Two years ago, Clayton and his friend Will Leasure were smoking cigars in the parking lot before the Outlaw Music Festival. Clayton had an idea for a podcast. Leasure already had a name for it.
The idea for “Meet Me in the City” — a podcast exploring music through the boroughs of America — came that September. They recorded their first episode in November, and debuted a month later.
“Meet Me in the City” is hosted by Leasure, Clayton and Johnson, and is produced by Matthew Sprinkle, who chimes in from time to time. When the podcast premiered, the hosts and guests shared one mic in the middle of a table. They’ve since upgraded.
Much like Dayton Music Fest, “Meet Me in the City” occupies a necessary space, one that made the hosts say: Dayton needs something like this. The bi-monthly podcast digs into local music scenes of the past, present and future, and is currently focused on the hosts’ hometown: Dayton. And because of their collective connections to the scene — having played in bands and been fans of others — they’d be talking about music anyway. They just decided to put it on the mics.
Most of the 30-plus episodes have been recorded at Twisted River Coffee Roaster in Dayton, Clayton’s roasting facility. Others have been recorded remotely. Episodes have featured musicians, record shop owners, radio hosts, promoters, documentarians and rock journalists. Its first guest was Don Thrasher, former Dayton Daily News music and arts writer, followed by Guided By Voices guitarist Mitch Mitchell, Jamy Holliday and Brainiac’s Tyler Trent.
The episodes have been mainly focused on Daytonians, particularly those involved in the Dayton music scene from the late 1980s into the early 2000s, but the podcast is branching out. The podcast recently featured Terry Cole, the founder of Colemine Records in Loveland, and a green room field interview with Hershey, Pa., band The Ocean Blue.
“We’re really just taking a holistic look at the world of music,” said Leasure. “Any facet or aspect of being in or around music, we try to have conversations with those people.”
“This whole thing for me is the human interest story,” Clayton said. “I try not to do much background, looking into the person. It’s the discovery of it. I come almost naively into the conversation.”
Because of the heavily retrospective aspect of the podcast — many guests having ties to the scene the hosts are most connected to — there’s an inherent risk of falling prey to the “remember this?” phenomenon. And nostalgia for a local scene can only be ridden for so long. But the podcast avoids that trap by highlighting newer Dayton bands and expanding beyond musicians to include others working in the music world. It’s homage to the past, and discovery of the present.
“We could be glamorizing the scene from that period, but it was amazing to be playing at that time in Dayton,” Johnson said. “We didn’t know what we had, right? And for so many people that listen to the podcast, that’s their prime too.”
The late “Gem City Podcast” — an independent podcast that covered the Dayton music scene, businesses, events and people — held court in the local circuit from 2015 to 2020. “Meet Me in the City” is cut from a similar cloth. It’s a podcast built around interviews disguised as conversations. The hosts are music fans doing what they do best — chatting about music.
Contrary to this writer’s preconceived notions, the name “Meet Me in the City” is not a nod to “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” an oral history of the rebirth of the New York City rock scene in the early 2000s. Rather, it is this: an invitation to a show. “Meet me in the city. We’re going to go to [insert venue here.]” The meeting spot is also a place where hosts do a deep dive into a particular music scene. It started with Dayton and there are plans to explore scenes outside of it — scenes like the one Dayton had, and has.
“We started playing music here,” Clayton said. “We want to grow and expand, and learn more about different people, different aspects of music.”
“We feel like there’s probably other cities around that have those special places that were just as meaningful,” Leasure said. “They helped inform our music tastes. They shaped and formed us.”
The very first Righteous Anger show was at the Dayton Band Playoffs at Canal Street Tavern. Clayton was 17 years old. He’s 56 now. Recently, he attended the 2026 Dayton Battle of the Bands and watched a new crop of bands take the stage — just like he and his friends once did.
Thirty years from now, someone might be talking about them.
MORE INFO
New episodes of “Meet Me in the City” are released every other Friday on Substack.
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