Tag: Z. Lupetin

The Show On The Road – Chris Shiflett

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. speaks with Chris Shiflett, a renegade guitar slinger who has spent 20 years prowling stages around the world with the Foo Fighters and has become a soulful songwriter in his own right.

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His new record, Hard Lessons, is coming out June 14, and he talked with Z. about the vulnerability of striking out on his own, the whiplash jump from rocking Madison Square Garden one night and a rowdy bar the next, and how growing up with three brothers in Santa Barbara helped him navigate becoming a dad to three young sons of his own.

For those about rock, we advise you listen to this man. He’s been to the mountaintop and has had to start over more than once, but most of all, he can write rock ‘n’ roll songs that make you roll the window down and sing at the top of your lungs.

The Show On The Road – Hot Club Of Cowtown

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Z. speaks to Hot Club Of Cowtown — the genre-defining Western swing trio that has quietly crafted over thirteen records, and has traveled a quarter of a century on the road together.

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On this episode, Z. was lucky enough to record two live performances from Hot Club Of Cowtown, and is there anything better than guitar, fiddle, and bass going full tilt around one mic? Both tunes are included, as well as an enlightening discussion about the scariest hotel room they’ve ever stayed in, playing together for over twenty years, and what it was like to tour with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan…on the same tour.

The Show On The Road – Jon Stickley

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, one of the preeminent guitar pickers and instrumental adventurers working today, Jon Stickley.

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Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Stickley leads one of the most sonically innovative, shreddingly mind-expanding, and confoundingly impossible-to-categorize acoustic groups, the Jon Stickley Trio.

Host Z. Lupetin spoke with Jon in a hotel bathroom a while back to hear his side of his guitar hero story. Listen for an exclusive acoustic performance from Jon at the end of the episode.

The Show On The Road – Dom Flemons

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show,  Z’s two-part conversation with Dom Flemons, the Grammy award-winning American songster who has made it his mission to reclaim and rejuvenate the lost acoustic music of the past and bring it whistling brightly into the future.

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Born in Phoenix, Arizona to parents of African American and Mexican heritage, the ever-curious young Dominique Flemons went from playing drums in his school band and busking on the streets of Flagstaff with his fingerpicked guitar and neck rack harmonica to taking a chance that would change his life completely. He scrounged enough money to make it to the Black Banjo gathering in North Carolina, where he would meet Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson and begin a seven year run with their groundbreaking African American string band, The Carolina Chocolate Drops. They would go on win a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album, headline festivals and theaters around the world, open for Bob Dylan, play the Grand Ole Opry, and burst into the collective consciousness of young acoustic music hopefuls all around the world who were tired of the same stoic, hillbilly bluegrass and white-washed old-time songs played over and over around the festival campfire.

The Show On The Road – Gaby Moreno

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, a folk-pop shapeshifter who effervescently sings in four languages and has rocked stages on four continents, Gaby Moreno.

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Born María Gabriela Moreno Bonilla in Guatemala City, she knew she wanted more as a teenager and journeyed to the USA with that big voice and an even bigger dream. She has since lived several lives inside the dark heart of the LA music business, getting signed to Warner Brothers at 18 and then dropped and signed by Epic Records, only to be dropped again by age 20.

Why didn’t she give up and go home? Because the dream was a bit bigger than that. Over the last decade and a half, Gaby has put out a series of sonically adventurous and politically fearless English and Spanish language albums that have created an international fanbase which takes her around the world each year. Hopscotching from early jazz to introspective folk to Dap-King-assisted soul, Gaby has been filling concert halls from Berlin to Sydney, winning her a Latin Grammy in the process, setting up a dream collaboration on a new album with Van Dyke Parks, and getting her weekly appearances on NPR’s Live From Here as Chris Thile’s secret weapon. She even helped write the theme song to the beloved NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation!

While she may be multi-talented, she is also among the kindest, sweetest souls to be featured on The Show On The Road. Make sure you stick around for a new song she plays at the end and a short story she wrote on the spot about UFO’s and time travel.

The Show On The Road – Rayland Baxter

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. meets up with songwriter and rock ‘n’ roller Rayland Baxter on the road in Las Vegas.


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Beyond Rayland Baxter’s mellow, easy going demeanor lies a deeply perceptive and sharp-as-a-knife craftsman who takes his songwriting deadly serious. His newest record, Wide Awake, deepens his focus and finds him questioning the very existence of the American dream being bought and sold all around us. 

The Show On The Road – Rachel Baiman

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Fiddler and banjo picker Rachel Baiman calls her mom on this week’s episode of The Show On The Road with Z. Lupetin.

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A Chicago native, Rachel became an Illinois state fiddling champion as a teenager and later went on to form 10 String Symphony with fellow fiddler Christian Sedelmyer.

Z talks with her about the gift and sacrifice of making music your life, and how her organization Folk Fights Back has given her and her fellow Nashville songwriters a way to directly challenge the policies of the current Presidential administration.

The Show On The Road – Bobby Rush

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

At 85 years old, Bobby Rush has been playing his brand of lovably raunchy, acoustically crunchy, and soulfully rowdy blues for over six decades.

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Starting from his days as part of the Southern migration from his hometown of Homer, Louisiana, to the South Side of Chicago — where he used to have Muddy Waters himself sub for him when he couldn’t do a gig — Bobby Rush, who won his first Grammy at the humble age of 83, has no plans of slowing down.

The Show On The Road – Bhi Bhiman

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. speaks with multi-talented songwriter, singer, guitar-slinger, and activist Bhi Bhiman. His newest project is called Peace of Mind, and is being released week by week as an interactive political podcast album.

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For nearly a decade Bhi Bhiman has been diligently crafting poetic, protesty earworms with his masterful guitar work and fuzzed out harmony. Along the way he’s gained some powerful friends and fans — like the late Chris Cornell who had Bhiman sing each night on tour a few years back. He writes about our broken immigration policies, our abandoned mental health system, the continued fight for women’s rights, voter suppression, and that’s just the first few songs off Peace of Mind. Somehow, he’s not preaching at you while he’s doing it. He’s simply putting a stunned smile on your face as you sing along with a renewed faith in the democratic process and freedom of speech.

The Show On The Road – KOLARS

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. talks to Rob Kolar and Lauren Brown of theatrical space-rock duo KOLARS.

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Sure, many husband and wife bands try to stand out in their own way, but Rob and Lauren take it one step further. They’re both multi-talented multi-instrumentalists who create a sci-fi-inspired, jangly, joyful strain of roots rock that sounds much bigger than two people. Sometimes you just have to hear something to believe it.