Name: Hefty Tomatoes
Site: Mixcloud
Started: 2016
A short sharp dose of vinyl grooviness! Hefty Tomatoes is a podcast of records and chat, now in its fourth year.
Basically I play great music on vinyl and try to tell you a little about the songs. Sometimes there are guests who bring along a bag of records to share with us and sometimes the episode is based around a special event.
Aside from Liverpool, the podcast has been recorded in Italy, Brazil, Peru and the Faeroe Islands along with at live events and even during an elaborate Lupercalia pub crawl.
You can see a rogue’s gallery of guests below, listen to the programme and find out how to appear. The podcast hit 100 episodes in June 2020 then had a break (save the customary Christmas episode) while series 1 of The Sam Cooke Lectures ‘aired’.
Hefty Tomatoes returned for it’s fifth season at Christmas 2021, continuing into 2022.
Wanna know more? Here’s a brief Hefty history…
🍅Years 1 and 2
Launched in 2016, for the first year there was one half-hour episode a week for 52 weeks without a break. That was hard work and a crazy commitment. Many a week was ended with shouts of “Oh god, I almost forgot the podcast!”, much to the annoyance of the neighbours. In its second year, Hefty Tomatoes was every fortnight and more or less alternated between guest episodes and me on my own.
🍅Year 3
In its third year, the podcast grew to an hour and appeared roughly once a month. Each episode focused around loosely defined ‘events’ (Hefty Tomatoes Live at Maguires, an Aretha Franklin tribute, a Coffee and Turntables retrospective and a Brazil special, a Christmas at Lovelocks episode, a New Year focused episode, podcasting our way around the Baltic Lupercalia Crawl, Record Store day and the John Lennon time capsule, a return to Peru and Brazil, the Baltic Record Fair (with Liz Owen) and the another Christmas special ‘A Christmas Gift for You’.
🍅Year 4 and 100th Episode
The fourth season was recorded during the first UK covid-19 lockdown of 2020. There were ten hour-long episodes each with a lovely real-life image of the virus. Charming I’m sure you’ll agree.
In June 2020 the podcast celebrated its 100th episode with a one off show. This marked the only time I have played a song twice, as I got previous guests to select a fave track from their episode.
🍅Stream Online
You can catch up on all the previous episodes here and there are examples embedded below. Here is the archive link: www.mixcloud.com/OldRope
FAQ: As royalties are paid for the music played via a special streaming licence, sadly the podcast cannot be downloaded. But is is easy to listen to on Mixcloud and they have their own app too. If you sign up you can get notifications when the next episode is online, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
The most recent episode:
Here are some sample episodes:
🍅Guests
If you’d like to be a guest on Hefty Tomotoes please contact Old Rope. Cranks welcome.
Here are pics of some of the people who’ve appeared on the podcast. Click each photo to expand and open the gallery.
Old Rope 