Steve Hoffman, also known as Tales of Hoffman, joins KGNU’s Meredith Carson in the studio. Steve discusses his participation in the upcoming Mapleton Hill Porchfest in Boulder. The event, taking place on Sunday, September 22nd from noon to 4:00 p.m., is a community gathering where local musicians perform on porches around the neighborhood. Hoffman shares the history of the Porchfest, which started in Ithaca, New York, and has since spread to other cities (Interview date: 9/13/2024)
Meredith Carson: We have Steve Hoffman in here with us. His musical moniker is Tales of Hoffman, and he is going to be playing during our Mapleton Hill Porchfest, which is today and tomorrow, I believe. Steve, welcome to KGNU studios.
Tales of Hoffman: Thank you, Meredith. It’s a pleasure to be here. Just a quick correction: the Mapleton Hill Porchfest is an afternoon long event that will be taking place on Sunday, September 22nd.
Meredith Carson: I see.
Tales of Hoffman: I’m very happy to be here. I’m really honored and grateful that the organizers of the Mapleton Hill Porchfest would invite me to play some music for you in the community and talk about the Porchfest a little bit.
It’s a really great community event. It was started in 2007 by a group of volunteers and music lovers in Ithaca, New York, near Cornell University. In 2011, Boulder picked up on the idea, and I want to thank Jamie Cannon and the other organizers for putting this together for 14 or 15 years now. I’ve been participating in a handful of them. Everybody in the Mapleton Hill area of Boulder opens up their homes and their porches and hosts all this wonderful local talent, all these musicians and bands. There’s probably 60 bands playing over the course of Sunday afternoon, the 22nd, and people just walk around, bring their lawn chairs with them, their families. It becomes a big outdoor block party. It’s now in dozens of cities all over the country and a grassroots community event.
Meredith Carson: Love it. You are going to be participating and playing music on the porch, and we get to have you play some in the studio this morning. Tell me about the first song you’re gonna play.
Tales of Hoffman: Thank you very much. I like to play some of my favorites from my favorite songwriters around the world and I do some originals myself. So it’s a mix of covers and standards and originals that I perform on my acoustic jukebox guitar is what I call it. Acoustic jukebox music is what I play. So this is a song written by Lowell George. People know him, famously, of Little Feat. He presented this in 1971 to Frank Zappa because he was playing in Frank Zappa’s band. Frank said, you need to start your own band. So he did, and then this became one of his favorites. Linda Ronstadt has covered it. It’s called “Willin'”.
Anyway, it goes something like this.
Tales of Hoffman plays “Willin’”.
Meredith Carson: Steve Hoffman live in the studios with a couple of tunes that certainly go way back for me, and I imagine for a lot of you out there who are listening this morning. So Mr. Hoffman, you are a longtime participant in the Can’t We Please Have Healthier Food Movement. And tell us a little bit about that, what your day job involves.
Tales of Hoffman: Music’s always been a love, and I really love that I play in local venues around town. It’s my moonlighting, right side of my brain, creative outlet. But during the day I work in the natural organic and a regenerative food and agriculture space, which is what brought me to Boulder about 36 years ago, working with a media company here in Boulder called New Hope Network. They put on the big trade shows for the natural products industry, they produce the trade magazines, the news that business owners, decision makers in this industry need to continue to grow that market. It’s now a $300 billion market. When I started, it was maybe $25 billion total in sales.
Meredith Carson: Was Whole Foods even invented when you started?
Tales of Hoffman: Actually, I had the opportunity to meet John Mackey back in 1985 when he had two stores. John’s a friend. I continue to see him every year. He spends time in Boulder. What he built with Whole Foods Market is just amazing. I know people will joke about the costs sometimes of natural, organic food. But what I will say to that is you either pay the farmer or you pay the doctor. And if you think organic food is expensive, try health care.
Meredith Carson: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. I don’t think that point gets made very often when we talk about being better for the environment and all of those things, just as a financial comparison.
Tales of Hoffman: Yeah, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said, “food be thy medicine.” And today, the way that we grow food, or produce food, I should say, it’s very pesticide and chemical intensive. They are carcinogenic. They’re toxic. We use genetically modified foods. The tech bros want to do precision fermentation, which is really growing dairy or meat in vats with GMO substrate as their grains.
I’m telling you, stay away when they use these euphemisms like precision fermentation. All I got to say to people is, you want to live a good, long, healthy life, choose organic for you. And if you want to have great developing young minds, choose organic because pesticides really mess with growing kids’ bodies and minds.
Meredith Carson: Right on, dude.
Tales of Hoffman: Sorry to get onto my soapbox.
Meredith Carson: No, I asked you. I asked you. You find a lot of sympathetic audiences at this radio station.
Tales of Hoffman: Boulder is a wonderful community for this and the only thing that I can tell our listeners here is to check out NaturallyBoulder.org because it’s a group of 1,500 companies in this region alone that are dedicated to natural and organic foods.
Meredith Carson: Cool, cool, cool. All right. Now, to get back to your side hustle, can we have another song, please? I think we’ve got time for one more.
Tales of Hoffman: Oh, thank you very much. This is a tune that kind of just came to me, I’ll say, from the universe, and it is called “Infinite Sky”. And listening and being inspired by Alan Watts lectures that I hear on KGNU.
Actually, I want to give a shout out to my friend, Uket Acefa, because she’s a DJ here as well from Reggae Bloodlines and African Roots. She’s a good friend. We work together a lot in the hemp and natural foods industry. She has an incredible herbal tincture company as well. But this song is really that I think we are like flowers of the universe to bear witness to creation itself. We are the eyes to see for the universe, to see what it’s made of. We’re all a part of it. That’s what this song is about. “Infinite Sky”.
Tales of Hoffman plays “Infinite Sky”.
Meredith Carson: Steven Hoffman live in the KGNU studios. You can hear him and tons of other musicians at the Mapleton Hill Porchfest, Sunday the 22nd, that’s next Sunday from noon to 4:00 pm. Steven, thank you so much for coming by this morning.
Tales of Hoffman: Thank you, Meredith. Thank you KGNU. Thank you, Boulder.
Meredith Carson: It’s been a pleasure to have you on the air here. Thanks a lot. We’ll see you next Sunday.
