After months of meetings, emails, texts, and planning, it’s all come down to this … today’s debut of The Moonshine and Motorsports Podcast on all your favorite platforms and YouTube.

The show is a collaboration between the folks at the Daily Downforce, The Scene Vault Podcast, and North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

I’m hosting the show, despite the fact that I’m a teetotaller from WAY back. I drank my half a Budweiser all those years ago in high school and just never developed a taste for the stuff.

So what am I doing working on a project devoted to moonshine? Here’s the way I’m looking at it.

I’ve been working in and around motorsports for more than 30 years now, but I’ve never actually strapped into a race car and hauled off toward the green flag. I’ve never traded paint with another competitor.

And my mechanical ability? Nonexistent … at best.

That being said … as long as I’ve been around NASCAR, it’s a part of who I am. The same goes for North Carolina. I wasn’t born in the ol’ North State and I didn’t move here for good until I was 25 years old.

But … yeah. I’m a North Carolinian to the core of my being … and you’d better not try to convince me otherwise.

With all that said, I’m ready to take on the task of figuring out how moonshine, motorsports, and North Carolina came to be so interrelated.

We actually start the show at the end of the trail, at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It’s here that the sport’s long history comes together in an ultra-modern facility, gleaming in all its glory, far away from so many backwoods still sites.

What would those long-ago moonshiners have thought about this place? That’s a good question … but NASCAR legend and “former” moonshiner Junior Johnson? He actually built the still that’s on display to this day.

Over the course of this show, we’re going to talk to people from across the state in an attempt to figure it all out. The show is scheduled to release new episodes every couple of weeks, so look for us … and enjoy.