This week, to kick-start our fifth season we call into an organic vegetable farm in Texas to chat with an upright bassist who also happens to be a former New Orleans ace street performer, and singer and songwriter, who sounds like she might have stepped out of a saloon in 1955 filled with the warm echoes of her heroes Hank Williams and Patsy Cline: Melissa Carper. Is there such thing as a “new nostalgia” movement happening under our noses in the Americana scene? I’m going to say there is, thanks...
Jan 19, 2023•48 min
Welcome back, friends. Season 5 is here to help launch us into 2023, starting off with the new old-time sounds of the singing upright bassist who everyone calls “daddy,” Melissa Carper. Plus, the return of the rock-n-soul butterfly Rayland Baxter taped on his porch in Tennessee, and also a fascinating talk with Cleve Francis, a singing heart doctor who once rubbed elbows with Garth Brooks and the big boys in the country pantheon, but was recently rediscovered for putting out a transcendent compl...
Jan 12, 2023•6 min
How can I try and summarize the soundtrack to my life this year? Indeed, we are in year three (!) of this endless pandemic and I find I am more and more drawn to pure escapism, fantasy and what I might call the “new nostalgia”? Personally, I don’t go more than a few hours in the day (or during sleep at night) without something on, whether it’s playing on my bluetooth speakers around the house, or in headphones as I walk the dog or the toddler around the neighborhood, or in the car rolling to the...
Dec 22, 2022•17 min
This week, we cross the pond for a talk with rising British roots-rockers Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, who harness the freewheeling sonic spirit of the sixties with a new Brighton-based band they call The Heavy Heavy. While the British coast isn’t exactly known for its blissed out sunshiny beaches (or as a haven for rock 'n' roll stardom), Will and Georgie decamped there during the pandemic. And through the power of imagination (and production wizardry), they somehow mastered the reverb-y sun...
Dec 08, 2022•55 min
This week, we head down to Austin, Texas where we talk to multi-instrumentalist and renowned producer Adrian Quesada. Many know him as half of ground-breaking deep soul duo Black Pumas, where songs like “Colors” rose up the charts, taking them from tiny Austin clubs to the biggest festivals in the world, garnering Grammy nods, playing as the theme for the Major League Baseball playoffs and even featuring at Joe Biden’s inauguration. But on his own, Quesada has had a remarkably fruitful 2022, fir...
Dec 01, 2022•45 min
This week, we talk with Kenyan singer-songwriter Ondara, who came to Minneapolis in search of his voice as a young musician, and found a new creative persona which he now embodies called The Spanish Villager. He has since taken audiences by storm, garnering a Grammy-nomination and now returning with a stunning politically-charged new LP. Spanish Villager No: 3 is produced by Ondara and Mike Viola (Jenny Lewis, Dan Wilson) with collaborations from Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes, ...
Nov 17, 2022•58 min
This week, we call into Minnesota to talk to frontman and lead-songwriter Dave Simonett of the innovative jamgrass pioneers Trampled by Turtles. Celebrating a new record, Alpenglow, produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, the six-piece band has gone from storming shaggy local bars in Duluth to playing their famously fast roots-n-roll in the biggest venues and festivals in the world. Twenty years in, Simonett is keeping it fresh by letting masters like Tweedy bring his punky minor chord sensibility to ...
Nov 10, 2022•55 min
This week, we call on an Americana pioneer and a beloved fixture of the Nashville roots-country scene, the always affable Grammy-winner Jim Lauderdale. This year he celebrated the release of his thirty-fifth record Game Changer. Growing up in both North and South Carolina, as a young man Lauderdale fell in love with country music but took an unconventional path to becoming a sought-after songwriter, harmonist and writer in Music City. He toured in New York theatre productions when he was startin...
Nov 03, 2022•1 hr
This week, we return to the Crescent City to talk to one of the new leaders of the Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band, trumpet player Glenn Hall III who is part of a deep New Orleans musical family. Rebirth will be coming from NOLA to LA to help headline the inaugural Paramount Ranch Sonic Boom on October 15th. It’s a brand new music festival co-created by yours truly and Dustbowl Revival (along with Tiny Porch Concerts and the Santa Monica Mountains Fund) that will celebrate the confluence of Am...
Oct 13, 2022•45 min
This week, we dial into New Orleans for a fascinating talk with master funk-guitarist and songwriter Leo Nocentelli. Discerning listeners may known him as the chief groove-creator behind the legendary group The Meters with Art Neville on keyboard, George Porter Jr. on bass, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums. There is no mistaking his soulful dagger-sharp signature sound leading often-sampled treasures like “Sissy Strut” and “Hey Pocky A-Way” (The Beastie Boys were big fans) - or even his slinky masterf...
Oct 06, 2022•1 hr 1 min
This week, we’re back for the fall season with the first face-to-face taping in nearly two years. I was able to catch up with the fearless deep-voiced frontman BJ Barham of North Carolina roots-rock favorites American Aquarium, in the front bar of The Troubadour in LA as his tour was passing through. American Aquarium’s rawly personal new LP Chicamacomico dropped earlier this year and focuses on the twin losses of BJ’s mother and grandmother - as well as a dark point in his own marriage when he ...
Sep 22, 2022•1 hr 3 min
On this new episode, maybe we need something soft to counter the hard news many Americans have witnessed this week: so why not dive into the crystalline brother harmonies of Minneapolis duo The Cactus Blossoms, who just put out a lush new record One Day? Sure, you could write off what Jack Torrey and Page Burkum are creating as simply a loving homage to roots pop pioneers like the Everly or Louvin Brothers with an acerbic modern twist. But with allies like David Lynch (who inserted them into his...
Jun 30, 2022•58 min
This week, the show dials into the Nashville studio of one of the most gifted songwriters and empathic storytellers of her generation: Mary Gauthier. While Mary has become known for her darkly honest tales of overcoming addiction and seeking truth and joy after overcoming her troubled upbringing in Louisiana, she was nominated for a Grammy for her devastating record Rifles & Rosary Beads (co-written with U.S. veterans and their loved-ones) and her new record may be her most surprising and mo...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 4 min
This week on the show, we talk to a startling new talent placing a gut-punch into the folk and blues scene, the Milwaukee-raised and now Austin-based singer-songwriter Buffalo Nichols. Growing up learning on his sister’s dreadnought guitar and then traveling widely through West Africa after high school drinking up the sounds of the kora and percussion players in Senegal, Carl Nichols began finding his voice and playing style in the haunting open and minor tunings first heard from bluesmen like S...
May 05, 2022•55 min
This week, The Show On The Road is back with an intimate talk with Texas-born folk pop collaborators Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke who for the last decade have toured the USA as symbiotic harmonizers Penny & Sparrow. Their lush 2022 release Olly Olly showcases their unique lifelong friendship and was their first collection where they relied only on each other from beginning to end. There is a field-recording looseness to some of the songs with sounds of nature and a cinematic string section li...
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 5 min
This week, we bring you a conversation with Birmingham, Alabama’s Paul Janeway, frontman of the storied soul and art-pop experimenters St. Paul & The Broken Bones. While many first learned of Paul as the bespectacled former bank teller and accounting student who went from playing tiny clubs around the south to stalking stages from Red Rocks to Coachella in resplendent sequined robes, howling like a reincarnation of Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett with a bold brass section behind him, it reall...
Mar 10, 2022•1 hr 7 min
This week, to help celebrate the end of Black History Month, we bring you an in-depth conversation with Compton-raised blues and roots master Keb' Mo', who has helped preserve the haunting Delta blues of Robert Johnson while also making his own cheerful and slyly subversive R&B Americana for the last thirty years - winning four Grammys along the way. His newest album, Good To Be, was inspired by returning to his neighborhood in LA and rediscovering the community. Born Kevin Roosevelt Moore t...
Feb 24, 2022•1 hr 7 min
This week, we launch season 4 of the show with a bilingual banjo-slinging singer-songwriter originally from Montreal and now based in Nashville: Allison Russell. After two decades of quietly creating heart-on-her-sleeve roots music in hard-touring groups like Po’ Girl, Birds Of Chicago, and recently the supergroup Our Native Daughters - playing the guitar, clarinet, banjo and singing in English and French - the spotlight finally fell straight on Russell in 2021. With the help of her husband and ...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr
We’re back! Season 4 is here and we have some very special conversations coming your way. Listen in for a little preview of our upcoming deep dives with Grammy-winners like Keb’ Mo’, newly-risen roots star Allison Russell (nominated twice this year), howling frontman Paul Janeway of soul icons St. Paul and The Broken Bones, longtime folk-pop hero and festival organizer Drew Holcomb, and a special unearthed episode with macabre folk-punk Amigo The Devil. New episodes return every week. Support th...
Jan 20, 2022•6 min
To finish out the season, we bring you a talk from Toronto with rising roots singer-songwriter and folk philosopher AHI (pronounced “eye”), who celebrated the release of his acclaimed third full-length album Prospect in November. Born in Brampton, Ontario, to Jamaican and Trinidadian immigrant parents, AHI (short for Ahkinoah Habah Izarh) didn’t initially plan to pursue music -- and scared his large family of teachers and educators by jumping ship from college and traveling wildly instead with j...
Dec 17, 2021•53 min
This week, we bring you a conversation with one of Nashville’s supreme songwriters: Brandy Clark. Born in a logging town in Washington state, Clark started playing guitar at age nine before setting it aside and getting a scholarship for basketball. Music kept tugging her back in though. Reba recorded two of her songs in “Cry" and "The Day She Got Divorced" (like a modern Patsy Cline, Brandy has a knack for nailing a heartbreaker) and she soon found a valuable mentor in Marty Stuart, who helped h...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 2 min
This week, we get on the horn with renowned Texas-born singer and deeply observational songwriter Hayes Carll, who is celebrating the release of his seventh LP, the atmospheric country-tinted You Get It All. While some may just be discovering Hayes’ lived-in songs which are often spun with dark humor (he admits John Prine and Jimmy Buffett were early inspirations), next year marks the twentieth anniversary of his first album Flowers and Liquor which he wrote while still in college in Arkansas. H...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 8 min
This week, we call into the Catskills of New York for a deep conversation with James Felice: accordionist, pianist, songwriter and co-founder of fun-house-mirror Americana group The Felice Brothers. James started the band with his brothers (poet lead singer Ian) and percussionist Simone in 2006 as a busking folk pop experiment with a literary rebel streak within the subways of New York City. They’ve joined roots-pop luminaries like Bright Eyes at venues as storied as Radio City Music Hall - but ...
Nov 11, 2021•55 min
This week, we bring you an in-depth dive with vintage roots-n-soul excavator and beloved Illinois-born songwriter Pokey LaFarge. With his trusty guitar on his lap during the talk, taped in his LA breakfast nook, we go through the making of his funky and cheerful new LP In The Blossom of Their Shade. For the last decade and change, Pokey LaFarge (born Andrew Heissler in Bloomington-Normal) has criss-crossed the globe making his own brand of historic-minded, literary-tinged folk blues. Europe, esp...
Oct 28, 2021•54 min
This week, to help celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, we bring you conversation with a rising star in folklorico-pop hailing from Veracruz, Mexico: Silvana Estrada. Currently on her first tour of the United States opening for Rodrigo y Gabriela, Estrada has already made a name for herself in Mexico, renown for her deft finger-picking on the Cuatro, and her ever-bending, darting vocal mastery. Songs from her first EP including the soaring electronic-beat driven “El Guardo” have been listened to o...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr
This week, we bring you a half-century-spanning talk with the Grammy-winning ringleader of one of American roots music’s most durable and iconic bands, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. The episode is a celebration of their fifty years of diligent song collecting, Western swing camaraderie and epic genre-spanning collaboration - and features first listens of their new record Half a Hundred Years which drops on October 1. The record covers old classics and tells new stories, with spritely cameos...
Sep 30, 2021•45 min
This week, we talk to Brooklyn-based bandleader and jazz-roots singer extraordinaire Sammy Rae, who for the last four years has barnstormed the country with her kinetic octet The Friends. Look, when you’re young and inspired, you drop out of college, you’re waiting tables and you think about starting a jazzy pop band - most people (as well as common sense and basic economics) tell you to start small. Get a few like-minded musicians in a room, work and work your best songs, try packing out a few ...
Sep 16, 2021•1 hr 8 min
This week, we go on a deep dive with Madi Diaz, a sought-after Nashville-based songwriter who may have dropped among the most devastating and powerful break-up albums of the decade with her newest LP History Of A Feeling, a searing debut on Anti- Records. If you’ve made it to the doldrums of your mid-thirties, you’ve probably had your heart broken once or thrice. Diaz is no exception, except unlike the rest of us who may try and forget all about those lost love affairs, Diaz does the opposite. S...
Sep 02, 2021•55 min
This week, we dial into North Carolina for a comprehensive conversation with Grammy-nominated songwriter MC Taylor, who for the last decade and a half has created heart-wrenchingly personal and subtly political music fronting the acclaimed roots group Hiss Golden Messenger. With his newest release Quietly Blowing It, Taylor continues to tell stories that are at turns hopeful and devastating – as if deeply examining his own faults and features as a father, husband, citizen and artist can help us ...
Aug 19, 2021•54 min
This week, we bring you an intimate conversation with avant-folk instrumentalists and songwriting team Martin Earley (guitar, vocals) and Callie Peters (cello-vocals) - the driving forces behind New England’s The Ballroom Thieves. Beginning as a hard-traveling duo, also featuring longtime percussionist Devin Mauch, over a decade ago at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, the band began to turn heads and fill rooms when they added Peters and her fierce and poetic singing-style around eight years ...
Aug 05, 2021•50 min
