Tag: Dustbowl Revival

The Show On The Road – JD McPherson

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

JD McPherson joins host Z. Lupetin for the final episode of The Show On The Road’s 2019 season.


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Oklahoma-born JD McPherson makes his own brand of high intellect, dance party-ready, Sun Studios-style rock ‘n’ roll. Last year he may have recorded one of the greatest original Christmas albums of the modern era with Socks.

While McPherson probably never dreamed he would become a new rock ‘n’ roll king of Christmas, Socks may be his most impressive feat yet. If you’re deeply suspicious of the capitalistic caterwauling of most modern holiday music on the airwaves (except you, Mariah!) you’ll still fall in love with JD’s sarcastic and sweet collection of holiday originals. The album deftly dives into lesser discussed Christmas subjects like broken expectations, inter-family angst, holiday horniness, and hilariously, the myth of why Santa must be grossly overweight to satisfy us fairy tale-loving kids. Give Socks a spin as you rock around the Christmas tree or the Hanukkah bush, or even better — keep it playing all year long.

 

The Show On The Road – Jason Lytle (Grandaddy)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, a special conversation with Jason Lytle, the founder and sonic visionary behind one of the America’s most beloved and underrated roots-and-noise-rock groups, Grandaddy.

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Starting from humble beginnings in the early 1990s as a trio of skateboarding friends in Modesto, CA, Grandaddy put out a series of daring, deeply weird records produced and written by Lytle that first caught fire in Europe. By the turn of the millennium, the band found themselves headlining rock festivals like Glastonbury in the UK and crashing late night TV in the US.

But Lytle wasn’t cut out for traditional cookie cutter stardom. Grandaddy broke up for six years, and after disappearing into the Montana wilderness, the soft spoken, mountain-crazy, multi-instrumentalist songwriter kept his devoted fanbase coming back for more.  His oddly-titled solo records, cinematically rich soundscapes that encircled whacked anti-heroes, and poetic, campfire-ready short story songs still make us worried kid listeners feel heard and seen — but also constantly keep us guessing.

His latest album, NYLONANDJUNO, which dropped in August on Dangerbird Records, is an experimental instrumental album made entirely with a nylon string guitar and a vintage Roland Juno synthesizer.

Host Z. Lupetin was able to catch up with Lytle before a recent rare solo show in LA.

The Show On The Road – Sam Lee

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. Lupetin speaks with renowned British song collector, sonic interpreter, roots music promoter, and deeply intuitive folk singer Sam Lee.

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Lee came to music almost by accident after a former life as a wilderness survivalist and nature advocate. Since, he has become one of the leading voices in Great Britain, saving the treasured endemic music cultures that rapidly disappear each year. His gorgeously delicate and meticulously researched debut, Ground Of Its Own, shot him from hopeful academic to nationally recognized folk star — partly by being nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Lee has relentlessly worked to save and rejuvenate the ancient melodies and songcraft of Irish and Scottish traveller tradition, Romany rhythms and stories, and connect those traditional melodies to a youthful pop culture that is yearning to know where it came from and where it is going next.

His Nest Collective, an “acoustic folk club,” gathers artists, authors, dancers and theatrical renegades and puts on shows and events across London – making Sam a rare double threat – as both an artist and a promoter of other artists.

His newest release, Old Wow, drops January 31, 2020.

The Show On The Road – Lucy Rose

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

As host Z. Lupetin travels across the UK this month, we bring you Lucy Rose – a talented singer/songwriter who grew up in the same lyrically fertile plain as Shakespeare. She has made albums filled with twisty tales of sharp-tongued, black-hearted people searching for redemption, and navigating the rough rivers of supernatural sorrow that refuse to let us go as we grow up.

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On her newest No Words Left, Rose has gone back to her roots a bit, forsaking the glossy Brit-pop direction toward which some of the powers-that-be wanted to push her, peeling back her sound to reveal just the thorny, pure fruit inside. The result is intense. Interlocking singing conversations in the tone of a toothy, hushed scream, she questions our relationships with ourselves — and maybe even God — to find who we really are behind the suffocating velvet gauze of our multiple social media personalities.

The Show On The Road – Robert Ellis

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks with Robert Ellis, the restless, tuxedoed, Texas piano-man who has paired his fleet-fingered, high-humored, “jazz in an Austin roadhouse” keys playing with machete-sharp lyrical turns of phrase — all backed up with his smile-through-the-apocalypse country-rock band.

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Ellis has gained a beloved international following all the while creating a persona that is half the tender brilliance of early Billy Joel, and half high-hatted, Southern huckster who might tell you a story that will make you cry one minute, and then steal your watch when you’re not looking the next.

Z. met up with Robert Ellis on the road together in the Netherlands.

The Show On The Road – Bonnie Bishop

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks with Bonnie Bishop — the fierce singer/songwriter raised in Texas and Mississippi with a powerhouse voice shaped by decades of singing in smoky bars. She cuts confessional Americana gems that have won her a Grammy for her songwriting and have gained her a growing legion of fans nationwide.


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Like her hero Bonnie Raitt, sometimes it takes an artist releasing six records and reaching her late thirties for anyone to take notice. And sometimes it takes a painful divorce to create a song that would be recorded by Bonnie Raitt and help Bonnie Bishop win a Grammy. No, Bishop’s life didn’t change overnight — reality is usually much more sobering than the fantasy of winning big in music. But, Bishop knows she is winning now. Things are really happening, people respect her, and the road is moving — fast. And sometimes that’s the scariest thing of all.

The Show On The Road – Charlie Parr

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, Charlie Parr — a Minnesota-based folk blues lifer who writes novelistic, multi-layered stories that shine a kaleidoscopic light on defiant, unseen characters thriving in the shadows all around us.

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Parr has a new record with only his name on it, and it isn’t shiny and perfect and commercial and catchy. It’s him. It’s pure Charlie Parr and maybe that’s enough. He hasn’t moved to LA or Nashville; he’s stayed in the cold grey north of Minnesota, because that’s his home. Take a second wherever you call home right now and listen to his episode — and his new record. You might hear something different every time.

The Show On The Road – Anna Tivel

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Anna Tivel – the Portland-based singing poetess who builds mountain ranges of rhymes with her colorful, impressionistic perspective of a world still shrouded in endless beauty and mystery.

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Anna Tivel is one of those folk singers who is passed between friends and long-time listeners like a secret talisman; a tiny gemstone that you polish in your pocket when you need a reminder that the earth is vast and the smallest things you pass on the side of the road are beautiful if you look at them from the right view.

As soon as the needle hits the wax on her latest record The Question, Anna’s hushed, sharp-edged voice begins slicing angular verses that build and build until the words flow out in blinking mini movies that sear themselves on your eardrums and then are gone in a flash. It’s like she’s a sonic cinematographer waiting for the scene to be shot in our minds.

The Show On The Road – Paul Cauthen

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, host Z. Lupetin speaks with booming country gospel trickster Paul Cauthen.

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Z. and Paul met up in Nashville after his weird and whacked-out Big Velvet revue, which nearly got shut down for a brawl that occurred on stage at the end. Paul has a way of harnessing his own madness into a dangerous and intoxicating sonic brew that needs to be in your ear holes right now. Start with this episode, and then move on to Paul’s recent release, Room 41.

The Show On The Road – Dylan LeBlanc

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week Z. speaks with Dylan LeBlanc, the lithe Louisiana-born roots ‘n’ roller who has one of those once-in-a-generation, ghostly-lilting voices that doesn’t seem of this time or place.


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His newest record Renegade, produced by Dave Cobb, makes it clear LeBlanc has grown up a lot in the last few years. It’s a big, snarling, cinematic, banger of a record; part spaghetti-western dust storm, and part hook-filled, ’60s AM radio sunshine.

This is our last episode of the summer season, so have a listen with a cold drink under the sun, and let Dylan’s voice transport you. Where? It’s up to you.