LoCLE Grown Podcast Pumps Up Volume on Cleveland’s Music Scene

“Great music sprouts from underground.”

The slogan for Jordan Laird and Jordan Urban’s LoCLE Grown podcast speaks to the importance of early creative opportunities. After all, once great music sprouts, it can grow.

“Everybody starts somewhere,” Laird says, “and everybody’s a local musician until they’re not.”

Laird and Urban, who go by “JLaird” and “Jurbz” in their laid-back interview-based show, estimate they’ve interviewed more than 300 Northeast Ohio-based musicians and industry professionals across six seasons. With their sound engineers Dana O’Connor and Jake Conder, the LoCLE Grown team launches its seventh season on March 5.

“I'm more excited about this season than anything we've ever done with the show,” Laird says. “It's had a lot of different evolutions over the years.”

“We’re really excited to just do a lot more work in the community,” Urban adds. “We really have been focusing on how we can take what we film and record in a room and take it way broader than that, and push boundaries, and be more connected in the scene.”

LoCLE Grown made its first entrance to the scene on WBWC FM 88.3 The Sting, Baldwin Wallace University’s radio station. Laird, as a BWU student, was heavily involved with the station, starting by shadowing DJ Dennis King, who hosted the tropical program Island Time.

A year after graduating, Laird returned to the station, with Urban’s help, to create a show for local acts. The two Jordans hosted the program on Tuesday nights for two years before deciding to make LoCLE Grown an independent podcast.

“I think that when we started this originally, I'm not saying that there wasn't anybody else doing it, but there weren’t a lot of people that were highlighting the Cleveland music scene,” Urban says. “I think there was definitely a big gap to fill, a lot of opportunity there.”

The two co-hosts, friends who have known each other for 22 years since growing up as next-door neighbors in Medina, use their respective professional skills in the LoCLE Grown project. Laird works in the sponsorships division of a live entertainment company, and Urban is the event manager at Forest City Brewery.

Now, on most Sundays, they record new episodes of LoCLE Grown from their studio space in Cleveland’s Rock & Roll City Studios.

Podcast episodes have spanned genres and styles, featuring acts like acclaimed indie-rock band Mr. Gnome, breakout reggae-funk group Tropidelic, music producer Chris DiCola, Apostle Jones singer Mikey Silas, 2024 Best of Cleveland winner Da Land Brass Band and singer-songwriter Anya Van Rose.

Beyond taped performances and interviews, LoCLE Grown has also brought artists to the forefront with live performances, including karaoke nights and shows like Music Is Mother, a concert featuring an all-woman local lineup supporting the Haven Home women’s shelter. Laird and Urban have, for the past three years, been invited to Tropidelic’s EverWild Music Festival to do LoCLE Grown interviews on the grounds.

The two hosts plan to expand the podcast project, while keeping their core mission intact.

“We want to bring more Clevelanders to these shows and investing back into their musicians, and especially people who don’t go to shows,” Laird says. “A goal is, how do we get people that don’t listen to Cleveland music, to listen to Cleveland music?”

“I think we always want to be a safe place for people to come and share their stories and music and art,” Urban says, “But, also, the biggest picture we talked about over the years is to hopefully be a place where bigger artists that are stopping in Cleveland can sit down and talk with us, too. We’re open to every opportunity, but it doesn’t stop at Cleveland.”

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