Tag: The Show on the Road

The Show On The Road – Lake Street Dive

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, Z. Lupetin and The Show On The Road bring you a conversation with internationally loved soul-pop pioneers Lake Street Dive. Starting out as jazz nerds storming local folk festivals and tiny rock clubs around Boston, they’ve since become a well-oiled touring phenomenon, headlining Red Rocks, traveling across Europe, playing late night on Colbert and Kimmel, all while refusing to settle into an easily nameable genre. In 2021, after three years since their last release, they celebrated their much-awaited seventh studio album Obviously.

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Most notable bands are like sunsets: they flash their colors, they create a few memories and fade away. And most groups that attempt, somehow, to connect virtuoso players in the jazz, roots, and rock ‘n’ roll scenes never actually live in the same town. Each have a Beatles-esque knack for singing sublime harmony and writing effortlessly killer hooks (see fan favorites like “Go Down Smooth,” “Good Kisser,” or their new TikTok earworm, “Hypotheticals”) and also each have their own solo groups? Maybe they last a few fiery tours and finally disband. And yet Lake Street Dive have become a steady standard-bearer in the nascent Americana world — and only seem to be getting tighter and more creative 17 years in.

Founded in 2004 by luminous singer Rachael Price, upright bassist-songwriter Bridget Kearney, high-energy drummer Mike Calabrese, and the recently departed guitarist-trumpeter Mike “McDuck” Olsen at The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the group caught new wind and inspiration after adding kinetic keyboardist/singer-songwriter Akie Bermiss in 2017.

After months of planning, we finally caught up with Calabrese and Bermiss on Zoom to discuss how they are forging a fresh path forward after a tough year and a half away. Make sure you stick around to end of the episode to hear how they meticulously created their knockout a-cappella pop gem, “Sarah,” which closes out their new LP.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

The Show on the Road – Menahan Street Band (The Daptone Sound)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, The Show On The Road brings you a rare conversation with Thomas Brenneck and Homer Steinweiss, the braintrust behind brass-forward instrumental supergroup the Menahan Street Band. If Tarantino and Scorsese ever needed a custom-made, 1970’s greasy-soul soundtrack, MSB might be the perfect choice. While the timeless Daptone Records sound has gone worldwide thanks to breakout stars like the late Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, most don’t know the bandleaders and songwriters behind their intricately arranged works.

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Guitarist/producer Thomas Brenneck has been the secret sauce in helping hitmaker Mark Ronson create vintage backdrops for crossover stars like Amy Winehouse, while Homer Steinweiss’ slinky drumming can be heard across the Daptone universe, including on Jones, Winehouse, and Lee Fields and The Expressions records, not to mention his work with Lady Gaga, St. Vincent, and Bruno Mars. For the first time in a decade, MSB — which includes Dave Guy (The Roots), Leon Michaels (The Black Keys) and Nick Movshon (The Expressions) — have reconvened the troops to create their most effortlessly cinematic collection yet: the cheekily titled The Exciting Sounds Of The Menahan Street Band. The album art alone signifies a sensual, intimate evening is ahead to whoever listens. Is the design NSFW? Maybe.

Brenneck called into the episode taping from outside L.A. and Steinweiss from his studio in New York City. The conservation jumped back to how they formed the group in 2007, how they convinced Bradley to join them in making new music (he had been doing James Brown impression work), and how they find that out-of-body, improvisational zen zone which creates their aural moods of mystery and intrigue — showcased best in the reverb-y Bond-like jam “Starchaser.”

A favorite surreal moment that Brenneck mentioned was driving through Brooklyn hearing their song sampled by Jay-Z. For a moment, their horns were blaring from every car radio in the city. While hip-hop legends often find their beats and backdrops from classic soul and R&B vinyl, notables like Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott and 50 Cent have mined the funky MSB catalog for years. Sir Paul McCartney also used their services. If you need an instant vibe, they’ve got you. Even in sparkling trumpet-led themes like “Glovebox Pistol,” which clocks in at a minute and eight seconds long, you can see a velvet-boothed, smoke-filled scene unfolding, bringing to mind the lush scores of The Godfather or The Score.

Only recently have star backing-bands like The Wrecking Crew, The Swampers, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section come to be appreciated for creating some of the most beloved songs in the American pop canon, from The Beach Boys and Aretha Franklin to Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and The Staples Singers. It can be argued that in the 21st century, Brenneck and Steinweiss (and the work of The Menahan Street Band) deserve to be included in that conversation. With one listen of The Exciting Sounds Of The Menahan Street Band, you are transported — exactly where is up to you.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

The Show on the Road – Robert Finley

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we journey to northern Louisiana for a unique conversation with sprightly blues and southern rock singer Robert Finley, who began making music in his cotton-growing family in the 1960s, and has been rediscovered and empowered through his remarkable partnership with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys.

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Finley’s funky and cheeky comeback album, Goin’ Platinum (which sounds like a lost Motown gem), came in 2017. In May of 2021, he celebrated the release of the deeply personal follow-up, Sharecropper’s Son. As you can hear in the episode, even in his late sixties, Finley is a playful force to be reckoned with and isn’t shy about sharing how faith and music have gotten him through decades of tragedy and hardship. In 2019 he even reached the semi-finals of America’s Got Talent.

Growing up in a religious home where blues and soul music was rarely allowed to be heard, Finley worked as an army helicopter repairman and professional carpenter for many years, often keeping his keen musical ideas to himself. He may now be legally blind, but the always-sharp dressed Finley (he loves a snakeskin jacket) was spotted busking on the streets of Helena, Arkansas and the blues-obsessed Auerbach was smitten with Finley’s raw, swampy Jimi Hendrix meets James Brown tone.

Both of Finley’s critically-applauded releases subsequently came out on Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound, which has become a home for previously unheralded Black artists like Yola, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, and Leo Bud Welch.

(Editor’s note: Read BGS’ recent interview with Robert Finley here.)

 

The Show On The Road – Amy Helm

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, The Show On The Road places a call into Woodstock, NY, where we speak to a respected singer, songwriter, and sometimes drummer Amy Helm, beloved daughter of Levon Helm of The Band.

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Growing up in the home of two working performers (her mother is singer Libby Titus, who wrote songs covered by Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt) wasn’t always the easiest for the introspective Helm, but it gave her a fertile proving ground to begin exploring creating her own soaring songs in the folk, blues, and soul traditions. She waited until she was forty-four to release her acclaimed first solo record, Didn’t It Rain, with her father lending his signature earthy drums on several tracks — and this year, she teamed up with multi-instrumentalist and producer Josh Kaufman (Taylor Swift, Bonny Light Horseman) to create What The Flood Leaves Behind, her most emotive and lushly-realized project yet.

With her dogs often joining the conversation from her upstate home, Helm dives into her early years trying her hand at singing in New York City cafes, having folks walk out of her folk fest shows because her band was too loud, founding the band Ollabelle, joining her stepdad Donald Fagen’s group Steely Dan onstage, backing up legends like Stax soul artist William Bell and finally reconnecting with her dad in her mid-thirties as he began his late life renaissance, hosting his epic Americana throwdowns called “The Midnight Rambles.” It was being a member of that crack “ramble band” that gave Amy the final push to pursue her own lead voice.

While Levon famously struggled with heroine addiction and the foibles of post-Bob Dylan and The Band fame fallout, it was when he got clean and took Amy under his wing that both of their stars began to rise again. You can hear Amy singing on his gorgeous return in 2017’s Dirt Farmer. Becoming more ambitious, Amy laid down her upbeat rock-n-soul-tinged second album with producer Joe Henry in LA with notable players like Doyle Bramhall II, Tyler Chester, and a vocal choir of Allison Russell and JT Nero (Birds of Chicago) and Adam Minkoff. This Too Shall Light was released in 2018 on Yep Roc Records and Amy began to be recognized as one of the most powerful singers touring the Americana circuit. Her newest record was recorded at her spiritual home, Levon Helm Studios, where each ramble still takes place on the weekends.

During the pandemic, Helm had a unique idea to keep her creative muscles strong, even when live music gatherings were not technically allowed in public. She began setting up “curbside concerts” for her friends and any curious fans who missed her songs, touring around Woodstock with her guitar, bringing a little joy to her shut-in listeners during New York’s darkest hours.

Stick around to the end of the episode to hear Helm introduce the spiritual opening track of What The Flood Leaves Behind, “Verse 23.”

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

The Show on the Road – Cake (John McCrea)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, a rare career-spanning interview with the ever-curious frontman, activist, and rock hitmaker John McCrea, who founded Cake, one of the most beloved and yet misunderstood bands of our time in Sacramento in 1992.

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Despite putting out unlikely ubiquitous radio hits like “The Distance,” “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” and “Never There” featuring the signature combo of dry speak-singing, spaghetti western brass, muscular guitars, and spacey synths, and becoming one of the best selling groups of the 1990s and early 2000s, McCrea and an ever-changing group of collaborators have always operated more like a DIY garage band. They produce and record everything themselves and exist outside the music industry spotlight — only putting out their oddball, genre-defying work when it’s ready.

While you may have forgotten some of their danceable favorites that burned through college and indie-rock radio — with further study, songs like “No Phone,” which tackled our toxic relationship to technology (even before smartphones came out), now seem both deeply of (and way ahead of) their time.

Critics were often confused by Cake’s lyrically dense, subversively political records like Motorcade Of Generosity, Prolonging The Magic, and Comfort Eagle. And with their obtuse album art, strange homemade videos, McCrea’s conspiratorial slam-poet frontman delivery, and his shaggy Sacramento-based bandmates, it was all quite atypical in the era of shiny studio-created MTV and radio-ready rock. And yet their legions of fans, including our host Z. Lupetin, ate it up and continue to anxiously wait for what’s coming next from the group. After a decade of home recording and environmental activism (with a recent emphasis on combating deforestation) McCrea hints that a new album and a return to playing may finally be in the works.

 

The Show on the Road – Lera Lynn

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a deep dive with silky-voiced, southern gothic-folk songwriter Lera Lynn. Lynn has recently gained notoriety for her mysterious and lushly cinematic sound, as heard on her haunting 2020 LP, On My Own (on which she writes, produces and plays every instrument on each song) and in the music of HBO’s True Detective (produced by T-Bone Burnett) — she became a cast member in Season 2.

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We’ve all had our dark moments during this last year. For Lera Lynn it was figuring out how to put out a new album, which she had painstakingly made herself in isolation (see also: Springsteen’s moody and homemade Nebraska), right as her first baby was on the way without any family being allowed to help shoulder the load. At times, the burden seemed too much to bear, but what emerged was a touchstone set of songs that unintentionally seemed to pinpoint the exact center of our collective dread — and the flickers of hope of a new beginning that can come out of a such a societal time-quake. Searching, reverb-y rock standouts like “Are You Listening?” seem to be calling out into a void that we never knew we had, perhaps reminding us again how much we need human touch, friendship, family warmth, and true soul connection.

While we are currently emerging into the light-filled end of this COVID-19 tunnel, it’s important to note that this interview was conducted back in 2020 in the thick of the harshest lockdowns (the taping footage was lost, then finally found). Songs like “Isolation” hit the exact pain point for many artists like Lynn, who once thrived on bringing live-music’s unique sweaty joy to strangers in a new town each night. Her rising calls of “Is anybody out there?” ring like echoes from a very recent bad dream. A dream, of course, that is still very much a painful reality across this country and around the world.

Coming out of the fertile roots rock scene of Athens, GA, Lynn’s earlier records — like the intimate and country-inflected Have You Met Lera Lynn? from 2011 and its pop-forward follow ups The Avenues (2016) and Resistor (2017) — focused mostly on her endlessly warm and rich voice and the fury and frustration she was processing having grown up an only child of an alcoholic dad. But it was her guest-star-laden LP, Plays Well With Others (2018), where Lynn began to realize the extent of her gifted arranging and vocal powers together. Teaming up with a murderer’s row of Americana artists like Shovels & Rope, John Paul White of the Civil Wars, and Rodney Crowell, the album may be the most high-spirited of her works — like a basement party jam session going off the rails in all the best ways.

The tough year at home did make Lynn come to appreciate how far she’s come since those early days — maybe it took a decade of hard-won acceptance and practice to be able to create On My Own without any help from other musicians or producers. The result is a wonder to hear. Now if she could just play it for an actual live audience. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear Lynn introduce her favorite broken-romance number, “So Far.”

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

The Show on the Road – Ani DiFranco

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a truly inspiring talk with the activist, author, and free-spirited feminist folk icon Ani DiFranco, who just released her lushly orchestrated twenty-second album: Revolutionary Love.

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Many things have been said about the music Ani DiFranco has created for the last thirty years since she burst on the scene with her fiery self-titled LP in 1990. With her shaved head on the cover, fearlessly bisexual love songs, dexterous guitar work and hold-no-prisoners lyrics sparing no one from her poetic magnifying glass, DiFranco’s persona became almost synonymous with a rejuvenated women’s movement that blossomed in the late-1990’s Lilith Fair moment. And yet she was always a bit more committed to the cause than some of her more pop-leaning contemporaries, who faded away as soon as their hits subsided.

Framing herself somewhere between the rebellious folk-singing teacher Pete Seeger and the gender-fluid show-stopping rock spirit in Prince, (who she recorded with after he became a fan,) DiFranco was always just as passionate about raising awareness for abortion rights, ensuring safety for gay and trans youth and bringing music to prisons, as she was promoting her latest musical experiment. She began playing publicly around age ten, and as a nineteen-year-old runaway from Buffalo, NY, she started her own label, Righteous Babe Records, that allowed her to operate free of corporate (and overwhelmingly male) oversight. Indeed, despite gaining a wide international fanbase she has released every album herself since the beginning — as well as championing genre-defying songwriters like Andrew Bird, Anaïs Mitchell, Utah Philips, and others. It was DiFranco’s encouragement that helped Mitchell’s opus Hadestown become a Tony-winning Broadway smash. DiFranco may have been deemed a bit too left-of-center for pop radio, but her beloved 1997 live record Living In Clip went gold.

Let’s get something out of the way real quick: was this male podcast host initially a bit intimidated to dive into her encyclopedic album collection after admiring her work from afar and believing the songs were not meant for his ears? Indeed. I grew up with girlfriends and fellow musicians who rocked Ani’s Righteous Babe pins and patches on their jean jackets like they were religious ornaments. What I found during this mind-bending conversation, and after listening to her polished and mystical newest record especially, was that DiFranco has never tried to push away people that don’t look or talk like her — or tried to mock or belittle conservative movements she doesn’t agree with or understand. There is a deep kindness and empathy in her songwriting that I never expected and in her 2019 autobiography, No Walls And The Recurring Dream, she acknowledges how lonely and exhausting it can be trying to fight against a societal tide that doesn’t want to stop and give you space to be who you are.

What became increasingly clear during our conversation was that DiFranco wants to make music for everyone. She prides herself on her quirky, multi-generational fanbase — with grandparents and kids, dads and sons, daughters and aunties alike singing along to favorites like “Both Hands,” “Untouchable Face,” and covers like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” at packed shows across three continents.

I had my own goosebumps-inducing moment singing with Ani that I’ll never forget. The oldest folk festival in America, The Ann Arbor Folk Fest, once put me on stage to sing harmony on “Angel From Montgomery” with DiFranco at the acoustically perfect Hill Auditorium. I attended the University Of Michigan years earlier and I saw John Prine sing that classic in that same room, and it felt like a full circle moment. Seeing how DiFranco transfixed the crowd that night, and how the women songwriters and musicians offstage especially watched her with such admiration made me want to see what her music — which I had never fully listened to — was all about.

If you have a chance, listen to Revolutionary Love start to finish, and stick around to the end of the episode to hear DiFranco read lyrics as poetry.

Photo credit: Daymon Gardner

The Show on the Road – Parker Millsap

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we feature a conversation with one of the rising stars in our current roots music renaissance: Parker Millsap, a gifted Oklahoma-born singer-songwriter who grew up in a Pentecostal church and creates a fiery gospel backdrop for his tender then window-rattling rock ‘n’ roll voice.


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When you’ve been touring hundreds of days a year down southern backroads from Tulsa to Tallahassee since you were a teenager like Parker Millsap has, you know a thing or two about how to keep your head when things go off the rails. But it was the forced year-long break during the pandemic that really made him stop and accept how far he’s come from his intense, anxious, folky debut Palisade in 2012, which was released when he was 19. His soulful, self-assured new record Be Here Instead displays a relentlessly hard-working performer who no longer has to chase the next gig for gas money, or has to worry if the world will accept his work. Holed up outside of Nashville with his wife, Millsap let the songs do the talking.

His brawnier, self-titled record from 2014 showed his rebellious electric side coming to the fore, followed by his beloved, fire-and–brimstone bopping breakout The Very Last Day two years later, which confronted our country’s obsession with destruction. Then there was the toothier, glossier, pop-leaning Other Arrangements, which finally brings us to his soulful newest record, Be Here Now. It’s not hard to see that this young songwriter is coming into his prime years. With a new maturity and wisdom behind his writing, standout, incendiary songs like “Dammit” are allowed to unfold in a distortion-dipped, John Lee Hooker meets U2 slow-burn build; never resolving, never relenting while he confronts the tough truths and hypocrisies that are threaded into our modern lives. What is our purpose? What can we do about the violence and greed all around us? Without pushing or preaching, the song is trying to convince its listener to never give up in making our broken world a little better every day.

What always set Millsap’s songwriting apart, though, isn’t just his ability to get us fired up with stomping roots-n-roll hysterics (though he’s pretty great at that), it’s the tender left-turns he takes when he goes acoustic, bringing the volume down and the emotion up. Reminiscent of a southern Paul McCartney, his scratchy, soulful tenor shines most on his gorgeous ballads — think “Jealous Sun” (from The Very Last Day) as his own “Yesterday” or on the newest record, the psychedelic and heart-string pulling “Vulnerable,” which asks us all to try and see our own weaknesses and past wounds as potential strengths.

While it is bittersweet to not be able to kick off his new record release this April with a typical cross-country tour, on April 23 Parker will be playing Be Here Instead in its entirety with his longtime band live on Mandolin — which you can stream from anywhere.

Photo credit: Tim Duggan

The Show on the Road – Caroline Spence

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature a conversation with an admired and sharp-witted singer-songwriter in the fertile Nashville Americana scene, Caroline Spence.


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A sought-after lyricist who mines her own vulnerabilities and lovelorn past to tell delicately crafted story-songs, Caroline Spence’s voice seems to always hover angelically above the page, bringing to mind new-wave country pop heroine Alison Krauss or her vocal hero, Emmylou Harris.

Growing up in Charlottesville, VA daydreaming to Harris’ signature twangy honey-toned records like Wrecking Ball, Spence admittedly was a bit starstruck when the silver-maned lady herself came on board to sing harmonies on the title track of Spence’s newest LP, Mint Condition. It quickly became a critic’s darling and an Americana radio staple nationwide.

As a conversationalist, she usually leads with cheerful southern modesty, but beginning with her 2015 debut, Somehow, Spence wasn’t afraid to push at country music’s guy-centric boundaries. She brought aboard a talented group of genre-defining collaborators like blue-eyed soul hero Anderson East and pop-folk favorite Erin Rae to give the songs new heft. Her follow-up Spades And Roses brought more lush atmospherics to her yearning acoustic stories, elevating the clear-eyed feminine power behind emotive songs like “Heart Of Somebody.”

While Spence will tell you she is just furthering the empowered spirit of roots songwriter pioneers who came before her, during this time of high anxiety, her deeply felt love songs like “Sit Here and Love Me” and “Slow Dancer” seem especially fitting, touching on her bouts of depression and her inability to connect with the ones who are trying to help her through.

Sometimes sad songs truly do make people happy, and if you’re feeling a bit low, maybe pop on her newest single “The Choir,” about finding your people when you need them most.

Photo credit: Angelina Castillo

The Show on the Road – Bettye LaVette

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature an intimate conversation with beloved soul and R&B singer, Bettye LaVette.

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Covering her remarkable six decades in show-business, we dive deep into LaVette‘s beginnings as a Detroit hit-making teenager during Motown’s heyday (her neighbor was Smokey Robinson), to her early career touring with Otis Redding and James Brown, and the hard times that followed, as a music industry steeped in racist and sexist traditions largely turned its back on her.

While other soulful song stylists like Sharon Jones, Tina Turner, Mavis Staples and others saw their status and popularity rise with time, LaVette remains an underrated, best kept secret on the Americana circuit, with younger listeners just discovering her remarkable work covering anyone and everyone from The Beatles to Neil Young to Billie Holiday.

After nearly dropping out of music, her remarkable comeback began in 2005 with a string of acclaimed records — bringing her from half-filled bars to singing “Blackbird” at The Hollywood Bowl with a 32-piece orchestra, being nominated for five Grammy awards, and being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

One thing you’ll notice immediately is her fiery laugh, which punctuates the episode — even when telling the darkest stories, like her early manager getting shot and her 1960s hits being recorded by white artists, leaving her versions largely forgotten. Her Grammy-nominated newest LP Blackbirds, produced by legendary drummer Steve Jordan, shows her at her most vulnerable best.

Photo credit: Mark Seliger