Interview with Drinking Partners Podcast

I recently attended a fundraiser in my town that was an evening of food and comedy. One of the comedians in particular, Ed Bailey, brought the house down and was even brought back up for an encore. One thing he mentioned in his act was that he was one half of a podcast called Drinking Partners, with fellow comedian Day Bracey. After the show, I looked up the podcast and decided to give it a listen on my commute. The premise of the show is that Ed and Day go to various Pittsburgh establishments, sample microbrews and chat with interesting people from around the city. I spent the next 30 minutes laughing quite a bit but also learning interesting information as they were interviewing Braddock Mayor John Fetterman. Looking back through their archives, they have an impressive list of guests from City of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto to local legend Rick Sebak to former Steeler turned full time artist, Baron Batch. Ed and Day were gracious enough to give us some time. Here's more on Drinking Partners:

1 - For our readers that haven't heard of you - tell us a little about your background and how you got started in comedy.  We both started doing standup in the fall of 2013 which is actually how we met.  Day is from Braddock and had already begun his life as a comedian at that time by posting short videos on YouTube.  Ed is from Cleveland and began doing stand up basically off of a dare from his girlfriend.  Since then we have both been able to carve out respectable comedy resumès including opening for a slew of national headliners such as Hannibal Burress, performing at the Innaugural Pittsburgh Comedy Festival and Burning Bridges Comedy Festival.

2 - What made you think 'we should start a podcast?' Having starting stand up at about the same time we both gravitated to each other.  One reason obviously was because we were at the same stage in our development, but we were also two of the few young black comedians hitting the open mics.  What we ended up noticing is that the other comedians would naturally gravitate to our back and forth banter at open mics/shows/get togethers.  People would suggest that we do a podcast and when Nick Miller from Epicast Network approached Ed about doing a podcast it all kind of just fell in line.

3 - Do either of you have a background in radio or is this a 'figure it out as you go' thing? No radio experience prior to Drinking Partners other than Day doing his video blogs.

4 - Do you guys plan the podcast in advance or is it more about just letting conversation flow over the beer? We really focus on letting the conversation flow naturally.  We obviously like to give background on the guest and highlight any accomplishments but the focus of our interviews is for the listener to get a better understanding of the person and what drives them, interests them, etc. Our concept is literally friends having conversation over drinks and we want to give the listeners a side of our guests that they don't get with other interviews.

5 - If you could interview just one more person for Drinking Partners - who would it be and why? 
Day - "Sade. Because I just want to be in the same room as Sade. Preferably a sauna."
Ed - "Martin Lawrence, nobody made me want to do comedy more than Martin."

6 - How can local people attend one of your recordings of Drinking Partners?
 epicastnetwork.com/partnerspod
Instagram, Facebook & Twitter - Partnerspod
iTunes, Stitcher & Libsyn - Drinking Partners

We promote all live podcasts and live comedy shows on the website as well as IG, FB & Twitter.  Our live comedy shows are monthly in downtown Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre.

Thanks again to Day Bracey and Ed Bailey for taking the time to answer our questions! I highly recommend Drinking Partners for an entertaining podcast. And common sense – save this for after the kiddos are out of the car – it’s comedy for grown ups :)

Gwen O’Brien works full time in higher ed, works full time as a wife, works full time as a mom, works full time as a dog mom and occasionally finds time to write or edit. She resides in McDonald and enjoys reading, yoga and donuts (not necessarily together) when she’s not working.