Tag: podcasts

The Shift List – Jonathan Whitener (Here’s Looking At You) – Los Angeles

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the Shift List, Jonathan Whitener — chef and co-owner of Here’s Looking At You in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. Similar to his cooking, Jonathan’s musical tastes are a reflection of his family and surrounding environment. Outlaw country from his father, ’80s metal from his brothers, and a love for Glenn Danzig that continues to this day.

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Since it opened in 2016, Here’s Looking at You has appeared on almost every ‘best of’ restaurant list around LA — and that’s due to a number of factors: Co-owner Lien Ta’s laser focus on service and comforting hospitality; top-notch tiki-adjacent bar service; the evolving playlists blending old school hip-hop and post-punk; but it’s anchored by Whitener’s anything goes approach to cooking.

Whitener grew up in Huntington Beach, CA the son of a Mexican mother and a German father. Growing up near Orange County’s thriving Vietnamese and Japanese communities, he pulls all of these influences into his “SoCal tapas-style” menu with standout dishes like the shishito peppers accompanied with an tonnato sauce — the Italian answer to hummus — sprinkled with Huamei, a preserved Chinese plum. Or for another example, frogs legs seasoned like Nashville hot chicken with a salsa negra, scallion, and lime.

Whitener cut his teeth for three years as the chef de cuisine for Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s restaurant Animal in Los Angeles before opening Here’s Looking At You with Lien Ta, who he met while she was serving as front-of-house manager at Animal.

Jonathan Whitener’s Shift List
Buzzcocks – “What Do I Get?”
Waylon Jennings – “I’m A Ramblin’ Man”
Waylon Jennings – “Rainy Day Women”
Danzig – “Am I A Demon”
Metallica – “Ride The Lightning”
Nick Waterhouse (Feat. Leon Bridges) – “Katchi”
Tupac (Feat. Syke) – “All Eyes On Me”

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 String – Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Ketch Secor is the fiddler and front man of the uncanny success story Old Crow Medicine Show. As they enter their third decade as a band, they can claim to have revived and re-imagined old-time string band and blues music for new generations.


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They’ve added at least one hit song to the country music repertoire in “Wagon Wheel” and reached millions with a show full of passion and classic country music values. Their latest, Live At The Ryman, is a collection of hand-picked tracks from roughly a decade of live recordings at the Mother Church. Ketch talks about the band’s origins, the legacy of its forty-odd shows at the Ryman and being part of Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary.

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 String – Kelsey Waldon and Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

In her new song “1988,” Kelsey Waldon tells the story of the year she was born in Western Kentucky and what happened after that.


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What music fans know is that she brought her songs to Nashville and found community among the top emerging figure in East Nashville, including Margo Price and Erin Rae. She’s just released her third album and it’s special because White Noise/White Lines is a debut for John Prine’s Oh Boy Records, part of a renewal of that decades old indie label. He’s her songwriting hero, and their relationship is at the core of this conversation. Also in the hour, Raleigh NC writer Tommy Goldsmith talks about his new book, the definitive account of Earl Scruggs and his famous bluegrass instrumental “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

The Show On The Road – The Lone Bellow

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks to the founding trio of one the most respected and sought after folk-rock bands in the country, The Lone Bellow.

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Their hedonistically heavenly harmonies have lifted them from playing tiny bars around their founding home base of Brooklyn, New York to adoring audiences at venerable venues like Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the Apollo, and The Ryman Auditorium, in their new home of Nashville, Tennessee. The Lone Bellow have a rapport that is intimate, hilarious, and — when it calls for it — deadly serious. The band is full of so much heart and genuine insight that you can’t help but lean in and listen.

The Shift List – Katie Button (Cúrate) – Asheville, N.C.

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Katie Button is at the helm of two restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina: the lively and authentic Spanish experience at the acclaimed tapas restaurant Cúrate, as well as Button & Co. Bagels, influenced by Katie’s upbringing in New Jersey.

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Chef Katie Button took a winding road to open her restaurants in Asheville, first pursuing science degrees at Cornell and earning her master’s degree in biomedical engineering in Paris. Realizing that a life in science wasn’t for her, she changed course to the culinary field, starting as a server at one of José Andrés’ restaurants in Washington, D.C. She volunteered on her days off to work at his avant-garde restaurant minibar to help prep in the kitchen, since she didn’t have any professional cooking experience.

Being in the kitchen made her realize that it was the place she wanted to be most, so from there, she got a position as an intern in the pastry kitchen at New York’s Jean-Georges. After that, she moved to LA to work at The Bazaar by José Andrés, and that following summer, she landed a position in the pastry kitchen at El Bulli, Chef Ferran and Albert Adria’s legendary three-Michelin star restaurant in Spain.

It was there that she met her husband Felix, and together they moved to Asheville to open a restaurant with her parents, where they eventually opened Cúrate in 2011. The classic Spanish tapas restaurant received instant attention and accolades, from mentions in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times t0 earning status as a nominee for the James Beard Foundation’s Rising Star Chef award in 2014, a semi-finalist for Best Chefs in America in 2015, and a nominee for Best Chef Southeast 2018 and 2019.

In this episode, Chef Katie admits that when she’s expediting dishes, she really doesn’t hear much going on around her, underscoring her intense focus while working the line. But when she’s prepping for a shift, her staff has been surprised to learn that underground indie rock from the mid to late 90s is her go too – think “The Moon & Antarctica” by Modest Mouse, Archers of Loaf, and Built to Spill.

Katie Button’s Shift List 
Jason Durulo – “Want To Want Me”
Beyoncé – “Run The World”
Wilson Phillips – “Hold On”
Soul Coughing – “Super Bon Bon”
Modest Mouse – “Trailer Trash”
The Rolling Stones – “Honky Tonk Women”

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 String – Del McCoury, Jim Lauderdale and IBMA 2019

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Del McCoury is a bluegrass hall of famer and repeat host of the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. Jim Lauderdale is a beloved Nashville songwriter whose wide range of projects and songs includes Grammy Awards in bluegrass. Their personalities are as big as their resumes, so they’ll make memorable co-hosts of the 2019 IBMA Awards in Raleigh.


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In a joint interview in front of a live audience, Jim and Del talk about the World of Bluegrass and their past and potential future as banjo players. You never know what might happen. Also in the hour, the next wave of the genre with Bluegrass Ramble showcase artist Jaelee Roberts. The 18-year-old is a new voice and songwriter who’s being welcomed by leading musicians into her first steps as a recording artist. IBMA’s World of Bluegrass runs Sept. 24-28 in Raleigh, NC.

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.