Today we’d like to introduce you to Enrique Duran II and Marco Morin.
Hi Enrique and Marco, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Enrique – The Kicks & Comics podcast was born out of my need to have a creative outlet. The profession that I chose to go get a degree in doesn’t afford any opportunities to be creative. Being a lifelong sneaker fan and a lover of comic books and pop culture starting a podcast seemed like the best way share my love of those things with a like-minded audience. Marco and I started this podcast in October of 2019 and have been consistently putting out content through our podcast channel and social media account. We have just surpassed 4,300 listens and have a goal of hitting 5000 by the end of 2021.
Marco – The idea of a podcast had always been something that I had been interested in starting. Truthfully I lacked the motivation to do it on my own. Having a relationship end gave me the motivation to start doing things to better myself in addition to that was reconnecting with my childhood friend Enrique. Catching up with my old friend and discovering a lot of our interests from our youth still held a special place in our hearts led to the idea of collaborating and creating something that even if nobody else listened, we would be happy to sit and listen to 20 years from now. We are grateful for the amount of people that have turned into and follow our little Austin-based show, but in the end we do it because we love sitting down and talking about the things we love.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Enrique – The road to start a podcast was relatively smooth. Our friend and executive producer AJ has a podcast dealing with Austin city politics. I went to him with the basic startup questions of how to get a podcast off the ground and he happily shared all the information he had. Marco and I met a few times to create an outline for the first ten or so episodes and we set a schedule to sit down to record them. We decided to get those ten episodes in the can before actually publishing the episodes. I have to say after recording the first two episodes, I was on such a creative high that I couldn’t wait to meet up and record again. After the recording came the technical part of editing the episode, adding musical intros and outros and then sharing it to Soundcloud for distribution. Learning the podcast editing process was incredibly fun me and it’s something that I openly share with people who want to learn about recording their own podcast. What I like about our podcast is that it has a real DIY/punk rock aesthetic. It’s just two guys, with the occasional guest, a laptop and a Blue Yeti microphone. We hit record and we are off to the races.
Marco – I have to echo Enriques sentiments on getting started and the feeling once we actually got some recording under our belt. The biggest obstacle and challenge for me has been becoming a new father during this all. About four months into our journey, I found out that my girlfriend (wife now) were expecting and that didn’t really cause barriers at the time but once our son was born, balancing a full-time job, being a parent and working on the show became more difficult. Thankfully I have a great recording partner who has been through the throws of your new parenthood and was very understanding, and I have a great life partner who supports me fully and gives me the ability to still work on the show that I love so much.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Enrique – Right now, our main focus is the podcast. Marco has designed some cool merch for us that I’d like to expand on but both of us being married with kids and our respective careers finding time to do more than our podcast right now is a bit challenging.
Marc0 – Echo this as well. It would be ideal to expand upon our show. I would hope to do more in the field recordings as well going to cons and other events related to what we are passionate about and meeting with like-minded individuals. Obviously, the pandemic slowed us down a bit in networking and developing some of those other connections but we are hopeful for what’s to come.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Enrique – Being an OG Austinite, I have seen the city grow and change in so many ways. What I love is the opportunities that this city affords in terms of letting everyone shine in their own creative way. What I least like about it is sometimes what drew people to this city gets drowned out by greed and people’s self-interests. The people that made this city attractive over the past decades are the same ones that are being driven out due to an unchecked increase cost of living and gentrification.
Marco – I can appreciate the growth of our city I think it only added to the uniqueness and overall diversity that Austin is known for. It is tough that certain aspects of our city are losing their charm however. Additionally, our city just hasn’t caught up with the amount of people moving here makes things difficult, but hey if everybody wants to be where you are then I guess that’s the place to be.
Contact Info:
- Email: atxkicksandcomics@gmail.com
- Website: https://kicks-and-comics.com/
- Instagram: @kicksandcomics
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kicksandcomics/
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-739134125
Image Credits:
Nick Barnes for images 1, 5, 6 and 8.
