Tag: podcasts

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.

The Breakdown – Punch Brothers, ‘Antifogmatic’

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

It’s a festively boozy week on The Breakdown – Emma’s been at the drinks cabinet and so, it seems, have the Punch Brothers. Is their wild and woozy Antifogmatic even a bluegrass record? We join Noam, Gabe and Critter in London to find the answer – then track down Chris Thile in New York to steal his cocktail recipes.

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Featured Songs
“You Are”
“Don’t Need No”
“Alex”
“Rye Whiskey”
“Me And Us”
“Missy”
“The Woman And The Bell”
“Next To The Trash”
“Welcome Home”
“This Is The Song (Good Luck)”

The Show On The Road – The Mammals

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Mike Merenda and Ruth Ungar of The Mammals talk to Zach about their devoted activism, big-hearted protest songs, and how music can still make a difference.

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Presented by Nomad Goods. Head to hellonomad.com/bgs and use code “BGS” at checkout to receive 15% off any full-priced items through the end of January.

The Shift List – Nonesuch, Oklahoma City

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Colin Stringer and Jeremy Wolfe are two of the three chef/founders of Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, an intimate, 22-seat restaurant that focuses on cooking with ingredients that come exclusively from their native Oklahoma.

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In a landlocked state that rarely gets national recognition for its culinary ambition from any organization, Nonesuch was named Best New Restaurant in the country by Bon Appetit back in August, ahead of nine other concepts from food capitals like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C.

The inventiveness and inspiration for Nonesuch were set in motion when Stringer and Wolfe started running a supper club back in 2014 called Nani, in the 100-year-old Victorian house that Stringer also lived in near the heart of Oklahoma City.

Word grew around town about the semi-legal restaurant operation in Stringer’s home, and it was eventually shut down by the city for operating without a license. When Nonesuch opened back in October 2017, it wasn’t a coincidence that the dining experience felt intimate, familial, and hospitable.

As Bon Appetit’s Editor in Chief Andrew Knowlton wrote in his review of Nonesuch, the best analogy to describe the young chefs that run it are like “three guys in a band, heads down, making incredibly beautiful music together — that they doubt anyone would ever hear.”

A little over a year after their opening, Nonesuch is booked solid for the foreseeable future, and the guys are poised and focused to take on the newfound attention with a unique sense of artistry and a killer playlist.

The Shift List – Jose Salazar – Cincinnati (Salazar, Mitas)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Jose Salazar is a chef and restaurateur based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Originally from Queens, New York, he got his start in restaurants around New York City, most notably working with Chef Thomas Keller for a four-year stint at Per Se and as the Executive Sous-Chef at Bouchon Bakery when it first opened its doors in 2006.

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In 2008, Salazar and his wife Anne moved to Cincinnati after receiving an irresistible offer to be the Executive Chef of The historical Cincinnatian Hotel and Palace restaurant, and in December of 2013, they opened Salazar together in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood.

In August 2015, Jose and Ann opened Mita’s, their second restaurant together, which has earned Jose nominations for best chef in the Great Lakes from the James Beard foundation in 2016 and 2017.

We had a chance to talk to Salazar in the back corner of a press tent during a rainy Saturday morning in Louisville, Kentucky, at this year’s Bourbon and Beyond festival back in September.

salazarcincinnati.com

The Breakdown – Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, ‘Second Generation Bluegrass’

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley were both only 17 years old when they recorded Second Generation Bluegrass. Both went on to be country megastars, until Whitley died of alcohol poisoning at 34. Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs joins us to explain how two teenagers managed to perfectly replicate the bygone sound of the Stanley Brothers – and he shares his final moments with Keith.

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Featured Songs
“Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown”
“All I Ever Loved Was You”
“Poor Monroe”
“Daybreak in Dixie”
“Son of Hobert”
“Rank Stranger” (The Stanley Brothers)
“Memories of Mother”
“Those Two Blue Eyes”
“My Deceitful Heart”
“Dream of a Miner’s Child”
“Sea of Regret”
“No Stranger to the Rain” (Keith Whitley)

The Show On The Road – Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn — two legends and innovators who’ve brought the humble banjo across four continents and have won over 17 Grammys between them in the process — talk with Z. before their show at UCLA.

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For over three decades now Béla has quietly revolutionized how the banjo is played, recorded, and perceived — taking it from of the front porches of Appalachia and into jazz clubs, symphony halls and rock stadiums from his hometown of New York City to Uganda and Tibet and back again.

Meanwhile, Abigail has forged her own unique path. A fiercely intelligent songwriter and activist fluent in Mandarin, she gave up on being a well regarded lawyer in China after a meditation retreat brought her to the realization that the banjo and not the briefcase was her destiny. After meeting at a Nashville square dance (yes, that really happened), Bela and Abigail’s banjo explorations became one. Slowly, they began touring and recording together, and that’s where Z. caught up with them, on a rainy Wednesday on UCLA’s campus in LA.

Featured Songs: “Big Country” and “Over The Divide”


Presented by Nomad Goods. Head to hellonomad.com/bgs and use code “BGS” at checkout to receive 15% off any full priced items through the end of January.

The Breakdown – John Hartford, ‘Aereo-Plain’

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Aereo-Plain is probably the greatest album John Hartford ever made — but when it came out in 1971, even his record label didn’t know what to make of it.

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We’re still not quite sure – is it a genuine nostalgia fest, or was hippie Hartford pulling bluegrass’ leg? And can producer David Bromberg and Vassar Clements superfan Alex Hargreaves help solve the mystery?

Featured Song Clips From “Aereo-Plain”:
“Turn Your Radio On”
“Steamboat Whistle Blues”
“Back in the Goodle Days”
“Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie”
“Boogie”
“With a Vamp in the Middle”
“Steam Powered Aereo Plane”
“Tear Down The Grand Ole Opry”
“Station Break”