Tag: Dustbowl Revival

The Show On The Road – Theo Katzman (Vulfpeck)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

For this special episode, your host Z. Lupetin adhered to the strict stay-at-home pandemic orders, recording an intimate phone conversation with Theo Katzman, the Cheshire Cat of soulful pop-rock and one of the most visible members of the mysterious funk supergroup, Vulfpeck.


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In January, Katzman celebrated the release of his cheeky, super catchy, unabashedly romantic, and pop-driven new solo album Modern Johnny Sings: Songs in the Age of Vibe and was on a run of packed release shows when everything shut down (you know, because COVID-19). Katzman’s expertly-crafted songs and lilting falsetto vocals have that rare spark that can brighten anybody’s dull quarantine in no time.

The Show On The Road – Joey Dosik (Vulfpeck)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, host Z. Lupetin meets up with Joey Dosik, a silky-voiced songwriter and freaky-talented multi-instrumentalist who writes lush, romantic jams that transport listeners to R&B-tinted, old school FM radio gold.

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Some listeners may have learned of Dosik’s talents with DIY, future-funk ensemble Vulfpeck, led by trickster curator/composer Jack Stratton. Vulfpeck went from making goofy viral videos and recording an album of total silence — that scared the shit out of streaming giants like Spotify after it rocketed the band to international notoriety and financial success — to crowdfunding a series of hit funk records and vinyl releases that propelled them to sold out international tours, headlining nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and an unprecedented sold out show at Madison Square Garden (all with no record label in sight).

As we honor and celebrate two lost musical greats this week, Bill Withers and John Prine, it’s comforting to remember that we have constant new waves of amazing artists like Joey Dosik coming up who can honor and further their message. In many ways, Dosik’s songs combine the honest earnestness of Prine’s best early work, telling frank stories of family and relationships, with Withers’ deep, church-flavored, down-home groove.

 

The Show On The Road – The Wood Brothers

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Right before the whole world as we know it shut down and they shortened their West Coast tour due to COVID-19, host Z. Lupetin spoke to Oliver and Chris Wood — Americana pioneers The Wood Brothers — about their renewed musical bond, how they grew up in Colorado jamming with their biology professor dad, and how they just barely missed the great East Nashville tornado earlier this month. When it rains it does pour, it seems.


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The Wood Brothers’ brand new record, Kingdom in My Mind, is a sweetly funky, ballsy, bluesy, booty-shaking, and romantic improvisational masterwork. Do yourself a favor and turn it up loud and proud — it will help you groove through the lockdown. If there is anything that’s clear in this deeply strange and unsettling time, it’s that we need music more than ever.

WATCH: Smooth Hound Smith, “Crazy Over You” (Live at Ten Four)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Smooth Hound Smith (feat. Connor Vance from Dustbowl Revival)
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Crazy Over You” (Live at Ten Four)

In Their Words: “‘Crazy Over You’ is pretty guileless in its meaning, and remains one of the only true-blue love songs I’ve ever written (no cheeky humor or heartbreak in this one, folks). Over the years it’s been used many times as a first dance song at weddings, and it even got licensed for an adorable love scene in MTV’s The Real World a while back. These days, when we play it in a live setting, we usually do it stripped down, with just two voices and a guitar, so this session was really fun. We built it up a little with some great players (Danny Pratt on drums, and Rhees Williams on bass), and felt especially lucky that Connor Vance from Dustbowl Revival was around Nashville that day and willing to sit in on fiddle and play with us. We filmed and recorded it live at Ten Four Recording Co. here in East Nashville, and it was engineered by stalwart supporter of sonic excellence, Jesse Thompson.” — Zack Smith, Smooth Hound Smith

Photo credit: Adam Murphy

The Show On The Road – Dustbowl Revival

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, a very special finale to our winter season, featuring a group of world-traveling, folk-funk adventurers that have been catapulting American roots music into the 21st century with their exuberant melding of string and brass band traditions and their white knuckle, award-winning live shows. It’s Dustbowl Revival.

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To say today’s episode is personal would be an understatement. Your host Z. Lupetin founded Dustbowl Revival in Venice Beach, CA over ten years ago with a lucky Craigslist ad that started it all. What began as a clandestine jam group with as many as ten instruments going full blast at an after-hours advertising office soon moved to speakeasies and small venues around LA, with the band eventually recording their beloved live album With A Lampshade On at the famed Troubadour in LA and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

In 2013 Liz Beebe joined the group as they began touring full time, becoming a powerhouse eight-piece band that wowed festivals and stages in over a dozen countries, playing over a hundred and fifty shows a year. They’ve released a total of seven full-length records along the way, including their soul-dipped, self-titled work from 2017, which was produced by Grammy-winner Ted Hutt, co-founder of Flogging Molly.

This week celebrates the release of their most daring work to date, Is It You, Is It Me, produced by Sam Kassirer (Lake Street Dive, Josh Ritter) and engineered by Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens). Z. was able to gather the whole band around the mic while on the road in New Hampshire. Make sure you stick around to the end of the episode as the band shares their intimate acoustic single “Let It Go.”

BGS 5+5: Dustbowl Revival

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Dustbowl Revival
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Latest Album: Is It You, Is It Me
Rejected Band Names or Nicknames: “When I was first trying to figure out the band name, we asked the audience at the first ‘show’ we played at the old Brown Derby in LA. I almost went with the name of the first album, The Atomic Mushroom of Love, but that would have been too much.”

Answers by Z. Lupetin of Dustbowl Revival

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

As nerve-wracking as it was, I’m super glad we had the cajones to try and record our live record Lampshade On at The Troubadour in LA and The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Both spots have such history and it felt like we were floating while doing it. Two of the most intense, rowdy, and giving crowds we’ve ever played for. Truly I almost freaked out and messed up the first few songs at The Troubadour — it meant so much to me to be there — but the energy is palpable on the record and that was worth it. Recording live is like trying to play music on a tightrope with your eyes closed.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I can never stay in one medium for long. It’s like only eating Italian every meal for the rest of your days — there are so many storytelling mediums that are so worth our time. Short stories are a forever favorite. I am also a playwright and I’ve always seen a lot of overlap between performing music and creating dialogue and stories for theatre. Why can’t conversations be had in the middle of a song?

I’ve always had a macabre sense of humor and the work of writers like Edward Albee, Christopher Durang, Sam Shepard and poets like James Tate and short story masters like Etgar Keret and Peter Orner seem to scratch an itch I try to get to with my songwriting — telling stories of normal people in deeply strange and emotionally epic situations trying to figure things out the best they can. Can magical realism be a genre in music instead of Americana?

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I adore hiking up mountains when I can and maybe it’s the Pisces in me, but I have a visceral need to be near an ocean or a big old body of water (I grew up by Lake Michigan). Jumping in lakes, ponds, oceans, weird hotel pools, you name it, I do it as much as possible to reset my brain. Riding waves thirty blocks from my house is among the most purely joyful things I know to do. I find myself bringing the sea and the sky and the limitlessness of space into a lot of songs accidentally. My grandfather was a part of the space program so maybe his curiosity was passed down to me in some way.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I’d love to share a few hot dogs and some fries with John Prine. I share his love of a good dog — being from Chicago, the simplicity and perfection of a Vienna beef sausage on a steamed poppy seed bun with all the fixins and the spicy sport peppers for extra crunch and tang — it just can’t be beat. It’s the first thing I get in the Chicago Midway airport on layovers. Also John is a lesson in well-spiced simplicity!

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

This is a tough one as my bandmates (and my mom) will often question if a song and its story are personal or simply a fantastical vision of something I wished could happen or feared might happen. Initially the opening song on our new record, ‘Dreaming,’ was about a baseball closer who blows the biggest game of his life. It wasn’t personal at all of course, and when we changed it up to be more about a performer who panics in the bright lights it did feel more grounded and emotionally real, because it came back to being a version of me. Not me exactly.

I do get nervous before shows. I’ve never almost died out there (not yet!), but I strongly feel starting with a seed of truth and letting your imagination (or paranoia) run wild creates the most unique story. I’m very lucky — I came from an insanely supportive and artistically curious family — but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the tragedy and darkness that lurks within our family history if one looks hard enough. People are complicated and often don’t reveal what’s really going on. I tried to uncover that in our tune ‘Sonic Boom.’ What if you told the person you loved most what was really going on inside? Stretching the truth can still be personal — and creating fantasies maybe can help us find out who we really are.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

The Show On The Road – Che Apalache

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week we feature a border-breaking bluegrass band who came all the way from Buenos Aires to celebrate their Best Folk Album Grammy nomination. Before Che Apalache hit the red carpet, they stopped by host Z. Lupetin’s LA living room studio to talk about their unlikely founding and how they’ve created their intoxicating brew of traditional North American and often overlooked South American string band sounds.

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Lead by a trilingual world traveler, fleet-bowed fiddler, spitfire vocalist, and sonic scholar Joe Troop, Che Apalache formed almost accidentally when Joe began teaching curious local Buenos Aires pickers his own North Carolina folk traditions. Amongst his talented students he found three kindred spirits in Argentinians Franco Martino on guitar and Martin Bobrik on mandolin, and Pau Barjau on banjo, who is originally from Mexico. The result has been one of the most unexpected and have-to-hear-this-to-believe-it stories in modern roots music, culminating in their brilliant second record, Rearrange My Heart, which was produced by fan of the band (and a guy pretty good on the banjo), Béla Fleck. Lucky for all us, Che Apalache play several songs during the episode!

The Show On The Road – Jason Hawk Harris

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. meets up with cerebral, Texas-born roots rocker Jason Hawk Harris, who has recently struck out on his own, poking one foot through the torn tinsel of a Houston honky tonk and another through a haunted, California Black Mirror episode set in a tilted sci-fi future.

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While most songwriters hide behind walls and trapdoors of metaphor, Harris isn’t afraid to openly process his recent family traumas and loss on his stunning (and aptly titled) debut solo album, Love & The Dark, released by Bloodshot Records in 2019. Despite his youth, Harris has much to tell us and if this equally sensitive and swaggering sound is where the future of modern country music is headed, we’re in.

The Show On The Road – Dar Williams

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin’s conversation with revered singing songstress and deeply wise wordsmith, Dar Williams.

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Coming out of the Hudson Valley outside New York City, Williams has released over thirteen albums across a quarter century as one of America’s touchstone folk poets, first bursting out of the famed Lilith Fair folk rock scene in the mid 1990s with contemporaries like Ani Difranco and the Indigo Girls and gaining a devoted following. She has toured with luminaries like Joan Baez and Patty Griffin, written a book about what makes communities resilient, she runs her own songwriting retreats, and has inspired generations of women to fearlessly embrace their creativity and exercise their limitless potential. Z. was able to catch up with Williams in the green room at the historic McCabe’s Guitar Shop before her second show of a sold out weekend in Los Angeles. A new album is on the way.

10 Bands Returning with New Music in 2020

Posted on by Editor

Roots music is already taking hold this decade, with ten notable bands preparing to release their newest albums in the months ahead. From award-winning bluegrass bands to prominent Americana ensembles, here are ten projects BGS believes are worth your attention.

The Ballroom Thieves, Unlovely (February 14)

This band’s undeniable energy has endeared them to crowds at Boston Calling, Newport Folk, Moon River, Mountain Jam, and Calgary Folk. However, folk music is just one part of their approach. The political messages are especially evident in Unlovely, while a new relationship between band members Callie Peters and Martin Earley informs the songwriting as well. Listen for Darlingside on the title track.

Della Mae, Headlight (January 17)

Prodigiously talented as instrumentalists and empowered by their mission of women’s rights, Della Mae make a statement on Headlight, especially in their support of those women whose claims of sexual abuse have been questioned. This time out, their sound is bolstered by keys, drums, and electric guitar. The trio of Jenni Lyn Gardner, Kimber Ludiker, and Celia Woodsmith will be touring in the U.K. this month.

Drive-By Truckers, The Unraveling (January 31)

The modern political climate informs Drive-By Truckers’ The Unraveling, with titles like “Armageddon’s Back in Town,” “Thoughts and Prayers” and “Babies in Cages.” Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley battled writer’s block for their first album in four years but it’s easy to figure out who ultimately inspired this set of songs, which were recorded in Memphis with producer David Barbe and engineer Matt Ross-Spang.

Dustbowl Revival, Is It You, Is It Me (January 31)

Dustbowl Revival decided to shake things up on Is It You, Is It Me. First of all, the Los Angeles-band wrote the songs in a two-week window in the studio, rather than fine-tuning them on the road. Second, the musical inspirations stretch further than usual, with pop vibes and percussion getting ample space. With Z. Lupetin and Liz Beebe on lead vocals, and produced by Sam Kassirer, this is one of the most exuberant records you’ll hear this year.

The Haden Triplets, The Family Songbook (January 24)

After an uncle discovered a songbook from the Haden Triplet’s grandfather, a radio star in the 1930s, the LA ensemble carried the material to the studio. The Family Songbook echoes that earlier era, while its covers range from the Carter Family to Kanye West. Their brother Josh Haden wrote “Every Time I Try.” A stunning musical blend comes naturally to the siblings, as their father was jazz bassist Charlie Haden.

The Lil Smokies, Tornillo (January 24)

While this roots band has origins in Montana, the Lil Smokies recorded Tornillo in a Texas town of that name – the site of Sonic Ranch Studio. While clearly influenced by bluegrass, the Lil Smokies capably transcend its borders. Their instrumental and vocal skills are evident in “Worlds on Fire,” yet bandleader Andy Dunnigan writes abstract lyrics that are just open-ended enough to put your own experiences inside.

The Lone Bellow, Half Moon Light (February 7)

Everything that has propelled The Lone Bellow into the hearts of live music fans is found in abundance within Half Moon Light. The passionate delivery, the poetic lyrics, the propulsive melodies – all accounted for. This time the trio teamed with The National’s Aaron Dessner, who produced the album at his studio in upstate New York. A three-month U.S. tour kicks off Feb. 12-13 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.

The SteelDrivers, Bad for You (February 7)

The lonesome growl of the SteelDrivers is now delivered by Kelvin Damrell, a raspy singer and guitarist who makes his debut recorded appearance in the lineup on Bad for You. (No pressure, but their 2015 album won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.) Founding member and fiddle player Tammy Rogers co-wrote 10 of the 11 new songs and sings harmony, too. Their spring tour launches February 6 in Bristol, Tennessee.

The Wood Brothers, Kingdom in My Mind (January 24)

Even when they’re writing about heavy topics, the Wood Brothers bring joy into their music. Kingdom in My Mind offers a mature perspective with a timeless groove, although the album came together by chance after building their own studio in Nashville. After listening back to some jam sessions, they discovered they could carve out some new tracks. Tunes like “Little Bit Sweet” capture that unmistakable magic.

Wood Belly, Man on the Radio (January 31)

A bright spot on Colorado’s bluegrass scene, Wood Belly worked with producer Sally Van Meter to further tap into their harmony-driven sound and arrangements. “Can’t Get Behind” (with special guest Jeremy Garrett) is about needing acceptance, although the band has found exceptional allies already with an IBMA Momentum Award nomination and a win in the 2018 Telluride Bluegrass Band Competition.

Photo of The Ballroom Thieves: Shervin Lainez