For a few minutes Wednesday during a Birmingham Rotary Club meeting, John B. McLemore lived again, at least in the ears of those at the Harbert Center.

“I should have given you like a rated R warning,” podcaster Brian Reed told the crowd, after playing a few recorded conversations from the late Bibb County man at the center of his 2017 work, “S-Town,” complete with a barrage of expletives.

McLemore, as anyone who has listened to “S-Town” can attest, was not afraid to turn the air blue on a host of subjects, especially his hometown of Woodstock.

“S-Town” took its name from McLemore’s nickname for Woodstock, if a more polite rendering for the uninitiated. It was a “reflection of his state of mind.”

Reed said his relationship with McLemore was “one of the most memorable of my life.”

See also: Who is John B. McLemore, figure in ‘S-Town’ podcast?

It began when McLemore contacted Reed, a reporter with “This American Life,” about an alleged murder he said was being hushed up by Bibb County authorities.

Reed was able to confirm that the killing didn’t happen, but his association with McLemore took a different turn when the antique clock restorer took his own life in 2015.

At the time, Reed said he was also involved in an elaborate whistleblower story involving the Federal Reserve. At the same time, though, he was receiving snippets of conversations recorded in Bibb County by McLemore dealing with fights in gas stations, drinking and small-town scandals.

“I remember thinking I had two whistle-blowers in my life at the same time,” he said. “And I felt special.”

“S-Town” recounts McLemore’s life, death and the tangled tale of his friends and family. The name “wasn’t ideal,” Reed said, but accurately reflected the sensibilities of its main character. McLemore was a man who could assault any listener with obscenities when reflecting on his surroundings, but just as easily summon an introspective quote from Kahlil Gibran, rendered in the intonations of his dirt-road Alabama accent.

In fact, when it came time to actually title the podcast, Reed and others tried out other, less colorful names.

“Bibb County.” Too boring.

“John B.” Blah.

“This American Life” host Ira Glass suggested “The Vulgar Horologist.”

Reed even thought of “An Eyesore Among Eyesores,” using a quote from Faulkner. Reed said his wife nixed this one.

But “S-Town” was like a code word among McLemore’s friends and acquaintances into McLemore’s consciousness, he said. It seemed to sum up this inspiring, irritating, vulnerable yet lacerating man.

The podcast, mixing storytelling with the tapestry of a Southern gothic novel, tapped a deep nerve. As of 2020, “S-Town” had been downloaded more than 80 million times. It has inspired talk of a motion picture, and turned tiny Woodstock, pop. about 1,500, into a stop-off for pilgrims from around the world.

Part of its allure is McLemore himself, Reed said, and telling his story involved tapping into McLemore’s personal talent for storytelling.

“I have a story to tell, and I’m going to take you through the story, and it’s going to be worth it,” he said. “And we’re betting on the fact that, like a novel, the question of what this story is about – is it a podcast? is it journalistic – the work the listener has to do serves as its own momentum.”

But the story was also rigorously fact checked, he said, sharing a chain of emails to confirm just one detail – that the seniors gathering for cards at the Woodstock community meeting room played Skip-Bo, not Uno or bridge.