We recently connected with Jordan & Jordan Laird & Urban and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan & Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

We grew up as next-door neighbors, with our moms acting more like sisters than neighbors a lot of the time. We often went back and forth to each others’ houses, doing things for and with each others’ families, and shared lots of laughs and tears together in Medina. Our moms’ bond became our bond, with Urban’s mom teaching us more about the mechanics behind music (how to play, sing, etc) and Laird’s mom giving her undying support. Both of us had very strong and independent mothers who taught us how to speak up, be creative, work together in literal harmony, and emulate that exact independence and strength they have.

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?

Starting in 2015, Laird was a format DJ for Baldwin Wallace University’s 88.3FM The Sting and throughout her college career carried many positions on the WBWC Board of Directors, including promotions, programming, and ultimately General Manager. In 2019, Laird was one year post-graduation when she realized she never got to host the specialty show she always wanted. She called on her lifelong friend and then-roommate, Jordan Urban, to co-host a specialty show with her on Tuesday nights at The Sting. It would feature one business and one band or artist every week and it would be called LoCLE Grown. Each week on the show, we interviewed a band and/or business, featured live performances in the Greater Cleveland Area, and built on a network of people who enjoy all things local.

This has changed in many ways since COVID-19. In August 2021, we were no longer at 88.3 The Sting and doing Instagram Lives from home. When we went off-air, we stayed persistent and tried partnering with a couple of different independent groups in and around the Cleveland area, Unfortunately, neither of these partnerships were long-lasting, and we realized the best way to get our vision of LoCLE Grown where we want it to be would be to take it there ourselves. While it was discouraging at times, we learned a lot in this last year in real time.

LoCLE Grown is something for the Humble. It is a reminder that we all start somewhere. We are a community of creatives in and around the Cleveland area, and we are proud of the artists that come from here as well as the ones who make Cleveland a stop along the way to fame. We want to dive deeper into the framework of local music, no matter what local means to you, all while providing entertaining commentary and GREAT MUSIC like you’ve never heard before!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Every year we come back to 88.3 The Sting to do an installment of their 40-years-strong Summer Marathon Series. Traditionally, this is 18 hours (7am-1am) of the same artist. LoCLE Grown has done a marathon the last 3 years but instead of 18 hours of the same artist, the last two years we’ve had a different artist featured each hour. It is super ambitious because we have to time out a set up, soundcheck, interview, performance and switch over for the next hour 16 different times throughout the day with 16 different artists. Our date this year was 8/18/22, and we had 16 wonderful artists confirmed.

Just about a week before the show, we found out that the studio, which has been in the same place for many decades, got news that they will be relocated to a different building with all new space. This was great news for the station, but left us wondering if we would be in the old studio or new studio by the day of the marathon, or if the station will even be on air that day. They sounded hopeful that we would be okay by the day of our marathon, but as we were a few days out, it was seeming less likely that they’d be ready for 16 live artists to record and perform all in one day.

Less than 2 days before the marathon, Laird connected with the GM at the House of Blues Cleveland and was given permission to move the marathon to The Cambridge Room. We rented a bunch of equipment at A Max Music in Akron the day before and were able to switch all of the artists to come to the Cambridge Room instead. Instead of broadcasting on-air, we went on Instagram Live and we recorded each interview and performance as best as we could and are currently releasing each interview as our Season 2 episodes (every Sunday and Thursday)!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

We just want to shine a light on the performers in Northeast Ohio and surrounding areas. Giving an artist a space to talk about their work and what drives them motivates us to keep doing our thing. This podcast started selfishly, we just wanted to see artists performing acoustic/ live in front of us. We also started the podcast because we wanted to be like “training wheels” for these really talented artists to have (a lot of the time) one of their first experiences interviewing. We break down the wall and just have fun on the show, and the live performances have been the cherry on top. The listeners are other musicians who now connect with that artist and grow the network of local musicians. Everybody wins!!

Contact Info:

• Website: loclegrown.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loclegrown/
• Facebook: facebook.com/loclegrown
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI3b7vpcPsSHeRL0I__IGYw
• Other: linktr.ee/loclegrown