Tag: Z. Lupetin

The Show On The Road – Leyla McCalla

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week The Show On The Road features a conversation with Leyla McCalla, a talented, multi-lingual cellist, banjoist, and singer/songwriter.

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Born in New York, raised in New Jersey, and McCalla is now based in New Orleans, where she raises three kids (she often tours with them in tow). McCalla often honors her Haitian heritage, bringing listeners into a vibrant world of Creole rhythms and forgotten African string-band traditions by introducing them to a new audience with her own powerful creative vision.

You may know McCalla as an integral part of two different roots supergroups: the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters. But for much of the last decade, she has put out heady, ever-surprising solo projects. The latest, The Capitalist Blues, harnesses the brassy, percussive sounds of New Orleans; her previous record, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey, was also a standout, putting her gorgeous cello-work center stage while also examining powerful Haitian proverbs and Haiti’s often-overlooked, tragic history.

The Show On The Road – Rising Appalachia

Posted on by Chris Jacobs
This week on the Show On The Road, a conversation with Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia. In 2005 she founded this unique partnership with her sister Leah after their relentless world travels finally intersected in southern Mexico, where Leah had started mastering the banjo.

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Growing up in a musical family of traditional string-band players and contra-dance leaders near Atlanta, Rising Appalachia’s latest release, Leylines, mixes the rustic front porch sound of their childhood family jam sessions with a neon-tinted modern backbeat of dancehall electronics and mystical protest. That could have felt incongruous, but somehow these influences mix beautifully with their ethereal, intertwined vocals and darting fiddle-and-banjo runs.

While our host, Z. Lupetin, was able to catch up with Chloe for this cross-country conversation, Leah has been marooned in Costa Rica since the world shut down in March and continues to work from there. The sisters and their talented six-piece band have become a beloved fixture at music festivals throughout the United States, but have also played stages in Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Ireland, Scotland, and more. 

Always looking to challenge the traditional carbon-hungry touring routine, Leah dubbed their group as part of a growing “slow music movement”, and in this episode, Z. talks with Chloe about the time they toured remote Canadian farming islands via sailboat. It’s that kind of intimate and innovative traveling that Chloe would like to return to whenever the COVID-19 shutdown lifts in the coming years.

Stick around to the end of the episode for an acoustic version of “Harmonize” from Leylines, and check out Rising Appalachia’s newest single “Pulse,” featuring Dirtwire.

The Show On The Road – Dan Reeder

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, a conversation with renegade roots songwriter, painter and NSFW self-taught poet Dan Reeder.

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Reeder is rarely interviewed, but has collected a legion of devoted fans after putting out a series of beloved albums on John Prine’s Oh Boy Records – including the much-anticipated new LP, Every Which Way.

For the uninitiated, diving into Reeder’s uniquely absurdist, harmony-drenched body of work can feel like reading a rich short story collection in one sitting. His normal routine is to layer lush close-mic’d vocals on top of one another using himself as a conspiratorial choir. He sketches tiny but poignant moments from his life and imagination, often repeating a simple phrase again and again like one of his most-listened to tunes, “Work Song,” which tells us bluntly through gospel claps: “I’ve got all the fucking work I need.” 

The new album may seem intimidating at first. It features a whopping 20 songs (or cinematic vignettes of a sort), but a closer look shows it clocking in at a succinct 39 minutes. Controversial-while-gentle acoustic offerings like “Porn Song” come in at just under minute long. New favorites like the wide-eyed (and foul-mouthed) piano ballad “Born a Worm” ask the deepest of questions of an indifferent, endlessly beautiful universe in only the way Reeder could — by plainly inquiring about a caterpillar’s mysterious transformation into a butterfly: “what the fuck is that about?”

Much more than a one man band, Reeder often builds every instrument he plays in his recordings, from steel string guitars, to banjos, drums, basses, cellos, violins, clarinets, and even the computer he records on. This episode was recorded in his garage studio in Nuremberg, Germany, where he’s lived with his wife for 30 years. 

Host Z. Lupetin spoke to Reeder right after John Prine passed away from complications of COVID-19, and they spoke about his tours together with Prine and how much his music inspired him through the years. 

The Show On The Road – Agnes Obel

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, The Show On The Road features a conversation with renowned Danish pianist, experimental composer, and atmospheric-folk songstress Agnes Obel. 

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Recorded high above Hollywood in the famed Capitol records building (Obel was recently signed to Blue Note Records), host Z. Lupetin takes an intimate tour of Obel’s newest work Myopia, which shows the pianist and composer at her most personal and aurally fearless.

Born in Copenhagen and based in Berlin, Obel’s albums warrant repeat listening, as it’s often hard to know exactly what instruments are playing at any given time. At times the darting, looping piano and quicksilver string work seem like a chamber orchestra, or maybe the songs on Myopia are secretly the technicolor backdrop and emotive score to a film that only she sees.

It’s been nearly a decade since her transcendent DIY debut album, Philharmonics, put her into many people’s minds (she may not be very well known yet in the States, but she is a gold-record selling, underground star in many parts of Europe). This past spring, Obel was set to play the expansive Greek Theater in Los Angeles before COVID-19 forced her to stay in Berlin — which, for an artist that creates hushed, often lyricless songs you probably can’t dance to, is an impressive leap.

 

The Show On The Road – Dave Stewart (Eurythmics)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature an intimate, long distance talk with British-born super producer and new wave songwriting titan Dave Stewart.


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Stewart grew up obsessed with Delta blues, but also with the futuristic beats and dancehall magic found in synthesizers. He somehow fused those two worlds into an indelible body of work that has won him a Grammy and sold over 100 million records and counting. While most people know him as one-half of the foundational synth-soul group Eurythmics, which he formed with longtime friend and muse Annie Lennox, churning out genre-defying hits like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” and “Here Comes The Rain Again,” that still burn up radio today.

Since the 1980s heyday of Eurythmics, Stewart has forged a singularly cosmopolitan career as something of a modern sound collector, both in creating his own bluesy solo work and producing records for a cavalcade of stars like Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, Joss Stone, and more. He has also been acknowledged as one of the most tireless boosters for AIDS research, even working directly with the late Nelson Mandela to raise money for the cause.

His newest musical adventure has him rejoining Louisiana-based blues interpreter Thomas Lindsey for the forthcoming full length Amitié. The striking single “Storm Came” is available now.

The Show On The Road – Steve Poltz

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature a conversation with a Canadian-born paraparetic prince of pop-folk singers, who has jumped through more gauntlets of the modern music industry than almost anyone in his three plus decades of making records, Steve Poltz.

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Poltz first hit the scene with the San Diego-based underground punk-folk favorites The Rugburns, then as an accidental hitmaker and MTV video heartthrob with collaborator and friend Jewel, and then as a wild-haired, two hundred shows a year internationally revered solo act. He’s put out a baker’s dozen of whacked-out, deceptively sensitive, and fearlessly personal albums that have won him devoted audiences from his ancestral home in Nova Scotia to the dance party dives of California to massive festivals across Australia and beyond.

 As we are still quite separated during the pandemic, host Z. Lupetin called up Poltz in Nashville to discuss the long and twisty road Poltz has travelled — jumping from his inspired, most-recent album Shine On back to his childhood in swinging Palm Springs (where he met Elvis and Sinatra), to making $100,000 music videos for his ill-fated major label debut in ’98, to nearly dying on stage after substance abuse problems and never-say-no-to-a-gig exhaustion took its toll.
 
We now find him in a more peaceful, purposeful existence, where he is newly married and enjoying making music at home (government orders!) for the first time in decades.

The Show On The Road – Jamestown Revival

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The road, we feature a conversation with Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, two Texans and expert harmonizers who for the last decade have toured the world as Jamestown Revival.

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Right before all tours got sent home, host Z. Lupetin was able to hop on the Jamestown Revival tour bus (sorry for the engine hum) to discuss their intimate new record, San Isabel, and their journey from meeting as curious singing teenagers in Magnolia, TX to their move out west and back home again. While their previous record, The Education of a Wandering Man, saw them harnessing the muscular roots-rock that can be heard at their powerful live shows, San Isabel strips everything back to their intimate two-voices-around-one-mic, “southern and Garfunkel” sound that brought them together in the first place — and has rightfully won them hordes of fans coast to coast.

They say sibling harmony can’t be compared and we’ve had several sets of twin bands on the podcast, but what about soul-brother harmony? If one thing is clear just sitting on the bus and listening to them weave their stories and songs together, it’s that Clay and Chance were born to sing together.

San Isabel was laid down at Ward Lodge Studios overlooking the San Isabel National Forest in Buena Vista, Colorado and often includes the natural sounds of the nature all around them. Give it a listen — it’s peaceful and powerful and raw and maybe just what we all need right now.

The Show On The Road – Kat Edmonson

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a two-part conversation between host Z. Lupetin and folk-jazz visionary Kat Edmonson. The first part was captured backstage before a show at Largo in LA, right before the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdown. In the second part, Z. caught up with Edmonson during her anxious but creative quarantine in New York City. 


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Initially turning heads for her dreamy and futuristic interpretations of great songbook classics like Gershwin’s “Summertime,” which have been listened to over ten million times and counting, Edmonson broke through with playful original works a decade ago, self-producing one of Z.’s all-time favorite records, Take to the Sky. She quickly found powerful fans in folks like Lyle Lovett, who she toured with wildly. Major label releases followed. Edmonson soon migrated from her home state of Texas to Brooklyn, with her elfin chanteuse look and sparkling vintage sound (think Blossom Dearie with some Texan muscle).

Z. and Edmonson sat down to discuss her newest record, Dreamers Do, which may just be the shot of pure cinematic nostalgia we all need right now. Does she cover Mary Poppins, Alice In Wonderland, and Pinocchio and somehow make them deeply cool, sonically subversive, and somehow brand new again? She sure does.  

The Show On The Road – Theo Katzman (Vulfpeck)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

For this special episode, your host Z. Lupetin adhered to the strict stay-at-home pandemic orders, recording an intimate phone conversation with Theo Katzman, the Cheshire Cat of soulful pop-rock and one of the most visible members of the mysterious funk supergroup, Vulfpeck.


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In January, Katzman celebrated the release of his cheeky, super catchy, unabashedly romantic, and pop-driven new solo album Modern Johnny Sings: Songs in the Age of Vibe and was on a run of packed release shows when everything shut down (you know, because COVID-19). Katzman’s expertly-crafted songs and lilting falsetto vocals have that rare spark that can brighten anybody’s dull quarantine in no time.

The Show On The Road – Joey Dosik (Vulfpeck)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, host Z. Lupetin meets up with Joey Dosik, a silky-voiced songwriter and freaky-talented multi-instrumentalist who writes lush, romantic jams that transport listeners to R&B-tinted, old school FM radio gold.

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Some listeners may have learned of Dosik’s talents with DIY, future-funk ensemble Vulfpeck, led by trickster curator/composer Jack Stratton. Vulfpeck went from making goofy viral videos and recording an album of total silence — that scared the shit out of streaming giants like Spotify after it rocketed the band to international notoriety and financial success — to crowdfunding a series of hit funk records and vinyl releases that propelled them to sold out international tours, headlining nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and an unprecedented sold out show at Madison Square Garden (all with no record label in sight).

As we honor and celebrate two lost musical greats this week, Bill Withers and John Prine, it’s comforting to remember that we have constant new waves of amazing artists like Joey Dosik coming up who can honor and further their message. In many ways, Dosik’s songs combine the honest earnestness of Prine’s best early work, telling frank stories of family and relationships, with Withers’ deep, church-flavored, down-home groove.