The Third Story with Leo Sidran

When Julian Lage plays guitar, it’s hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that’s because it’s been with him for most of his life. When …

Michael Mayo is cautious when it comes to labels and categories. He prefers for the language he uses to be “descriptive rather than prescriptive.” It’s easy to understand why: because he defies categ…

A story about stories.

How seven years and nearly 200 episodes of podcast interviews inspired the record The Art Of Conversation.

Excerpts of conversations with Amy Cervini, Andre De Shields, Jorge D…

When singer/songwriter/educator Roxana Amed moved from her home in Argentina to the United States, she didn’t walk. But she might as well have. She describes her new record as being like “a bag full …

For a farmer’s daughter from Western Kentucky like SG Goodman, a career as a singer-songwriter was not the obvious choice. Her family had farmed the same land for generations, and the path was laid o…

There are some musicians who live in multiple universes at the same time. Clyde Stubblefield was one of those. From 1971 until his death in 2017, he lived and worked in Madison, Wisconsin. He was a l…

This year musicians and creative people have had to confront themselves, their work, and their ambitions head on, and Bob Reynolds is no exception. But unlike so many of us, Bob already had some mech…

In March 2020, just as the world was closing under the advancing cloud of Covid 19, I spoke to a handful of musician friends from around the world to hear how they were doing and to explore some of t…

Before she became a journalist, writer, novelist, television show host, and the editor of Latin music coverage for Billboard magazine, Leila Cobo played the piano. She moved from her home in Colombia…

Imogen Heap has to put her daughter to bed, then she can talk about what she’s been working on. She can tell you about her latest single, “Last Night Of An Empire” which she released on December 9th.…

Just hearing the name Boz Scaggs evokes a feeling. It’s a hip, laid back, soulful, approachable feeling. It’s a southern thing. But it’s a San Francisco thing too. He is, as his most recent record pr…

Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time. 

He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want …

Billy Martin (also known as illy B) is many things. He's a visual artist, a filmmaker, a teacher, a builder, a composer, a record producer... But if you know his name, chances are it's from his band …

As Andres Levin will tell you, even he has trouble explaining his career and life in a succinct, organized, bite sized way. He’s a record producer, bandleader, filmmaker, composer, philanthropist, Ne…

Raised by a god-fearing mother and a Black Panther father in the mecca of progressive politics, singer, rapper and entrepreneur Rexx Life Raj's music perfectly articulates the beauty and struggle of …

Duncan Sheik’s career has not followed a straight line. After studying semiotics at Brown University, he emerged in the mid 1990s as a pop singer songwriter with his hit “Barely Breathing”, and quick…

Johnny Brennan was a wise cracking kid from New York who had a natural gift for doing voices and making up characters. First, he did it to crack up his family. When he started recording the prank pho…

There are times when the right song reaches us at the right time. Sometimes it’s a brand new song. Sometimes it’s a classic. Sometimes it’s something you’ve heard a hundred times before but the stars…

Whenever my dad and I get together to talk, there is no predicting where the conversation will lead. It always has a way of making some kind of sense, and tying together the strands of our diverse in…