From First Rolls to Guiding Hands: Maddi Murphy’s Kayak Journey

In this episode of The Dubcast with Dubside, we sit down with Maddi Murphy—paddler, performer, and mental health counselor-in-training—at the Delmarva Paddlers Retreat. Maddi first attended Greenland-style kayaking events as a child, rolling her first kayak at just 14, and has since grown into a thoughtful and dedicated mentor in the community.

Dubside and Maddi explore her early introduction to traditional kayaking, what it was like to return to the sport as a teenager, and the rewarding (and sometimes frustrating) experience of teaching others to roll. Maddi shares powerful insights into the psychological barriers that can hold people back—especially those coping with fear or trauma—and how grounding techniques from her counseling work can help students regain calm and confidence on the water.

From rolling progression to Dashboard Dramas, and from stiff old kayakers to the strength of young women, this is a rich, heartfelt conversation about growth, resilience, and finding joy in the water.

Delmarva Paddler's Retreat

Transcript

DUBSIDE:
Welcome to The Dubcast with Dubside. This is a special guest edition of the Dubcast. I'll be talking to Maddi Murphy, who came to Qajaq USA events at a very young age, and grew up with it and stayed with it.

We will discuss the differences between the Delmarva and HRGF, that's the Hudson River Greenland Festival, her teaching rolling progression, psychological obstacles for people learning to roll, some of the differences between men and women, we have trauma and panic issues, her career path to be a mental health counselor, some acting and plays and a concept called “dashboard dramas”, her use of the GoPro camera at kayak events, and some music application ideas.

This runs for about a little over half an hour. 

So here we are at Delmarva and I'm talking to Maddi.

MADDI:
Hi Dubside.

DUBSIDE:
How's it going? Pretty good. Great to see you.

MADDI:
It's great to be seen. It's great to see you.

DUBSIDE:
So you have some sort of last name, but somebody like Dubside doesn't worry about last names, but if you want to tell me what your last name is.

MADDI:
My last name is Murphy. Maddi Murphy.

DUBSIDE:
Maddi Murphy. And you started coming to Delmarva a long time ago.

MADDI:
I did.

DUBSIDE:
When was that? Do you remember?

MADDI:
I don't remember the year. I think I was about seven, seven or eight.

DUBSIDE:
Seven or eight years old.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
I remember you were young. I didn't know you were that young.

MADDI:
Maybe I was eight or nine. I don't remember.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Can you remember all your impressions of it?

MADDI:
I remember it being a lot of like old people. And it was back when it was like a one-day event.

DUBSIDE:
Delmarva?

MADDI:
Oh no, not Delmarva. Okay. I'm thinking of HRGF.

DUBSIDE:
You got them all mixed up. That's okay.

MADDI:
Okay. Okay. So yes.

So I started coming to HRGF when I was very young, like probably seven or eight.

DUBSIDE:
What year would that have been?

MADDI:
I don't know. I was born in ’96. So you do the math.

DUBSIDE:
2001 or 2002?

MADDI:
No, not that early.

DUBSIDE:
But you were born when?

MADDI:
I was born in ’96. So I would have been 10 in 2006. So it was probably like 2005, 2004.

DUBSIDE:
So I was at HRGF, two of those. Do you remember me there?

MADDI:
Not really.

DUBSIDE:
I don't really remember anybody though.

MADDI:
Maybe vaguely.

DUBSIDE:
Maybe.

MADDI:
But like I was a small child and you were like this legendary being.

DUBSIDE:
Oh really?

MADDI:
So, you know.

DUBSIDE:
The first year I was there, Cheri Perry was there. I met Cheri Perry there.

MADDI:
Okay.

DUBSIDE:
When Wayne Gilchrist was doing it.

MADDI:
Okay.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So your dad must have just taken you and said here, look at all this kayak stuff.

MADDI:
Yeah, yeah. And he had built me a small kayak, a small kayak.

DUBSIDE:
So you were paddling.

MADDI:
I mean, not, not extensively, but like as much as like an eight year old does. Yeah. We have this ore bed in our hometown that, so they were digging iron ore back in the 1800s and then they hit a spring and so it all filled up.

And so there's this like little, like mile long pond. And so we would go in, into the ore bed and, and kayak. And that was like about as far as I ever wanted to go.

It was down to the end of the back. But yeah, so he built me this really beautiful little like plywood with a strip deck kayak.

DUBSIDE:
What kind of paddle?

MADDI:
A Greenland paddle.

DUBSIDE:
Really?

MADDI:
Oh yeah. I, yeah, I call it the matchstick. We still have it.

DUBSIDE:
Really?

MADDI:
But it's so small that it's like paddling with a matchstick now, but it was perfect when I was that age. And I, you know, I had like a mild, like, you know, child interest.

And then, then I kind of just decided, ah, that's not cool anymore. Cause you know, that's what kids do.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
They just decide.

DUBSIDE:
Did any of your kids your age get into kayaking?

MADDI:
No, no, not at all. So I would just go out with my dad every once in a while. And then I kind of got sick of it.

And then when I was 14, I just kind of announced one day, I'd like to learn to roll. I'd like to go back to HRGF this year. And my dad was like, okay.

So he took me and McKinley Rodriguez, who was also 14 at the time, taught me how to roll. It was one of those like annoying, like, “I got my hand roll before.”

DUBSIDE: 
You were 14 and she was 14 and she taught you how to roll?

MADDI: 
Yeah, it was a very, very cool moment. Wrote about it in my college essay.

DUBSIDE:
How many…how much instruction did it take? How long, how many tries?

MADDI:
It was like, it was like the morning. It was like the morning session.

DUBSIDE:
Just one morning and you were rolling.

MADDI:
Yeah. Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Do you remember when you got it the first time?

MADDI:
Not specifically.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

MADDI:
Cause it was, it was, you know, that process of like…

DUBSIDE:
Where they were helping you and then they had to convince you that they weren't helping you.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
But yeah. So she taught me how to roll it. I had my hand roll before I had my Greenland standard roll, which is always very annoying for people when kids do that. Flexible kids.

DUBSIDE:
So you're one of those kids.

MADDI:
Yeah. Yeah. And then I think the next year was my first Delmarva.

So I was 15 when I first came Delmarva.

DUBSIDE:
Right. When did you just start doing rope stuff?

MADDI:
I guess it was when I was 14, my first HRGF as like a teenager.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
All right. And so as you, like when you got to through high school and things, you were still doing it then, but was it some weird thing that the other kids didn't fully understand or how did that work?

MADDI:
Yeah. I, I mean, people are always surprised when I tell them that I kayak because I am like the most unathletic person, like in high school, I was in the theater program, like chorus, band, like music and theater and like artsy stuff. And my mom is super involved in like theater as well.

And so then like, so like people will get to know me and like, then all of a sudden I'll drop, “Oh, I'm going to kayak camp, you know, next weekend” or whatever. And they'll be like, "I'm sorry, what? Like you kayak, like you do something athletic?”

And I'm like, “Yeah, I know”. 

It's like really incongruent with everything else about me.

DUBSIDE:
Well, tell me your impression of the difference between how HRGF goes and how Delmarva goes.

MADDI:
Oh, that's interesting. I think HRGF is more family friendly, even though we haven't had a ton of kids, it is more of like a lighter vibe. And then Delmarva is definitely like a little bit like darker vibe.

There's more pranks. There's more, um, there's more drinking. I don't drink, but everyone else does. And I find it amusing.

DUBSIDE:
So yeah, if you've been coming out long, you, you've noticed like the, the Cabin 8, the Walden Gang, all that.

MADDI:
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I wasn't here during like peak Cabin 8 years, but I've definitely heard the stories.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So any other differences between HRGF and Delmarva that come to mind?

MADDI:
Delmarva has an extra day of instruction, which is nice because, you know, with HRGF, formal instruction starts on Saturday. But with Delmarva, formal instruction starts on Friday. So you get the Friday sessions, the Saturday sessions, and then a Sunday session.

So I think it gives people a chance to like work on stuff and then come back to it the next day. And then even maybe the next day after that.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right. The the general personalities of people that come to these events, do you see any differences between just the, I mean, you talked about a little darker here, a little more wild.

MADDI:
Yeah. A little edgy.

DUBSIDE:
Okay. Mm-hmm. Wow.

But then over the years, it's changed somewhat over time, wouldn't you say?

MADDI:
Yeah. Um, I think we're getting a lot more young people, which is great. There were like, there were like five or six like people around my age and I was like this year and I was like, oh my gosh, like, where are these people coming from? How did they hear about us? How, like, where did we get these people? Get them, make them bring their friends.

Like, because I think, I don't know, maybe I guess pre-pandemic, um, it was like, it was like me and, and maybe the Apgars and nobody else our age.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. All right. Well, we get, there'll be sometimes somebody's son or daughter will come to these things for a year or maybe two years.

And then they just, you know, my parents dragged me to this thing and I put up with it and then they don't come back.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
It's awfully nice. You are the, one of the few exceptions who actually, we still get to see you come each time.

MADDI:
I've stuck around. One thing about me is that I stick with stuff. Like it just, I collect things. It just becomes part of my identity.

DUBSIDE:
And so like, typically people who've been here long enough become mentors and we've, we've done that with you. And so now this year, you've been past years, you're out there teaching and rolling.

MADDI:
Yeah. I think I came here once as a participant and then I just thought I was just mentoring.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. So, tell me how you would start off teaching somebody rolling. What's your technique?

MADDI:
Um, balance brace first. Um, balance brace into, you know, folding over and then folding back into your balance brace. Then all of a sudden…

DUBSIDE:
Just getting that, that hip movement of the kayak thing going.

MADDI:
Yup. And the twist The twist is hard for people sometimes, you know, getting your shoulders flat on the water. And then, you know, I would go into the 180 roll, you know, where you're like fully upside down, but on the same side going down.

And then, uh, and then eventually the 360, but even then that's just the hardest part is the, like people get disoriented.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
Cause you're upside down.

DUBSIDE:
Are there, are there categories or certain types of students that you get that you have a more difficult time with?

MADDI:
Yeah. This is not to be mean, but I have a really hard time with, there's this category of old stiff white man paddling a bathtub.

DUBSIDE:
I know what you mean.

MADDI:
And they are always the nicest guys and they can't get their head on the back deck. And that is so hard to teach, you know, recovery from a balance brace or a roll when they can't get their head all the way back because you know, your head's just like a bowling ball. 



DUBSIDE:
I find, you know, stiff guys and big high volume, high back deck kayaks who cannot balance race.  It's just not going to happen. You know, it's not going to happen. But then I was —was it here somewhere recently— that we got familiar with it.  It was it's a technique where they say, you know, your first thing should be a balance brace and they'll go through all these things about here's the position you get in the balance brace.

And then if you get the guys like that to balance brace, even if they, if they're doing it with their face, six inches underwater, that's considered successful.

MADDI:
Yeah, sure.

DUBSIDE:
All right. So, which is a different idea for me. Cause I'm thinking, if they're, if they're not floating, if they're not breathing, it's not working.

MADDI:
Well, it's not as functional if they're not breathing, obviously, but…

DUBSIDE:
Getting them fully familiar with that position, whether you're breathing or not, just so you know that's how you're supposed to feel, arching that much and getting your face as close as possible as you can. If their back deck was five inches lower, it might work in that kayak.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
All right.

MADDI:
I also find it really hard when people have their PFD on and their PFD gets caught on the back as they're trying to slide up on the back deck. It's just getting caught. And there's always tools like, you know, like some sort of knife, you know, stowed in their PFD.

DUBSIDE: 

All the junk on their PFD.

MADDI:
Or the, yeah, the whistle and the radio. And then the thing that has really been annoying me this year is the little camelback water sacks.

DUBSIDE:
Oh yeah.

MADDI:
And I'm just like, man, I haven't had any water all weekend. Like I'm in my dry suit. I'm not taking this thing off to pee.

Like, and people are like, no, I got, I gotta be hydrated. And I'm like, screw that! Terrible advice, terrible advice. 

But yeah, it, you know, it's just like, well, why would you want to have that water on your back, like pulling your back in, sloshing around?

DUBSIDE:
So what is it as a category or group of people, what are the easiest people to teach?

MADDI:
Um, young, flexible women.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
I agree with that.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. The only, the only issues you can possibly find that people that, that are really freaked out about being underwater, they can be flexible and young, but if they're freaking out, you know, then that's, you got the psychological things to work through there.

MADDI:
Yeah. But I don't mind working through that kind of stuff. I'm in school to be a mental health counselor.

So, um, I had a really interesting moment with Abby Rupert last year where she was in a kayak. I don't know if she was unfamiliar with the kayak or if she was just like feeling kind of claustrophobic, but she starts to panic just being in the kayak. And I said, Abby, tell me five things you can see.

Tell me four things that you can touch. Tell me three. And she knew exactly what I was doing.

It's a grounding technique. And you need to go through the five senses, you know, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. And it, and it, it just brings your attention back to your actual surroundings instead of like the panic that's going on inside your head.

And somebody had done this with her before. And I think for her just knowing that, hey, I'm going to, we're going to do some grounding right now. Like she just, she snapped right back into it.

DUBSIDE:
I'm familiar with that panic, anxiety place when you, when your head gets to that stage, it can be, you know, high heights or claustrophobia, a number of things. But if it's underwater, being in a kayak, once your head has been to that place, anytime you're anywhere close to that situation, your head is going back there and you totally panic. And so I can, so it sounds like you've had some professional training, how to deal with this stuff.

So what you just said, I want to, I want to dig into that a little bit further. Go back over that again. I want to get that straight.

So you're telling somebody it's five, four, three, two, one. Tell me that again.

MADDI:
So tell me five things you can see. So they look around.

I see the couch. I see the window. I see the quills nest sign.

I see the mirror.

I see the lamp.

I don't know what number I'm at. 

And then four things. Some people do four things you can hear. Some people do four things you can touch.

DUBSIDE:
OK. See, hear, touch.

MADDI:
And so then, you know, you're, you're touching things and it's the, it's the tactile, like grounding you that way. And then hearing, you're listening. All of a sudden I can hear, you know, whether it's the buzzing of the lights or the crow over there or whatever. And then smell, and then taste.

And it like really just helps people get back into their body and realize I'm here. I'm safe.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
Whatever scary moment is passed and my panic is going crazy and it doesn't need to right now. That's not serving me right now.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
I've tried various things. But I had, I remember one woman… it seems to be— you tell me if this is your case— people who will say, you know, I had this near drowning when I was a kid. I was in a situation where I, you know, something like that. And they’ll admit that, my head has got issues there.

It's always women.

MADDI:
Interesting.

DUBSIDE:
Because guys would, would never even take the class. They don't want to, they don't want to admit that they have problems. They're not even trying to kayaking.

They're just not even there.

MADDI:
Yeah. They're totally avoidant. And women may have more of a tendency to be like, no, I want to get through this.

And I wonder if part of that is that being a woman in this patriarchal society, like trauma is almost built in, like it’s hard to be a woman, and women work through really, having really scary things happen to them all the time, whether it's that creepy guy catcalling you on the street, or, you know, intimate partner violence, not that that doesn't happen to men, but it is more often perpetuated against women by men, and so I wonder if that sort of has like a correlation there between, like, women are used to getting through shit, and, you know, dealing with trauma, and so if you have a bad experience, and you know your life is going to be better if you can stop panicking whenever you're triggered, I wonder if that's part of it, where, you know, they have the, perhaps the emotional awareness, they've been taught, you know, women are often taught to be more in touch with their emotions than men, so I think that all has to do with it.

DUBSIDE:
Well let me tell you my, one of my attempts to work through somebody's fear, I was with a group of, these were college kids, we were going down the Savannah River, and there was some thing they had, a project. A guy was doing a Greenland kind of traditional paddling orientation, from headwaters to all the way to the end or something, I don't know, weeks or something that they did this, and I joined them for a couple days. We were camping out along the place, and the guy had permits from different parks. We had a little bit of time to do some rolling. And the guy said, this is Dubside, and he does all this Greenland rolling stuff. 

There was this one woman, they said, she's got some issues being really fearful of being underwater.

So I could see she was, you know, flexible and had a nice kayak for that, so I was trying to do it, the idea that, you know, if the water is your friend, maybe you just haven't had the right introduction to your friend. 

So I said, you know, trying to make someone feel really comfortable in that you're supporting them and they're not gonna, you know, be caught underneath by themselves because you're right there all the time. I said, look, I'm gonna hold your hands, and we're gonna go underwater, and I want you to visualize, just in your head, you can close your eyes, but if you've ever seen like a coral reef and all these colored fishes, amazing colored fishes passing through there, and the plants that are waving in the grass. So I want you to go down and just imagine that, and just think, see what you can see, and then squeeze my hand when you're ready to come back up.

So we go under, and she was, you know, a little bit tiny, she comes back up, and I said, tell me about it, tell me every detail about it, tell me all about it, okay, now, go down for another look, you know, she goes back down, and so, you know, like you're saying, five things you can see in here, you're taking their head away from the trauma in the past and saying, here's where we are right now, and tell me all about it, and really get their head in the present, and I had some success with her on that one, it worked out.

MADDI:
Yeah, it sort of, it becomes a corrective experience, too, you've had this bad experience in the past, and you're like, “Water BAD”, and then all of a sudden, it's like, well, no, maybe water is not bad. Maybe you had a bad experience with water, but now I'm going to hold your hand, and we're going to see how that water can support you, and how you can work with it, and how you can have fun on the water.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, I had a woman in Sweden, or Denmark, and she admitted she'd had some big trauma near drowning or something. And so I worked with her a bit, and we started staying there, and I could pull her up really quickly, and she was, you know, a little fearful, but we worked at it for a while, and at one point, she said—I got into, you know, you want to twist your body, and where your hands are, and things like that, and we've got into the tech of it—and she said, “Well, can you just let me stay under there a little bit longer? Don't pull me up so fast, so I can be down there further.” 

And then she realized what she had just said, that she had been so in a hurry to get up before, and now here she is asking to be down longer, and she's, oh…

MADDI:
Yeah, give me a chance to work it out.

DUBSIDE:
It was a big moment.

MADDI:
Yeah, building people's resilience, building their, like, self-assurance.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's cool.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
So, what kind of work are you looking for career-wise?

MADDI:
Yeah, so I want to be a mental health counselor. I am in the last year of my program. It's a two-year program, and I have spent the last three and a half years working my way through it very, very part-time, very slowly, and so I've got the rest of the semester, and then the spring semester, and then I'm done, and then I'll hopefully take my test and become a licensed mental health counselor, so I do want to do therapy, I want to help people with anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, all that kind of stuff.

DUBSIDE:
Wow. So someone who has kayaking issues, would that typically be under the heading of one of those things?

Like, that's not an OCD thing. That's too much kayaking. 

But, like, if you had trauma as a kid, near drowning or something, and were freaked out about being in a kayak, what would that, what classification of mental illness or mental issue?

MADDI:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I would say that that is trauma, and you could do, like, a trauma-informed therapy of some kind, whether that be trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy, or, you know, I guess that would probably be the most, like, standard treatment for something like that, but I suppose with, like, phobias, people will do exposure therapy, you know, they start with little exposures.

DUBSIDE:
So, is phobia classified as different from trauma, or is they sort of related, or how does that work?

MADDI:
You know, I'm not entirely sure. That's a good question. I'd have to look that one up.

I think you can get phobias without having trauma, for sure.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, okay.

MADDI:
But I think they're related.

DUBSIDE:
Hmm. All right. Wow.

Do you see any, or have any ideas about kayaking as therapy?

MADDI:
That, I mean, nature therapy, being in nature. I know that there are some cultures that do nature bathing, or forest bathing, where you go into the woods and you just drink it in. And I feel like that sort of, I don't know much about that practice, but it—I don't know—with my limited knowledge, it feels like something that could kind of be translated to being on the water, just really enveloping yourself in that environment. I think being close to nature can be really, really healing for people, so, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Hmm, all right.

MADDI:
And I think the other thing is that kayaking and rope gymnastics are so physical, and you're making your body do the thing, and you're sore, and you're bruised, and your muscles are just tired, and it can really distract from anxiety and stress and, you know, all the everyday hustle and bustle, and for me, personally, I come here, and I'm just, like, I'm working, and, like, my physical body ends up feeling so tired, but also so strong by the end.

And it's a good distraction from, you know, any other stress and anxiety going on in my life.

DUBSIDE:
All right. Cool. Are you planning on coming back next year?

MADDI:
Oh, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
And to HRGF?

MADDI:
Eh, HRGF is a problem. We've switched the time of year that HRGF is, because we have a new venue.

DUBSIDE:
That's right, that's right. This was the new year. I had to miss it this year, too, because I had the Minnesota thing.

MADDI:
Yeah, and it coincided with the Rochester Fringe Festival, which is a multidisciplinary arts festival— theater, music, dance, all this stuff. And I've been doing that for years. And that's my mom's thing. So my mom will write these plays that take place in cars. It's called Dashboard Dramas.

DUBSIDE:
Wow.

MADDI:
So it's just the actors and two audience members, and that's it. And so you're sitting there, and the audience watches a ten-minute play, and then they rotate to the next car over, and they watch a ten-minute play in that car, and they rotate, and there's four cars, and...

DUBSIDE:
Wait, wait, wait. Say that again.

MADDI:
Okay, okay. Dashboard Dramas. Plays in cars, okay? So there's four cars, and eight audience members, and they go in pairs.

Each pair of audience members goes through to each car, and in each car...

DUBSIDE:
So the audience moves from car to car.

MADDI:
Yep.

DUBSIDE:
All right. And there's two actors in each car.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

MADDI:
Or sometimes more, but sometimes they squeeze in, or we have a trailer or something that fits more people. But yeah, there's a ten-minute play in each car, totally unrelated, like little vignettes, basically.

DUBSIDE:
So these perform while the car is driving?

MADDI:
No, it's parked in a parking lot. But the actors have to do it four times per show, and so it gets very repetitive, and it really kind of screws with your brain, because you'll be like, oh my God, was that three or four?

I don't know. And we'll do multiple shows in one day.

DUBSIDE:
Okay.

MADDI:
And so over the course of...

DUBSIDE:
So you do the acting for them?

MADDI:
Yes. Yeah? Yeah.

So I've been doing that for a few years now, and my mom writes them.

DUBSIDE:
All right.

MADDI:
So I'm kind of like a little Nepo baby there. All right. But yeah, so I've been doing that, and it's really fun.

And I think there was one year where I think we did the same play 96 times over the course of 10 days.

DUBSIDE:
Really?

MADDI:
Because it was that many runs. And it's just an absolute whirlwind, but I love it. And this year, HRGF was the weekend before the Fringe Festival when I was in dress rehearsals for the Fringe Festival, and I was like, well, 10 days at the Fringe Festival or two days at HRGF.

It was like, really hard to justify. And the other thing about HRGF, the new location I've been there, it's really beautiful. The water's really beautiful.

The guy who runs the place, Dequin, he's awesome. But it is just camping, and I don't like camping. And sweet James Hartford said, oh, Maddi, you can sleep on my couch in my basement if you want.

And I'm like, we're just down the river, or down the road in Cold Spring. I was like, thank you, James, that means a lot to me, because I really hate to be in a tent. But hopefully at some point it will not be at the same time as Fringe, and I'll be able to do HRGF.

DUBSIDE:
Well, if they can work out that conflict between the Minnesota event and the Michigan event…

MADDI:
Yeah, that too, yeah. And I think that definitely affects way more people in our community, obviously, who are trying to do both.

DUBSIDE:
Did you gravitate towards the acting thing as a kid?

MADDI:
Yeah, yeah. As a kid, I was in musicals all throughout high school.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, my acting experience as a kid was Boy Scout skits.

MADDI:
Oh, interesting.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

MADDI:
That's funny.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, a lot of them were these formula ones that everybody knew about, they would get repeated over and over, which were pretty stupid. There were some people who had some creative ideas, and, yeah.

MADDI:
I mean, you're a pretty creative guy. You've got your music, you play the guitar, you're always recording songs, Dubside’s version of various Greenlandic tunes.

DUBSIDE:
Thank you for listening, yeah.

MADDI:
Yeah, yeah. That's very fun.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. We haven't really done any kayak skits at these events, have we? Not formally. There's some wild stuff that goes on at these auctions.

MADDI:
Yeah, that's true, that's true. And we do the movie making.

DUBSIDE:
Oh, yeah, that's right.

MADDI:
So we show movies, we make movies.

DUBSIDE:
So you've been one of Peter Gangler's camera folks, right?

MADDI:
Yes, and I have a GoPro, but something's wrong with it. It broke, and I just got fed up, and so now every time...

DUBSIDE:
So when I say his camera crew, I mean, he hands out...

MADDI:
He hands me a GoPro, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
And he says, go do something with this.

MADDI:
Now that I don't have my own working, he just hands me one, and I film for him.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, but it's great that, you know, shooting with a GoPro entails having to do all this editing, but he likes to do all that.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
So you just go out and shoot, and hand him the camera afterwards, and...

MADDI:
Yeah, for sure. I like to leave him little secret messages on the GoPro for him to watch later.

DUBSIDE:
That sounds like fun. Tell me, this weekend, you did a lot of out in the water, standing out there, helping people learn how to roll, but you had hooked up your own soundtrack.

MADDI:
Yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah?

MADDI:
Well, last year, Alan had this big speaker out there at the end of the dock, and he just put on some... I don't know. It was like Simon and Garfunkel or something like that, and the vibes were just immediately changed.

We were dancing. It was just... It was like a party out there, and I was like, we have got to do this again.

So we got the big speaker, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna make a playlist in it. It was an eclectic mix, some oldies, some newbies, and it was like six hours long, and I just put it on shuffle, and yesterday, my phone overheated in the middle of the day, but yeah, what are you gonna do? So yeah, that was really fun.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, cool. I was getting down some of that.

MADDI:
Yeah, yeah.

DUBSIDE:
Well, the gang here on Sunday afternoon is going to go to a restaurant, and they're gonna be leaving pretty soon, and I've still got to get my warmer clothes on and put this gear away, so we'll call it an interview, a special guest interview there. Thank you very much, and I hope to see you many more times in years to come, because you're such a cool person.

MADDI:
Aw, thanks, Dubside. Right back at ya.

DUBSIDE:
Thank you. 

And there you have Maddi Murphy, interviewed on Sunday, October 13th, 2024, at Camp Arrowhead in Delaware, and I'll note that Maddi's father is Dave Murphy, who's been a regular at both Delmarva and the Hudson River Greenland Festival for many years. Maybe sometime this coming year, I'll be able to interview him, and you can hear from him directly.

Thank you for listening to The Dubcast with Dubside.