Stories from the bar

Twenty-three minutes into EP. 042 we made the mistake of ranking buffalo sauces on air. By the time the episode posted, the inbox held more messages than the entire year before it. One listener mailed us a bottle of his grandmother's scotch bonnet sauce with a note that read, simply, "Fix your list."

We read the best responses on the follow-up episode, re-ranked the top three with witnesses present, and still changed nobody's mind. The sauce with the grandmother's note came in second, which she will apparently never forgive us for. The bottle is empty and she has our permanent respect.

EP. 006 was rolling beautifully. Our guest was telling a story about a road trip, a wedding, and a canoe, and the bar had gone quiet to listen. Somewhere in the middle of it, both microphones stopped recording. The red light on the interface had burned out months earlier and nobody had replaced it.

We talked for another hour into dead equipment, poured a round when the guest finished, and discovered the truth only at playback. The canoe story is gone forever. The guest has agreed to come back and tell it again on the record, but he warns us every time that it was better the first time. He is probably right.

The rules of the jukebox council are simple: seven songs a night, one veto each, no vetoes on anything played after midnight. The night before we taped EP. 038, a regular named Marty vetoed the same song four times in a row, and the bar split into two armed camps — nobody armed, but everybody loud.

The song was a nine-minute jam nobody loved, which is what made it perfect. We settled it the only way the house allows: darts. Marty won, the song played in full, and three people sang every word. The episode taped the next night with the incident officially entered into the house record.

The name comes from a Tuesday at Dolan's that felt like a Friday. A friend bet that I couldn't get through one story without knocking over my drink. Mid-sentence, elbow met pint, and the story hit the floor along with the glass. The bartender, without a word, set down a fresh beer in a plastic cup and said, "Two cups tonight."

The bet was lost, the story survived, and the plastic cup became the running joke that became the show. We still tape with one backup cup on the table. It has never been drunk from. It exists to remind us that every good story is one spilled beer away from getting better.

We tried a studio once. Soundproof walls, broadcast desks, the works. Ten minutes in, we both sounded like we were reading a warranty. The conversation we have in this show only happens when there's a bar between us, a bartender who ignores us expertly, and the low hum of people minding their own business.

So we taped at the corner table instead and never looked back. Yes, you can hear a glass clink now and then. Yes, sometimes the jukebox sneaks into a pause. We consider those features. The bar is the third host, and it has never once asked for a raise.

Fourteen minutes before we rolled on the first episode ever, our booked guest texted a photo of a flat tire on a road three states away. We had two beers, one microphone between us, and zero plan B. The bartender suggested we just talk to each other like it was a regular Tuesday.

So that's what we did, and the recording had something we couldn't have planned: two friends actually enjoying a conversation. That accidental format became the show. The guest did eventually show up — EP. 009 — and opened with an apology and a round for the house, which the house accepted.