Chip Carter of ‘Where The Food Comes From’ On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Entertainment Industry
It’s important to reflect the world around us, and the world around us is amazingly diverse. My show is about food and farming. Too often that’s a world where opportunities don’t exist for minority groups except at the bottom rungs. There are a lot of reasons for that, mainly connected to the generational transfer of land ownership. Ain’t got no land, ain’t got no farm. And to get enough land for a commercial farm is stupendously expensive, not to mention equipment and labor and other infrastructure. So we seek out and are thrilled to tell the stories of minority entrepreneurs who have found ways to beat the odds.
As a part of our series about pop culture’s rising stars, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Chip Carter, Host and Producer of the new national cable TV series “Where The Food Comes From”.
Back in the ’90s, Chip Carter was a nationally known print journalist (when there was such a thing) with The Chicago Tribune and Washington Post writing about video games, entertainment and pop culture. A mid-life career change took him to AOL/The Huffington Post as a video producer in 2009. He used that experience to launch CBC3 Media in 2016 and is now the producer and host of the popular new food and farm television series “Where The Food Comes From” on The RFD-TV Network and now in Season 2. Unexpectedly his long-dormant (never-launched?) music career got a boost as well. His ChipCarterMusic.com now has thousands of followers, and he’s heading back to the studio to make more new music even as Season 2 of the show hits the airwaves.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
It took a long time, I remember that much. I’m also pretty sure it happened a long time ago. I know that because so much of what I remember is like “old” history now, like Polaroid pictures old, and some of that I’m getting to capture and chronicle through this TV show and even some of my music. I’m not the typical ingenue. To be considered a “rising” anything at this age and stage of my career is amazing. I was a career print journalist and sometimes musician for not just a decade… not two decades… not even three decades, but almost 40 years… but at least I started young. I always made a living, and somebody always knew what I was doing. But now suddenly everybody seems to be catching on, so…
I grew up in the super-rural country a lot longer ago than most people have been alive. Tiny little small towns with no gas stations, no restaurants, no libraries, even no red lights — and above all, usually, no hope. My dad was a preacher so we moved every two or three years — little farms towns throughout Georgia and Texas. Moving like that was hard as a child; as an adult, it’s invaluable. I came to realize that every place, no matter its size, is completely different than any other place. But also that there are core truths that run through everything and are in play everywhere, whether it’s Manhattan, NY, or Manhattan, KS. We are all the same people.
My father was a very erudite, educated man who believed in God and the Kingdom to come, but he was pragmatically much more worried about how all of his flock fared here on this planet in the present day. He preached equality, commitment, service, and he did all of this in the very Deep South in very small towns where, and at a time, doing so was not always popular.
And he dropped all that on me at a very early age, whether I wanted it or not, and I’ve proudly walked with it every day of my life, even when doing so has been hard.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
Yeah, a bunch of them. But one was pivotal. When I was 7, we moved from a little town in Georgia that I loved to giant Fort Worth, TX, where nobody knew me and I was in a big city school. Dad went there to get his official pedigree education that proved he was a real minister, not just a Sunday morning preacherman. I was chubby, wore glasses, had a crewcut and a speech impediment that was a leftover from being profoundly deaf between the ages of 2 and 5. So I was a slow-moving target and I was just getting smashed flat daily as if a particular bulldozer had made doing such a personal mission.
And I remember one Saturday morning sitting in our little apartment, watching cartoons and commercials, which is where I was every Saturday morning, I became really keenly aware of those kids in those shows and ads and how much fun they were having. And I thought, and possibly said out loud, “I want to go live in that box with them.” Pretty much everything I’ve done since that moment — the writing, the music, all of it — has been to get there. And I have to say it’s pretty much as awesome as I ever dreamed: After years of wanting to be, I’m now one of those kids who lives inside that box. I’m aware of the differences between him, the guy on the show, and me. And I’m now just working real hard to be every day that guy you see on your TV, even when I’m not actually in there. He’s the best version of me.
And then the next big moment came like 644 years later, when after a career in the Big City Media that had taken me everywhere I ever wanted to go, I felt compelled to come home to the country and start telling the stories of my people. I was an urbane world traveler, very familiar with Michelin lists and unlimited expense accounts, 5-star hotels and stretch limos to take me anywhere I wanted because of the status of that career. And then the music stopped, as they say — nobody was reading newspapers any more — and I was back to Square One. I was kind of at rock-bottom when the floor dropped out of the newspaper industry. So I figured I would answer that “call” I had been getting and actually go back out to the farm and see if there was actually anything there that might conceivably be a part of my future. It took several years, tens of thousands of miles, and a lot of nights in Super 8 motels to show me that clearly there was.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Probably not. I mean, there is several books’ worth there. So I’ll reach back all the way to last week and share a couple from just then. We were filming in North Carolina, going West to East, starting way up in the mountains in a tiny little town called Newland. We met a genuine bootlegger, had a sip fresh from the still in his shack by the pond. I jammed with some of the finest bluegrass musicians in the world. And then we staged a jailbreak, complete with a getaway by train. Some of those things were for the show. Some of those things were not! And then literally two days later we were in Salisbury, NC, on a water buffalo farm. So I’m out in the middle of a buffalo herd and they’re literally playing ping pong with me. They paid me back with amazing bufala mozzarella cheese and some of the best gelato I’ve ever had. And I got to help with that process, starting with actually milking a water buffalo. Which before that morning I had only ever seen before in pictures. So those are just what we call “normal” days now.
It has been said that mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Well goodness, I’ve had time to start a great many things in my life, and I’ve made funny and embarrassing mistakes at every stop. So I’ll tell you about the first great one, which was more embarrassing than funny, but informed every step I have taken since. I told you I grew up country. My grandparents on my mother’s side were still farming when I was born. The boll weevil and other factors drove them out of farming when I was still little. So they moved to town and took whatever jobs they could to support themselves. My grandmother was a lunch lady at the elementary school. And my grandfather became janitor at the county courthouse.
My first media job was at the newspaper in that same little town, Conyers, GA. And my first week on the job, the editor sent me to the courthouse to interview a judge for a story. I was actually terrified — not about the interview or the judge. I was horrified that I might run into my grandfather cleaning up around the courthouse, and that someone would see us and make the connection: “He’s just the janitor’s grandkid, he’s not a real media person!”
The thought was humiliating. My cheeks were crimson as I entered the courthouse. I actually snuck around corners, peeking around like in a spy movie to make sure I didn’t see my grandfather anywhere. To my relief, I made it to the judge’s office and stepped through the door. That man — one of the most respected and admired in Conyers — literally leapt from behind his desk and made a beeline to me coming through the door. He stuck out his hand and as he enthusiastically pumped away, he said, “I am so glad to meet you. Everybody in this courthouse loves your grandfather. He is the finest man I have ever known and it’s an honor to meet his grandson.”
If you understand what I learned from that, you’ll understand why my eyes are wet even now retelling it. I’ve since been to the White House, had private tours of the U.S. Capitol, met and hung out with every celebrity on the planet from Dave Grohl to Bruce Springsteen to Derek Jeter. And I’ve been proud every step of the way about who I am, who my people are, and where I’m from.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
We are almost done filming Season 3 of Where The Food Comes From! And now I’m looking for time to get back in the studio to record a half-dozen new songs I’m incredibly excited about, and I’m also excited about working with some amazing musicians I’ve met on this most recent phase of my journey. I’m also pretty stoked about a Holiday Special we’re putting together about Christmas at the John B. Stetson Mansion. He’s the guy who invented the cowboy hat, and he was the first millionaire to move to Florida, and you just have to see what they do with that home every Christmas to believe it. And maybe even more exciting than any of that is the fact that the Stetson Mansion Christmas special is actually the pilot for another prime-time series, Chip Carter’s America! Which is all the amazing little stories I’ve found on my way to where the food comes from. I’m kicking around a couple of other show ideas. We’re also expanding rapidly in the social media world, we’ve started doing TikTok recipes and demos and product unboxings on various platforms, we’ve launched a digital cookbook, and we’re getting ready to bring Where The Food Comes From to SiriusXM radio as a weekly show, too!
You have been blessed with success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
Yeah, don’t quit. Just don’t. That is literally the only secret to anything that there is. Don’t quit. Don’t let anybody make you quit — I raised a child by myself from the time he was 2 and there were no end of people telling me I needed to give up and focus on building a life for him; they didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. Don’t let any circumstance make you quit — I broke my neck in 2008 for God’s sake. If you want it bad enough, you will find a way to make it happen. It may take longer than you want — look at me. It will most assuredly be harder than you want or can even imagine — again, I’m looking in the mirror here. Measure the successes, let them carry and sustain you as far as they can. Appreciate the journey — even when it’s hard it’s taking you where you want to be; don’t deny yourself happiness because you haven’t hit your goal, take joy in the fact that you’re still in the game. And there’s only one thing you absolutely must do to stay in the game and have even a whisper of a chance to hit that high mark: Don’t. Quit.
We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
It’s important to reflect the world around us, and the world around us is amazingly diverse. My show is about food and farming. Too often that’s a world where opportunities don’t exist for minority groups except at the bottom rungs. There are a lot of reasons for that, mainly connected to the generational transfer of land ownership. Ain’t got no land, ain’t got no farm. And to get enough land for a commercial farm is stupendously expensive, not to mention equipment and labor and other infrastructure. So we seek out and are thrilled to tell the stories of minority entrepreneurs who have found ways to beat the odds. Maybe they’re getting involved in farming in rehabbed shipping containers. Maybe they started a mushroom farm in their garage. Maybe they’re engaged in urban farming, rooftop farming. Maybe a food truck turned into a sitdown restaurant or franchise. And sometimes you come across a story where somebody just wouldn’t give up and carved out their own little slice of the American Dream despite the odds against doing so.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
Chip Carter’s “5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Went Into Show Biz”
- You can’t just walk in a television network or anywhere else important and say, “Here I am!” They don’t care. And they will throw you out if you try. You can’t just stroll into the New York Times and say, “I’m the guy you’ve been waiting for.” All of these things, all of these opportunities are almost all based in connectivity and networking. I wish I had known that to go to NYT I should have gone to an Ivy League school. I wish I had known for TV I should have gone somewhere I’d meet people who would be part of my network forever. But I guess I’ve always been a fan of doing things the hard way; you do learn a lot from that approach.
- I wish I had known how hard it is to maintain your integrity in industries where there is basically very little — people usually cash it in at the first opportunity. I made a commitment early on that my work was the most important thing about me, not how big an audience I had or how much money. But I do wish I had known how few people in the industry walk that same walk. I would have probably swallowed a lot less BS.
- There are things you are worried about that you cannot control and that in fact, are stupid to pre-worry about. I was very concerned that people would not accept a new face my age on TV telling them things — and especially not with a guitar and microphone in-hand trying to sing them songs they’ve never heard before. I mean I stressed about that a lot. And when the pandemic hit, I was even more frantic — I felt like a turkey with a pop-up timer that tells you when you’re done, and I’ve thought for years that was going to go off any minute. End of the day, looking back on the other side, it didn’t matter one iota. It’s never been mentioned. Never been referenced. It’s a non-issue. And it was the thing that worried me most.
- Almost everyone who tells you they can do something for you is full of shit. And if they want money in advance for their efforts, turn and run.
- Actual talent is basically worthless. The best actress doesn’t always get the role. The best singer doesn’t usually win the Grammy. The best writer doesn’t sell the most books. It works out that way sometimes, fortunately, but talent is just a ticket that gets you to the starting line of the actual race. All the talent in the world is meaningless without the work ethic and commitment to drive it home, despite the odds and the wars you will inevitably fight along the way to your mountaintop. In fact, people with basically no talent and great work ethic and dedication are way more likely to succeed in this business than people blessed with great talent and the expectation that’s all they need.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Burn out, what is that? There’s just no such thing. You can be dead dog tired. You can be weary; physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, weary. But if you’re doing what you love and really believe in, you simply can’t burn out. That spark is inextinguishable. You can get discouraged, You can get downhearted. You can be exhausted beyond comprehension. But if that spark goes out, then I’m sorry, you just weren’t committed enough, and that’s why that guitar is sitting under your bed instead of getting played, not because nobody would give you a fair shake like you keep telling everybody. And if you’re around people who are dampening your spark, move the hell on. Other than that, the fire that drives you, the one that makes you you, may at times be tamped down to just a glowing ember; it’s a hard, cold world, and if you’re trying to do something that actually matters it’s even more so. But that spark never goes out unless you let it. And it will propel you to do things you did not realize you were capable of.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 😊
Same answer as always. Same answer I’d have given at age 7. Just be nice. Just treat people with common decency and courtesy. It takes no more effort than being an asshole. And it just makes the whole of your life so much more pleasant.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I was a writer of some renown 30 years ago in Atlanta before I broke out nationally and internationally. The newspapers and magazines would promote my articles on their front pages and covers — I guess that was the first time I was a “rising” anything! I was actually getting published other places around the country. But I couldn’t break through and get anyone important to talk to me about where I could go next careerwise. I desperately wanted to be a syndicated newspaper columnist — you write an article for your flagship paper and they resell it around the world and split the money with you. Back in the day it was a very big deal, really it was like being a rockstar, you can still see some of my reviews referenced in Wikipedia and elsewhere. But then I couldn’t even get anybody to answer a phone call or letter. I would later find out why.
I had an idea for a book I was working on, it was just totally for laughs, just a ha-ha book, but I thought it could find a big audience. There was an illustrator I knew of who was very well known, Sam Rawls. His pen name is “Scrawls.” He was the cartoonist for one of the Atlanta papers and was syndicated to other papers around the world, both his editorial cartoons and his comic strip. I knew this book I was working on would lend itself well to a great illustrator. So I made it my mission to find and meet Sam Rawls. I started calling around, and calling and calling. It took months, but I finally found out he lived — guess where? — my hometown of Conyers, GA. Then I was able to find out that he played in a rec softball league. And his team played on the same fields my rec team played on.
So I found out when his team was playing next and just went to the game. My plan was to just say hello after and see what happened. Well, what happened was, Sam was pitching. And he took a line drive right to the face. It was a horrific sight. Fortunately he was wearing glasses — that made the impact look all the worse. But it also saved him from a concussion or worse. He was heading to the ER to get checked out anyway of course. But while he was waiting for the EMTs he came and sat in the bleachers holding an icepack to his face. I was able to ask how he was holding up.
Turned out it looked a lot worse than it was. We talked for a few minutes. I told him who I was and what i was up to. He was interested and we made plans to meet later that week for a beer.
I showed him what I had for the book so far and where I saw it going. He liked it all and was ready to move forward. And then I mentioned another little idea that had just very recently come to me. I had just gotten my first Nintendo and loved playing with my son, who was then 4. But it was really hard for us to find games that we could play together. And there was just nowhere to get information like that, except for the occasional specialty magazine. So my idea was to review video games, the same way movies, TV shows, music are reviewed. It sounds really simple and basic now. But at least on a national, mainstream media level, nobody was doing it!
Sam loved that idea. He offered to illustrate it on the spot. More importantly — and so, so, so much more importantly than I realized at the time — he offered to shop it around to the major syndicates, like Tribune Media Services, owned by The Chicago Tribune and where I eventually wound up. There were only a half-dozen major syndicates. And they were absolutely, wholly and utterly unapproachable: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Sam of course was already syndicated. So he was already vetted. So when he sent them my idea and our prototypes, they actually looked and paid attention. And they signed me to a deal that would take me around the world with my son and make me semi-famous for the next 19 years.
Now here’s the capstone to that story. I was the only writer the Tribune signed that year. They brought on one other new person, a cartoonist. When I sat down with the big bosses to sign my contract, I asked how many other writers they had considered that year before deciding to sign me, how many other dreamers had gotten as far as to get a pitch in front of them that was even looked at, much less acted on.
The answer was 16,000. Which meant 15,999 dreams lay dying as mine got up off the page and came to life. If Sam doesn’t personally put that material in front of people who knew and trusted him, I’m likely one of those 15,999 and we’re not having this conversation. I hope I’ve been that guy to others in my career, and that I’ll get a chance to do it for many more. And everything I learned from the time Sam opened the door are the things I had to know now to get this TV show made and on the air.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This will sound familiar given my earlier answers. Stephen King once said, and it stuck with me forever, “Talent is as common as table salt.” Absolutely true. Talent is everywhere — just go to any church on Sunday morning or a school talent show. There are people there who make everybody go, “Wow!” But then they go back to school or work. King wasn’t saying talent is meaningless — it assuredly is not, even given what I said earlier, it’s much better to have it than not — but without hard work and opportunity (often the same thing!) it’s highly unlikely anyone is going to come drag your talented behind off your couch and make you famous.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 😊
Right now? The people who buy shows for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime!!! I think the “why” is pretty obvious there.
How can our readers follow you online?
www.rfdtv.com/where-the-food-comes-from
All social channels @wherethefoodcomesfrom or @WTFCF_TV
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
