On Creative Collaboration: Matthew Schneeman & Spoon Jackson
Matthew Schneeman details his and Spoon's friendship, and explains how their dynamic has guided their podcasting adventures.
Matthew Schneeman — I met Spoon Jackson over the phone in 2019. I was story hunting for a radio feature and a producer from Uncuffed, a podcast out of Solano Prison that Spoon worked on, put me in touch with him. As a relatively new journalist (certainly new to more consequential topics such as incarceration — my previous pieces were on things like a charming pet cemetery or a hockey league for eighty-plus year olds), I was excited to be taking on a story that was more serious.
I knew Spoon was a character from the start. He had a confident swagger on the phone as he danced around ‘computer lady’ — the prison’s automated message that plays every five minutes — as she interrupted our calls. Sometimes, because the phone line wasn’t always clear, he would mishear something I said and begin responding to the wrong topic. I would correct him jokingly and give him a bit of shit. It gave us a somewhat comedic rapport which I think served us for the first show I did with him called AT NiGHT i FLY. The pitch of that podcast was to get me, someone who’s not that into poetry, through Spoon’s poems, to give a shit about poetry. This wasn’t that hard. Spoon’s poetry is quite accessible and direct and, even to a prose-loving person like me, beautiful. For that series, Spoon told stories about growing up in Barstow and I did supplemental field pieces where I went on mini adventures to a dog spa, or to hunt a pigeon in Brooklyn. I recorded some music for it and it was a great show
A couple years later we teamed up again on a larger, more official show called Navigating Freedom — a show about people in and around California prisons. I asked Spoon to be a producer on the show with me. I thought he could do some writing and pitch episodes, maybe host one? Spoon had always been very casual and spontaneous on the phone, and this translated pretty directly into his producing. Instead of pitching story ideas and writing narration, he would spur of the moment (certainly without giving me a heads up) grab someone from around the prison in Solano and call me up with them standing by. “Hey hey, what’s up? Listen, I got this guy who is in the firefighting program, you said you wanted to do an episode on work in prison right? Anyway, here he is…” and I would do the interview on the fly. I loved it. I like improv and Spoon got great people and, most importantly, they trusted Spoon enough to pick up a phone and talk to me, a complete stranger, 2,000 miles away, and tell me their life story, their biggest regrets, their crime, their hopes, and everything they’ve learned to heal themselves and atone for their mistakes. Spoon hooked me up with people who ran half-marathons while in prison, were in a gardening program, wrote science fiction, made a sweat lodge out on the yard, and more.
I’ve kept up with Spoon. I help out by ordering his quarterly packages for him, a way for him to buy stuff he can’t get at the commissary (which usually ends up being about fifty pounds of beef jerky—I’m exaggerating, but by how much, I’m not sure?). He recently was transferred to a new prison and this one has food cells (which I think is like a vending machine but with fresher food in it?). One item he was particularly excited about was clams. He used to have to have me order him clams. We have a running joke about clams. On the phone, when I’m ordering his quarterly package for him, he’ll ask for clams and I’ll suggest ‘oysters’ because clams sometimes are out of stock. He’ll then go on a mini-rant about how oysters are gross because ‘they got their shit still in them!’ Then, three or five months later he’ll have me order another package and I’ll, hilariously, pretend he wants oysters and he’ll complain about oysters. It’s not much of a joke, is it? He doesn’t really laugh at it, but maybe he puts up with me and my attempt to entertain myself.
To prepare for this blog post about collaborating with Spoon, I asked him if he had any memories about when we first started collaborating together. He said he remembered that he liked the idea for AT NiGHT i FLY and that a handful of people liked the show a lot. Within a minute he was pitching a reboot — “Maybe we could do a live version, something for Rabbits of Realness.” That’s Spoon for you. He just wants to connect and make things. I’ve been too busy, a bit burnt out on audio, and so I haven’t taken him up on the offer to make a new show, but he keeps asking every now and then and I, like him suffering through my recurring oyster/clam bit, indulged his plans and schemes for the next project. I recently had some clams from a tin on a camping trip. They were good! I have no idea if they’re better than oysters but even if they aren’t, oysters still got their shit in them.
Listen to Spoon and Matthew’s podcast Navigating Freedom.
Great piece. Your rapport with Spoon is clear. Love the irreverence.