Well, we didn't make the Murphy-Goode cut but it wasn't for lack of trying. Thanks to everyone who supported us and voted for our video application!

We Can Tell Your Story like Pros Because We ARE Pros

We’ve spent more than 20 years writing, editing and shooting for some of the best magazines, blogs, web sites and newspapers including Travel & Leisure, Every Day with Rachael Ray, itravelishop.com, Elle, fodors.com, National Geographic Traveler, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, National Geographic Adventure and many more. Please go to the Published Work tab at the very top of this page to see recently published work and go to the Photo Gallery tab at the very top of this page to see even more photos.

This has allowed us to hone our reporting and packaging skills in ways that let us make the most of the individual strengths of all types of media. From video to blogs to magazine cover stories to 140 character Twitter posts we know how to tell any story, including yours. Please go to the About tab at the very top of this page to read Karen's resume.

In addition to the work we deliver during the lifespan of this six month gig, we have the ability to sell stories about our experiences as Murphy-Goode’s Lifestyle Correspondents after the job is done or even produce a book about the project or simply about the winery (a coffee table book about the harvest, for example), thus increasing the bang for your branding buck. Just tossin’ it out there. 

We’re pretty good on the other side of the media and marketing equation as well having done many interviews for blogs, websites, books, live TV segments and magazines and newspapers who’ve profiled our Trans-Americas Journey.

However, our proven and diverse communication skills are not the only thing that makes us the right team to put the “life” back in Lifestyle and the "respond" back in Correspondent…

We Like Life to be an Adventure

In April of 2006 we quit our jobs, packed up our apartment in Manhattan and embarked on the Trans-Americas Journey, our five year, 200,000 mile working road trip through North, Central and South America. Since then we’ve successfully reinvented the way we work, ditching the shackled-to-a-desk approach to freelancing in favor of first-person experiences and real-life reporting from out here in the big wide world.

Every day is an adventure whether we’re tallying up the number of red barns with silos that we drive past or navigating the Alaska Haul Road and talking our way right to the Arctic Ocean so we're ready for the "daily grind" of being Murphy Goode Lifestyle Correspondents. Please go to the Home, About and Trip Facts & Figures tabs at the very top of this page for more about our Trans-Americas Journey.

After three years and 99,848 miles on the road (and counting) we've become experts at immersing ourselves in different lifestyles and new learning experiences then writing about them and photographing them for a wide range of readers and viewers of old media, new media and social media.  Traveling and working like this keeps us humble, curious and on top of our communication game. It’s also given us a pretty good eye for spotting world-class picnic spots from Prince Edward Island to Washington to Mexico.

When will our journey end? We hope the road never runs out and right now it’s taking us straight to Healdsburg!

We’ve been Creating “New” Media for More Than 10 Years

Karen produced live interactive online programming for some of the very first America Online web sites back in 1995. In 1999 and 2000 both Karen and Eric produced channels for Deja.com (which was ultimately bought by Google). Eric, a former corporate attorney (emphasis on the former), was also a producer at frog Design in New York City where he managed many digital media, branding and product design projects. He was also Technology Editor of SHOP Etc. magazine at Hearst Magazines.

We currently travel with two laptops, wireless cards and a router and more drives than we feel comfortable owning up to.This allows us to manage a digital photo library of more than 40,000 images from this trip alone, research and file stories no matter where we may be, stay in touch with friends and colleagues on Twitter (where we first heard about this Really Goode Job before the San Francisco preview), Facebook and LinkedIn and maintain our web site and blog (www.trans-americas.com) which has more than 400 pages of content created solely by us.

Our web site has been an integral marketing tool since the Journey’s inception in 2005, helping us brand the Trans-Americas Journey and attracting significant product sponsors (33 and counting including Dell, Lonely Planet and BF Goodrich). Currently our site has more than 600 opt-in subscribers to our email newsletter list plus subscribers to our blog’s RSS feed. The site itself attracts an average of 12,000 page views per month.

Social media sites have proven to be useful to us above and beyond getting our message out to the world, publicizing our stories and building our Trans-Americas Journey brand. For example, we are currently staying with dear friends in Ajijic on Lake Chapala in Jalisco, Mexico whom we met on Twitter after we posted about the town.

Our traveling technology has also allowed us to produce major online projects for clients including Airstream for whom we wrote and shot a popular Airstream Adventure blog designed to communicate their brand lifestyle during the last six months of 2008.

Check it out at: transamerica.airstream.com

We Wine A Lot (and other reasons we’re fun to hang out with)

We love wine and its power to inspire creativity and friendships and just plain fun. Karen grew up in Paso Robles and her father sold John Deere equipment to the vintners there for years. More importantly, her parents learned about wine the best way possible—by drinking, sharing and enjoying it (Murphy-Goode's The Fume has been a family favorite since back in the days when it was still simply called Fume Blanc).

Our love of wine has only deepened as we've traveled and seen, first hand, how important sharing a handcrafted beverage is all over the world—from tungba in Tibet to rakshi in Rajasthan to tequila in Tequila--and we're passionate about loving wine even more by learning even more. Once our Murphy-Goode gig is over, we will resume our Trans-Americas Journey into Central and South America where we plan to spend significant time working and traveling through the wine regions of Chile and Argentina. It would be wonderful to hit those areas with real knowledge and experience to go with all of our enthusiasm.

Check out our recent writing about wine including Why Outside is In: Consumer Credibility and Brand Believeability; V is for Vaynerchuk, not Vino; Bringing the Wine Home: Passion in the Passing Lane; the joys of red wine and lemon ice in Mexico; our short but sweet tip for handling red wine stained mouths at parties, our musings about Which MG Wine Goes with Nerves as we await the first applicant cut and Where to Wine, our ongoing list of great beaches, bathtubs, campsites, dive bars, luxury hotels and other hidden gems we discover during our Trans-Amerias Journey and how to make them even better with a great glass of wine.

Oh, and about those hawks and owls….Karen grew up with all of those birds nesting within a few yards of her house and her dad just got done building an owl house for Fratelli Perata Winery in Paso where he helps out a few days a week (if you haven’t tried their sangiovese yet then you’d best get busy). If we ask nice we’re pretty sure he’d share the blueprint with us.

In addition, Karen can kill a rattlesnake with a hoe, Eric was born with a GPS in his head and we've both climbed to well above 18,000 feet in the Nepali Himalaya--and we'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The chance to increase our wine knowledge (not just our consumption) is exciting, as is the chance to have a hand in making a wine to commemorate the Murphy-Goode Lifestyle Correspondent experience. And speaking of hands, we can’t wait for one of those friendly games of Liar’s Dice we keep hearing about. We've even been practicing...

What else do we love? Travel, obviously, and hiking and kayaking and horseback riding and cooking and watching things grow (slowly) and laughing (a lot) and learning new things and making new friends—preferably over a glass of the Really Goode stuff.

We’ve also been to More Than 200 Dead Shows

Which means we’ve probably already met you, Dave. Perhaps at Alpine Valley in 1985, 1986 or 1987? Or Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis on June 26, 1986 (one of only 16 shows in the state)? NYE 1986 or 1987? Greek Theater in 1985?

Music continues to be a huge part of our lives and we seek out music festivals as often as we can—High Sierra and Warren Haynes’ Mountain Jam are favorites and Jam Cruise really rocks and we wouldn’t say no to another weekend at the invitation-only Black Sheep Family Reunion festival.

We also travel with two fully loaded iPods, speakers and a hard drive full of tunes and can’t imagine life before satellite radio. We’re proud of the fact that we’ve made the jump from fan to friend with many musicians including the awesome guitarist Scott Metzger (a member of RANA, Gene Ween Band, American Babies, Bustle in Your Hedgerow, etc.) who kindly composed a Really Goode Theme Song for our Really Goode video application (see screen shots, below).

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FAQs about the making of the video:

Where the heck was the video shot?
We shot our video in a blue agave field near the Cascahuin Tequila Distillery in El Arenal on the Ruta de Tequila about 15 miles north of Guadalajara in Jalisco state in Mexico. But we never would have been able to do it without the assistance of Uleses Delgadillo Sanchez and his friend and distillery owner Carlos Torres. We shot at a tequila distillery because even though Mexico has a growing and improving local wine industry (we've grown fond of La Cetto petit syrah), most of it is centered in the Valle de Guadalupe wine region on the Baja Peninsula. Here in Central Mexico tequila is king and who are we to argue. Besides, how many video submissions have you already seen that were shot in a vineyard and/or feature someone with a wine glass in their hand?  Exactly.

Is tequila like wine?
Yes in a lot of ways, from the power of the distiller to make the final product his own to the influence of the terroir to the cool vibe many small and medium size tequilerias have to the just plain fun of drinking it from the nose to the palette to the finish. Tequila also has a specific geographic denomination--like chianti and champagne--and must be made with blue agave grown in specific areas of central Mexico in order to be called tequila. Salud!

Exactly how sharp is blue agave?
Glad you asked. Think of every arm of every blue agave plant as a brand new hack saw tipped with a hypodermic needle. Within a few seconds of entering the field we were both bleeding but what are a few scars and puncture wounds among friends?

Who’s that guy dancing in the background?
That’s Javier! He’s part of the family that owns the Cascahuin Distillery. He’s a pretty skilled jimador (the person who prunes and harvest those deadly blue agaves so they can be turned into delicious Tequila), but he’s an even better dancer. Other video stars include Carlos (the big guy) and Tadeo Delgadillo Guerrero.

Where did that killer song come from?
We believe the most creative results happen with the right team with the right talents in place. Karen wrote the lyrics for our “Trans-Americas Journey Roadsick Blues” riff on Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (she is a writer, after all) and Eric shot it (using our Flip Video camera). However, when it came time for some music we turned to the biggest bundle of musical talent that we know, one Scott “Boom Boom” Metzger (Google him). He crafted exactly what we wanted even before we really even knew we wanted it. Plus he's an awesome friend.

Trans-Americas Journey Theme Song by Scott Metzger

Who made the awesome signs?
The very best of the signs in our video (you can see all of them to the right) were drawn by our friend Iliana Cristina Hellyer on her kitchen table over quite a few late nights and quite a bit of wine. We simply can’t thank her (and her mile-wide perfectionist streak) enough.

Our Really Goode Script (go ahead and sing along)

Trans-Americas Journey theme song by Scott Metzger

We’ve been workin’ and TANIN in Mexico
On one of the LEGS of our Trans-Americas JourneyBut we want to put our working road trip on pause
To bring our TASTY BLEND of talents to your causeEric’s got his cameras to take all the pictures
Karen’s got her pen out, to get all the NOTES downOur BODY of work

appears in magazines you know

So you don’t have to ask “Would we be READY to go?”We’re BALANCED and deepLIVELY and complex
Way down to EARTHY
RIPE forBIG opportunitiesA BARREL of fun,
but never too (H) OAKY…about wine lifestyles, LIAR’S DICE and pokerYou can see that we’ve already been pretty nicely AGED
And we NOSE how to Twitter all day...and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube....