Alex Lewis

Alex Lewis is a Philadelphia-based independent radio producer and musician and the co-founder of Rowhome Productions.

Lauren Passell: Hi. So when I tell people I moved to Philly, they’re like, “Why Philly?” Here are two questions for you WHY PHILLY? And also…why are there so many goddamn audio people here? I love it, but why? 
Alex Lewis: I don't feel like Philadelphia is seen to the wider world as an audio city, but it really, really is. I'm from New Jersey. I went to college in Chicago. I moved to Portland, Oregon, after college. Then in 2012, I went to the Transom Story Workshop in Woods Hole, MA and afterwards thought I wanted to move back to the East Coast but I don't want to move to New York. I wanted to be close to my family and friends. Philadelphia had at least three public radio stations I knew of. I was like, If I move there with my background and my skills, I bet I can find a job making radio. 

Most people go to New York.
That's where a lot of energy is.

What was the vibe at the time?
This is pre-Serial. Gimlet didn't exist. This was just a couple of years before all that stuff started blowing up. Back then if you said you wanted to do anything with audio, people were like, I don't even have any follow-up questions because I don't care that much. 

I felt like I was becoming a public school teacher, choosing public media or public radio because it's a job that has a ceiling for how much money you can make in your career, but it's a good thing to do. It's a good thing to do for the world. It's a good way to spend your life. The people in public radio are the best people I've met.

So what’d you do once you got here [to Philly]?
I moved here in summer 2012. I thought I’d just work at a coffee shop or something. Someone had connected me to Yowei Shaw, we got beers at Dock Street in West Philly. (Now called Carbon Coffee.) Yowei was like, ‘do you want a producer job at World Café?’ I thought my work life was sorted from them on because literally the next week, she connected me with the executive producer there. They hired me pretty much on the spot because of Yowei's recommendation. I was like, Philadelphia is a magical place where people give you radio jobs when they barely know you.

Then why are there so many other audio people here? Did they take similar routes to you?
There are two main reasons. One is that there are so many public radio stations here -  WHYY, WXPN, WRTI, the classical music, jazz one. And there are community media stations, PhillyCAM, Scribe Video Center, and others. In 2020, when big podcasting, was really blowing up, a good number of people moved here from elsewhere because they had a remote job with Pineapple Street or something and could just have a higher quality of life for cheaper than living in New York, DC or LA.

Tell me about Rowhome.
So I had been working in public radio here, and  became a full-time independent producer around 2014. Post-Serial, the opportunities just ramped up and up and up for people who had experience making stuff. It went from being like, ‘I'm pitching stories to the local or national public radio stuff’ to being getting reached out to by all these companies who needed a producer. By 2018, 2019, I had at least 5-10 years of experience and my inbox was crazy with opportunities to work on interesting things for more money than I thought was possible.

Do you remember having a moment where you noticed the change?
Seeing how many people were excited about Serial and using their phones to listen to audio. I remember being on the subway in New York when a Serial episode came out and noticing that everyone was listening. I mean, everyone's listening now, but not everyone is listening to one thing. Then you’d go and meet up at a bar and then talk about it. I thought, ‘people are going to get used to this and they're going to want more of whatever this is.’ 

So I had been working  all these freelance jobs or year-along projects at places like Pushkin and Audible and WHYY and WXPN here in Philadelphia. And I met (Rowhome’s co-founder) John at WHYY, where he had been a producer for Fresh Air for many years. There was all this work available but no podcast company here. John and I had a lot of intersections.  We went on this reporting trip to New Orleans with WXPN, and I got breakfast with him and was just like, “Have you ever thought about starting a company before?” I thought we could become a one-stop shop, a really high-quality production team based in Philadelphia.

How are you and John different and how are you alike?
As soon as we started going, I knew we complemented each other so well. John's about 15 years older than me, a long-time public radio guy, has all the skills and knowledge, and has lived in Philly forever. Unlike John, I'm not a business guru. I love being out in the field with a microphone talking to people. I'm a little bit more by the seat of my pants. John is very fastidious and meticulous. My eyes glaze over when someone sends me a long agreement or someone's like, “You need to do your taxes now.” From the production standpoint, John is really good at the sound design, mixing, final master delivery part of things, which I think comes down to his fastidiousness, too, and just his level of experience and skills. Often, our projects break down, generally speaking, to me being the managing producer.  I help assemble our teams and listen to things, manage things, or run out in the field and collect tape, and get everything to the point of delivering him a session, and then he does all the back-end post-production stuff. My biggest advice is to find a  partner who's very different from you.

Why did you call it Rowhome?
Many of us here in Philly live in rowhomes, and we wanted a very Philadelphia-oriented identity. And we didn't just want to work on podcasts, we still wanted the opportunity to work on radio programs and documentaries, audio tours or other creative things. More than 50% of our work is Philadelphia-based stuff and I think that's a really cool niche for us. Also, I live here and I love it here and I want to be part of life here in a certain way.

Will you do video for your clients?
We're really an audio-first company, that's our area of expertise. I'm not against video. But if you're making something that is meant to be listened to, I think often adding the video element is just a distraction and it can really take away from the work you're trying to do. Because it's really rare that anyone is good at all of that stuff.

Do you get better tape with a microphone than if you have a camera?
I think so. The video element is someone caring about the way they look, the way they're saying stuff on tape. Right now, if we were filming this conversation, I worry I'd be acting a little bit.

John said something to me that I had never thought about before. Terry Gross still doesn't do Zoom. She's in a studio. We don't need to be seeing things.
Yeah, it’s like what is the goal of this recorded conversation? Terry Gross' goal is just to have the best radio conversation possible.

That's really good. What is the goal? Take it back a step. What is your biggest hope for Philadelphia, the city?
I just want us to have a really healthy and growing and expanding ecosystem of audio here. It's just going to keep getting better and better for everyone if we just have a thriving audio scene: We're going to make better shows. We're going to have cooler events . That includes Rowhome. That includes all the other people who are working in public media or for companies. I would love it if we had things like RESONATE or like Tribeca Audio here or any of those things. 

We spend too much time by ourselves in this world of audio making. I think any chance to hang out with other people is just generally good in the world we live in. And audio people are great, and we should all hang out more often.

Thanks, Alex!