(upbeat music) - Hey out there, Akronites.

Welcome once again to Around Akron With Blue Green.

Now on this episode, we're gonna meet up with a singer, songwriter.

We're gonna go to a radio station.

We're gonna meet up with some candy makers and we're gonna find a place that's truly odd.

Now, to kick this show off today, we're gonna head over to Kenmore and meet up with Jim Ballard at the Rialto Theater and learn all about this singer, songwriter's career.

Let's go see what Jim Ballard is all about.

(rock music) - Well, I was always around music, because my family was musical on both sides.

And so, music was just around me all the time.

I never thought about it as something people did as a living and something I heard on the radio or records.

But I remember being a little kid and one particular song, Peter, Paul and Mary's version of "If I Had A Hammer" came on.

Around that time too, I mean, I was maybe 10 and around that time, the civil rights movement was beginning to happen.

And I was kind of tuned into that and the song struck me and it was the first time a particular song struck me as something that wasn't just something you danced to or whistle to or sing that it had a point of view it had a meaning.

And so, from that time, that song has always been like my first song in a way.

And as it turns out it was written by Pete Seeger.

As it turns out "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" was also written by Pete Seeger.

And I didn't know it as I got a little older, I was listening to that song.

Didn't know Pete Seeger had written that.

The Byrds was one of my favorite bands as I became a teenager.

They did "Turn, Turn, Turn" written by Pete Seeger.

I never realized that until I was a little later, when I began to get into the sort of genealogy of songs and realized how influenced I was by Pete Seeger.

And then of course, later on when I had some records out and began to play, I had the great, good fortune of being able to play with Pete Seeger.

So, Pete Seeger has been an inspiration kind of unknowing to me in the background.

(rock music) The craft of songwriting is you have these ideas and conversations or you hear a snippet of it and you keep those notes and then you sit down and you begin to assemble all this.

But sometimes and in every songwriting cycle it's happened to me, sometimes lightning strikes you.

It could be while you're driving, anything, it could be a conversation you heard or a snippet from a movie, but lightning will strike you and you go, and for me, I get chills and I know that it's there.

And those are almost without fail the best songs.

Some of the ones that I took a long time to craft also for me are among those.

But the ones that I find out that I find tend to be the very best songs of those ones that I get.

Sometimes, people will say they were given to you by God or given to you by heaven or dropped on you by the fairies, but it is an inspiration.

It strikes you and you know it, and you've got to stop everything and at least jot down notes and ideas.

And for me, I dropped down, I jot down my peripheral thoughts about it too, like margin notes.

Why did this hit me now?

And what am I thinking about?

And what does it relate to?

But that time is a time when you just, I don't know, you just, thank you.

You know it's good.

You know it is.

And I've almost without fail, since I've had my band the last five years, when those happen, I can bring them to the band or the co-producer and play all the songs acoustically.

They won't say anything about any of 'em and that song, or those two songs that were struck like that, the band will go, whoa, 'cause they know too.

There's an instinct there that happens.

And it's just there and everybody gets willies about it.

You know.

(upbeat guitar music) Don't give up on your work ethic.

It's everybody has an inspiration for a book or a movie or a song or a building or something, but not everybody learns all the ropes to learn how to make that craft happen and follow through.

And that's the 98% work Thomas Edison talked about.

We all have inspirations, but you've got to sit down.

If you're a novelist, you have to sit down every day and write a certain amount of words.

And if you're a songwriter, you've got to sit down with your notes or your recordings or your sketches and you have to make that happen.

And you will, like everybody does, make mistakes, do things that are wrong or goofy or they just don't work.

And from those you find out what does, and it's a long process that I've seen some very talented people give up early in their career, because the work part was kind of drudgery to them and it is kind of drudgery.

But for me, for instance, with writing, I have what I call writing season.

And I gather constantly gather ideas all year long, whether they're on my iPhone or I sketch 'em down or on a napkin.

And I keep all of that stuff in one place, because you don't have that head space to write all the time to create all the time, but I keep them there.

And then when I know that I'm in that place, then I clear the decks of everything else.

And I sit down and write.

That's just me, but you have to have something like that where you're always gathering your ideas.

You never quit thinking about them, let other people, get their opinions, and don't be afraid of the criticism.

Take it with a grain of salt, 'cause you know what it is you want to do eventually where you want to head and they might not quite know that that's okay, let their input be there.

They might say 15 things and you'll use one really, really valuable thing.

So, don't close your door to those kind of thing, but it is work.

It isn't just talent.

It isn't just serendipity.

None of that happens without the work.

And so, you have to find that sort of that workflow for yourself and make that happen.

♪ The river roll by ♪ The river roll by - Next up, we're heading down to Wadsworth to the Wadsworth Community Radio Station 97.1.

And we're gonna meet up with Tom and Tina the morning crew and see what Wadsworth Community Radio Station is all about.

(upbeat music) - My dad had a restaurant when I was growing up as a kid.

And back in the sixties, you had a jukebox.

So, every week when they changed the records out, I got the records.

So, even as a little kid, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years old, I ended up, I just always liked music and had the old record player and would play those old 45s.

Now they were, all the good ones were in bad shape, because they all got beat up and everything.

I ended up with over 1,000 45s off of jukeboxes.

What ended up happening though is I would hear those and I would hear 'em on the radio.

In fact, you know, could listen to 'em as a little kid.

But then as I got little transistor radios and things like that, it's like, I heard that on the radio.

So, I've always liked listening to the radio even growing up as a kid.

And I think it all had to do with that I had those songs in my hand as a kid.

I had something physical in my hand, that was a song.

And then when you hear it on the radio, you just made that connection as a child.

(upbeat music continues) - I remember being a little girl and my parents would always have Fleetwood Mac playing, the Eagles, Journey, all of those types of fantastic artists playing.

And so, I picked up on that as a young girl and still young, they would enter me into pageants.

And when you were in pageants, you had to have some sort of act that you did.

And so mine was always a roller skating routine to various songs.

The one I remember most was Michael Jackson's, "Black or White".

And my love for Michael Jackson started, his music I should say began when I was probably six or seven years old.

Janet Jackson too, I can remember the radio playing and hearing "Miss You Much", but I, as a young girl, thought it was Mishy Mush.

(upbeat music continues) - Wadsworth Community Radio started, there was a gentleman and his wife by the name of Joe and Susan Arpad.

And they were college professors and had taught around the country.

And every place they went a lot of the colleges or universities had radio stations.

And then some of the smaller towns, they were in had little radio stations.

So it was always their dream, and they moved back to Wadsworth here and it was always their dream for Wadsworth to have a community radio station.

So they had made application to the FCC.

And this was before any of us were involved back in guessing 2009, 10, something like that.

And the application, sat there for a while.

And then in late, 2012, 13, they went through and we were granted our construction permit.

And then with the construction permit, you have 18 months to build this and get actually on air.

Well, our 18 months would've been in middle or the end of October, and then we actually went online in February of 2015.

And then in June of 2015, we actually started broadcasting on the FM.

- I think having a radio station in a small community like Wadsworth is so important because A, not everybody does have one of those and B, at any second we could be on air, letting the community know about something that's going on, whether it could be a street shutdown, a fire happening, something with the school.

What if there was a lockdown?

You know, we can go on in seconds.

We can tell the community whatever it is that we think that they need to know.

I've also heard the quote, something along the lines of, "There are two really important periods in your life.

The day you were born and the day you find out why."

I love radio, because I feel like my purpose is a conduit.

And so, this is the perfect avenue for being a conduit.

I connect people to people, I connect people to things, I connect people to resources and in turn I get connected.

That's what I love so much about it is all of the interconnectedness.

(upbeat gentle music) - We've got about an 8 to 10 mile radius in the Wadsworth area, of course, streaming online.

We're literally around the world, but the FM broadcast is about a 8 or a 10 mile radius around.

And again, it's a line of sight thing.

You know, it sometimes it's a little further, because of where the antenna is, a little further one way than the other, but about an 8 or a 10 mile footprint.

(upbeat gentle music) - I've had so many people come on our morning show and say, gosh, we were so nervous.

And as soon as we started talking to you, that went out the door, the nerves were, they were completely calm.

That makes me feel so, so good.

my goal is I want people to feel like this is home.

And I feel like my voice I've been told is warm, but I want my personality to feel the same way.

And I am fun and I am spunky, but I'm also very kind.

And when someone walks in here and we are interviewing them, that's what I want 'em to know is this is a safe place.

You know you're loved here.

You can be who you are and we are gonna just talk to you about it and we're gonna celebrate all that it is.

(upbeat rock music) Doing a job should be something that you love.

And something I learned when I worked at News Channel 5, I'm sure many people have heard it before, but it really sunk in with me.

Leon Bibb told me age is just a number.

So doesn't matter how young or how old you are, if you have a dream go out there and get it.

(upbeat rock music) - Next up, is something a little bit off the beaten path.

Something a little odd per se.

I'm gonna head down to Green, to the Oddmall Outpost and learn all about what the Oddmall is all about.

(upbeat music) - My goal as a little kid was I wanted to run my own zoo, which I guess we have about 30 pets here, so kind of counts.

But then I went into art.

Like I started in college, studying zoology.

Then I changed my major to studio art.

And then I got a job drawing monsters.

So, it kind of worked out.

I don't know, I feel like this kind of just happened.

I looked back at the past 20 years and I don't even know how we got here honestly.

(upbeat music continues) It started out, I was doing freelance illustration for a whole bunch of different game manufacturers, like role playing games, tabletop games.

My first big break came from Larry Elmore and Margaret Weis, who did "Dungeons and Dragons" and the "Dragonlance" series way back in the day, which is still ongoing.

They really took a shine to me at that origin show in 2001.

And I kind of owe my whole career to them for being so generous and hired me to do a whole book as my first project, basically.

But since then though, I've done, I kind of, my art style is a lot different from a lot of other artists in the genre.

I don't do like dragons and fairies and mermaids and like girls in chainmail bikinis and stuff, which was what everything was at that time.

So when they hired me, they usually hired me to do the whole book.

So, it would be cohesive.

And so, I kinda lucked out in that way, but then I'd say 10 or 12 years ago after we started doing the conventions and stuff, I kind of, I guess I got known well enough in the industry that I just started producing my own books and that's worked out pretty well.

So I have a series of role playing game called "Low Life: The Rise of the Lowly".

It takes place gazillions of years in the future, after humans are extinct.

Everybody's evolved from cockroaches and Twinkies and all the various things that survived.

So you get to play like as a sentient Twinky guy, if you want to.

They're called Creamfillians.

And then there are three books currently in that series, I'm working on the fourth one.

Then I have a children's book called "Alphabeast Soup", which is a rhyming illustrated story book, kind of in the vein of Dr. Seuss.

It's kinda like Dr. Seuss meets like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" or something like that.

It's much more verbose than Dr. Seuss, but I had a lot of fun with that one and I'm probably gonna do a sequel at some point.

(upbeat music) So I thought it'd be a good idea to have just like an art workshop at my house and invite anyone who wanted to break into the industry.

Invite some of my friends who were more established, I was still very, very new.

So I didn't really know that much yet.

So I thought we could all just get together, play some games, do some art workshops.

We went to the zoo and painted and drew animals, stuff like that.

And it just took off, like people had a great time.

We said, let's do this as an official event in the future.

So, we formed Con on the Cob, which is our four-day gaming convention that's coming up in October with a huge focus on art and artists and breaking into the industry that kind of stuff.

From Con on the Cob, we had the venue we were using, which was the Clarion Hotel in Stow, it's no longer there.

But at the time we figured, well, we already have connections at this hotel.

We went to Bizarre, Bizarre, which was a show in Cleveland that kind of focused on unusual art.

And it was a really cool show, but the venue it was in, I took my family there, was very much geared toward like adults and there was nowhere to change a baby, that kind of stuff.

So we said, why don't we do a similar thing where we throw in a bunch of entertainment and hands-on activities and make it more family friendly.

The first one kind of went really well.

So we decided to do another one that fall.

And now we're doing like 10 shows a year.

(playful music) People come in all the time.

Just have no idea what to expect 'cause from the outside, aside from the purple steeple and the dinosaur and the like fake window things I put on the front, it just still looks like a church.

People come in all the time, still asking if the soup kitchen is still open or the bread pantry or whatever they call it.

Like they used to run a free food thing from here.

Well, there was an actual church here before us, the River of Life, Church of God, I believe it was called.

They moved to Barberton and they were just trying to sell the building.

So we checked it out.

Yeah, so there was no one in here before us, besides the church that built it as far as I know.

Yeah, but we get such a mix of people coming in here.

Like everybody, people bring their kids here.

We do birthday parties and people will just say, can I come have a birthday party here?

And we do.

We just let 'em use this table or the space downstairs, play with the animals and shop around play games.

Well, we also have a game library downstairs with about 500 board games that people can just borrow.

Like you can come here, get a game from downstairs, play on this table over here.

You can bring your laptop and work on your screen play whatever you wanna do.

We don't have coffee, but otherwise pretend it's Starbucks and just hang out here and do whatever hipstery thing you want to do.

Yeah, so the animals are our pets.

They're just our personal pets.

We have more at home, but they live here at the shop and anyone who comes in is free to pet them.

And sometimes people will carry 'em around with them while they're shopping.

That's our friend, Anguirus, she's a bearded dragon.

She'll just sit on your shoulder.

You can walk around the store and look at art and stuff.

And she'll just sit there.

We have a turtle pond over at the entrance with a bunch of different kinds of turtles in there.

So there's all kind of animals here.

But anyone who wants to meet him is welcome to, we also do animal shows at some of the Oddmall shows.

And at Con on the Cob, my son, Mango, like the fruit, he's starting a business, Jungle Mango, where he's gonna start doing presentations at schools and community events and things like that with the animals.

So we have, I don't know, 13 snakes or so a bunch of lizards, frogs, turtles, spiders, all that kind of stuff.

(playful music continues) - Now to wrap this show up today, we're gonna head over to Arnold's Candies.

They've been making candies for over 60 years now, and they're known for their world class peppermint puffs, buttermint and peanut brittle.

Let's go see what Arnold's Candies is all about.

(gentle music) - About 11 and a half years ago.

I remember coming in and this was a customer of mine.

I worked at a bank, he was my customer, and he invited me out for a site visit.

He was looking to do a loan of some sort, and it was quite a bit different then than it is now.

Back in the fifties, Ted Arnold Sr broke away from Spangler Candy Company and started his own candy company here at Akron.

They were originally selling peanut brittle out of their basement, and they built this building in 1953.

And it's grown, it's been built six times since then into the building you see here today.

Ted Arnold Sr. sold to his son, Ted Arnold Jr. And I bought from him.

So I'm the third generation, not the same family.

And there is not any of the original family members left alive at this point.

(gentle music continues) It was quite a rude awakening.

At that point in my life, I thought I had everything figured out, had the world by the tail.

Thought that I was gonna spend a lot of time on the golf course.

But the truth is, is that owning your own business is 80 hours a week of hard work.

And it goes home with you and you never turn it off.

So, 11 and a half years later looking back, I'm certainly glad that I did it.

If I could talk to my younger self, I might have said, hey, temper your expectations and go a little slower, young man.

Well, first plan, plan, plan, and plan some more.

Second, make sure that you have the financial resources to get you through the low times, 'cause there's gonna be lean times.

Then third, take the risk.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

It's so important not to just think about it, but to actually do it.

Worst case scenario, you fail, you try again.

That's my advice.

That's one of the reasons I bought the company is that I had just a notion that I wanted to be part of manufacturing to turn something that is basically nothing into something that you can sell for a profit.

Instead of just being a service economy, I wanted to be a manufacturer.

And that's essentially, what this is for the truest form.

We bring in raw ingredients from multiple vendors.

We use our skill and our hard work and our knowledge that's been passed through from the original owners to create a finished product that people love.

And remember, so really what you're gonna see in the process is as raw as it gets.

Taking raw unrefined products and combining them together and through the talent and the skill of our confectioners, turning them into something that everyone enjoys.

(classical music) We make peanut brittle, cashew brittle.

We make buttermints.

We make the world's finest peppermint puffs.

Truthfully, we also have a cookie business that is burgeoning.

So we make snack candies as well.

So cookies and then we make some one offs, caramel corn, chocolate covered peanut brittle.

Some things that we don't sell as much of, but we still make here.

(classical music continues) Baking is a really good analogy.

Sometimes I refer people it's chemistry.

There's a lot of things going on at one time from temperature and moisture content, humidity and barometric pressure in the room.

The amount of the ingredients needs to be the same every time.

The way that you process the candy needs to be the same every time.

The temperature that you keep the candy needs to be the same every time.

So truly, and it is an art form, a lost art form, that very few people in the country in, the world, really understand and can do.

To be a master confectioner is a long, long forgotten occupation and we still keep it alive and well here every day.

(classical music continues) Supply chain has been a nightmare really.

We're used to that to an extent where we use a product, sugar, which is directly based on how the crops grow and weather related.

So, we've been used to ups and downs in both sugar and peanuts.

So we kind of understand that part.

We have multiple vendors that we can reach out to if we can't get it from one, we can usually get it from another.

I think the biggest thing that's affecting everybody right now is shipping.

Shipping costs have more than doubled.

So not only are we having to pass that along to our customers, but it's getting passed along to end users.

So, it's a really tough time right now, but hopefully there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

(classical music continues) A majority of our products are sold in other people's packaging.

So, you'd be hard pressed to go out and find Arnold's Candies in a lot of places, but you wouldn't believe all the places that we're actually in.

So we sell a lot of our candy out the back door in brown boxes.

The people take those bulk candies and then they repackage them into their own individual brands and resell them.

Our currently, our lines are sold through a couple local companies.

ACME grocery stores would be the easiest way for you to find our main products.

(classical music continues) - Thank you for watching this episode of Around Akron with Blue Green.

Now, if you have any questions or comments, you just wanna drop me an email.

You can reach me at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen.com or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you and have an amazing day.

(upbeat music) We got radio stations, we got something and something else and something else.

(upbeat music)