ARKANSAS — Clay Newcomb is on a personal mission to explore things forgotten in a digital world that moves past people and experiences at the speed of light. He revels in places, communities, traditions and lives that still remain deeply relevant to a lot of people and cultures across our country but risk being lost.
It was a mission he began long before he began producing his popular “Bear Grease” podcast, part of the iconic MeatEater podcast family. Newcomb, whose Instagram photos often show him sitting on a mule unironically, admits he never saw any of this coming.
“It has really been an interesting process to me as I’ve come into MeatEater, a process which has given me this massive platform that I’ve never thought I’d have,” he said. “I feel like I’m just doing all the stuff I’ve been doing my whole life. Only now, I have an audience.”
Newcomb is the embodiment of the American frontier — part Renaissance man, part mule wrangler, 100% storyteller. What possibilities await, spending just one afternoon or one podcast with him and his cast of characters.
“I’m a seventh-generation Arkansan,” he said. “My kids are eighth-generation. My family came here in the late 1820s and homesteaded in a community called Bumblebee in Montgomery County, Ark.”
His grandfather was a Baptist pastor and bird-dog trainer in Montgomery County, Ark., and the first person ever to attend college in his family. “He was also a schoolteacher,” Newcomb said. “He was also a World War II veteran, and all those guys wanted their kids to go to college.”
And so they did; Newcomb said his father became a banker. “He was like a white-collar guy in our town. But he was also a hunter; as country as any of them.”
When his father came home from work, he told them stories about the rural people.
“I spent my childhood hearing stories about the family that would come in and take out a $400 loan so that they could go catfishing for three weeks, the guys that were gathering moss for a living and selling moss,” he said. “He treated these people like they were kings.”
It was a dichotomy in the world that shaped who he is today. As he grew older, he realized that the people his father told him about were of no regard in a lot of places in society. “It was just like deep, deep inside of me that these were honorable people because my father saw them that way, and he was a good judge of character.”
Newcomb joined MeatEater in 2019; a prolific publisher, writer, cinematographer and photographer, he also owns, publishes and is the editor for Bear Hunting Magazine, the nation’s only all-bear-hunting publication. Outside his family, what drives him is introducing the connected world to his rooted world and showing them all that his world has to offer.
“I’ve never wanted to have some big career or be well-known,” he said. “That was never the intent. And I felt like the stories that I was telling were of little value to anybody.”
He said he has also never been interested in elevating rural American culture to the point of saying that it is the best culture. “I think there’s deep value in valuing your own culture so that you can value the culture of others,” he said.
His podcast gives the uninformed a history lesson before they even listen to its first story. “Bear grease,” in case you are wondering, is the rendered fat of a bear, which is turned into a liquid oil that can be used for a multitude of things. At one time, it was the fuel of the American frontier.
This meant that bears were a highly coveted resource. Bear grease was used as a commodity, explained Newcomb. Today, you’d hardly find anyone who knows what you’re referring to.
“Yet, that bear grease has not changed. It is still useful for all those things. It’s still healthy. It’s still available. It’s still something that a portion of the world still deeply values, and it’s been forgotten in our history books,” he said.
“Bear Grease is a metaphor for things that have been forgotten but are still highly relevant,” Newcomb said, echoing the tagline of his podcast.
When Newcomb tells you he is exploring things forgotten but still relevant, it is not a line, but a lifestyle. And whether you are from a rural stretch in this country or live in the city, everyone learns something new when they listen to Newcomb.
Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner.
