We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eric Senich. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eric below.

Eric, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Learning your craft is one of those things that once you start learning, you never stop. There’s never a time when I feel like I’ve learned it all.

I started learning to write at an early age. I was about 14 when I wrote my first published article. My Dad was the sports editor of our hometown newspaper. He assigned me to the local Pee Wee football teams and, later the Little League baseball games. He was my first teacher and best teacher. One thing that always sticks with me is him telling me about the importance of the lead; a sentence or two (maybe less) that will get the reader’s attention. Make them want to read on. “You want to get their attention,” he would say. “Once you have that, they’ll read the rest of your story.” From there I continued to learn on the job and took journalism classes in high school and college to sharpen my sportswriting skills. Eventually, I landed a job as sports editor of a newspaper in the next town over from mind – The Cheshire Herald. Now that was a learning experience! I covered every high school sport and was in charge of laying out the entire sports section.b I learned how to face the pressure of the job, especially in a town like Cheshire, CT. They took their sports seriously!

As far as broadcasting, that was much more challenging. It took me a long time to feel like I was grasping it. I fell in love with radio as a kid watching my Dad, who covered sports, as a DJ and newscaster at the local radio stations. He taught me as much about radio as he did writing. The problem was, that I had more confidence in my writing than in broadcasting. I studied the local DJs from the FM rock stations I listened to as a teen but I never felt I had what it took to get behind the microphone of a professional radio station. Other than making some comedy tapes of my own at home, It wasn’t until I was in college that I got serious about it. That moment came in the summer of 1991.

There was a program on the local rock radio station WPLR in New Haven, CT called “The Amateur Hour’. The host Ed Sabitino was in my Botany class at Southern Connecticut State University the previous spring semester. I heard him talking with another student about working at PLR and recognized his name and voice. We struck up a friendship and he eventually invited me to host one of the “Amateur Hour” shows. From that point on I was hooked! I joined the SCSU college radio station, taped every show, and would get advice from anyone and everyone including, of course, my Dad. But it would be years before I finally got to where I sounded good enough for a program director to give me a shot. That was at WCCC in Hartford, CT (the one-time home of Howard Stern). They put me on the overnight weekend shifts – midnight to 6 am. I got paid $5 an hour! From there I only got better by simply doing it. Turn on the mic, do your best and learn from your mistakes. I also developed my style, which comes with time. I had DJs who I was a fan of so I would emulate their approach at first. Like a musician influenced by the blues who would “take the music past where he found it”, I took their styles and slowly developed my unique voice while leaving elements of those DJs in the mix.

One craft I never expected to learn that I am so glad I did now was production. There was a time when I needed income. I would take any gig I could get. I was hired as an assistant producer with a group of stations in Hartford, CT. There I learned how to produce commercials using sound effects, and music beds. I was taught how to use the latest production software to lay down those elements and record my voice over the top. I received scripts written by the sales staff and it was my job to put together something that grabbed the listener’s attention in 30 to 60 seconds. I continued to do that at my next gig as an assistant producer at a station in Fairfield County (WRKI FM in Danbury, CT). Learning how to edit audio elements is a huge part of podcasting. Unless you have someone to do it for you, you’ll have to learn how to edit what you just recorded!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born and raised in Connecticut. I was also born into and raised on radio!

That statement is true in more ways than one. As a kid, I would visit my Dad (Jim Senich) at the radio stations he worked at and felt a connection from the start. He was a DJ, a sportscaster, and a newscaster and I was the son who followed in his Dad’s footsteps…every step of the way. Eventually, I fell in love with rock and roll through my older brothers who had albums on vinyl and cassette from all the great classic rock bands and artists. From AC/DC to The Doors To Lynyrd Skynyrd To Pink Floyd right through to ZZ Top. I loved it all. As a result, I got hooked on FM rock radio. Every day after school I listened to the area rock stations, especially WHCN in Hartford which had a popular local DJ named Lich. He set up the songs he’d play with fascinating information about how the songs were written, recorded, etc. I was hooked. But it would still be some time before I pursued my dream of being a rock and roll DJ. At that time, I was preoccupied with pursuing my first love – sportswriting.

After covering local sports for the town newspaper (The Observer in Southington, CT) in junior high and high school, I majored in journalism at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, CT before graduating in 1994. That would lead to my first full-time job in journalism. – the sound of record scratching here – But something happened during those college years that would alter the course of my future. After striking up a friendship with a DJ at the area rock station (Ed Sabitino from 99.1 FM WPLR in New Haven, CT), he hooked me up with an appearance on a Sunday night program called “The Amateur Hour”. I got to play the songs I wanted and introduce each for 60 minutes. Talking into a microphone that broadcasts my voice over 50,000 watts of power? Like a deer in the headlights. I’d never been so nervous. But, man, did I love it. It took me hours to come back down from that high and it was a high I chased from that point on.

In the fall of ’91, I went to my college radio station and asked if I could join. Just like that, I was a DJ. There, I was taught how to cue up vinyl records, talk up the songs just before the vocals kick in, the whole shebang. Eventually, after a training period, they gave me my very own show one night a week. When I went home each weekend, I grabbed a different set of records from my older brother’s collection and brought them with me to my dorm so I could play them on the air. I had a book called Rock’s Movers & Shakers published by Billboard in 1991 that I would use for information to introduce the songs. I started putting together a set of cue cards with trivia for each band and artist. Sitting in that radio studio one night a week for a few hours was a feeling I’ll never forget. I’d play a record, sit back, and look out the studio window. The campus at night was so peaceful, lit up by the stars under the night sky. It was like all time stopped. Heaven on Earth.

Eventually, college ended so it was time to move on with my career goals. While applying for jobs with newspapers, I continued to intern at WPLR until I landed a job as the sports editor of a newspaper in Cheshire, CT in 1996. But I didn’t give up on my radio dreams. I kept DJ’ng at my college station each Wednesdday night to sharpen my skills and make audition tapes until I finally got my first paying gig in radio. It was at WCCC in Hartford, CT. I did overnight weekends for 5 dollars an hour! The day before I went on the air, the program director told me I had to come up with an on-air name. During a brainstorming session, I reeled off my favorite movies. One of them was “Fletch”. And so my name on the radio was to be “Fletch”!

Eventually, I moved from weekend overnights to the 3 to 7 pm shift on Saturdays at WCCC. That lasted about a year before I got a job with another Hartford station (93.7 The Point) doing weekend mornings from 6 to 10 am and commercial production during the week. That lasted from 1997 to 1999, which was when I got my first full-time on-air job. I was hired to do 6 to 10 pm weeknights after producing commercials in the afternoon for a rock station in Fairfield, CT (WRKI FM). I also did the 10 am to 3 pm Saturday shift. From 2000 to 2006 I got to interview famous rockers like Gregg Allman, introduce and meet my favorite bands (Blues Traveler, Collective Soul), and just have an all-around blast!

In 2006, I decided to make a career change. For financial reasons, I had to step down from my job with the radio station and join the 9 to 5 world. Not an easy decision. In fact, it wouldn’t be long before I went back to WRKI to do a Saturday mid-day shift in 2009. It was also during that time that I re-ignited my passion for writing. It started by writing blogs for the radio station website around 2016. I often wrote about my favorite band Van Halen. One day I was contacted by the publisher of the Van Halen News Desk website Jeff Hausman. He read a few of the articles on the web and asked if I’d be interested in writing for his website. I gave it all of a second to think about it before saying “YES”!!! I’ve been writing and uploading content to the VHND site almost daily since around 2017. As for that weekend radio position at WRKI, it lasted right up until around 2019 or so when I discovered podcasts. And so my next adventure began…

One craft I never learned in my radio days was engineering so the idea of launching my very own podcast was pretty daunting. Step by step I somehow got there, though. I bought the mixer and the microphone. I downloaded the editing software and, thanks to Youtube and the internet, figured out what plug goes where, and, before long, I actually had it figured out. I launched my first podcast called DISCovery just for fun. I picked an album, song, or artist and gave all of the interesting stories behind them. It quickly became a success. At one point it was trending on Spotify. I was shocked since it was just a creative release for me. That’s when I made the move to launching a monetized podcast and launched Booked On Rock.

I knew that if I was going to do a legit podcast from a legal aspect, I couldn’t play copyrighted music or content. The challenge was to come up with interesting content without playing music. That’s when books on rock and roll came to mind. What makes a great podcast? Great stories. Who has all of the compelling stories and the skills to tell them without the ability to play the music they write about? That was my eureka moment. Invite authors to be a guest on the podcast! This was the perfect way to entertain music fans while also helping the authors promote the books they worked so hard on. I haven’t looked back since. Today, the Booked On Rock podcast can be heard on all of the major podcasting platforms and can be seen on YouTube with no end to this story in sight. If you love rock and roll music, you’ll love this podcast. If you’re an author who wants to get the word out about your book on rock, you have a platform!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

It would be to leave the 9 to 5 office job behind and rely solely on my creative passions to provide me with the financial support needed. I’m grateful for the day job for many reasons but to be able to do what I love full time would be a dream come true. Working in radio full-time was that dream come true until I reached my 30s and realized I needed to make a decision. Radio doesn’t pay much and I knew the future of the medium is in jeopardy due to streaming services and podcasts.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The completion of the creative circle. The process of creating something, sharing it with the world, and finding out that someone out there was moved by what you created as much as you were moved by creating it. There is nothing more rewarding than that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonrockpodcast/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonrockpodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bookedonrock?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbqUFiA-IGq97wkB5FEJB4Q