. It's the introduction to that one tool that you can pull, the one thing that makes you dream. Good stuff. Appreciate it.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Great talking.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Enjoy the rest of the show. Are your feet hurt yet?
[00:23:32] Speaker B: My feet gave up yesterday. So we'll just do the best we can right now to finish out. And I hope we have a hell of a fun day with four interviews.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Very much appreciate it. Thanks so much. You're welcome.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Brian.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Sa.
