From pandemic podcast to live show, ‘Midtown Coffee Radio Hour’ looks to entertain with local flair

A mixture of Christmas season nostalgia, grief and pure boredom gave Nick and Kristina Jackson the creative spark they needed after months of time at home in 2020.

It led the couple to create the “Midtown Coffee Radio Hour,” a podcast that soon will be transformed into a live show at Strawbale Winery on Saturday. 

The podcast is influenced by live variety radio shows, especially NPR’s “Live from Here” with Chris Thile, but has a Sioux Falls flair, the couple said. It’s available on numerous audio platforms, including Anchor, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

The Jacksons — Kristina is a scientist at research laboratory OmegaQuant and Nick is a former elementary school teacher who will start teaching at Augustana University in the fall — pride themselves on keeping the show entirely local.

It’s produced and written by them and features talent from Sioux Falls. When they first had their idea for a show around Christmas, they gathered up their talented friends and recorded a holiday special, masked up in an empty church. 

Since then, they have produced six episodes and now are preparing to debut their show in a live setting.

The show includes various Sioux Falls-centric skits, songs, fake commercials and more. It is based out of Midtown Coffee, a hypothetical but aspirational Sioux Falls coffee shop that the Jacksons dream of actually starting someday. 

Nick Jackson describes the vibe of the show in one word: hygge – pronounced “hyoo-guh.” It’s a Danish word that means a sense of comfort, peace, calm and togetherness — feelings that Jackson hopes the show brings to its listeners. 

“Every time they listen to it, they express this missing home and missing being around family, and it makes them feel that sense of comfort, that sense of hygge,” he said. “And so we hope to bring that to people, alongside a sense of pride of just, I’m proud of Sioux Falls, I’m proud of this community, I’m proud to be a part of it.”

Everyone involved has enjoyed recording the episodes and is excited to perform in front of a live audience, Jackson said.

“We all just love it so much,” he said. “We love being together. We love creating together. It comes together so quickly because everyone is extremely gifted and professional.”

The Jacksons are expanding their show from its typical one hour to about 2 1/2 hours for the live setting. The guest musicians and comedians will have extended sets, and there will be an hourlong pre-show with audience engagement like singalongs. 

The “Midtown Coffee Radio Hour” is booked for another date at Strawbale on July 17. Depending on how the first show goes, Jackson said they are looking to schedule more performances there for later in the summer and into the fall. The Jacksons also are brainstorming indoor venues they could perform in as well as dreaming of making it onto South Dakota Public Broadcasting someday. 

What started as a way to get together and create with friends during a time of social isolation has morphed into a podcast series that the Jacksons hope will gain traction as a live show. But no matter how big or small the audience is, Jackson said he knows they’ll continue to enjoy performing and creating together. 

“I could see us from having 30 people out there to 330 people,” he said. “But if we’re just playing to the guinea fowl that are running out there, that’s good enough for us. We very much just enjoy it.”