Johnny and I had met for lunch a few weeks before we taped this. We'd tossed around the idea of creating some sort of podcast, but we could never settle on anything that would be worth talking about every week. At this particular lunch, we decided the best thing to do would be to record our conversations and see what happened. This day, which had been the warmest of the year so far, we escaped the crowds and found a spot on the north side of the lake to tape our first episode.


Incidentally, this was the last video Johnny and I shot before his move back to Seattle. We'd taped two episodes earlier in the afternoon, and, hanging out afterward, Johnny let it slip that he stopped an assault. I've always been adamant about him not telling me too much about one of his stories in the hope that the spontaneity would come through better on camera. And so with this episode, I simply hit "record" and made him start talking.


This was the second Mailbag episode we taped. What you can't see in this video is just off screen, a shirtless man with a cold/cocaine problem was leering at us and occasionally blowing his nose. We also sidestep the television pilot writing question knowing full well that we were in the middle of negotiations for the Secret Squirrel Project.


This was the episode where I felt we really hit our stride. We'd taken a few missteps with camera placements and content, but I think we finally figured it out on this one. We didn't have much of an idea as to what we wanted to tape, but us just ranting seemed to work. (We had to cut this episode in half and from here on out we instituted the "Johnny Time Limit" Rule)


Johnny and I have some serious issues with the "dumbing of America," which is proved quite successfully by Lauren Conrad's book being a bestseller. We shot this episode on the Highline and had to ask the people around us not to walk into the shot. This was not entirely successful.


Sometimes you just need to let Johnny rant. This was one of those cases.


This marked not only Baierman's first appearance on the show, but also our first guest in general. We'd met after work in Madison Square Park and spent almost an hour looking for a proper place to tape. Johnny was insistent that we get the Flatiron Building in the shot - but we also needed a platform to rest the camera on. (We didn't have a tripod). The result had us situated in the middle of Broadway - dodging buses.


This happens to be our least-watched episode. I'm not sure why, but I assume it's because of the wind on the microphone.


This is my favorite episode of Three Chords & the Truth. The story behind this one is that this was the second version we taped. We'd shot one earlier, but the disc we were shooting on got damaged and shut down half-way through. And so, we had to shot another. Same topic. Same story. Different reactions.