Well, here we are with another incremental episode of the Smoke and Steel Podcast. I know what you’re thinking – “Walt’s been saying he’s getting the crew together for a month now, does this guy even have friends?” Fair question. The truth is, I’ve been a little overzealous with the timeline. From my perspective, I’ve cranked out four episodes in a week. From your perspective watching these weekly releases, it’s been stretching out like a bad cigar that won’t stay lit.

But I promise you, the crew is real, they’re excited, and we’re getting close to actually recording together. Maybe this Sunday, maybe next Tuesday – either way, we’re not far from getting the cigar crew together for a proper recording session.

When Life Decides to Pile On

So remember that disastrous 24 hours I mentioned last episode? The water coming through my ceiling, basement flooding, car breaking down? Yeah, that wasn’t the end of it. Wednesday morning rolls around, I’m downstairs working with my coffee, decide to grab a snack from the pantry – one of those Costco fruit and nut bars my wife picked up. I bend over to grab it from the bottom shelf and pop – threw my back out.

Now I’m stuck bent over in my kitchen at 5 AM with waves of pain washing over me. Had to use momentum to stand up, grabbing onto counters to get my bearings. Been walking around with a crutch shortened way up like a cane – not nearly as cool as it sounds. Should’ve gotten one with a snake head or something.

The whole thing reminded me that I’m north of 40 now (43 by the time this posts), and my body’s starting to send me memos about taking it easy. Still can’t pick up my motorcycle from the shop, which really sucks.

Podcast Distribution: Going Beyond YouTube

Up until now, the Smoke and Steel episodes have only lived on YouTube and embedded here on Stogie Review. If you’re going to call something a podcast, it should probably be available where people actually listen to podcasts, right?

I’ve got us set up on Spotify now – just search for “Smoke and Steel Cigar Podcast” and you should find us. We’re also on Apple Podcasts. The goal is to have both video and audio feeds available wherever you prefer to consume content, whether that’s your phone, YouTube, or straight from the Stogie Review site.

For now I’m focusing on Spotify and Apple as the main distribution channels. There are other options like Google Play Store and Amazon Music, but I’d rather get these two dialed in and focus on actually creating good content rather than spreading thin across every platform that exists.

Social Media and the Discord Server

The social media side is pretty straightforward – we’re using the established Stogie Review Instagram and Facebook accounts rather than creating separate ones for the podcast. Makes more sense to leverage what’s already there.

I did dust off my old Twitter/X handle, but honestly, that platform has become such a mess – noise without much signal. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. We’ll see.

The bigger news is the Discord server I set up for Stogie Review back in late 2023. It’s been sitting dormant since Mike and I were initially talking about getting the band back together, but I did some housekeeping on it recently. It’s still pretty bare bones, but it’s functional.

I know Discord is primarily known for gaming and streaming, but I’ve found it incredibly useful for community discussions beyond that. I use one for motorcycles and it works great for just communicating with like-minded people. The idea is to create a space where we can actually have conversations about cigars, not just post pictures with “look at my stick” captions.

The Stogie Review Origin Story

Since I had some extra time to fill and this is the backbone behind the Smoke and Steel Podcast, figured it made sense to give you the origin story of how Stogie Review came to be.

Back in 2006, Jerry Cruz and I were playing Battlefield 1942 online as part of a gaming clan called High Plane Strike Force =HPSF=. Jerry had this habit of smoking cigars during our voice chat sessions, which made him nearly impossible to understand when he was trying to call out enemy positions or coordinate strategies.

The off-topic section of our gaming forum started getting cluttered with cigar discussions – reviews, recommendations, the usual stuff cigar smokers talk about. Jerry thought it made more sense to create a separate WordPress blog to keep all our cigar content in one place rather than annoying the gamers. So he created stogiereview.com, set up accounts for both of us, and we started posting back and forth.

We never intended it for anyone else – it was literally just us and maybe one or two guys from the clan. But people started finding it, commenting, and before we knew it, the thing was actually growing. This was when YouTube was still fairly young (man, that makes me feel old), and Jerry got the idea to start doing video reviews.

Those early video reviews really took off, and that’s when the site got popular. Other cigar enthusiats came on board to lend a hand – Brian Tipton was one of the first, then Brian Hewitt, Justin, Ben, Mike, and several others over the years. We started getting invited to trade shows, meeting manufacturers and reps, getting advance samples of new releases. It was a really cool process being part of that community and industry conversation.

Where We Are Now

The site’s been pretty dormant for the better part of two years, with only limited activity even before that. Life gets busy – Jerry got busy, I got busy, Mike got busy, Ben got busy. It’s been like musical chairs of who’s available to keep things moving.

The reality is, when you start having kids, priorities shift. I went from being the guy who’d sit down with a new cigar, notebook in hand, really nerding out over tasting notes and pairings, to someone who couldn’t risk smoking something I might not like during my limited free time. When you’ve only got an hour and a half window, do you try the unknown stick or reach for Old Faithful? I chose Old Faithful 99% of the time, which made creating new content nearly impossible.

Even today, sitting here recording this, I reached for a 601 Blue Label – something I’ve had dozens of times before because I knew I’d enjoy it rather than risk sitting here wondering why I lit up something awful.

But here’s the thing – I don’t want Stogie Review to be as big and busy as it was 10-15 years ago. That was a lot of work. What I’m looking forward to is some level of activity, some community engagement, and the chance to dabble in the cigar space again without the massive time investment.

Moving Forward

This feels like a scattered, rough-around-the-edges episode, but hopefully it’s the last incremental one you’ll have to sit through before I actually get the crew together for a proper recording session.

The main thing I want you to take away from this is that we’re making real progress. Podcast distribution is expanding, social media is set up, and most importantly, we’ve got a Discord community ready for you to join and start having actual conversations about cigars.

So hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you’re using, and more importantly, join us on Discord – that’s where the real community building is going to happen.

Thanks for sticking with me through another one of these solo episodes. Next time, hopefully you’ll be hearing from the whole crew.