Livestream with George of Lehigh Valley with Love 3-24-24
Mike talks community, music, marketing and more with George from Lehigh Valley with Love
Lehigh Valley with Love Media is an award winning, family owned, boutique digital media company founded in 2015 on the belief that the Lehigh Valley deserves all that’s coming to it.
Transcript:
Mike: All right, hello and welcome to the Bellwether Ritual live stream, where we discuss music, the local Lehigh Valley, PA scene, band social media marketing, and more! Today is Wednesday, October 15th. My name is Mike, and I’m the vocalist/guitarist of Bellwether Ritual. Hope you all have had a good week. I just wanted to mention we wrapped up our last show at 11 Fest last Saturday at the Bethlehem Area Public Library. It was a lot of fun, and we saw a lot of familiar faces, which was great. Big congrats to the library and Josh on that one!
Tonight, our guest is George from Lehigh Valley with Love. Lehigh Valley with Love is an award-winning, family-owned, boutique digital media company founded in 2015. They’ve been named Best Podcast, Best Blogger, Best News Blog, and more here in the Lehigh Valley. We’ll talk to George all about that and more. George, welcome to the stream! How you doing tonight, man?
George: Great! Thank you for having me! This is fun. It’s funny because I’m usually setting my phone up against all these different things to make sure everything is in frame, but I’m on the other side of the interview today. So, I’m excited.
Mike: Yeah, it’s great to have you on the other end of the interview. You do a lot of these, so it’s awesome to be able to turn the tables. So, right off the bat, anything you want to plug? I know you have a lot going on. Anything you want to let people know about?
George: Yeah, I mean, Christmas is coming up! It feels like COVID was a million years ago, but Christmas is coming back to the Lehigh Valley. Downtown Bethlehem, both the North and South sides, are going to be hopping with events. And of course, Nazareth as well. It’s exciting, especially since Bethlehem is known as the Christmas City. Everyone should definitely check it out.
Mike: Yeah, it is the Christmas City for sure! And I know there’s an event this weekend that I’m going to try and make it to. It’s called Nashville Meets Bethlehem at Steel Stacks.
George: Yes, absolutely! Gerard Longo, who used to be involved with Lehigh Valley Underground, is coming back from Nashville and they’re putting on a Nashville-style show. What that means is the singer-songwriters explain the song before or after they play it. You’ve got bands like Beautiful Distortion, Billy Bauer, and Carly Commando on the bill. It’s a really unique show for those into local music. People should definitely check it out at SteelStacks.
Mike: That sounds really cool, man. I’ll definitely try to check that out!
George: Yeah, for sure! Go to steelstacks.org for more details.
Mike: Awesome. And, by the way, I saw someone in the comments asking, “Can you fly, Bobby?” That’s a Robocop reference, right?
George: Haha, yes! I’m a huge Robocop fan, and that’s actually a line from the movie. It’s funny—some people get into Star Wars; I got into Robocop. I have a ton of Robocop memorabilia, even a Japanese toy release from Robocop 3 from 1993. Some people get into the Star Wars stuff, but I’m all about Robocop, even the garbage movies and TV shows. I just love it all!
Mike: That’s awesome. How old were you when you first saw Robocop?
George: Oh man, I was probably around 8 or 9 years old when I first saw it. Looking back, I probably wouldn’t let my daughter watch it that young, but it was such an influential movie for me—not because of the violence, but because of the satire. Paul Verhoeven did a great job of mixing action with a deeper commentary on society. Even his other films like Total Recall with Schwarzenegger—I love that style.
