Tag: BGS Podcast Network

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episodes 1 and 2

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Harmonics with Beth Behrs is a brand new show from the BGS Podcast Network delving into the intersection of music and wellness. The podcast officially kicks off today with the release of its first two episodes, featuring guests Glennon Doyle and Geeta Novotny.


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In episode one, actor, comedian, and banjo enthusiast and Harmonics host Beth Behrs talks with New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle (Untamed) about living in a female body, the freedom that comes with putting everything on the table creatively, and the age old question: how much TV is too much TV in quarantine?

An activist and “patron saint of female empowerment,” Doyle got her start in the Christian family blogosphere as creator of Momastery.  She is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women led nonprofit organization that has raised over $25 million for women, families, and children in crisis. Glennon lives with her wife, Abby Wambach, and three children in Florida.

Harmonics’ second interview is with opera singer and sound healer Geeta Novotny, founder of Revolution Voice. Novotny explains the science of sound healing and vibrational therapy and the importance of using music to find your voice (sometimes literally).


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Novotny started her career as a classical singer, a mezzo-soprano performing principal roles with the LA Opera and the American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera. After twenty years of vocal performance and teaching, she founded Revolution Voice, a practice program that uses the voice and sound as a bridge between music and wellness.  In addition to her vocal work, Novotny is an acclaimed sound bath artist and incorporates other multi-therapeutic approaches into her vibrational healing methods throughout California and around the country.

Listen and subscribe to Harmonics through all podcast platforms and follow BGS and Beth Behrs on Instagram for series updates!

 

The Show On The Road – Chicano Batman

Posted on by Chris Jacobs
This week, The Show On The Road features a conversation with members of LA’s Latin roots-rock heroes Chicano Batman. The band came together in 2008 and is comprised of Eduardo Arenas (bass, guitar, vocals), Carlos Arévalo (guitars), Bardo Martinez (lead vocals, keyboards, guitar) and Gabriel Villa (drums).

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Host Z. Lupetin was able to catch up with Bardo Martinez and Eduardo Arenas while they sheltered in place at home in LA. In the past you may have seen Chicano Batman at music festivals like Coachella dressing up in matching Mariachi outfits or crooning in a colorful mashup of Spanish and English on previous standout records like the dreamy Cycles of Existential Rhyme and the rebellious Freedom Is Free.  

Their newest work, Invisible People, is their most personal, political, and downright danceable release to date. The traditional Mariachi outfits may be tucked away in storage, but their playful vibe remains, even as the musicianship and pop-tightness took a big jump forward.

After twelve years of expanding and fine-tuning their sound and finding a devoted national audience, Chicano Batman is no longer the oddball, upstart band. While they now focus mainly on English lyrics, they know as songwriters and performers that they’ve become role models for Los Angeles’s vibrant Latin-roots rock renaissance, acting as springboards to a whole new scene that may not have a genre or name yet.

 

‘Harmonics with Beth Behrs’ Debuts on BGS Podcast Network on September 8

Posted on by Editor

The Bluegrass Situation is thrilled to announce the newest addition to the BGS Podcast Network: Harmonics With Beth Behrs. The eight-episode podcast explores the intersections of music, creativity, wellness, and healing. (Subscribe here.)

Hosted and produced by actress, comedian, and banjo lover Beth Behrs (The Neighborhood, 2 Broke Girls) each episode features a deep dive conversation into topics such as mental health, sound healing, songwriting as therapy, ancient musical traditions, and the power of the creative process on our physical bodies and emotional selves.

The first two episodes of the series premiere on Tuesday, September 8, kicking off with guests Glennon Doyle (New York Times bestselling author of Untamed) and renowned sound healer Geeta Novotny. Other featured season one guests include Brandi Carlile, Mary Gauthier, Mickey Guyton, Tichina Arnold, and Allison Russell.

Behrs says, “Songs are simple ways of telling stories, you can find a song to fit any mood you’re in. That’s because music bypasses the intellect and goes straight to the heart. I’ve always felt that healing is creative and creativity is healing. Maybe it’s magic? I want to feel closer to the magic. I want all of you to feel closer to the magic. Harmonics was born so we could explore the intersection between music, healing, creativity, and spirituality- and in doing so, makes ourselves feel a part of something bigger. Less alone. More connected.”

Amy Reitnouer Jacobs, co-founder and executive director of BGS, says, “Developing this show with Beth was a dream — we’ve wanted to do something together for a long time. During this time when we’re all refocusing our lives and constantly assessing the state of the world, creating a space where women could be honest and vulnerable about so many topics — such as maintaining creative processes under stress and maintaining mental and physical health at home — seemed more relevant and necessary than ever before. We’re honored to feature so many incredible talents from the roots music world, but I think the breadth of our guests will show our audience that so many of these themes are universal and relevant across the creative spectrum.”

 

The String – Heidi Newfield and Mac McAnally

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Two guests this show who both have careers straddling Nashville’s hit-driven Music Row and art-driven Americana scenes.


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Heidi Newfield had a run of country hits in the 2000s w a band and as a soloist. Now she’s reinventing and going gritty with her songwriting and blues harp on her first new album in more than a decade, The Barfly Sessions, Vol 1. Mac McAnally is a legend on the Row – a Hall of Fame songwriter and a 10-time CMA Musician of the Year. His own music displays real independence and countless skills as a singer, writer and producer. His new one is called Once In A Lifetime.

The Show On The Road – David Bromberg

Posted on by Chris Jacobs
This week, The Show On The Road features living folk-blues legend and underground guitar icon David Bromberg.


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Host Z. Lupetin got to speak with the now 74-year-old Bromberg in a hotel room before the pandemic shutdown, prior to Bromberg playing a show at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles back in February, 2020.

Coming out of the fertile Greenwich Village scene on the heels of Bob Dylan, Ramblin Jack Elliot and other shaggy troubadour-storytellers, Bromberg’s encyclopedic knowledge of American songwriting traditions made him a coffee house wunderkind who refused to be pigeonholed in one genre. By the age of thirty, Bromberg was the go-to guitarist for Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Prine and Ringo Starr, and he could be found jamming at dinner parties with George Harrison.

A man of many interests and talents, Bromberg actually stepped away from performing for nearly two decades at the height of his notoriety, moving to Chicago to learn how to build and then appraise violins. He became obsessed with identifying the best instruments just by sight, and even opened a respected instrument shop in Wilmington, Delaware called David Bromberg Fine Violins.

He returned after twenty two years off the road with the triumphant and Grammy-nominated Try Me One More Time in 2006, and has assembled an energetic band of friends that continues to join him on his new, high energy offerings.

Bromberg’s muscular and ever genre-bending 2020 release, Big Road pays homage to his heroes like Charlie Rich and 1930’s bluesman Tommy Johnson, but also injects heavy doses of swampy rock, horn-heavy funk, and good-humored, folk storytelling along the way.

Stick around to the end of the episode to hear him play a new acoustic tune called “Buddy Brown’s Blues.”

The String – Chuck Prophet

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Chuck Prophet is a lifer who at 57 says he’s just getting the hang of it – it being crafty, intelligent songs that feel good even when they’re downers, songs that rock and twang in balanced proportions.


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Since going solo after a decade with the psych garage band Green On Red, Prophet has given us a vast body of work that sits easily on the shelf next to Rockpile, Elvis Costello or Tom Petty. Now he’s releasing a reflective, sardonic and political album called The Land That Time Forgot. From retooling his solo sound to his long partnership with spouse Stephanie Finch, there was a lot to talk about.

The String – Joshua Ray Walker

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Reaction to Joshua Ray Walker’s debut album was as strong and swift as any to come along in country music and Texas songwriting in quite a while. But the Dallas native had been working stages nightly for ten years by the time the world paid attention.


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He was ready to follow up fast and he did so to great acclaim on 2020’s Glad You Made It. This self-assured, thoughtful artist has a lot to say.

Also in the hour, we meet Australian emigre to Nashville Emma Swift, whose new collection of Bob Dylan covers is quite special.

The Show On The Road – Leyla McCalla

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week The Show On The Road features a conversation with Leyla McCalla, a talented, multi-lingual cellist, banjoist, and singer/songwriter.

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Born in New York, raised in New Jersey, and McCalla is now based in New Orleans, where she raises three kids (she often tours with them in tow). McCalla often honors her Haitian heritage, bringing listeners into a vibrant world of Creole rhythms and forgotten African string-band traditions by introducing them to a new audience with her own powerful creative vision.

You may know McCalla as an integral part of two different roots supergroups: the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters. But for much of the last decade, she has put out heady, ever-surprising solo projects. The latest, The Capitalist Blues, harnesses the brassy, percussive sounds of New Orleans; her previous record, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey, was also a standout, putting her gorgeous cello-work center stage while also examining powerful Haitian proverbs and Haiti’s often-overlooked, tragic history.

The String – Adia Victoria

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Adia Victoria taps the lineage and resolve of the early Blues queens with a sound made for “the now” on her 2019 album, Silences.

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Victoria’s journey from South Carolina to Atlanta and then to Nashville reads like no other artist of recent memory. She works hard to set herself apart from the institutional trappings of the indie music business. Critically acclaimed and sharply thoughtful, this made for a fascinating and challenging conversation.

Photo credit: Daniel Jackson at Newport Folk Fest 2019 for BGS

The Show On The Road – Rising Appalachia

Posted on by Chris Jacobs
This week on the Show On The Road, a conversation with Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia. In 2005 she founded this unique partnership with her sister Leah after their relentless world travels finally intersected in southern Mexico, where Leah had started mastering the banjo.

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Growing up in a musical family of traditional string-band players and contra-dance leaders near Atlanta, Rising Appalachia’s latest release, Leylines, mixes the rustic front porch sound of their childhood family jam sessions with a neon-tinted modern backbeat of dancehall electronics and mystical protest. That could have felt incongruous, but somehow these influences mix beautifully with their ethereal, intertwined vocals and darting fiddle-and-banjo runs.

While our host, Z. Lupetin, was able to catch up with Chloe for this cross-country conversation, Leah has been marooned in Costa Rica since the world shut down in March and continues to work from there. The sisters and their talented six-piece band have become a beloved fixture at music festivals throughout the United States, but have also played stages in Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Ireland, Scotland, and more. 

Always looking to challenge the traditional carbon-hungry touring routine, Leah dubbed their group as part of a growing “slow music movement”, and in this episode, Z. talks with Chloe about the time they toured remote Canadian farming islands via sailboat. It’s that kind of intimate and innovative traveling that Chloe would like to return to whenever the COVID-19 shutdown lifts in the coming years.

Stick around to the end of the episode for an acoustic version of “Harmonize” from Leylines, and check out Rising Appalachia’s newest single “Pulse,” featuring Dirtwire.