Paso Robles guys share random thoughts on-air
From left, Bill Roof and Rob Sharp record an episode of their podcast, “Random Thoughts with Bill and Rob.” Photo courtesy of Bill Roof
Bill Roof and Rob Sharp upload two podcasts every week
Paso Robles Bill Roof and Rob Sharp have been good friends for years, first meeting through the Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce when they both served as board directors. Sharp owns Sharp’s Hill Vineyard with his wife, Pamela Hill Sharp. Roof is general manager for Adelaide Inn. Together they started a podcast, Random Thoughts with BIll and Rob, at the end of February. The 12th episode went live this weekend.
The podcast was born after Sharp’s son was a guest disk jockey on KJUG a year ago. They were all enthralled by the microphones and the whole experience, so Roof and Sharp started talking and decided they could do their own show.
“We formed an informal group of friends who would meet every Friday sharing cigars and drinks and just doing what guys do — tell stories,” Sharp said. “It was so much fun [we] decided to record some of these via a podcast.”
Roof said they talk about whatever topic comes to mind. “Sometimes we don’t decide [what to talk about] until we push record,” he said.
Though Roof jokes on-air that they record the show in Sharp’s basement, Roof said the studio is in the lower level of Sharp’s Paso Robles home.
“We’re both professional business men who never grew up, I guess,” Roof said. For now, he said, the podcast is a hobby. “We have grand aspirations of getting our listeners up to a hundred grand, selling advertising and retiring.”
“Our favorite part of doing the podcast is two-fold,” Sharp added. “One, it’s just plain fun, a great outlet. The other is it’s just a project to see where we can take it and how big it can get.”
For each show, Sharp comes up with random thoughts, Roof said, and Roof is responsible for the comic relief.
“We look for weird news stories we can have fun with,” he said.
The show also has a foreign correspondent, Mike Gibson, the former executive director of Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce, who now lives in Mexico. While the duo is looking into being able to take call-ins from listeners, currently they solicit random thoughts from listeners via the show’s Facebook page. The show is typically made live on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Roof said they try to be a couple episodes in case something happens in life — last week, he said, Sharp got sick and they weren’t able to record. The shows are recorded on an iPad with a mixer plugged into it and two microphones plugged into the mixer.
Roof said that both of their wives love the show. “They probably laugh harder than anyone else — because they know us,” he said. “We’re having a lot of fun with it. We started it more for ourselves than anything else.” Right now, he said, the show has had 400 listens and 50 subscribers, though he’s not sure how those people found their podcast.
“People are finding us,” he said, adding that the podcast is available on iTunes.
“People should listen because its just fun. No boundaries, no agenda, just enjoying the randomness of the moment,” Sharp said.
