October 24, 2023 • 11 mins
Mike and Janell Bass talk their 70's retro van, their Bumble connection, and the inspiration behind Ponyboy Slings...
Mark as Played
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
You're a news radio eight forty whasTerry Miners. Here, we've got two
superstar entrepreneurs from this area in thestudio with me. Let me say how
to Janelle and Mike Hi Hi,the Bass Family. The Bass Family.
Mike is wearing a cool sort ofcowboy hat. But I was just on
your website, drinkponyboy dot com becauseI wanted to see the van. I'd
(00:26):
heard a lot about it. Absolutely, she's forty six years young. Yeah,
whose brainchild was this to get avan right out of the seventies?
That? Look? Honestly it wasMike's. Yeah. Yeah. We were
actually planning on making a little trailerbar to promote our brand, and then
we were we started thinking about it. We're like, why are we doing
a bar when we are coming upwith the can cocktail. We're not making
(00:48):
drinks anymore, we're popping them.Yeah. So the two of you have
been bartenders. I mean, you'reclearly too young to even know what the
nineteen seventies are about, but somehowyou did your research. Well, well,
did your parents help you. I'ma product of the seventies. You
were you were born in seventy nine, seventy one seventy one. Okay,
so you were a baby in alot of people feel like it's the greatest
(01:12):
era ever. But I saw yourvan and I thought this is great.
I just love the whole notion ofthe It looks like a nightclub inside the
van. Absolutely, it's in nineteenseventy seven G twenty. It's all original,
Okay. It was made by aman named Jack out of Columbus,
Ohio. He decked it out andthen just never really drove it. It's
(01:34):
never seen snow or rain, andthe inside has shag carpet, purple veloor
seats, the pop quilted leather ceilings. I mean, would you see it
on eBay or something instead of anunused van? Says on Facebook marketplace.
It was the first thing that cameup when we made the decision too,
yeah, to go that direction.So the two of you bartender's same place.
(01:57):
That's how you met. No,not to me that on bumble Believe
it or not? Come and itworked out yes during COVID Believe it or
Not. Yeah, No, wehad been longtime bartenders in the bar industry.
I did most of my work inLA I worked in like chef driven
restaurants like Spago and fun stuff likethat. And then I was doing I
was doing working for Well. Iopened bars in Florida, bartending for years
(02:23):
and years, and then I startedworking with a consulting agency based here Hawthorne,
and we we did national restaurant accountwork. So we were making cocktails
for suppliers, for brands for youknow, large companies like Darden and celebrity
cruises and blooming brands and whatnot.So that's kind of what brought me here.
(02:46):
I was on my way to Europeduring twenty twenty to make a move
there. Yeah, and then theytold you nobody's going anywhere exactly. They
locked it down, And so Icame here and got locked down. That's
right. I put a ring onit, that's right. Who swiped on
whom on bumble? I think itwas. It actually happened about a ten
minute span, Okay. I wasjust on there checking out to see what
(03:08):
was going on out there. Ofcourse you were, and I was skyping
with my best friend in LA.We were just checking out. The dudes
here compared to the dudes in Laare very different, I'll tell oh.
Yeah, so yeah, I thinkwe matched. And you had like turned
it off and in the morning hehad a message that he had a match
(03:29):
and during that short time, Yeah, we just hit the ground running.
When when did the first I Loveyou come out? Many weeks later?
How many hours later? Hours?Don't lie, Mike, it was right
when I saw her boy, Thatis the right answer, right. So
(03:51):
you've put together a line of drinkscalled pony Boys Slings. And by the
way, one of my favorite booksmy entire life, is The Outsiders became
a movie. But yeah, ponyBoy's a great character in the movie The
Outsiders. Coincidentally, Yes, that'scool. Well, I mean that book's
seventy years old or something. Anyway, think I'm sure that pony Boys finally
(04:12):
use now So oh, yeah,here you are with pony Boy. But
that wasn't where you found that word. Now, where do you find it?
Uh? Embarrassed. I'm embarrassed tosay that I had never read the
book or seen the movie at thetime, and we were coming up with
names. Our dog's name is Whiskey. We call them Whiskey Boy, and
so we were playing with that name. But then we didn't want to just
be boxed into that. If wewanted to play with other spirits later,
(04:34):
so I said, well we metin Kentucky. What about pony Boy,
and Mike's like, oh the outsiders, That's which I saw in the theater.
Yeah. Yeah, that was alot of guys on their way to
start them right. That was thewhole the whole rat pack or brat pack
or where they come. Yeah,where they are, all of them.
So you've got all these different flavorsnow called Pony Boys Slings, And are
(04:56):
you in bars or is this justhappening now where you're getting these things added?
Yeah, So we just launched inJuly. We're in bars, restaurants
and retail and so we're only availablein Kentucky as of right now, mostly
Louisville, Lexington and the Covington area. And so yeah, we're with Kentucky
Eagle, that's our distributor, andwe're just you know, trucking along.
(05:19):
Here's an example. We all knowthe Stevie Wonders song mas Cherie Amour.
Yeah, this is bourbon whiskey withdriver mooth sour, black cherry juice,
aromatic bitters, and natural flavors,and it's pony Boy Slings my cherry a
more. Did I say that correct? Perfect was to sing it my Silly
(05:43):
Stevie, one of the great onesof all time. You have bourbon pop
star, says Bourbon whiskey driver,mooth, strawberry juice, lemon bitters nice,
Yes, Derby cream soda as ChurchillDown's been chasing you over the word
Derby. We're still waiting our trademarkor trademark there you go. Yes,
(06:04):
yes, I love the concept.So give people a basic idea of what
sort of pop they're going to getout of. Yeah, these tastes,
so yeah, I'll take this one. So basically, we wanted to create
a sessionable way to drink bourbon.We love bourbon. It's always presented to
you though in like an old fashionedManhattan where it's very spirit forward, and
(06:26):
so what we were finding is thatif you actually blend it correctly and put
on the back end, it canbe super refreshing and really delicious and easy
to drink. So we made thesecarbonated bourbon cocktails. They're only seven percent,
so they're not going to knock yoursocks off, but they are going
to make you giggle, so that'skind of our intention. And then all
of them are made with real bourbon, and we use modifiers like fortified wine.
(06:49):
So in the Derby Cream soda weuse sherry and in the other two
we use dry remooth, so it'sBourbon the modifier. And then we use
real juice, so we use realblack cherry juice and real strawberry. We're
using a basil extract, natural lemon, aromatic bitters, black lemon bitters.
We're just basically trying to make itreally good. So where's the test lab?
(07:12):
You know they have a test kitchenfor a restaurant. Is it in
the van or is it where youlive? It's in the mid No,
I'm just kidding. Well, actuallythe thought process and creation happened right here
on Fourth Street. We used tolive at the edge, and that's kind
of where all the formulations. Yeah, but from the bartending world, taking
that and flipping it on his headand working with our co packer and we
(07:35):
worked with a food scientist based outof Denver, Colorado to learn how to
really translate a cocktail to a canand just kind of took it from there.
And yeah, we saw a demandfor it. We were doing working
with a lot of brands around thearea, Bourbon brands, and we were
doing events and developing cocktails for theirvisitor centers at their distilleries, and we
(08:00):
saw this at events. We weredoing large events three to four hundred people
during the summer, and we hadto make drinks with whiskey. So I
have the background of kegged cocktails fromsome of the bars I opened down in
Florida, so we took that andbasically carbonated bourbon cocktails. So essentially we
were kind of doing a test marketat the time, not knowing that we
were going to start this, andthen when the time came, we knew
(08:24):
what worked. Love the feel ofyour website, by the way, it's
filled with joy, all photos andeverybody's having a big time. It's drink
ponyboy dot com craft bourbon cocktails,fully carbonated in a can by these two
clever people. You've both been bartenders. Yes, Do you get wrapped up
around the spokes of somebody's sad storyor you able to just turn that off
(08:45):
at the end of the night ofwork. Don't people come in and tell
you all kinds of things and it'sjust oh yeah. I had a few
regulars that didn't really move from theirseat too often. When I was born.
I just wonder what you have asince like a nun to sit there
and listen to this or somebody,but to multitask while you still got work
(09:07):
to do. Oh yeah, absolutely, honestly, don't miss all of that,
but I do miss having a littlebit of a crowd. That was
just kind of fun to play aroundand be creative behind the bar. But
now we do it with her cares. She loves an audience. Of course,
you love that microphone too, soyou have a little experience. I
feel. Yeah, I feel reallygood with the mic in front of me.
(09:31):
Yeah, I've done voiceover now sinceI guess it's probably been like eight
years, but I could tell youare a professional at the microphone. Thank
you so much. You do likecharacters, character voices. Yeah, I
lived in LA for ten years andfinally leaned into voiceover with everyone telling me
I should probably get into it.And then I've done animation. I play
(09:54):
Boy characters because I'm a female witha raspy voice. So you know,
that's that where they call upon forthe Bart Simpsons of the world exactly.
That's who I was thinking. Yeah, you know, if I could do
that, I mean, that'd y, that'd be fun too. But pony
boys slang is gonna be great forwhere are people going to see you next
that you're with your fancy van?Are you? Are you doing any parties
coming soon that I know about?Yeah, we actually have quite a bit.
(10:18):
We're gonna be at High Horse Baron Thursday for a fun speed dating
for all. Oh, I seethat. Yep, we have that coming
up. We're also going to beat Big Bar on Friday for a Halloween
costume bar crawl. We're doing someprivate parties this weekend. And then it
says Total one and more. Areyou doing that? No top Hat liquor?
(10:39):
Yep, that's I know where thatis. St Matthew. Yeah,
it's crossed from the Vogue Theater.Ye Breeze and Evergreen Coxes Evergreen very soon
okay cool? Ye. People canstart finding you then follow us on Instagram.
It's also drink pony Boy. Okay, Instagram handle that'll have that'll get
you there, that'll get you allthe latest. It is great to meet
you, Bass family. Thank you. They met on the bumbo. Next
(11:05):
thing you know, they've got StevieWonder in their mind and it's my cherry
amour and pony Boy slings multiple flavorsavailable there. Yeah, just follow him
on Instagram Drink pony Boy. That'salso the website drink ponyboy dot com.
Janelle my Great Sea Bo, thankyou so much, Terry, thanks for
the visit. Back in a fewon news Radio eight forty whas
You're a news radio eight forty whasTerry Miners. Here, we've got two
superstar entrepreneurs from this area in thestudio with me. Let me say how
to Janelle and Mike Hi Hi,the Bass Family. The Bass Family.
Mike is wearing a cool sort ofcowboy hat. But I was just on
your website, drinkponyboy dot com becauseI wanted to see the van. I'd
(00:26):
heard a lot about it. Absolutely, she's forty six years young. Yeah,
whose brainchild was this to get avan right out of the seventies?
That? Look? Honestly it wasMike's. Yeah. Yeah. We were
actually planning on making a little trailerbar to promote our brand, and then
we were we started thinking about it. We're like, why are we doing
a bar when we are coming upwith the can cocktail. We're not making
(00:48):
drinks anymore, we're popping them.Yeah. So the two of you have
been bartenders. I mean, you'reclearly too young to even know what the
nineteen seventies are about, but somehowyou did your research. Well, well,
did your parents help you. I'ma product of the seventies. You
were you were born in seventy nine, seventy one seventy one. Okay,
so you were a baby in alot of people feel like it's the greatest
(01:12):
era ever. But I saw yourvan and I thought this is great.
I just love the whole notion ofthe It looks like a nightclub inside the
van. Absolutely, it's in nineteenseventy seven G twenty. It's all original,
Okay. It was made by aman named Jack out of Columbus,
Ohio. He decked it out andthen just never really drove it. It's
(01:34):
never seen snow or rain, andthe inside has shag carpet, purple veloor
seats, the pop quilted leather ceilings. I mean, would you see it
on eBay or something instead of anunused van? Says on Facebook marketplace.
It was the first thing that cameup when we made the decision too,
yeah, to go that direction.So the two of you bartender's same place.
(01:57):
That's how you met. No,not to me that on bumble Believe
it or not? Come and itworked out yes during COVID Believe it or
Not. Yeah, No, wehad been longtime bartenders in the bar industry.
I did most of my work inLA I worked in like chef driven
restaurants like Spago and fun stuff likethat. And then I was doing I
was doing working for Well. Iopened bars in Florida, bartending for years
(02:23):
and years, and then I startedworking with a consulting agency based here Hawthorne,
and we we did national restaurant accountwork. So we were making cocktails
for suppliers, for brands for youknow, large companies like Darden and celebrity
cruises and blooming brands and whatnot.So that's kind of what brought me here.
(02:46):
I was on my way to Europeduring twenty twenty to make a move
there. Yeah, and then theytold you nobody's going anywhere exactly. They
locked it down, And so Icame here and got locked down. That's
right. I put a ring onit, that's right. Who swiped on
whom on bumble? I think itwas. It actually happened about a ten
minute span, Okay. I wasjust on there checking out to see what
(03:08):
was going on out there. Ofcourse you were, and I was skyping
with my best friend in LA.We were just checking out. The dudes
here compared to the dudes in Laare very different, I'll tell oh.
Yeah, so yeah, I thinkwe matched. And you had like turned
it off and in the morning hehad a message that he had a match
(03:29):
and during that short time, Yeah, we just hit the ground running.
When when did the first I Loveyou come out? Many weeks later?
How many hours later? Hours?Don't lie, Mike, it was right
when I saw her boy, Thatis the right answer, right. So
(03:51):
you've put together a line of drinkscalled pony Boys Slings. And by the
way, one of my favorite booksmy entire life, is The Outsiders became
a movie. But yeah, ponyBoy's a great character in the movie The
Outsiders. Coincidentally, Yes, that'scool. Well, I mean that book's
seventy years old or something. Anyway, think I'm sure that pony Boys finally
(04:12):
use now So oh, yeah,here you are with pony Boy. But
that wasn't where you found that word. Now, where do you find it?
Uh? Embarrassed. I'm embarrassed tosay that I had never read the
book or seen the movie at thetime, and we were coming up with
names. Our dog's name is Whiskey. We call them Whiskey Boy, and
so we were playing with that name. But then we didn't want to just
be boxed into that. If wewanted to play with other spirits later,
(04:34):
so I said, well we metin Kentucky. What about pony Boy,
and Mike's like, oh the outsiders, That's which I saw in the theater.
Yeah. Yeah, that was alot of guys on their way to
start them right. That was thewhole the whole rat pack or brat pack
or where they come. Yeah,where they are, all of them.
So you've got all these different flavorsnow called Pony Boys Slings, And are
(04:56):
you in bars or is this justhappening now where you're getting these things added?
Yeah, So we just launched inJuly. We're in bars, restaurants
and retail and so we're only availablein Kentucky as of right now, mostly
Louisville, Lexington and the Covington area. And so yeah, we're with Kentucky
Eagle, that's our distributor, andwe're just you know, trucking along.
(05:19):
Here's an example. We all knowthe Stevie Wonders song mas Cherie Amour.
Yeah, this is bourbon whiskey withdriver mooth sour, black cherry juice,
aromatic bitters, and natural flavors,and it's pony Boy Slings my cherry a
more. Did I say that correct? Perfect was to sing it my Silly
(05:43):
Stevie, one of the great onesof all time. You have bourbon pop
star, says Bourbon whiskey driver,mooth, strawberry juice, lemon bitters nice,
Yes, Derby cream soda as ChurchillDown's been chasing you over the word
Derby. We're still waiting our trademarkor trademark there you go. Yes,
(06:04):
yes, I love the concept.So give people a basic idea of what
sort of pop they're going to getout of. Yeah, these tastes,
so yeah, I'll take this one. So basically, we wanted to create
a sessionable way to drink bourbon.We love bourbon. It's always presented to
you though in like an old fashionedManhattan where it's very spirit forward, and
(06:26):
so what we were finding is thatif you actually blend it correctly and put
on the back end, it canbe super refreshing and really delicious and easy
to drink. So we made thesecarbonated bourbon cocktails. They're only seven percent,
so they're not going to knock yoursocks off, but they are going
to make you giggle, so that'skind of our intention. And then all
of them are made with real bourbon, and we use modifiers like fortified wine.
(06:49):
So in the Derby Cream soda weuse sherry and in the other two
we use dry remooth, so it'sBourbon the modifier. And then we use
real juice, so we use realblack cherry juice and real strawberry. We're
using a basil extract, natural lemon, aromatic bitters, black lemon bitters.
We're just basically trying to make itreally good. So where's the test lab?
(07:12):
You know they have a test kitchenfor a restaurant. Is it in
the van or is it where youlive? It's in the mid No,
I'm just kidding. Well, actuallythe thought process and creation happened right here
on Fourth Street. We used tolive at the edge, and that's kind
of where all the formulations. Yeah, but from the bartending world, taking
that and flipping it on his headand working with our co packer and we
(07:35):
worked with a food scientist based outof Denver, Colorado to learn how to
really translate a cocktail to a canand just kind of took it from there.
And yeah, we saw a demandfor it. We were doing working
with a lot of brands around thearea, Bourbon brands, and we were
doing events and developing cocktails for theirvisitor centers at their distilleries, and we
(08:00):
saw this at events. We weredoing large events three to four hundred people
during the summer, and we hadto make drinks with whiskey. So I
have the background of kegged cocktails fromsome of the bars I opened down in
Florida, so we took that andbasically carbonated bourbon cocktails. So essentially we
were kind of doing a test marketat the time, not knowing that we
were going to start this, andthen when the time came, we knew
(08:24):
what worked. Love the feel ofyour website, by the way, it's
filled with joy, all photos andeverybody's having a big time. It's drink
ponyboy dot com craft bourbon cocktails,fully carbonated in a can by these two
clever people. You've both been bartenders. Yes, Do you get wrapped up
around the spokes of somebody's sad storyor you able to just turn that off
(08:45):
at the end of the night ofwork. Don't people come in and tell
you all kinds of things and it'sjust oh yeah. I had a few
regulars that didn't really move from theirseat too often. When I was born.
I just wonder what you have asince like a nun to sit there
and listen to this or somebody,but to multitask while you still got work
(09:07):
to do. Oh yeah, absolutely, honestly, don't miss all of that,
but I do miss having a littlebit of a crowd. That was
just kind of fun to play aroundand be creative behind the bar. But
now we do it with her cares. She loves an audience. Of course,
you love that microphone too, soyou have a little experience. I
feel. Yeah, I feel reallygood with the mic in front of me.
(09:31):
Yeah, I've done voiceover now sinceI guess it's probably been like eight
years, but I could tell youare a professional at the microphone. Thank
you so much. You do likecharacters, character voices. Yeah, I
lived in LA for ten years andfinally leaned into voiceover with everyone telling me
I should probably get into it.And then I've done animation. I play
(09:54):
Boy characters because I'm a female witha raspy voice. So you know,
that's that where they call upon forthe Bart Simpsons of the world exactly.
That's who I was thinking. Yeah, you know, if I could do
that, I mean, that'd y, that'd be fun too. But pony
boys slang is gonna be great forwhere are people going to see you next
that you're with your fancy van?Are you? Are you doing any parties
coming soon that I know about?Yeah, we actually have quite a bit.
(10:18):
We're gonna be at High Horse Baron Thursday for a fun speed dating
for all. Oh, I seethat. Yep, we have that coming
up. We're also going to beat Big Bar on Friday for a Halloween
costume bar crawl. We're doing someprivate parties this weekend. And then it
says Total one and more. Areyou doing that? No top Hat liquor?
(10:39):
Yep, that's I know where thatis. St Matthew. Yeah,
it's crossed from the Vogue Theater.Ye Breeze and Evergreen Coxes Evergreen very soon
okay cool? Ye. People canstart finding you then follow us on Instagram.
It's also drink pony Boy. Okay, Instagram handle that'll have that'll get
you there, that'll get you allthe latest. It is great to meet
you, Bass family. Thank you. They met on the bumbo. Next
(11:05):
thing you know, they've got StevieWonder in their mind and it's my cherry
amour and pony Boy slings multiple flavorsavailable there. Yeah, just follow him
on Instagram Drink pony Boy. That'salso the website drink ponyboy dot com.
Janelle my Great Sea Bo, thankyou so much, Terry, thanks for
the visit. Back in a fewon news Radio eight forty whas
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