Tag: BGS Podcast Network

The Shift List – Phil Bracey (P. Franco, Bright) – London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Phil Bracey is not a chef, but rather the manager of P. Franco, a neighborhood wine shop, bar, and makeshift restaurant in Northeast London’s Clapton neighborhood. Along with Bright, a new restaurant that opened nearby last May, Phil was instrumental in P. Franco being named Restaurant of the Year by Eater London in 2017.

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It’s important to note that ‘manager’ is a broad term, as Bracey admits that even he doesn’t know what his actual title would be. Granted, he helps to procure and looks after the wines, but more important, and less easy to recognize, is that his approach to hospitality is passionately personal.

Fed up with the pretentiousness that often accompanies drinking wine, Bracey set out to make P. Franco a welcoming space that encourages experimentation by customers, allowing them to discover natural wines in an environment that’s relaxed yet lively, a space that you can pop into for one glass and ultimately end up staying for the rest of the night.

Music is paramount to the customer experience at both P. Franco and Bright, and like a good DJ, Bracey is constantly dialing in the playlists during each night’s service, doing his best to follow the flow of the evening.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The Show On The Road – KOLARS

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. talks to Rob Kolar and Lauren Brown of theatrical space-rock duo KOLARS.

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Sure, many husband and wife bands try to stand out in their own way, but Rob and Lauren take it one step further. They’re both multi-talented multi-instrumentalists who create a sci-fi-inspired, jangly, joyful strain of roots rock that sounds much bigger than two people. Sometimes you just have to hear something to believe it.

The String – Missy Raines

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Missy Raines grew up in rural west VA deeply immersed in bluegrass culture. And when she started playing professionally in her collegiate years, she went for it with no plan B but a life in the music she loved.

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Over a couple of decades as a side musician, she became a pioneer and a scene favorite, winning seven IBMA awards for her bass playing alone. In 2008, she made real a long-standing dream of starting her own band, which became a vehicle for her innovative fusion-minded composing and her mentorship of emerging young master musicians. In late 2018, Missy released her first album under her name alone, as it’s a songwriter’s project that adds to her musical world view.

The Shift List – Ramael Scully (Scully, Ottolenghi) – London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

A veteran of chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s venerable Ottolenghi and Nopi restaurants, Ramael Scully opened his first restaurant, Scully, back in March 2018 with the backing and support of Ottolenghi himself.

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Given that Ramael Scully was born in Malaysia to a mother of Chinese and Indian descent and an Irish-Balinese-Malay father, his palate was destined to be informed by mixed influences. Add a move to Australia as a young child, where he was ultimately raised in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, and you start to get a sense of how he eventually found his culinary voice.

Utilizing a range of ingredients from homemade spices, pickles, preserves, oils, animal fats, dairy, and sprouts, his food can only be described as his own, like the arepa stuffed with eggplant sambal and bergamot labneh. It’s neither Middle Eastern nor Colombian — it’s just Scully’s.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The String – Rodney Crowell

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

The String launches a new year with a conversation with Rodney Crowell, one of the legit icons of Americana music.

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The Texas born, Nashville based songwriter was one of the artists around whom the format was created 20 years ago, and indeed he won the Americana Music Association’s lifetime achievement award for songwriting in 2006. He’s a valued collaborator, earning a Grammy Award for his recent work with his longtime friend and colleague Emmylou Harris. He became an acclaimed author with his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks in 2011. Recently he’s released a first-ever Christmas album and a volume of stripped down “Acoustic Classics” from his extensive catalog. We cover a range of times and topics. Also in the hour, Maya de Vitry talks about her difficult but necessary departure from the beloved acoustic trio The Stray Birds. She’s set out on her own with the album Adaptations.

The Show On The Road – Sunny War

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Z. speaks with folk/blues guitarist and singer/songwriter Sunny War.

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Turns out that while Sunny War was playing her poetic brand of punky blues on the rowdy boardwalk in Venice Beach, host Z. Lupetin was living just up the block and walking past her every day without noticing. She’s come quite a long way since those days, having released three albums since 2014, culminating with 2018’s breakout, “With the Sun.”

The Shift List – Honey & Co, London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Itamar Srulovich is an Israeli-born chef who co-founded Honey & Co with his wife, Sarit Packer, back in 2012. Itamar is the music lover between he and Sarit, so he sat down for this interview, which includes music from Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, the UK, and the US.

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A cozy spot located in London’s once sleepy Fitzrovia neigborhood that serves homey Middle Eastern fare directly across the street from their amazing food shop, market, and culinary boutique Honey & Spice, they also opened Honey & Smoke in 2016, a big and buzzy grill house serving everything from lamb kofta and chops, whole fish and slow-cooked octopus, charred cauliflower and amazing drinks.

Itamar and Sarit racked up impressive resumes before going into business together with Honey & Co, both serving as alumni of the venerable Ottolenghi restaurant and cooked together in restaurants around Tel Aviv before their time together in London.

Three restaurants and three bestselling cookbooks later, family is the through line that brings everything together at Honey & Co, and not just because Itamar and Sarit are married. It seems like Itamar knows every staff worker, diner, and shop customer intimately, exuding a warmth and friendliness that surely brings people back.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The Show On The Road – Lindsay Lou

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Host Z. Lupetin talks with the honey-voiced singer/songwriter Lindsay Lou. For over a decade she has been making slow-burning soulful roots music, first with her Michigan band the Flatbellys and now with her Nashville crew billed simply as Lindsay Lou.

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They talk about how she joined the “Great Americana Band Migration” from Michigan to Nashville, as well as the nuances of pleasing her punk-rock mom with her evolving music. They also try out some new lullabies, because it seems like all of their friends are having babies.

Song: “The Great Defender”

The String – Single Lock Records and Muscle Shoals

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. More and more, roots and rock and roll musicians have been traveling to Muscle Shoals to record.

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A string of remarkable bands and songwriters, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc, and The Secret Sisters, have had projects emerge from the area in recent years. Half a dozen studios are in demand and busy. It’s become clear that Muscle Shoals is no museum. It’s a scene. So the only thing to do was to go there and listen.

The Show On The Road – Tim O’Brien

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Starting in the late 1970s with the pioneering string band Hot Rize, Tim O’Brien has trailblazed a quietly powerful and influential solo career that includes 16 albums and multiple Grammy awards, writing what many consider to be the new standards of bluegrass music.

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Now that he’s a bluegrass elder statesmen, O’Brien has made the time to produce albums for a new crop of festival headliners like Yonder Mountain String Band and the Infamous Stringdusters. He’s recorded and toured with Mark Knopfler and Steve Martin, had his songs covered by the Dixie Chicks and Garth Brooks — not bad for the small, bespectacled kid from Wheeling, West Virginia who dropped out of college and headed west with the idea that maybe, just maybe — if he learned enough songs — he could make it.