Five minutes. One live microphone.

The only ground rules: your story must be true, it must be about you, and it can’t be a plug for anything.

Welcome to Fray Cafe.

Recorded live at Red Eyed Fly on March 13, 2011 during SXSW 2011. Special thanks to Kevin Smokler and all of the Fray volunteers for making the evening a huge success, and to the management and staff of the Red Eyed Fly for hosting the event year after year. And, naturally, a shout-out to Derek Powazek for starting the ball rolling 11 years ago.

Extra-special thanks to everyone who donated to ensure the continuation of Fray Cafe @ SXSW!

The audio from this year’s event is presented here in its entirety. You can listen to individual storytellers using the embedded players, or download a .zip file of the full show (AAC format, 499MB). iOS users and the Flash-averse can access & listen to the individual tracks here.

Storyteller Audio
Kevin Smokler
The Legend of the Budiac Pimp Suite
14:36
Jim Henke
Two Dumb Jokes
6:48
Amanda Hirsch
Talking to the Opposite Sex
5:38
David Dylan Thomas
A Love Story
7:37
Gabriel Paul
Independence Day
6:10
Rion Morgenstern
At Least It’ll Make a Good Story for the Book…
11:11
John Bell
Getting Lost
6:13
Kyle McGuinness
My Job at the Internet Room
5:51
Denise Jacobs
The Joys of Giving Birth
7:03
Baratunde Thurston
The Snowtorious Hike
7:25
Kevin Attempts to Call Jish
1:45
Christian Payne
My Turning Point
7:52
Kevin’s NPR Moment I
3:02
Ewan Spence
A Ghost Story
12:49
Remembering Brad; Spirit of Fray
3:02
INTERMISSION
Back from Break;
“Don’t make me start singing…”
5:06
Phylise Banner
Fear of Flying
11:52
Arun Ranganathan
Meisner & The Method
7:02
Jeff Rider
The Mystery Box
14:58
Kevin’s NPR Moment 2
1:04
Nick Peterson
Reclaiming an Embarrassing Moment
5:12
Jessica Reynolds
Unknown Things
10:03
Josh Millard
Jokes I Learned as a Kid
5:44
Pamela Greyer
115 Days
7:18
Jeff Wallace
Let’s Go…Fly Through the St. Louis Arch!
6:57
Pablo Defendini
The Last Lesson My Dad Gave Me
5:57
Kevin’s NPR Moment 3; Special Thanks
3:54
Glenda Bautista
Web 2.0 Ruined My Life
10:29
Wrap-up
2:50

Creative Commons License
Fray Cafe 11 is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.