Midnight at the Sun Diner Will Take the Listener on a Weekly Ride Through the Rich History of
The Legendary Record Label
New York, NY (August 4, 2021) – Just a handful of months after acquiring the legendary Sun Records, Primary Wave Music is excited to announce 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 70th anniversary. This exciting new podcast is the first of many projects that Primary Wave Music has been developing with Audio Up since taking an equity interest in the company in May of 2020. 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 Diner’ will 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, as well as 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.”
Founded in April 2020 and led by Founder/CEO Jared Gutstadt, Audio Up has built an ecosystem of premium entertainment content within the music and audio space. From fictional scripted podcasts to unfiltered interview series, Audio Up has created a new and innovative form of IP since its launch. Audio Up is no stranger to the highbred fictional adaption of music IP and history. Gutstadt was also the creator of the critically acclaimed and highly successful Bear and Banjo podcast which featured music from Bob Dylan, Poo Bear, T Bone Burnett and Jared Gutstadt.