Tag: podcasts

The Show On The Road – T Sisters

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. speaks with Oakland’s soulful singing T Sisters. For this trio of sisters, singing harmony-rich songs isn’t just their full-time job, it’s a way of life. It’s what they do — and damn do they do it well.

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Sisters Erika, Chloe, and Rachel Tietjen are harmonic masters. Whether it’s demonstrated in their sassy originals accompanied by upright bass, guitar, banjo, and mandolin, or with their delicious vocal-layer-cake covers of hits by Kylie Minogue and Paul Simon, family runs deep through the music. T Sisters will be releasing their next EP, We Are Bound, produced by Oliver Wood (The Wood Brothers) in March 2019.

 

The Show On The Road – Jordie Lane and Clare Reynolds

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, we’re talking with Australian singer/songwriter Jordie Lane and his Aussie producing/harmonizing partner Clare Reynolds. Jordie has been making dark-hearted, voluptuously verbose folk music with a grinning rock ‘n roll spirit for nearly a decade.

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While he’s just making a name for himself in the US, Lane has been playing huge venues all over Australia for years as one of Melbourne’s most beloved and respected roots music artists. Have a listen, and then tell your American amigos to give this Aussie kid a shot — you won’t regret it.

The String – Ruthie Foster

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

If Americana values all American roots forms and the fusion thereof, then nobody’s more Americana than Austin singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster.

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She grew up singing in church in rural TX, developed a variety of skills in bands while serving in the US Navy, then became a folk troubadour who slips from country to soul to blues to gospel with ease. She has been one of if not the flagship artist for Austin’s excellent Blue Corn Music record label since 2002. She’s been featured on a guitar blues tour with Jorma Kaukonen and Robben Ford, and that’s just one fragment of a rich collaborative life. She’s won the Blues Foundation’s Koko Taylor award for best traditional blues female singer SIX times, and she’s nominated again this year. She’s also a charming person who radiates kindness.

The Show On The Road – The Accidentals

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Z. chats with Michigan electric folk trio, The Accidentals. The two leading ladies of The Accidentals met as violin- and cello-playing high schoolers in Traverse City, Michigan, where it was love at first jam, and soon after they had the courage to say no to a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music. They have been making records and touring non-stop ever since–all before they could even buy themselves a beer.

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The Accidentals’ empowered cocktail of classically infused, funky Americana got even more potent when they officially became a trio in 2014 as drummer Michael Dause joined in, and they quickly became precocious Michigan musical celebrities, opening for Brandi Carlile, Andrew Bird, and Rodriguez, among others. This momentum got them national attention following an appearance at South by Southwest (notably adored by Billboard) and eventually led them to sign to a major label.

Z. met up with the three of them in a hotel room at the Sisters Folk Fest in Oregon.

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 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”