Midnight at the Sun Diner Podcast Spotlights Legendary Sun Records

 

PRIMARY WAVE MUSIC AND AUDIO UP ANNOUNCE

SUN RECORDS PODCAST

Just a handful of months after acquiring the legendary Sun Records, Primary Wave Music has announced the launch of a Sun Records podcast titled Midnight at the Sun Diner. The music publishing giant partnered with podcast content production studio Audio Up Media to launch the podcast just in time for the legendary label’s 70^th anniversary. 

The launch of Midnight at the Sun Diner is also the first of many activations that will take place over the next year to celebrate Sun’s platinum anniversary.

In this genre-bending, time traveling musical podcast series, listeners will be taken on a ride through the rich history of one of the most iconic music labels of all time.  Set in Memphis, listeners can follow along with the series narrator who also happens to be a music journalist. 

After being assigned a feature on Sun Records, the writer searches around Memphis looking for his big story only to come up empty handed. That is until he finds himself at the Sun Diner, where he stumbles into a multiverse portal that takes him back to the early years of Sun Records.  There, he gets to meet all of Sun Records’ legendary artists including Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, as well as Sun Records founder and producer, Sam Phillips. As the story unfolds, artists of the present day learn that they can travel back in time to meet their heroes face to face and even host jam sessions together, bringing fresh inspiration and new ideas to their own music.

Through a series of set pieces, the podcast will weave in the tales of Sun Recording artists and take a deeper dive into the legacy of the label and studio, ultimately telling the story of the famed label through the personal history of its artists. Each episode will also feature performances of songs from the Sun Records catalog of music with a discussion to follow by contemporary artists. Future plans for the podcast will also include recording artists performing their favorite Sun Records songs LIVE from the Sun Diner. 

“The Sun Records story has been told in many ways. I’m convinced that fiction is a great way into this rich and lush music meta verse for artists to collaborate and explore the Sun vault through,” says Jared Gutstadt, Founder and CEO of Audio Up. He continues, “Podcasts are another gateway for music and story exploitation. I already see this as a streaming visual series once we accomplish season one’s concept in the podcast space. With IP and publishing assets from Sun Records, the potential for a soundtrack and spin-off content is limitless.”

“Midnight at the Sun Dinerwill help convey the impact of Sun Records on music and culture through an entirely new lens,” says Dominic Pandiscia of Sun Label Group and Natalia Nastaskin, Chief Content Officer at Primary Wave Music, both part of the team managing the strategy with Audio Up. They go on, “It will be an incredibly immersive listening experience for both the existing fan of Sun Records, and for the fan of any podcast that provides endless entertainment value with a touch of history.”

Midnight at the Sun Diner was conceived of by Audio Up’s chief creative officer Jimmy Jellinek, a former journalist who served as Gutstadt’s co-writer on Bear and a Banjo as well as Halloween in Hell and has written or produced a number of Audio Up’s most successful franchises. “To be present at the birth of Rock-n-Roll and put the listener in the room with Jerry Lee Lewis as he lit the piano on fire or stand next to Sam Phillips as he fought with Leonard Chess over Howling Wolf’s contract is about as of a delicious opportunity as one can get. The Sun Story is the story of American Music and in that the story of America itself.”

Primary Wave Music is a leading independent publisher of iconic and legendary music in the world. The company is home to some of the most iconic songwriters, artists, and record labels across the history of recorded music including Sun Records, Bob Marley, Stevie Nicks, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, Smokey Robinson, Whitney Houston, Burt Bacharach, Prince, Olivia Newton-John, Ray Charles, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, War, Robbie Robertson, Count Basie, Sly & The Family Stone, Boston, Alice Cooper, Paul Anka, Boy George and Culture Club, Allee Willis, Leon Russell, Free, Toots & The Maytals, Steve Cropper, Glenn Gould, Air Supply, Holly Knight, Godsmack, Disturbed, Devo, Donny Hathaway, Nicky Chinn, Noel Hogan (Cranberries), Chris Isaak, Dan Wilson, KT Tunstall, Patrick Leonard, Steve Kipner, Sturken & Rogers, and many more. The songs represented by Primary Wave include over 700 Top 10 singles, and over 300 #1 hits. 

Audio Up Media is a podcast content production studio, housing numerous audio-based properties. Headed by Audio Up CEO and Adweek’s 2020 Podcast Innovator of the Year and Podcast Producer of the Year recipient, Jared Gutstadt (formerly of the Jingle Punks), Audio Up is building an ecosystem of entertainment content within the music and audio space.