Russ Gershon is the saxophonist and composer who leads Either/Orchestra, a jazz group that has been performing and recording for 25 years.

Either/Orchestra's discography includes Dial "E" (1986), Radium (1988), The Half-Life of Desire (1990), The Calculus of Pleasure (1992), The Brunt (1994), Across the Omniverse (1996), More Beautiful than Death (2000), Neo-Modernism (2001), Afro-Cubism (2003), Ethiopiques 20: Live in Addis (2005), and Mood Music for Time Travelers (2010).

Either/Orchestra has two shows upcoming in New England, including February 3rd at Fete in Providence, Rhode Island and on February 24th at the ICA Boston.

Gershon has also run Accurate Records for many years, releasing more than 80 albums of jazz, rock, and soundtracks.

I met with Gershon at his rehearsal space and office in Somerville, Massachusetts to discuss:
* how Either/Orchestra has evolved with musicians and musical styles through its 25 years
* why he has self-released the Either/Orchestra albums back before it was in vogue
* how jazz has long been a sponge for sounds, as a method to approach musical materials and improvisation.

This interview was recorded in 2007, though I missed a few key opportunities to release it sooner. But it's still a great listen. Enjoy.

Music featured in the interview includes:
1) Either/Orchestra: Coolocity (Mood Music for Time Travelers) (in preview)
2) Either/Orchestra: Fast Edd: (Neo-Modernism)
3) The Decoders: Everytime I Wake Up
4) The Decoders: Song X
5) Sex-Execs: My Ex
6) Either/Orchestra: Doxy (Dial "E")
7) Either/Orchestra: Moanin' (Radium)
8) Either/Orchestra: Red (Half-Life of Desire)
9) Either/Orchestra: Grey (The Calculus of Desire)
10) Either/Orchestra: Notes on a Cliff (The Brunt)
11) Either/Orchestra: The Jeep is Jumpin' (Across the Omniverse)
12) Either/Orchestra: Number Three (More Beautiful Than Death)
13) Either/Orchestra: Los Olivados (Neo-Modernism)
14) Either/Orchestra: The (One of a Kind) Shimmy (Mood Music for Time Travelers)
15) Either/Orchestra: Soul Tezeta (Ethiopiques: Live in Addis)
16) Either/Orchestra: Suriname (Mood Music for Time Travelers)

17) Acid House Kings: Heaven Knows I Miss Him Now

My first exposure to Gang of Four's music was from either WNYU's legendary New Afternoon show in the latest of 70s or from Hofstra University's Jeff Foss. (To hear me ramble on more about these stations, listen to my 50th episode with Mike Dreese of Newbury Comics.

It was likely "I Found that Essence Rare" or "Damaged Goods" that pulled me in at first...punky guitars, funky bass, tribal beats, angry vocals, socio-political lyrics, and Marxist ideals. Who could resist?

As a part of an amazing era of post-punk music (including some of their peers, like The Au Pairs, Bush Tetras, Delta 5, The Mekons, Mission of Burma, and Wire, among others) Gang of Four was funky and abrasive, tribal and confrontational, political and personal, and best of all, their albums from the late 70s and early 80s have stood the test of time and Gang of Four has become one of the most influential bands of the last 30 years.

Influenced by British punk bands like The Clash and Sex Pistols and American punk bands Television and The Ramones (who Gill and King saw in New York at C.B.G.B.'s), as well as dub, Bob Dylan, Dr. Feelgood, Jimi Hendrix, and The Velvet Underground.

Gang of Four's lyrics also put them in a class shared only by bands like The Clash or The Pop Group. Dealing with consumerism, capitalism, and gender politics, I think there have only been a handful of bands over the last few decades who have been willing to infuse socio-political anger into their work (Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine come to mind first.

There's also a good book about the band called Gang of Four: Damaged Goods by Paul Lester, published by Omnibus Press in 2008.

Gang of Four's albums included 1979's Entertainment!, 1981's Solid Gold, 1982's Songs of the Free, and 1984's Hard. A second era of the Gang of Four (sans Allen and Burnham) produced 1991's Mall and 1995's Shrinkwrapped. The first four albums showcased a band moving from brittle, discordant songs to funky, danceable soul. I can't think of many bands that made such a long journey in so few, landmark records.

You can watch a handful of videos of the band on YouTube, including "To Hell With Poverty."

The 2000s brought a new crop of bands who were clearly influenced by Gang of Four, including Interpol, The Rapture, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Liars, and Radio 4.

In 2007, the four original Gang of Four members reunited and re-recorded a number of their songs, as well as having some bands that were inspired by Gang of Four remix these recordings, including The Dandy Warhols, Hot Hot Heat, Ladytron, The Others, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs among others.

The band also toured and Gang of Four is still making music today, though without Allen and Burnham. Gill and King are currently raising money for their next release, due out in October.

Gang of Four also influenced many of their contemporaries who went on to mainstream success, including REM and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (whose debut was produced by Gill).

Dave Allen played bass for the Gang of Four for their first two albums and an EP and then went on to other projects, including Shriekback, who released 10 albums and had a number of hits, including "My Spine is the Bassline," "Lined Up," and "Hand on my Heart."

In the 90s, Allen made his way to the other side of the desk in the music business, working as General Manager at eMusic and Intel.

Allen writes an influential blog called Pampelmoose, where he writes about the music business and shines the spotlight on bands and artists he likes. He has also posted several essays about the music business, including "The End of the music album as the organizing principal" and "Dear Musicians, Please be brilliant or get out of the way," which we discuss during our conversation.

Allen is now the Director, Insights & Digital Media at North, a digital strategy company based in Portland, Oregon.

As someone who has lived and breathed both music 1.0 and 2.0, I knew he would be a terrific interview for Well-Rounded Radio, both for fans of Gang of Four and Shriekback, but also for musicians and music entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out how the business is evolving.

I met with Allen in Portland, Oregon over the December 2009 holidays to discuss
* how he made the leap from musician to behind the scenes in the music biz
* why the future of music will not fit in the containers of the past
* what musicians should do now to create big events

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) Gang of Four: At Home He's a Tourist (Entertainment!) (in preview)
2) Gang of Four: Ether (Entertainment!)
3) Gang of Four: Not Great Men (Entertainment!)
4) Gang of Four: What We All Want (Solid Gold)
5) Faux Hoax: Foxworthy (Your Friends Will Carry You Home EP)
6) Gang of Four: If I Could Keep It For Myself (Solid Gold)
7) Gang of Four: A Hole in the Wallet (Solid Gold)
8) Gang of Four: Capital (It Fails Us Now) (Another Day, Another Dollar EP)
9) Shreikback: Lined Up (Care)
10) Broken Bells: The High Road (Broken Bells)
11) Shriekback: My Spine is the Bassline
12) Shriekback: sexthinkone (Tench EP)
13) Imogen Heap: Aha! (Ellipse)
14) Sonic Youth: Calming the Snake (The Eternal)
15) A Weather: Spiders, Snakes (Cove)
16) Fields: Feather (Everything Last Winter)
17) Shuttle: Tunnel
18) Sleigh Bells: Infinity Guitars (Sleigh Bells)
19) Gang of Four: To Hell with Poverty (Another Day/Another Dollar EP)

Long before the internet came barreling along, music magazines were one of the most important ways for music fans to read about their favorites and discover new artists.

I've spent my share of time and money reading great 4-color, glossy, music magazines and newspapers through the years: Rolling Stone. Creem. Trouser Press. NME. Melody Maker. The Big Takeover. Goldmine. Musician. The Bob. Record. Matter. Forced Exposure. Spin. Magnet. Ray Gun. Jazz Times. Paste. Filter. Harp. Mojo.

How would the audiences of modern music have grown and expanded were it not for all these magazines and dozens more like them? I'd be lying if I said all these wonderful publications didn't greatly shape my tastes in music, art, culture, and prose--and my record collection.

But why are they important? Just like blogs or podcasts, it was and is the people behind them...the writers and editors, photographers and designers, sales reps and trafficking and subscription folks. People who, by and large, really loved music and played the roles of tastemakers and critics and curators, bringing their favorites to the masses.

No Depression was another magazine I often bought, too. No Depression published its first print edition in 1995 and continued through 2008, carrying on the great traditions of smart writing and in-depth interviews with a focus on Americana or roots music or, alt-country, as it was called in its earliest days.

The name No Depression comes from The Carter Family's 1936 song No Depression in Heaven, covered by Uncle Tupelo in 1990 on their debut album. From there, it became the name of a bulletin board about alt country that lived on America Online back in those early days of the consumer web, at the same time when this idea of country-influenced rock was beginning to gain traction. You can read more about this history of the song and magazine on nodepression.com.

I first discovered No Depression in 1995 at the UW bookstore when I was living in Seattle while working at another start-up magazine: MovieMaker, a title about independent film.

Over the course of 13 years and 75 issues No Depression featured artists such as Blue Mountain, Solomon Burke, Steve Earle, Jason & the Nashville Scorchers, Patty Griffin, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Buddy Miller, Gram Parsons, The Shins, Son Volt, Ralph Stanley, The Waco Brothers, Whiskeytown, and Lucinda Williams, along with many others. We'll hear music from some of these artists during our interview.

Through the years the No Depression brand expanded through books, bookazines, radio series, tours, and more.

The Internet has clearly opened a lot of doors for music, without a doubt. I could argue, though, that it's reducing our attention span to nothingness in this era of “there’s always something else over there that is more shiny and new.” The reality of a shifting business model also means fewer record labels have a budget to advertise in magazines, making producing quality productions like No Depression magazine impossible.

Is this a good thing? I don't think so.

No Depression was highly regarded for its in-depth articles and interviews: they received Utne Reader’s Independent Press Awards for Arts & Literature coverage, and was cited as one of the nation's Top 20 magazines of any kind in 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.

With all their back-issues online, you can read 99% of their editorial content. You can also buy back issues of most of the print issues.

Fairchild is keeping the brand going by using the Ning social networking platform, volunteer writers and contributors, and 80,000 unique readers per month connecting and conversing at nodepression.com.

In 2009, Fairchild added a concert held just outside Seattle in Redmond's Marymoor Park with Justin Townes Earle, Iron & Wine, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and Gillian Welch among others.

The 2010 No Depression Festival takes place Saturday, August 21st and features Sera Cahoone, The Cave Singers, Alejandro Escovedo, The Maldives, Chuck Prophet, The Swell Season, and Lucinda Williams. I’ve also featured many of them in this episode, too. Buy tickets for $45.

As so many online ventures, No Depression is now supported by advertising, merchandise and donations, so if you like what to hear in this show and on their site, then click on ads that interest you, buy something from from their advertisers, buy some No Depression back issues, books or bookazines, wearables, posters, bags and stickers, or make a donation.

I met with Fairchild in Seattle this spring to discuss:
* how she made her way into the publishing and advertising biz
* why she decided to take the leap to publishing No Depression online
* what she's learned being a pioneer in the field

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) Uncle Tupelo: No Depression (No Depression)
2) Lucinda Williams: Real Love (Little Honey)*
3) Son Volt: Catching On (Trace)
4) Blue Mountain: Blue Canoe (Dog Days)
5) The Shins: New Slang (Oh, Inverted World)
6) Jason and the Nashville Scorchers: Hot Nights in Georgia (Fervor)
7) The Carter Family: No Depression in Heaven
8) Buddy Miller: Returning to the Living Water (Universal United House of Prayer)
9) Merle Haggard: I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink
10) Emmylou Harris: Every Grain of Sand (Wrecking Ball)
11) Patty Griffin: Rain (1000 Kisses)
12) Loretta Lynn: You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man
13) Solomon Burke: Don't Give Up On Me (Don't Give Up On Me)
14) Steve Earle: Amerika v. 6.0 (The Best we Can Do) (Jerusalem)
15) Ralph Stanley: Poor Rambler
16) The Waco Brothers: Do You Think About Me? (Do You Think About Me?)
17) The Maldives: Tequila Sunday (Listen to the Thunder)*
18) Sera Cahoone: Baker Lake (Only as the Day is Long)*
19) Alejandro Escovedo: Faith (Street Songs of Love)*
20) Chuck Prophet: Where the Hell is Henry? (Let Freedom Ring!)*
21) The Swell Season: High Horses (Strict Joy)*

* Performing at 2010 No Depression Festival.

Festival owner and producer George Wein may not be one of those names in the history of music that everyone knows as he so often kept himself behind the scenes, but Wein has had an enormous impact on the world of live music and festivals, especially jazz.

Last year I interviewed Jay Sweet, who co-produces (with Bob Jones) the Newport Folk Festival; Sweet has worked with George Wein since 2005. You can hear that interview and check out the line-up for this year's folk festival, taking place July 30-August 1.

The Newport Jazz Festival takes place August 6-8, 2010.

Wein was born in in 1925 in Lynn, Massachusetts and grew up in Newton, where he learned to play jazz piano and performed in a variety of jazz groups. As he details in our conversation, after serving in the second World War, he opened Storyville, a jazz club that solidified his lifelong relationship with jazz musicians.

In 1954, Wein started the Newport Jazz Festival; five years later, with the help of Pete Seeger and others, the Newport Folk Festival was born. Wein went on to start a number of festivals in other cities, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles, and JVC Jazz Festivals in cities around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Warsaw, and Tokyo.

Wein and Nate Chinen wrote the biography Myself Among Others: A Life In Music, published in 2004 by Da Capo Press. It’s a terrific read for anyone interested in music festivals or the history of jazz over the last 60 years. Wein also now has a blog, Key of G: Notes from George Wein.

Wein could easily be called the grandfather of the modern music festival, introducing ideas like sponsorships into the equation as a way to sustain events of this scale.

For those who haven't been lucky enough to attend, the Newport festivals are held at Fort Adams on a peninsula overlooking Newport Harbor, Narragansett Bay, and the 11,000 foot Newport Bridge. Surrounded by water, sail boats and listeners and a very easy-going crowd, the festivals' location is hard to beat. Do yourself a favor and go.

In 2007, Wein sold the the festivals to Festival Network, but in 2009, the company was headed for bankruptcy and Wein stepped back in to ensure the folk and jazz festivals in Newport took place again. As in 2009, the jazz festival is sponsored in 2010 by the healthcare company CareFusion. As Wein discusses, he's also organizing new kinds of festivals in New York City.

Over the years, the Newport Jazz Festival has brought live albums recorded during the festival and Wolfgang's Vault now has select, classic Newport concerts available to purchase. There's also several videos available, including 1960's Jazz on a Summer's Day and Newport Jazz Festival 1962.

The 2010 Newport Jazz Festival takes place August 6-8 this summer. The line-up includes more than 30 jazz artists and ensembles performing at three stages. For a full schedule and details on buying tickets or directions, visit newportjazzfest.net. For tickets for the Newport Folk Festival, taking place July 30-August 1, visit newportfolkfestival.net.

I met with Wein in his Manhattan apartment--which you get to by walking down a hallway lined with beautiful, framed posters from many of his past festivals--to discuss:
* how he curates festivals for audiences and how its changed over the years
* how the festival has evolved over more than five decades
* why he came back to give the Newport festivals another life

Photo credit: John Abbott

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) J.D. Allen Trio: Sonhouse (Shine!) (in preview) *
2) Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Zeno (Infernal Machines) *
3) Glen Gray-Casa Loma Orchestra: Casa Loma Stomp (1930 Okeh version)
4) Benny Goodman: Sing, Sing, Sing (With A Swing)
5) Elliot Lawrence: Elevation
6) George Wein: Back In Your Own Backyard (Wein, Women, & Song)
7) Ella Fitzgerald: Cotton Tail
8) Pete Seeger: Old Dan Tucker
9) Miles Davis: Fran-Dance (At Newport 1958)
10) John Coltrane: My Favorite Things
11) Dave Brubeck Quartet: How High the Moon
12) Charles Mingus: Cryin' Blues
13) Bob Dylan: It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (Highway 61 Revisited)
14) Balfa Toujours: J'ai vu le loup, le renard et la belette
15) Duke Ellington: I Let a Song Out of My Heart
16) Esperanza Spalding: Ponta De Areia (Esperanza)
17) Ben Allison: Fred *
18) Dizzy Gillespie: Newport Blues (from Newport Jazz Festival 7/3/1959; available on Wolfgang's Vault)
19) McCoy Tyner: Four by Five
20) George Wein: Please (Wein, Women and Song)
21) Uncle Tupelo: Graveyard Shift (preview for Kyla Fairchild of NoDepression.com interview)

* Performing at Newport Jazz Festival 2010.

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As you might imagine, I listen to a lot of music. I've always been pretty damn picky, but in some regards, Well-Rounded Radio now has me acting like the radio DJs and A&R people I used to hate so much when I was in bands (and trying to get them to listen to me!). So much stuff, you put it on, and if something doesn't grab your attention in a minute or two, you start reaching for the stop button.

My favorite album of 2009 was Song Sparrow Research's Welcome to the Potato Famine. I downloaded it in the fall via Bandcamp and found myself going back to it again and again for many months. Needless to say, given the amount of music now available to all of us, that doesn't happen as much as it used to for me.

You might recall the 50th episode of Well-Rounded Radio with Mike Dreese of Newbury Comics where I talked about the origins of Well-Rounded Radio. My friend, Marion Seymour, who played a big part in the story, has two sons. Her oldest, Harrison Boyce, is a terrific designer and you can see his work at harrisonboyce.com. Harrison also created the current Well-Rounded Radio site (in Movable Type).

Marion's younger son, Hamilton Boyce, is a musician who Marion has been telling me about over the years, from going to Garfield High School in Seattle and playing jazz to his first band, Grotto Fork, to the recording of Song Sparrow Research's first EP, The New Ragtime Revolution.

Last fall, I downloaded Song Sparrow Research's first full album, Welcome to the Potato Famine, from Bandcamp and was, to put it plainly, blown away.

Song Sparrow Research’s line-up for both recordings was David Balatero on bass and cello, Hamilton Boyce on guitar and vocals, and Nash Turley on drums and harmonica.

With the album recorded at the Caldwell Sculpture Studio in Seattle in the middle of winter and vocals in a studio, the album has a big, epic sound, but also a level of intimacy through the vocals.

Song Sparrow Research has been compared to a variety of artists, including Neil Young and Jeff Buckley, but I also hear hints of Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground, jazz, improvisation, noise, and metal in the songs, too.

You can see some videos on their YouTube channel, including clips from live shows and music videos. Follow them on Twitter and become fan on Myspace.

You can still download Welcome to the Potato Famine at Bandcamp. Personally, I think $9.99 is an excellent price. Or, go cheap and buy at Amie Street and help drive them up the charts.

Song Sparrow Research is working on their second album now in Seattle, with an expanded line-up that includes more strings and stand up bass.

I sat down with Balatero and Boyce in December in Seattle to discuss:
* how the band recorded and produced their debut album in a giant metal working warehouse
* who some of their favorite artists are that also influence their work
* how are looking to make a living in this brave new world of music 2.0

Photo credit: Ethan Welty

Songs included in the episode include:
1) Song Sparrow Research: No Thoughts of My Own (Welcome to the Potato Famine) (in preview)
2) Song Sparrow Research: Tall Landlords (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
3) Garfield High School Jazz Band
4) Grotto Fork: Not Guilty (Ungulate)
5) Grotto Fork: ADAT (Ungulate)
6) Song Sparrow Research: Dry Sun (The New Ragtime Revolution)
7) Song Sparrow Research: Short Sighted (The New Ragtime Revolution)
8) Song Sparrow Research: Told to Send (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
9) Song Sparrow Research: From Mildew (unreleased demo)
10) Song Sparrow Research: From Mildew (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
11) Song Sparrow Research: Colored Paper (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
12) Song Sparrow Research: Told to Send (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
13) Song Sparrow Research: Amp Dead (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
14) Song Sparrow Research: No Thoughts of My Own (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
15) The Raggedy Anns: Standing in the Rain
16) Song Sparrow Research: Colored Paper (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
17) Song Sparrow Research: Heavy Shit (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
18) Song Sparrow Research: Experiments in Feedback Control (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
19) Song Sparrow Research: From Mildew (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
20) Song Sparrow Research: Green to the Ground (The New Ragtime Revolution)
21) Song Sparrow Research: Another Day/Gooseneck (The New Ragtime Revolution)
22) Song Sparrow Research: Heavy Shit (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
23) Song Sparrow Research: No Thoughts of My Own (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
24) Song Sparrow Research: Tall Landlords (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
25) Song Sparrow Research: Amp Dead (Welcome to the Potato Famine)
26) Song Sparrow Research: From Mildew (Welcome to the Potato Famine)

At a moment where what being a record label means is certainly in flux, Rounder Records is celebrating its 40th anniversary and, in many ways, showing what it means for artists who share a label and what that means to its customer and fans. (News on 4/14/10: Concord Records acquires Rounder Records)

Rounder Records was started in March 1970 by Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton-Levy, and Bill Nowlin (left to right). In our interview, Irwin tells us how the label came to be, and how they began with blues and bluegrass, and evolved the label to include folk, Cajun, Celtic, and reggae music.

Rounder also manages 18 subsidiary labels, including Heartbeat and Zoe Records.

As someone who knows a bit about bluegrass music, but wanted to learn more, I also ask Irwin to take us through the history of bluegrass.

From the Theme from Deliverance to Bonnie and Clyde to O Brother, Where Art Thou? to bluegrass festivals around the world, Irwin helps us to understand some landmark moments in the history of the form and why it’s thriving now more than ever.

There are, of course, a lot of great resources about bluegrass music online, including Wikipedia, DMOZ, International Bluegrass Music Association, Society for the Preservation Bluegrass Music of America, International Bluegrass Music Museum, Bluegrass Works, and iBluegrass.

There is also a terrific book about Bill Monroe by Da Capo Press, Can't You Hear Me Callin': The Life of Bill Monroe by Richard Smith.

From starting a record label because, as Irwin put its, “nobody told us we couldn’t” to winning a Grammy Award for Allison Krauss and Robert Plant’s Raising Sand collaboration, there are many lessons within Rounder’s story for musicians in 2010 and beyond.

In our next episode of Well-Rounded Radio, we’ll feature an interview I did with Scott Billington, the Vice President of A&R for Rounder Records with a focus on Cajun and zydeco music, much of which Billington has produced himself.

Rounder Records celebrated its 40th anniversary in March with a new concert CD and DVD, as well as a concert special on PBS. The concert featured Mary Chapin Carpenter, Minnie Driver, Bela Fleck, Allison Krauss and Robert Plant, Allison Krauss & Union Station with Jerry Douglas, Steve Martin, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas, Madeleine Peyroux, and Irma Thomas.

They’ve also just revamped their web site, rounder.com and there's a great book about Rounder, The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance by Michael F. Scully.

I spoke with Irwin in Newburyport, Massachusetts to discuss
* why they started the label and how it has kept going
* how Rounder evolved through the years
* what some challenges are for roots music in the year 2010

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) J.D. Crowe and the New South: The Old Home Place
2) Alison Krauss and Robert Plant: Rich Woman
3) George Pegram: Mississippi Sawyer
4) George Pegram: Are You Washed in the Blood?
5) Joe Val: Along about Daybreak
6) Don Stover: Things in Life
7) Hazel Dickens: Hills of Home
8) Bill Monroe: Molly and Tenbrooks
9) Flatt & Scruggs: Go Home
10) MIke Seeger: The Memory of Your Smile
11) Bill Monroe: Blue Grass Breakdown
12) Jim & Jessee: Hard Hearted
13) Bill Monroe: Orange Blossom Special
14) Conne and Babe & The Backwood Boys: Home is Where The
15) The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Will the Circle be Unbroken
16) Summertown Road: Summertown Road
17) Vern Williams: When Springtime Comes Again
18) Steve Martin: Late for School
19) Alison Krauss & Union Station: Every Time You Say Goodbye
20) J.D. Crowe & The New South: Long Journey Home
21) Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass: At the End of a Long Lonely Day
22) Whitstein Brothers: Arkansas
23) The Soggy Bottom Boys: I am a Man of Constant Sorrow
24) Laurie Lewis & Kathy Kallick: Is the Blue Moon Still Shining
25) Alison Krauss and Robert Plant: Gone Gone Gone
26) Jimmy Rogers with Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters: Left me with a Broken Heart
27) The Balfa Brothers: J'ai Vu Le Loup, Le Renard Et La Belette
28) Bela Fleck: Crossfire
29) Minnie Driver: Cold Dark River (Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert)
30) Irma Thomas: River is Waiting (Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert)
31) Sierra Hull: Secrets
32) James King: Leavin'
33) Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard: Montana Cowboy
34) James Hand: Don't Want Me Too
35) Marcia Ball: That's Enough of that Stuff

This episode is dedicated to Dan Nash, a friend of mine in England who passed away on January 22. Dan was working on a number of different music projects including New Musical Order and Rockin' Daily. We were fans of each others' work online and were working together on Musicians for Music 2.0. Dan had a congenital heart defect and has left us at the young age of 28. I hope he is listening to this episode up there and enjoying it...

In many music and entertainment circles, the name Lawrence Lessig needs no introduction, but for those who don't know his work, here's some background.

Lessig is a lawyer and activist whose interests are mostly in intellectual property, copyright, technology, and political reform. He's has written five influential books, including Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000), The Future of Ideas (2001), Free Culture (2004), Code: Version 2.0 (2006), and Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008).

Remix was just published in paperback in October 2009.

Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons. In 2008, Lessig launched the Change Congress campaign, now called Fix Congress First.

Lessig talks about Creative Commons during the interview, but in a nutshell it's an organization with copyright tools that allows content creators to give various levels of freedom to others for them to remix and build upon the original work.

The idea behind remix culture is how an artist can take a work that a pervious artist has produced and build upon it to create something new. The term has become more commonplace in the last decade, but in fact the concept has been in use for decades, most notably in rap music starting 30 years ago.

Growing up in Queens, New York, I was lucky enough to hear the rap bands of the first era pretty early on (granted, thanks to bands like Blondie and The Clash and college radio putting Grandmaster Flash, The Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, and Afrika Bambaattaa on my radar) which usually utilized sampling techniques when creating their music.

I have long been a fan of the groups who fine tuned the ideas behind audio sampling to perfection, in Long Island's Public Enemy and De La Soul. I’ve always thought both groups pushed the ideas behind sampling in ways that few others did before or since, albeit in very different directions.

With Public Enemy’s 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and De La Soul’s 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising, at the moment it seemed like the idea of what music “is” was being reinvented.

But, after a series of lawsuits for a variety of musicians and labels, the art of sampling and remixing was largely hobbled, in either using others work with or without their consent.

Twenty years later, it is still mostly the domain of those willing to tread in dangerous waters or for artists who want to engage their own fans by allowing them to remix work as part of the growing participatory culture community. For remix artists who might be looking to push their ideas further, it’s unlikely they can put their work into the public without a sizable budget.

Having read all of Lessig’s work and seen two recent documentaries about the remix culture (Brett Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Benjamin Franzen’s Copyright Criminals), I wanted to speak with Lessig about how current musicians could utilize Creative Commons and share with their own audience as well as look at how we music fans can better understand this era of shared creativity, which dramatically changes the idea of those performers vs. us in the audience.

In addition to these films and Lessig’s Remix book, some good reads on the subject include DJ Spooky’s book Sound Unbound (2008) and Matt Mason’s The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism (2009).

The show includes music from the earlier era of sampling as well as some recent examples of mainstream musicians offering up their work for remixing, including David Byrne and Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Bjork.

I sat down with Lessig at his office at Harvard Law School to discuss:
* why it’s unlikely the current copyright system will change
* why Greg Gillis, also known as Girl Talk, has not been sued
* how Creative Commons works and how musicians can use it to engage their fans even more

Songs included in the interview include:
1) Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome (Welcome to the Terrordome) (in preview)
2) Grandmaster Flash: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel
3) De La Soul: Me Myself and I (3 Feet High and Rising)
4) Public Enemy: Night of the Living Baseheads
5) DJ Moule: Black Sabotage remix of Beastie Boys's Sabotage
6) Radiohead: Reckoner (In Rainbows)
7) Nick Olivetti: Nasty Fish remix of Radiohead's Reckoner
8) David Byrne + Brian Eno: Help Me Somebody (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts)
9) Owl Garden: Secret Somebody remix of David Byrne + Brian Eno's Help Me Somebody
10) Mr. Briggs Hit me somebody remix of David Byrne + Brian Eno's Help Me Somebody
11) Girl Talk: No Pause (Feed the Animals)
12) Girl Talk: In Step (Feed the Animals)
13) Danger Mouse: Encore (The Gray Album)
14) The Album Leaf's remix of Nina Simone's Lilac Wine from Verve Remixed
15) Vind's remix of Bjork's Venus as a Boy
16) Fatboy Slim: Praise You (You've Come a Long Way, Baby)
17) Amplive's remix of Radiohead's Weird Fishes

If you enjoyed this episode of Well-Rounded Radio, give a listen to other interviews with have done with music industry thought leaders, including Scott Kirsner, author of Fans, Friends, and Followers, Michael Bracy of The Future of Music Coalition, Tim Westergren of Pandora, and Dave Kusek, co-author of The Future of Music book.

The first time I heard Yoko K.'s music, through a submission I received via SonicBids, I found myself pulled into her alluring soundscapes and songs and kept coming back for more over the following weeks. With layered recordings hinting at influences like Bjork, Massive Attack, Portishead, Brian Eno's ambient work, and jazz vocalists, Yoko K.'s music is all her own.

Yoko Kamitani, who works under the name Yoko K., was born in Japan and moved to the United States in 2004. Her debut album, 012906, was released in 2006 by Asahra Music in Washington D.C., which won her the Best Album in Electronica/Dance award at the 6th annual Independent Music Awards.

Yoko K. performed, produced, programmed, and recorded the album almost entirely by herself. As singer and keyboardist, she also has the help of some string and horn players, but the scope of 012906 doesn't feel like an album recorded at a home studio with the help of a few musical friends. Instead, it's the kind of project an early-era Bjork might have created with a level of confidence, risk, and adventure that made me think Yoko K. was overdue for more attention. And, as with most albums that reward repeated listens, I kept finding new layers to what Yoko K. was doing on the album, truly moving electronic music a step forward through her choices of instruments that she pairs. I love the mood that the entire album creates when heard in sequence.

Also like Bjork, Yoko K. has a playful persona that resonates throughout the work, as if she herself is finding her way through the words and music. 012906 mixes electronic instrumentation with acoustic instruments, resulting in organic electronica, as she calls it.

Yoko K. is working on her second album and, in something of a Well-Rounded Radio first, she has shared ten demo versions and early mixes with us in advance of the final product coming out later in 2010. To me, each piece sounds like Yoko K. is creating more complex pieces and I'm sure her next release will be even more accomplished than the first.

Yoko K. has also created music with other collaborators as well as producing music used in conjunction with artists and organizations with some political and societal inspirations. She is also a keyboard player and backing vocalist for Dust Galaxy, a solo project of Rob Garza from Thievery Corporation, and toured across the United States and Europe in 2006-7.

Yoko K. also performs with Aphrodizia, Aphrodizia at The Velvet Lounge, Aphrodizia at The Velvet Lounge II, Aprhodizia at The Velvet Lounge III, an experimental music ensemble, in the Seduce & Destroy series and with visual artists; some highlights can be seen at All Our Noise, Presentation at NMWA / CreativesDC and From Nothing. You can also see two videos of her songs Blues of Grande Chai and Hello Hello.

Yoko K. was also generous enough to let me use Hello Hello as part of the Musicians for Music 2.0 presentation that I recently posted online:

I sat down with Yoko K. in Washington D.C. to discuss:
* how her first album came to exist
* how those first songs come together for her while working mostly alone
* how her work with visual artists is impacting her aural work

Songs included in the interview include:
1) Take Off (012906) (in preview)
2) Uchu Ryokou (012906)
3) 012906 (012906)
4) La Complainte D'r2 (012906)
5) Blues of Grande Chai (012906)
6) Eleventh Year (012906)
7) Deviant Flower First Mix (demo for upcoming album)
8) Hello Hello (012906)
9) Bubblenest Short (demo for upcoming album)
10) This Beast (demo for upcoming album)
11) AppleZ videoedit (demo for upcoming album)
12) Hug Robot (demo for upcoming album)
13) Cry 129 (demo for upcoming album)
14) Yoake (012906)
15 Carry On (demo for upcoming album)
16) Vaspa (demo for upcoming album)
17) Prisoner (demo for upcoming album)
18) Underwater (demo for upcoming album)
19) Tap (demo for upcoming album)
20) Yun Ae Se Po

To purchase Yoko K.'s 012906 album visit the Amazon.com, Amie Street, Asahra Store, CD Baby, iTunes, or Lala.

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I've been a fan of Jill Sobule (left) and Erin McKeown (right) for a long time and, in the last year or so, they have become pioneers of new fundraising models for the music industry.

They both also have new albums out (buy them from Sobule and McKeown direct) were on a US tour together from October through December 2009. I was lucky enough to have some time with them both just before their first show of the tour at Club Passim the famed club in Cambridge, Massachusetts that started as Club 47 in 1958. You can find their upcoming dates at on McKeown's site or Sobule's site.

Sobule has released eight albums since her first, Things Here are Different in 1990, including releases on the Atlantic and Artemis Record labels. Her latest album, California Years, was financed entirely by her fans with tiers of donation levels and corresponding tiers of how donors were involved with hearing or participating in the record itself. Aiming for $70,000, Sobule ultimately raised close to $90,000 from 500 of her fans.

McKeown has also released eight albums since her first, Monday Morning Cold in 1999, including releases on Nettwerk Records and Signature Sounds. McKeown raised money to produce her new album, Hundreds of Lions, by producing a series of online video variety shows, each webcast from different spots at her home in Western Massachusetts. McKeown charged a subscription rate to view all four episodes. You can still subscribe and view these. The album was just released by Ani DiFranco's label Righteous Babe Records.

McKeown and Sobule are literally leading the way in the new music ecosystem where musicians and music fans are connecting directly with each other via the internet. Instead of musicians sharing their revenue with a record store, a distributor, and a record label, artists are utilizing fan-funded opportunities to allow them to bring new work to their fans. Some other recent examples include David Bazan, Kristin Hersh, Idlewild, Issa (Jane Siberry), Marillion, Amanda Palmer (hear the Well-Rounded Radio Interview), Public Enemy, and Michael Tarbox (hear the the Well-Rounded Radio Interview).

Sobule's California Years was produced by Don Was (Was (Not Was) and producer of Bonnie Raitt, Rolling Stones, B-52’s, and many, many more) and written over the past three years after she moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and is often very much about the Golden State. As she has long done, Sobule switches between subjects that touch you and humor with some real substance...she keeps you guessing and coming back for more.

McKeown's Hundreds of Lions was produced by her longtime musical partner Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter (hear the Well-Rounded Radio Interview), Langhorne Slim, Kris Delmhorst). Together they experimented with pairing acoustic and synthesized sounds, resulting in a lush, sophisticated record that continues McKeown's musical journey as a performer that you can never quite predict what sounds she'll be creating next. Just the way I like 'em.

We recently spoke in the dressing room at Club Passim--with all the sounds you'd expect in a nightclub and restaurant-- to discuss:
* how each of them came to decide to organize fan-funded projects
* some pros and cons to recording and releasing your own work
* what they’ve learned by being pioneers...and what they still aspire to learn

Songs featured in this episode from McKeown's Hundred of Lions and Sobule's California Years albums include:
1) Erin McKeown: Santa Cruz
2) Jill Sobule: Nothing to Prove
3) Jill Sobule: San Francisco
4) Jill Sobule: The Donor Song
5) Erin McKeown: The Foxes
6) Erin McKeown: The Rascal
7) Jill Sobule: Where is Bobbi Gentry?
8) Erin McKeown: To a Hammer
9) Jill Sobule: Palm Springs
10) Erin McKeown: You, Sailor
11) Jill Sobule: Empty Glass
12) Erin McKeown: The Foxes
13) Jill Sobule: League of Failures
14) Erin McKeown: (Put the Fun) Back in Funerals
15) Jill Sobule: Spiderman
16) Erin McKeown: 28
17) Jill Sobule: Mexican Pharmacy
18) Erin McKeown: Seamless
19) Jill Sobule: A Good Life
20) Erin McKeown: The Boats
21) Jill Sobule: The Donor Song

Somewhat unintentionally, a number of the last handful of episodes of Well-Rounded Radio have been about what may well be the future of the music business, with interviews featuring Michael Bracy of The Future of Music Coalition, Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity, Jeff Price of TuneCore, and Joshua Boltuch of Amie Street.

As more and more power has been taken out of the hands of the traditional music industry and put in the hands of musicians, it's feeling like the goals are no longer a major record label deal, massive amounts of commercial radio airplay, a hit video on MTV, or the cover of Rolling Stone, even if those things are still all very welcome.

So what's next, for both musicians and music fans who want to discover their next favorite band or recording?

Scott Kirsner's new book Fans, Friends, & Followers looks at how some pioneers are using the internet to connect with their audience, grow that fan base, and turn it into something profitable without the traditional infrastructure in the music, comedy, publishing, and film & video industries.

Kirsner is a journalist for Variety and The Boston Globe and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, Fast Company, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek, and Newsweek, among other publications.

Kirsner writes the CinemaTech blog, which explores the way technology is changing the entertainment industry. He is the author of Inventing the Movies, a technological history of Hollywood published in 2008, and The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers, first published in 2006.

Kirsner is one of the founders of the Nantucket Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Future Forward events. He also speaks and moderates regularly at entertainment industry events, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the a href="http://sxsw.com/film" target="_blank">South by Southwest Film Festival.

As some recent success stories like Jill Sobule, Issa (the artist formerly known as Jane Siberry), or Amanda Palmer (hear the Well-Rounded Radio interview with Palmer) are proving, artists can also go direct to their fans to help fund recording or visual projects as well.

Kirsner's book approaches each subject as a question and answer session, featuring such Internet music successes as Jonathan Coulton, OK Go, DJ Spooky, Jill Sobule, Richard Cheese, Chance, and the Coverville podcast, along with a look at new business models in video, visual arts, and narrative writing.

The episode features music from many of these artists as well as a number of musical artists who I am friends with or follow or are fans of on things like Facebook and Twitter. I essentially sent out a note to a variety of musicians that I am connected to and, to Scott Kirsner’s point, I basically crowdsourced the majority of music in this episode in a matter of about five hours. Many of these songs are new that have not been released or demos, which I think is a great example of how the internet has changed how musicians, online media like me, and audiences like you are all now interacting.

In early Summer I sat down with Kirsner at his office in Beacon Hill in Boston to discuss:

* why he decided to write about a book about this subject now
* how all these changes in connecting are changing how musicians are behaving
* some ways to use the internet to better engage your fans--and find new ones

Music featured in the episode includes:
1) Pressure Cooker: Without Purpose (in preview)
2) Zoe Keating: Walking Man (in preview)
3) Lovewhip: Love Electric
4) John Haydon: Blue Van
5) The Jescos (including Timothy Bracy of The Mendoza Line): Movable Feast Blues
6) Lagoon: Blind
7) Song Sparrow Research: Colored Paper
8) Hallelujah the Hills: Classic Tapes
9) Jonathan Coulton: Code Monkey
10) Jill Sobule: Nothing to Prove
11) Amanda Palmer: The Point of it All
12) John McGrath: Some Holy Ghost
13) Preacher Jack: I'm in Love Again
14) Richard Barone: Girl
15) Dear Leader: Barbarians
16) OK Go: Here it Goes Again
17) Young Tremors: Pebble in My Sea
18) Bodega Girls: She's Into Black Guys
19) Jenn Vix: The Fire
20) Richard Cheese: Gin and Juice
21) The Sissormen: Maddie Sweet Maddie
22) THEiNTENSIONS: Coral

The Newport Jazz Festival started in 1954 by George Wein and is celebrating its 55th anniversary on August 8th and 9th in Newport, Rhode Island.

It's slightly younger sibling, long known as the Newport Folk Festival and going by the name George Wein's Folk Festival 50 this year, is celebrating its 50th anniversary on August 1st and 2nd. The folk festival was started by Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Albert Grossman, Pete Seeger and George Wein.

Jay Sweet (pictured with founder George Wein) has been producing the festival for the last few years and you may also know his name as Editor-at-large for Paste magazine. Sweet also co-owns a music services company called Sweet & Doggett.

This year's line-up includes The Avett Brothers, Balfa Toujours, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, The Campbell Brothers, Neko Case, Guy Clark, Judy Collins, Dala, Dear Tick, The Decemberists, Brett Dennen, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Tim Eriksen and the Shape Note Singers, Fleet Foxes, Arlo Guthrie, Iron and Wine, Ben Kweller, Langhorne Slim, The Low Anthem, Del McCoury, Tift Merritt, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchmen, Joe Pug, David Rawlings Machine, Josh Ritter (listen to the Well-Rounded Radio interview with Josh Ritter), Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Gillian Welch. You'll hear some highlights from many of these artists woven into my conversation with Sweet.

You can buy tickets to next weekend's festival at folkfestival50.com and if you can't make it to Newport, listen to NPR Music's webcasts.

I've attended the festival several times in the past and it's always great fun. It's a beautiful venue at Fort Adams State Park surrounded by Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay and the mood feels more like a gathering of friends than it does like many big music festivals these days.

To learn more about the spirit and performances of the mid-1960s version of the festival, there's a 1967 documentary film entitled Festival based on the 1963-1965 festivals out on DVD.

With Boston's Summer of 2009 non-stop rain ceasing for a little while, we took advantage of it and did the interview in Sweet's backyard on Boston's north shore. There’s a bit of wind hitting the microphones at the beginning, but it doesn't last. And so when you hear birds, now you’ll know they are the real thing.

I sat down with Sweet to discuss:
* how and why the festival has kept its loyal audience over the years while also keeping up with times
* how they curate the festival with both familiar and unfamiliar names on the bill
* why playing the festival is a seminal moment for so many artists in their careers

Music featured in the episode from artists performing at the George Wein's Folk Festival 50 in 2009 include:
1) Langhorne Slim: Rebel Side of Heaven
2) Josh Ritter: To the Dogs or Whoever
3) Pete Seeger: The Wreck of the Old 97
4) Tift Merritt: Broken
5) Arlo Guthrie: Grand Coulee Dam
6) Iron and Wine: White Tooth Man
7) Ben Kweller: Things I Like to Do
8) Neko Case: Don't Forget Me
9) Fleet Foxes: Mykonos
10) Del McCoury: I'm Bound for the Land of Canaan
11) Dear Tick: Friday XIII
12) Dala: Lonely Girl
13) Tao Rodriguez-Seeger:
14) Mavis Staples: Freedom Highway (live)
15) Billy Bragg: The Beach is Free
16) The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love 2
17) Joe Pug: Hymn #101
18) The Campbell Brothers: Good all the Time
19) Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Sowing on the Mountain
20) Balfa Toujours: J'au vu le loup, le r
21) Tim Eriksen and the Shape Note Singers: The Maid Freed From the Gallows
22) The Low Anthem: Charlie Darwin
23) Gillian Welch: My First Lover
24) Joan Baez: God is God
25) The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You

Jay recommends Bonnaroo, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and The Forecastle Festival.

Charlie recommends Bumbershoot and Green River Festival.

So, back in the 70s, my older siblings Michael, Maureen, Joseph, and John respectively turned me onto Arlo Guthrie (and David Bromberg), Carly Simon (and James Taylor), Led Zeppelin (and The Rolling Stones, Peter Tosh, Bachman, Turner, Overdrive, and Yes) and The Monkees (and The Beatles, Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Association, and The Dead Kennedys, and my cousin Thomas turned me onto The Clash (and The Ramones and Talking Heads).

With that kind of introduction and education, it's no surprise I got hooked on music and started buying vinyl.

If I remember correctly, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was my first in 1973 at Korvettes in Flushing, Queens...of course a double album. My dad told me that if it affected my grades in any way, he would take it away. I was seven.

When CDs came along in the late 80s, even though they were less expensive to produce, the list prices put them at $14.99 or more. Over the last 10-15 years, the street price has settled at about $11.99 or so, but of course lots of places sell them for more and less than that. Of course now CD prices are dropping in price to compete with digital downloads and they are often costing less than mp3s albums.

After the demise of the original Napster and the rise of iTunes, the $.99 a song model arose and somehow took hold. But in an era where many listen to music free from myspace or off of artists’ web sites and others file share, most working musicians are wondering how they will make a living making music when it's clear you can’t rely on the sale of a physical product any longer, along comes an idea that I really like.

Amie Street was started in Providence, Rhode Island on Amie Street on July 4, 2006 by Elliott Breece, Josh Boltuch and Elias Roman while at Brown University. They are now based in Long Island City, just across the river from Manhattan. Roman is the Director of Business Development and Operations, Breece is the Director of Product Development, and Boltuch is the Director Public Relations and Marketing.

We'll talk more about how Amie Street works during my interview with co-founder Joshua Boltuch, but the idea is that when a song is added, it starts free up to .98 and will go up in cost as demand rises up to a maximum of .98. Occasionally, shoppers who frequently recommend artists will also get credits from Amie Street, so it’s a bit of a buy back strategy.

The mp3 files are all free of digital rights management, or DRM.

Musicians receive 70% of the revenue from each sale. And yes, I know that for musicians recording music costs a lot of money, especially if you go into an 24 track studio to do it, but I also know there's something to pricing things at the right point to get those impulse buys. Part art and part science, on Amie Street more than a few times I have bought an artist’s entire album because I heard 60 seconds of a song, like it, and it was priced at $3.00. Would I have done that if it were priced at $9.99 or $16.99?

I find the interface of Amie Street to be among the best out there in terms of leading you from one genre, artist, or song to the next. It might not be quite the same as wandering the aisles of your favorite brick and mortar record store, but there is something about the interface and sampling opportunities that are more thought-out than what most of the big online music retailers have done.

It has also incorporated some social networking functionality into the site, so you can see what other friends are listening to and be turned on to artists in a more webby way.

This interview was recorded in October 2008 and I'm afraid it just delayed for a handful of reasons, but I’m happy that it’s seeing the light of day now, just as Amie Street comes up on their third anniversary.

I sat down with co-founder Boltuch at the Amie Street offices in Long Island City to discuss:
* How and why mp3s started getting priced at $.99
* How Amie Street is using the net’s technology to help music fans find more music
* Why musicians are submitting their music to Amie Street and what they like about the business model

Music featured in this interview includes:
1) Passion Pit: Little Secrets
2) Dirty Projectors: Stillness is the Movie
3) Harlem Shakes: Nothing but Change Part II
4) Juana Molina: Un Dia
5) Tulsa: Fill Her In
6) Machel Montano: Defense
7) Sadie: Dien Blaues Auge-Brahms
8) Camera Obscura: French Navy
9) The Faraway Places: Run While True
10) Marco Benevento: Now They're Writing Songs
11) Boyou Roux: Zydeco Sont Pas Sale (No Salt in The Snap Beans)
12) Prabir and The Substitutes: Who's Going to Love You?
13) Chuck Brown: Autumn Leaves
14) Heidi Berry: Time
15) Elvis Perkins in Dearland: Shampoo
16) Peaches: I Feel Cream
17) Gongui: Me Ama Te Amo
18) Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens: Trouble in my Way
19) The Kills: Fried My Little Brains
20) These United States: Honor Amongst Thieves
21) MSTRKRFT: 1,000 Cigarettes

Rick Berlin started making music in the early 1970s and continued through a handful of bands over the last three decades, including Orchestra Luna, Orchestra Luna II, Luna, Berlin Airlift, Rick Berlin: The Movie, The Shelley Winters Project, and, most recently, simply as Rick Berlin.

As a piano player and songwriter, Berlin's style has run the gamut from the theatrical to the confessional. In several of these incarnations, Berlin came close to breaking it in the music industry, but as he's learned, sometimes the stars don't always align the way they should. During our interview, Berlin takes us through anecdotes about some of these bands and we'll get to hear musical highlights from throughout the years.

Having grown up in New York, I was aware of Berlin's music over the years and learned about his 2006 album Me & Van Gogh from Hi-n-Dry Records from feature articles in The Boston Globe and The Boston Phoenix. His latest CD, Old Stag, was released in 2008.

For fans of Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Ben Folds, or Leonard Cohen, Berlin's albums will be a welcome addition to your collection.

Berlin recorded Me & Van Gogh at Hi-n-Dry, the studio and music collective that I’ve featured on Well-Rounded Radio in the past with our interviews with Twinemen, Jimmy Ryan, and Monique Ortiz. Billy Conway, drummer for Morphine, Twinemen, and the Chip Smith Project, co-produced Me & Van Gogh and Tom Dube engineered and mixed it.

Old Stag was recorded in Berlin's living room, with help from sound engineer (and neighbor) Joe Stewart and string arrangements from Brendan Cooney.

Berlin will be performing at the new Hi-n-Dry space at The Somerville Armory on Saturday, May 9th with a string quartet. For more information and to buy tickets, visit Brown Paper Tickets. The concert is a fundraiser for The Mark Sandman Music Project. You can also check for other upcoming performances on Berlin's site.

You can see some video of Berlin on YouTube.

Berlin is also working on a video documentary about our shared home town, Jamaica Plain or JP. Take a look at some clips of Jamaica Plain Spoken on YouTube; Berlin is open to receiving donations to help complete the project.

We recently met at his apartment, down the street from the Brendan Behan Pub, to discuss:
* The various musicians and artists he's worked with while making music over the years.
* How he found himself playing on Mark Sandman’s piano to record Me & Van Gogh with the help of the Hi-n-Dry group
* How he recorded Old Stag at home and on a limited budget, with great results

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) Rick Berlin: House on Fire (Old Stag) (in preview)
2) Rick Berlin: Don't Talk about Joan (Me & Van Gogh)
3) Orchestra Luna: Doris Dreams (Orchestra Luna)
4) Orchestra Luna: Boy Scout Songs (Orchestra Luna)
5) Orchestra Luna: Little Sam (Orchestra Luna)
6) Orchestra Luna II: Greyhound (live) (Special Class)
7) Orchestra Luna II: Dear Kate (Special Class)
8) Luna: Dumb Love (demo)
9) Berlin Airlift: Over the Hill (Berlin Airlift)
10) Berlin Airlift: Don't Stop me from Crying (Berlin Airlift)
11) Rick Berlin: The Movie: Eddy Isn't Coming Home (Filmclip)
12) The Shelley Winters Project: Nothing (Forced 2 Swallow)
13) The Shelley Winters Project: Blood (EP)
14) Rick Berlin: Me & Van Gogh (Me & Van Gogh)
15) Rick Berlin: Rock n Roll Romance (Me & Van Gogh)
16) Rick Berlin: Do You Still Love Me (Me & Van Gogh)
17) Rick Berlin: City is Empty (Live at Jacques)
18) Rick Berlin: Never Stops Raining (Song Saves)
19) Rick Berlin: Unknown Soldier (Old Stag)
20) Rick Berlin: Happy Lesbians in the Snow (Old Stag)
21) Rick Berlin: Your Light is On (Old Stag)
22) Rick Berlin: Michiko (Old Stag)
23) Rick Berlin: Elle (Old Stag)
24) Rick Berlin: How Can I Hate People I Don't Know?
25) Rick Berlin: Walkin' in the Hood (Song Saves)
26) Rick Berlin: Criminal (Me & Van Gogh)
27) Rick Berlin: John Lennon's Nose (Old Stag)

As anyone who buys music knows, the way we are finding it and buying it has changed radically over the last 15 years.

For musicians, it used to be that if you wanted someone to release your music, you'd have to get the attention and approval of an artist and repertoire (or A&R person) at a label, work to sign a deal either big or small so that the label would then press up your product and work with distributors to get your vinyl or 8-track or cassette or CD to ship them out to record stores where the music fan could have access to them.

Now, all you have to do it is get some audio files online and instantly be able to have your music available to the current online global audience of 1.5 billion people, which is still just about 23% of the world's population, so the potential for reaching new audiences continues to grow. As mobile devices get smarter, it's inevitable that consumers will be downloading more music and playing it without a desktop or laptop computer even being involved, too.

As a result of the rise of digital download stores such as iTunes and Amazon mp3, the need has come for new companies to aggregate songs and distribute them out to all these growing online stores.

That's where TuneCore comes in.

After SpinArt, Price went on to work with eMusic.com, first as a consultant, then as interim VP of Content Acquisition, and finally as the Senior Director of Music/Business Development. He contributed towards the creation of eMusic's initial business model and created and implemented the first subscription-based music sales and distribution structure.

In 2005 Price started TuneCore, which is an aggregator which helps get digital music into online stores such as iTunes, Amazon mp3, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, Amie Street, Groupie Tunes, ShockHound.com, and lala.

TuneCore has also been in the news in recent months as some very mainstream acts have used the service to get their music direct to consumers, including Nine Inch Nails and Paul Westerberg. Just a few weeks back, it was announced that Aretha Franklin would be using TuneCore to distribute her version of My Country Tis Thee that she performed at the Obama inauguration.

TuneCore's competitors are services such as IODA, The Orchard, and CD Baby and I discuss with Price about what makes TuneCore different from these services. I hope to interview founders and representatives of these services in the future as well.

This episode includes music from a variety of independent music that has been submitted to be for Well-Rounded Radio. I can’t say that all have used TuneCore, but they are indicative of independent musicians these days who are producing great music on their own and using the Internet to reach new audiences. For a full list of what is included in the show and links to their sites, visit wellroundedradio.net/tunecore.

I met with Price during an event for held by The Future of Music Coalition’s in New York City to discuss:
* how artists can use a service like TuneCore to get their music out to download-to-own music services
* what it costs to use and what other services TuneCore offers to musicians
* how it’s a part of a very different music industry than what we had fifteen years ago

Music included in the episode includes:
1) Slow Car Crash: There It Is (in preview)
2) TVC15: Ao
3) Anais Mitchell: Shenadoah
4) Papermoon: House of Cards
5) Rev. Bob & The Darkness: Dead Man Running
6) Michael W. Smith: Above All
7) Ray Mason: Question to Answer
8) Clay McClinton: Left My Baby Blue
9) Los Soberanos: Francamente
10) Bill Noonan Band: Big Enough to Hide In
11) Satoru: Life is Never Long Enough
12) Fort Pastor: Fall With Me
13) Shauna Burns: Gotta Get Ahead
14) JJ Appleton: Falling Down
15) Nine Inch Nails: 3 Ghosts I
16) Paul Westerberg: Board of Edukation
17) Aretha Franklin: My Country Tis of Thee

A little over a year ago I interviewed Jenny Toomey, who co-founded The Future of Music Coalition in 2000 with Michael Bracy, Walter McDonough and Brian Zisk. Toomey and I discussed how the organization came into existance and some of its main areas of focus. You can hear that interview here. Toomey has since moved over to the Ford Foundation and Ann Chaitovitz is the new Executive Director.

Bracy is the Policy Director for The Future of Music Coalition. He also co-owns the Misra Records label and is a partner at Bracy Tucker Brown & Valanzano, a government and public affairs consulting firm in Washington D.C., so he knows his way around the worlds of both music and legislation.

The Future of Music Coalition is, to quote, "a national non-profit education, research, and advocacy organization that seeks a bright future for creators and listeners. FMC works towards this goal through continuous interaction with its primary constituency--musicians--and in collaboration with other creator/public interest groups."

You can learn more about network neutrality at savetheinternet.com, Google, Wikipedia, and The Future of Music Coalition's Rock the Net pages.

The Future of Music Coalition's Rock the Net campaign was established in April 2007 to increase musician's awareness about the importance of net neutrality because certain telecommunications and cable companies would like to charge content providers higher fees for faster delivery of their sites. The result would be an Internet where those who couldn't afford to - or didn't want to - pay a toll would be stuck in the slow lane. Artists could lose an important connection to their fans and suffer financial loses, while listeners might be denied their freedom of choice.

The Future of Music Coalition’s benefit album, entitled Rock The Net: Musicians for Network Neutrality, was released by Thirsty Ear Recordings this past summer and the money raised goes toward supporting FMC's efforts on this front. You can buy the album direct from Thirty Ear. Artists who donated songs to the cause include David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion), Bright Eyes, The Classic Brown, BC Camplight, DJ Spooky, Free Form Funky Freqs, Guster, Aimee Mann, David Miller, Palomar, Portastatic, Matthew Shipp, They Might Be Giants, Wilco, and The Wrens.

I wanted to do an episode on the subject because the battle over net neutrality seems to be well known in geek circles, but the general population doesn't seem to be as aware and it's ultimately going to effect everyone using the Internet. I'm hoping this episode will help bring the idea to a broader audience, including music fans and musicians who will certainly depend on the web more than any other distribution channel in the future.

And while Barack Obama's selection of Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach to lead the FCC review team are encouraging, by all accounts the battle is far from done.

Many of today's most talented artists are demonstrating their support of an open Internet where all users can access the lawful content of their choice without undue restrictions. Founding Rock the Net artists include Calexico, Les Claypool, Death Cab for Cutie, John Doe, The Donnas, Guster, Kathleen Hanna, Griffin House, Kronos Quartet, Jerry Harrison, Ted Leo, The Locust, Bob Mould, Matt Nathanson, OK Go, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Boots Riley, Rogue Wave, Jimmy Tamborello, State Radio, Street to Nowhere, Matt Wertz, and The Wrens.

I met with Bracy during a recent Future of Music Coalition event at the Public Theatre in New York City to discuss:

* why network neutrality matters to musicians and music fans
* what it is about developing net policy that needs to improve upon past technological inventions
* how you can stay informed and take action to help keep net neutrality as a defining principle going forward

Songs featured in this interview from the Rock the Net CD include:
1) The Classic Brown: Modulation (in preview)
2) David Bazan: Cold Beer and Cigarettes (in preview)
3) DJ Spooky featuring Saba Saba: Uganda
4) Bright Eyes: I Won't Ever be Happy Again
5) Palomar: Red
6) Aimee Mann: 31 Today
7) Wilco: Impossible Germany (Live)
8) Portastatic: Hang Down Your Head
9) The Wrens: Sleep
10) Matthew Shipp Trio: New Orbit
11) FREE Form Funky Freqs: The Binds That Tie
12) They Might Be Giants: We Live in a Dump
13) BC Camplight: Soy Tonto
14) David Miller: Sunday Driver
15) Guster: Timothy Leary

I will admit I was kind of turned off by the initial onslaught of publicity when The Dresden Dolls debuted here in Boston back in 2001 and 02. I hadn't heard much of the music, but whenever something gets too overexposed so far, I always tend to look the other way, so I'll chalk that up to why I hadn't known their work better.

But a few months back, I had the opportunity to interview Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls for her collaboration with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. You can hear that interview here on iTunes. After listening to The Dresden Dolls albums, I dare say I began to get it.

For those who haven't heard their music, The Dresden Dolls are part rock, part cabaret, and generally pretty intense. The duo features Amanda Palmer on vocals, piano, harmonica, and ukelele and Brian Viglione on drums, percussion, guitar, and vocals.

Palmer's first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? was released by Road Runner Records in late September and co-produced by Ben Folds. The album is quite different from The Dresden Dolls, with both sparse songs featuring Palmer paired with vocals as well as lush, orchestral pieces that help push her songs to entirely new sonic tiers. Folds also plays piano on several songs as well.

Palmer has also worked on a Who Killed Amanda Palmer? book with Neil Gaiman, best known for The Sandman comic series, Stardust, and American Gods. The book will be released in November.

Palmer has also posted a series of music videos on her site for songs from the new album, which is a terrific idea in this era where music videos are all but dead on cable television, but while video is more popular than ever on the web. They are low-budget, but do the trick of letting you hear the music and get a bit of a preview of her live performances.

She's out on tour now in Europe and in November in the US; check whokilledamandapalmer.com for dates and details.

I met with Palmer in Boston's South End neighborhood just as she was starting rehearsals for her current tour to discuss:

* what lead her to starting work on solo material
* how she met Ben Folds and why she wanted to work with him
* how she is bringing the album to life on the road

Songs featured in the interview include:

1) Ampersand (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?) (in preview)
2) Leeds United (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
3) Runs in the Family (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
4) Girl Anachronism (The Dresden Dolls)
5) Astronaut: A Short History of Nearly Nothing (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
6) Have to Drive (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
7) Guitar Hero (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
8) Strength Through Music (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
9) Blake Says(Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
10) What's the Use of Wond'rin? (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
11) Oasis (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
12) Another Year: A Short History of Almost Something (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)
13) Leeds United (Who Killed Amanda Palmer?)

Thinking back on it, I'm not exactly sure how or when I found out about San Serac, but I know I came across his Myspace page and I kept going back to hear his music, which is not something I do too often on Myspace.

I then sought out and bought his third CD, Professional, and found his music to be at an interesting intersection between David Bowie, disco, and electronic dance music. Thankfully, the album did not disappoint.

Nat Rabb works under the name San Serac, an artist who plays synthesizer, percussion, guitar, electronic saxophone, electronic drums, and sings. Rabb grew up in Baltimore and played in several post-punk bands including Candy Machine and INK. He now lives and works in the Boston area.

San Serac's music reveals his love of music of Roxy Music, Midnight Star, David Bowie, Maurice Fulton, Talking Heads, Shalamar, and Prince. The music touches on electronic funk, house, disco, garage, quiet storm, and freestyle. I love the fact that he's pushing the boundaries of what styles fit or belong together; not since Talking Heads' Remain in Light or Prince's Sign o' the Times have I listened to a record again and again and been rewarded each time. Frankly, I can't wait for San Serac's next release to see where he takes us next.

With Johnny Dark, San Serac has also released an album on September 23rd under the outfit Stereo Image and they will performing in Ontario, Canada in late October. Check their Myspace page for details. San Serac will also be touring in November and December 2008 in the US with Wilderness.

I met with San Serac in May in Somerville, Massachusetts to discuss:
* how he writes and records his albums—essentially all by himself
* what the gestation period is like for his own creations
* how the changes in the music business are effecting how he manages his own career

Photo: Drew Jarrett

Music featured in the show includes:

1) San Serac: Professional (Professional) (in preview)
2) San Serac: Fairlight (Professional)
3) San Serac: Love Tactics (Professional)
4) INK: Alger Hiss
5) INK: Real Life in the Deco
6) San Serac: Market Research (it's Time to Shop) (Ice Age)
7) San Serac: Astonishing Murders (Ice Age)
8) San Serac: What Price Revenge (Ice Age)
9) San Serac: Nihilistic Love (Professional)
10) San Serac: Sunlight in Electric Wires (Ice Age)
11) San Serac: You, Assassin (Ice Age)
12) San Serac: Tyrant (Professional)
13) San Serac: The Black Monolith (Professional)
14) San Serac: That Obscure Object of Desire (Professional)
15) San Serac: Command Shift Sexy (Professional)
16) Faunts: Instantly Dubbed (San Serac Mix)
17) Stereo Image: Dark Chapter (S/T)
18) Stereo Image: Exposure (S/T)
19) Stereo Image: Pack Moves (S/T)
20) Shout Out Out Out Out: In the End It's Your Friends (San Serac Mix)
21) Stereo Image: Red Nights (S/T)
22) Stereo Image: Your Collapsed State (S/T)
23) San Serac: Friends

San Serac recommends Maurice Fulton, Daft Punk, Faux Fox, Shout Out Out Out Out, and A Certain Ratio.

Thanks again to everyone who took our recent online survey. I learned some great information about who is listening to the show, what you like and what you'd like to hear more of. I was especially surprised to learn from the group that responded that 57% of you identified yourselves as musicians.

I have had fun doing interviews with music industry thought leaders in recent years as it's obvious that the music business is in a great deal of flux for both musicians and music fans. Truthfully, though, I haven't heard or read many good interviews about these changes. If you go to music conferences or subscribe to things like the Pho list you get to be on the inside of all these changes, but otherwise, it's a classic case of being shut out of ideas that are advancing around you.

I hadn't realized that musicians are tuning in to Well-Rounded Radio as an educational outlet, but that does seem to be the case and this episode, with an interview with Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity, it's a perfect case of providing some additional insight that I think can be very helpful to musicians.

Ariel Publicity helps artists and labels get their music in front of the growing legion of citizen journalists or prosumers, as folks like me have started to be called, who are creating text, audio, and video for others to access via the Web.

Hyatt and her team also help to educate musicians through various online and in-person boot camp sessions and seminars and they're helping to connect independent musicians with independent media outlets like Well-Rounded Radio.

At the same time, music fans are discovering music in a wide range of new ways, from podcasts and audio blogs to recommendation engines, streaming stations, and mobile devices to simply speeding up the word of mouth process that have always happened, but now is happening faster and globally with new technologies.

As print publications cease production, terrestrial and satellite radio tries to evolve, and more people around the world start using these technologies as a matter of course, how will we each discover our next favorite band? I have heard the story again and again how music fans who used to simply listen to what was in the charts or featured on the cover of music magazines now are finding they listen to very little mainstream music and are finding all kinds of niches online that take their curiosity in new directions. The idea behind the Long Tail is very much changing what we consume.

This episode features a number of artists that Ariel Publicity has worked with over the last year or two. You can find links to their web sites below.

I met with Hyatt at her office in mid-town Manhattan back in February to discuss:

* how the agency came to be born and her own experience leading up to it
* some myths about the old music guard that need to be shattered
* how musicians can be smarter and strategic about using social media to advance their careers

If you enjoy this interview, be sure to listen to other interviews I have done with music industry thought leaders. Tell me who else you'd like me to interview and I'll do my best to get them on the show.

Music featured in the show includes:

1) Le Rug: Gloss (Bleenex) (in preview)
2) Fiskum: The Crossing (Darkness/Fire/Dancing)
3) Kaliopi: Naked (Around the World)
4) Kito Peters: CEO (Stories)
5) Booze Monkey: Solitaire (The Old Way)
6) N Side: Bad Manners (Just a Broke Brotha' Trying to to Come Up!)
7) Howard Britz: Scatterbug
8) Dudley Saunders: Take Me Back Home Again
9) Sarah VonDerhaar: It's Not the First Time
10) Animate Objects: Clive (Riding in Fast Cars with Your Momma)
11) Black Fortress of Opium: Dulcet TV (Black Fortress of Opium)
12) Blood Red Sun: Pray for Rain (A Nation of Saviors)
13) Inga Swearingen: Black Crow
14) The Callen Sisters: Wake Up
15) I/O/I: Compass (I/O/I)
16) Michael Wolff: Solar
17) Yahweh's People: Oh My Lord (Yahweh's People)

Photo: Greg Kessler

For all 15 artists on this show who wanted to share their music with you, consider buying their music, whether it's on a shiny piece of plastic or as a digital file. Buy a t-shirt or a hat or whatever swag they're selling. Go see them live or make friends with them at myspace and last.fm or facebook or wherever. Tell a friend about them and share your good taste in music. Sign up to their email list or subscribe to an RSS feed. And tell them Well-Rounded Radio sent you if you can. The way the music business works is changing drastically by the day. Support the music you like and love and help change it.

1) Matthew Loiacono: Only Memory (Kentucky)
2) One Ring Zero: The Ghost Of Rita Gonzalo (As Smart As We Are)
3) John Haydon: Last Night What You Told Me (Phantom Heart)
4) Hell's Kitchen: Jack is a writer (Doctor's Oven)
5) Ladytron: I'm Not Scared (Velocifero)
6) The Grownup Noise: Grey Skies (Grownup Noise EP)
7) Rayse Biggs: Um Da Da (For The Love Of It)
8) Ashley Pond: Never Seen Your Own Face (Dala)
9) Television Hill: Mulberry Bush (Twlight)
10) Vincent Bernay: track 2
11) Air This Side Of Caution: Here We Go (Nature Will Turn On Us)
12) The Kickbacks: I Crash Cars (Motel Stars)
13) Candida Rose: Kabu Verdi, Un Da (The Sum Of Me)
14) Daniel Ward: Reverance (After The Storm)
15) Terry Winchell: Waiting Here For You (Vice Versa)

Newbury Comics started as a comics store on Newbury Street, a famed block for shopping in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, but now each of their 27 locations sells CDs, vinyl, DVDs, posters, toys, books, magazines, sports merchandise, clothes, shoes, housewares, and much more.

Given how much time (and money!) I have spent at Newbury Comics over these last eight years and how much great music I have discovered there and subsequently brought to my listeners, I was glad to be able to interview Mike Dreese, the co-founder of Newbury Comics, as we had a great conversation about the state of record retailing and the state of the music business in general.

If you live here, you already know why it's such a fun place. If and when you visit New England, be sure to stop by one of their stores and experience it for yourself. Newbury Comics now has locations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island with the majority of stores in Greater Boston. Check newburycomics.com for address location and to shop online as well.

Our timing of featuring Dreese on Well-Rounded Radio's 50th episode is good as this year is Newbury Comics' 30th anniversary and they are opening two new stores this summer. One is a super store in Norwood, Massachusetts in a space formerly used by a car dealership, which sounds like it might give the Amoeba Records stores a run for their money, and a second store will be located at historic Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston. Maybe there is a future for the record store, yet.

While I am not one to make too much of numbers, my arrival at it after producing the show for the last six years does make me stop for a minute to think about the path I've traveled and where it might be going.

Well-Rounded Radio was an idea born just outside Seattle on a sidewalk in Kirkland, Washington with my friend Marion Seymour back in 1999 during a conversation we were having about the great music interviews we both used to hear when growing up in the New York City area.

For me, it was hearing interviews with musicians from Jeff Foss on Hofstra University's Radio station (now called WRHU), on WNYU’s New Afternoon Show (which, I’ll admit, influenced my choice of NYU for college...), and from Vin Scelsa and all the New York radio station’s he’s been on over the years and who continues today on WFUV in New York and on Sirius Satellite Radio.

For Marion, her love of freeform radio was fueled by WFMU, then the station of Upsala College, which was just a few blocks from her childhood home and the freeform days of WNEW and DJs like Jonathan Schwartz and Pete Fornatale. Marion was a pioneering DJ herself in Seattle on KZAM, where she broke all kinds of programming boundaries and interviewed everyone who was anyone when they came through Seattle for more than a decade.

Since this kind of programming wasn’t something that existed to our satisfaction, I thought, why not create it myself?

In late '99 I moved back east and my wife Stacey and settled in Boston. Well-Rounded Radio started to formulate into an idea in 2000 and 2001. September 11th motivated me to do something I'd been thinking about, instead of just talking about doing, so I created a demo with a plan to pitch it to NPR. Little did I realize at the time that NPR is more competitive than most commercial radio syndication...and of course it is, because anyone with any taste would prefer to be on it!

Then came blogging and then came broadband and then podcasting. Then there was less of a need to find the distribution channel and more of a desire to take my passion for music and my joy in helping others discover really, really good music in an era where it seemed like mainstream radio didn’t care about anything but really awful hits. Of course, that’s only gotten worse.

I also hoped my show would make you feel like you were listening in on a conversation instead of it seeming like the host was trying to grill the subject or simply fawn over them. Hopefully I’ve succeeded at those goals to some degree.

As we all know, the media landscape is changing radically and while it's fascinating to watch it happen, and in some ways be a part of it, I'm sad about the passing of No Depression and Harp magazines and I'm sad that so many record stores are struggling and closing.

Part of the reason that I love record stores like Newbury Comics is that as someone who started out on vinyl and moved on to CDs and now mp3s, I think it will be sad when there are no longer these kind of physical places to interact with other music lovers and to discover new artists in surprising ways. Staring at your laptop can be fun, but it can also be pretty damn lonely, so I’m hoping "record stores" can evolve into something more than just a place to pick up an encoded physical product.

I could regale you with the time Bob Bortnick of the Dancing Hoods was working behind the counter at Slipped Disc, convincing me of the merits of The Velvet Underground and Nico, or all the hours spent digging through the vinyl at St. Mark’s Sounds or Bleecker Bob’s or Pier Platters or Midnight or Tower or that great record store on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck that I have long since forgotten its name, but who always got the import Clash albums in first!

Getting a tip from the record store clerk, picking up an album because the sticker on its shrink wrap had name-dropped all the right artists, or finding a used LP that was just cheap enough to make you want to buy it and give a band a chance...all those methods of introduction seem to be passing us by, even as new methods of introduction are becoming the norm. I'm not saying they are better or worse, but it is worth thinking about what we might be losing even as we move forward.

As a musician myself, I'm thrilled that musicians will have more power in their hands via the Internet, but I'm not that thrilled that the reduction of record stores, magazines, and record labels means that the power will rest in the hands of fewer corporate gatekeepers, like Wal-Mart, iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft, Napster, Rhapsody, Target, or whoever. Not that I have anything against any of these companies, but it's never good to have the power rest with too few, even if the Internet can connect us one to one in so many other ways. Of course there are bloggers and podcasters and other tastemakers, but distribution has always been the most valuable commodity in any media industry and that’s not likely to change.

Over the last year or two I have been looking at how I can take Well-Rounded Radio from hobby into something that I could make a living doing. I can tell by my web site traffic, emails from listeners, and the music coming to me from around the world that people like what I’m doing. My numbers keep growing and it’s clear that music fans still need real human people to filter their choices for them, just as record labels, DJs, music journalists, and record stores have done for decades. (If you want to help with this, you can take our online survey and tell us a bit about yourself.)

As a hobby, I've been careful to not let Well-Rounded Radio consume too much of my life as I raise a family and work a paying job, but it’s also something that I know is helping to connect independent musicians and an audience of listeners who also love that sense of discovery when you find a new artist that you connect to and, to put it plainly, fall in love with. (And this seems like a good a time as any to thank my wife Stacey and my kids for their encouragement, their understanding, and their support!)

In many ways I’ve taken my activity from my 20s in making mix tapes and CDs for a group of friends combined it with my own professional experience in marketing, and upped the ante using the net.

In an era where the role of DJs, music critics, and music journalism is in flux, maybe all that we need is some ways to help us find things that we want as well as be open enough to discovering something new that might just fill some current need we have in our lives.

Although some of the artists and thought-leaders I've interviewed have been from outside Boston, the vast majority who have been on Well-Rounded Radio are from Boston's amazing music scene, which doesn't get nearly the kind of national press that it should.

Which brings me back to Boston and the 50th show.

It also makes perfect sense that Dreese is on this episode because when I was in my band Falling Stairs in the late 80s and early 90s, we used to come up to Boston from New York City to record at Fort Apache. We made it a point to go to a variety of great guitar stores in Allston and always made a stop at Newbury Comics, which was the kind of record store that I always wished we had in the New York area.

Now I've been in Boston for almost nine years and I take Newbury Comics for granted (and yes, I still shop in brick and mortar stores!), but when I go to other cities, I realize that record stores are becoming more rare each year.

Given Newbury’s success, part of me wanted to pick Dreese’s brain for how they've maintained their success and provide some ideas to other music retailers around the world to help them evolve as the music industry changes. I’m sure there’s a brilliant business plan in there just waiting to be born...

The show features a mix of music from the late 70s up to today, much of it from Boston artists.

I met with Dreese at Newbury Comics' offices and warehouse in Brighton, Massachusetts to discuss:
* how the regional chain got its start and grew to where they are today
* how the music business has changed since the late 70s and how they’re evolving with it
* the return of vinyl and what it might mean in the scheme of all the changes

Music featured in the interview include:
1) Classic Ruins: 1 + 1 < 2 (in preview)
2) Willie Alexander: Mass Ave
3) The Clash: Complete Control
4) The Cure: Boys Don't Cry
5) La Peste: Better Off Dead
6) The Lyres: I Want to Help You Ann
7) U2: Fire
8) The Neats: Red and Grey
9) Human Sexual Response: Jackie Onassis
10) The Proletariat: Options
11) Jerry's Kids: Uncontrollable
12) Treat Her Right: I Think She Likes Me
13) Dinosaur Jr: Kracked
14) Buffalo Tom: Crutch
15) Salem 66: Across the Sea
16) Throwing Muses: Bea
17) Mary Timony: Look a Ghost in the Eye
18) The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: The Impression that I Get
19) Mr. Lif: I Phantom
20) Dresden Dolls: Coin-Operated Boy
21) Ho-Ag: Golden All Night
22) Marta Gomez: Dejalo ir
23) Tulsa: Breathe Thin
24) Frank Smith: Cut Right Through
25) The Radio Knives: Stone Stone

Mike recommends Flobots, Velvet Rope, Twist and Shout, Waterloo, Amoeba, The Record Archive, and Criminal Records.

Charlie recommends visiting Newbury Comics and newburycomics.com and finding your local or regional record store through the Coalition for Independent Music Stores and buying locally! Bring a friend and help keep them all going.

Thalia Zedek's music career started in the late '70s with White Women, followed in the '80s with Dangerous Birds and Uzi and continued later in the decade when she joined the New York noise band Live Skull. In the early '90s she formed the band Come, whose 1992 album 11:11 is nothing short of a masterpiece. Come's members included Chris Brokaw on guitar, Arthur Johnson on drums, and Sean O'Brien on bass and if you don't own any of their work, you should.

Since Come stopped performing later in the '90s, Zedek has released a number of solo albums including Been Here and Gone (Matador, 2001) Trust Not Those in Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness (Thrill Jockey, 2004), and Hell is in Hello, 2004 (limited edition 2.000 copies). Her EPs include You're a Big Girl Now (Kimchee Records, 2002) and The Nature of Drones (Thrill Jockey, 2005). She also released a live disc entitled Live at Tonic, NYC 1/16/2000.

Zedek's latest CD, Liars and Prayers, was also released by Thrill Jockey Records in late April. Although I think all of Zedek's work with Come and her solo albums have been outstanding, Liars and Prayers is a powerful and emotional collection of songs tackling political and personal subjects. It features a five-piece band, fleshing out Zedek's sound to a new level of complexity and intensity.

Zedek has been inspired by a variety of artists, including Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed, but over the years she has created her own distinct sound and found a strong cult audience that appreciates her impassioned vocals and moody songwriting. I've always loved the intensity in Zedek's work, really pulling me in and forcing me to pay attention to the music she makes.

Watch some videos of Come online, including live performances of Hurricane and Submerge, and music videos for Submerge, Cimarron, Somehow We're Together and a fan-produced video of The German Song. You can also see a slideshow of a song from the out-of-print Nature of Drones EP on myspace and a studio performance of 1926.

Zedek is out on tour in mid to late June with shows in New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago. West coast shows and some European dates are also in the works and you can visit myspace.com/thaliazedek to find out more.

I met with Zedek in May in Allston, Massachusetts to discuss:

* how the new, larger version of her band came to exist
* who else has influenced her over the years
* what some of those veiled political songs are really about

Special thanks to Anna for the mp3s of Dangerous Birds and Uzi that are included in the show. I own it all on vinyl, but I must buy me an Ion one of these days! Thanks, Anna!

Music featured in the interview include:

1) Body Memory (Liars and Prayers) (in preview)
2) Begin to Exhume (Liars and Prayers)
3) Wind (Liars and Prayers)
4) We Don't Go (Liars and Prayers)
5) Back to School (Been Here and Gone)
6) Lower Allston (Liars and Prayers)
7) Manha De Carnaval (Been Here and Gone)
8) Green and Blue (Liars and Prayers)
9) Do You Remember? (Liars and Prayers)
10) Next Exit (Liars and Prayers)
11) Come Undone (Liars and Prayers)
12) Brother (Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness)
13) Smile on Your Face by Dangerous Birds (Alpha Romeo/Smile on Your Face single)
14) Criminal Child by Uzi (Sleep Asylum EP)
15) You're a Big Girl Now (You're a Big Girl Now)
16) Was by Live Skull (Snuffer)
17) Submerge by Come (11:11)
18) Bone (Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness)
19) Island Song (Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness)
20) Ship (Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness)
21) Stars (Liars and Prayers)

Thalia recommends Arboretum, The Big Disappointments, Drug Rug, Major Stars, and Retribution Gospel Choir.

Charlie recommends the new album by American Music Club, The Golden Age.

As music licensing continues to become an important way for musicians to earn money as the music business continues to change, there are a number of ways that musicians can get their music out to those professionals that are seeking music for their projects, which tends to be Music Supervisors and Producers for film projects, commercials, television shows, and games. From my own experience, getting your music in front of these folks can be pretty time consuming, so a service like Rumblefish eliminates much of that effort and once again levels the proverbial playing field for musicians at all levels to get into the licensing game.

Rumblefish is a sonic branding and music licensing company started by Paul Anthony in 1996 after his own work producing Sarah McLachlan, composing film scores, and various other roles in the music business. Richard Jankovich, who I interviewed a few years back as member of Burnside Project, is now with Rumblefish in Portland, Oregon as Director of A+R and Licensing after working with DeWolfe Music Publishing in New York City for many years.

As Jankovich explains in our interview, Rumblefish has two goals: one is to help music supervisors, producers, and others who use music in their productions to help find quality independent music using their web site quickly and affordably, and two, to help companies define what their brand sounds like by helping companies big and small create soundtracks that make sense for retail and online settings.

Rumblefish clients to date have included NBC-Universal, HBO, Nike, The North Face, Adidas Originals, Red Bull, MTV, Mitsubishi, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I met with Jankovich in January 2008 in Rumblefish’s offices in Portland, Oregon to discuss:

* how a musician or band can get up and running using Rumblefish
* the process of how music supervisors and producers can find suitable music
* the financials for musicians when working with Rumblefish

Music featured in the interview includes:
1) Masonic - Different Speeds" (in preview)
2) Kristin Hersh - Slippershell (Pocket Remix)
3) Future Loop Foundation - Mediterraneo
4) George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars - Some Next Shit
5) DJ Morphiziz - Noche De Fiesta feat. King Dave, DJ Pure, Mercy, Blesson
6) Black Swan Lane - Wisch
7) The Knew - Call My Name
8) Baumer - All In
9) Jennifer Faust - Head West
10) Telescope - Action
11) Karate High School - From This Day Forward (The League Of Tomorrow Battle Hymn)
12) Oohlala - Chinese Whispers
13) Limbo - Rio Del Mar
14) The High Violets - Carry On
15) Parks and Recreation - What was She Doing on the Shore That Night?
16) Jasmine Ash - Start Over
17) Mount Sims - Black Sunglasses
18) Justice of the Unicorns - Girl From Texas
19) Terry Waldo - The Charleston Rag
20) Ennio Morricone - Strofa Monodica 2
21) Scott MacLeod - Broken Heart
22) The Feelies - On the Roof
23) Shane Newville - To Calm the Angry Monster

Several years ago, right after my wife and I moved to Boston, I did some work with John McGah and a group of wonderful volunteers on fundraising events for Give US Your Poor, a project taking on homelessness. To quote their statement, "The Give US Your Poor mission is to create a revolution in public awareness, dispel myths and inspire action towards ending epidemic homelessness in the United States. It works to affect change at the policy level, engage volunteerism and contributions at the individual and corporate levels through media, technology and education; and to funnel support to partner homeless organizations."

Give US Your Poor is an initiative of the University of Massachusetts Boston. McGah is the founder and Executive Director of Give US Your Poor, a former Senior Research Associate at UMass Boston's Center for Social Policy, and is a recipient of a 2002 International Eisenhower Fellowships.

Released by Appleseed Recordings in September 2007, the Give US Your Poor CD is a diverse and powerful collection of songs featuring collaborations between homeless and formerly homeless musicians and celebrity artists, including Jon Bon Jovi, Buffalo Tom, Mario Frangoulis, Danny Glover, Jewel, Sonya Kitchell, Natalie Merchant, Mighty Sam McClain, Keb' Mo', Madeleine Peyroux, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, John Sebastian, Pete Seeger, Michelle Shocked, Bruce Springsteen, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Dan Zanes (who Well-Rounded Radio interviewed a few years back).

Buy the CD direct from Appleseed Recordings, at Amazon.com, or iTunes. Proceeds from the CD will go towards the national awareness and action campaign to end homelessness. In addition, local and national homeless organizations will be able to sell the CD to raise funds and awareness to their organization. Homeless artists involved will receive direct payment, all travel costs, and mechanical royalties for any original music.

Wondering what you can do to help solve our nation’s homelessness problem? Here's some suggestions from McGah:

1) write your U.S. Senator in support of the the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. As of March 2008 it had passed the House, but not the Senate, but is co-sponsored by both a Republican and Democrat Senator. The fund primarily provides matching money towards the creation of housing for people to live in the lowest income bracket.

2) For veterans, The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans is supporting a bill "Homes for Heroes" for preventing homelessness among Iraq War Veterans. Visit The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans to find out more.

3) Visit these sites, sign up for email lists, donate to, and/or join these organizations:
The National Alliance to End Homelessness
The National Coalition for the Homeless
The National Heathcare for the Homeless Council

4) Let your voice be heard!

Give US Your Poor is also currently working on a documentary film about homelessness along with creating educational curriculums and local outreach. Watch select video previews of Southwest stories and East Coast stories. There's also a great video segment about Natalie Merchant's participation and recording session with homeless and formerly homeless artists on YouTube.

You can also visit the web site of photographer photographer Lynn Blodgett, whose powerful book, Finding Grace: The Face of America's Homeless, is discussed in the interview and had appeared in Paste magazine along with information about the CD.

To join Give US Your Poor's email list and stay in their loop, visit here.

In February I met with McGah in my current hometown of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts to discuss:
* what Appleseed Recordings is and what their particular social goals are
* how Give US Your Poor solicited and selected homeless and formerly homeless artists to participate in the project
* how this project can help combat homelessness and spread the word about this critical issue

Photo: Bryan How

Songs featured in the interview include:
1) Keb' Mo' and Eagle Park Slim- Baby Don't Let Me Go (in preview)
2) Natalie Merchant and Friends - There is No Good Reason (in preview)
3) Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen - Hobo's Lullaby
4) Sweet Honey in the Rock - Stranger Blues
5) Michelle Shocked and Michael Sullivan - Becky's Tune
6) Buffalo Tom - Ink Falling (Father Outside)
7) Mario Frangoulis - Feels Like Home
8) Bonnie Raitt and Weepin' Willie Robinson - Walking the Dog
9) Tim Robbins - Impossible Boulevard
10) Madeleine Peyroux - I Think it's Going to Rain Today
11) Mark Erelli - Here and Now
12) Kyla Middleton and Dan Zanes - Boll Weivel
13) Natalie Merchant and Friends - There is No Good Reason
14) audio documentary set to music - Land of 10,000 Homeless-Minneapolis
15) Danny Glover - My Name is Not "Those People"
16) Del Goldfarb and John Sebastian - Portable Man
17) Sonya Kitchell - So Lonely
18) Natalie Merchant and Friends - There is No Good Reason

John recommends the song Last King of May by Natalie Merchant on her Ophelia CD and "I'll Work for Your Love" on Bruce Springsteen's Magic CD, and the band The Wait.

Charlie recommends Tune Your World, The Future of Music Coalition's education events in upstate New York, and following me on Twitter.

Well-Rounded Mix 007 includes music from Billy Atwell, Austin and Elliott, Ave To, Marna Bales, Chris Elliot, The Freys, Dan Gonzalez, Gogol Bordello, Alicia Bay Laurel, Midnight Siren, Leah Siegel, Song Sparrow Research, and ThreeFifty Duo.

For all 13 artists on this show who wanted to share their music with you, consider buying their music, whether it's on a shiny piece of plastic or as a digital file. Buy a t-shirt or a hat or whatever schwag they're selling. Go see them live or make friends with them at myspace and last.fm or facebook or wherever. Tell a friend about them and share your good taste in music. Sign up to their email list or subscribe to an RSS feed. And tell them Well-Rounded Radio sent you if you can. The way the music business works is changing drastically by the day. Support the music you like and love and help change it.

2) Leah Siegel's song A Day At The River (With You And Your Lover) is from the CD Little Mule. Siegel is based in New York City and recorded the album in Seattle, Washington. Little Mule is one of the stronger, complete albums I've heard of late.

3) Billy Atwell's music was featured a long time back along with my interview with Dave Kusek, the co-author of The Future of Music book. Atwell released a CD entitled DOS, from which this song is from. Atwell also continues to score films and do various soundtrack work.

4) Gogol Bordello's Super Taranta! was released by SideOneDummy Records and was produced by Victor Van Vugt, who also also produced Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and PJ Harvey. This song is called Zina-Marina.

5) Ave To is the trio Nicholas Kolai Laget, Oddisee, and The Unknown from their disc Three Way Intersection with a mix of jazz, hip hop, and soul. The outfit works in the Washington D.C. area.

6) Dan Gonzalez's Through the Lies and the Beautiful is from his CD Public Square, his second full length CD. Gonzalez is Boston-based and also works on an education project for social justice called Columbus Day Gift Project.

7) Austin and Elliott's Truth That Hurts is from an EP of the same title. Elliott is also featured in this show with his solo work, with the song Making Up Lost Love.

8) Chris Elliot's song is Making Up Lost Love where you’ll find the title of the CD, satellite UFO jet plane or star, worked in. It makes me wants to dig out the Michael Penn CDs (or tapes, probably…). Elliot is also half of the Austin and Elliot that is also featured in this show.

9) Alicia Bay Laurel's CD is What Living’s All About: Jazz, Blues, and Other Moist Situations. This song, America the Blues, jumps out as a bit of Patti Smith meets George Carlin.

10) Marna Bales's CD is Boys Will Be Boys and the song is Wish You Hadn't Come Around. The disc was produced by her husband, drummer Jody Boyd and incorporates Bales' daughter Macy in her recordings and performances.

11) ThreeFifty Duo is Geremy Schulick and Brett Parnell from New York City and take on a mix of classical, contemporary, and original songs on their self-titled CD.

12) Midnight Siren is Karen Maria Capo and John Kelly. The song, Maybe, comes from their CD Instead of Sleeping.

13) The Freys's CD is People are Sacred and the song is Mother Moon. The band is two brothers and a cousin, Daniel, Sam, and Adam, aged 25, 22, and 21 and are based in Northern California.

Hope you enjoyed Well-Rounded Radio Mix 007…be back in a few days with our interview with Ida.

The Fleshtones have been making amazing music for more than thirty years, starting off amid the CBGB's scene of the mid 70s in New York City (with the Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Richard Hell and The Voidoids, Television, etc.) as a garage band with a lot of soul and ultimately merging into a sound they call Super Rock, which they describe as "a greasy ball of sonic and cultural influences ranging in feel from R&B, disco, and Lost In Space to garage, frat rock, and Mexican horror flicks."

The current band members include Ken Fox on bass and vocals, Bill Milhizer on drums and vocals, Keith Streng on guitar and vocals, and Peter Zaremba on lead vocals, harmonica, and organ. The Fleshtones were also recently immortalized in print with the release of Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band (Continuum Books, 2007) by Joe Bonomo. The book is a fascinating read about The Fleshtones, taking you from their origins in Whitestone, New York (just one town over from where I grew up in Flushing) in the 1970s through a variety of members who have played in the band, countless tours and albums, and up to the present. So, if you want the full story, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Vindicated! A Tribute to The Fleshtones was released in the fall of 2007 on vinyl by Larsen Records (France) and on CD by Dirty Water Records (U.K.). The album features 22 international bands (including Hoodoo Gurus, the Nomads & Handsome Dick Manitoba, the Slickee Boys, the Woggles, the Swingin' Neckbreakers, Richard Mazda, and others) covering songs spanning the Fleshtones' career.

The band has more than twenty albums to their name, and every one is a keeper. Some of my favorites include Roman Gods (1982, IRS Records), Hexbreaker (1983, IRS Records), Beautiful Light (1994, Naked Language/Ichiban Records), Laboratory of Sound (1995, Ichiban Records) to the more recent Do You Swing? and Beachhead (2003 and 2006 respectively, both on YepRoc Records). For a full discography, visit their Wikipedia page.

Their new album, Take a Good Look!, was released in late January 2008 and is also on YepRoc Records. Recorded with Jim Diamond (White Stripes, The Mooney Suzuki) at Ghetto Recorder in Detroit and in the New York City’s Lower East Side at Ivan Julian’s (guitarist/bassist in Richard Hell and The Voidoids, Isley Brothers, Matthew Sweet, Shriekback) N.Y. Hed studio.

Zaremba explains the new album’s title: “’Take a good look!’ was one of Gordon Spaeth’s favorite tag lines whenever the Fleshtones were attracting unwanted (but usually warranted) attention, which was often!” Spaeth played sax in the band for years, but passed away in 2005. Per the band, "his mock-serious, cocksure attitude is alive and well in the 21st century, as The Fleshtones offer a dozen all-original tunes testifying to pride, perseverance, and sweaty good times."

The band is out on tour, with stops in March in New Haven, Boston, Providence, Baton Rouge, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and New Orleans and in May in France, Germany, Italy, and Holland. Check out some live songs and videos of the band including Soul City, American Beat, American Beat video (from the movie Bachelor Party), Shadowline, Teenage Zombie, Right Side of a Good Thing, Hexbreaker + The Theme from the Vindicators, Jump, Jive, and Harmonize, Let's Go, Take a Walk with The Fleshtones, Accelerated Emotion, Beautiful Light, Hitsburg USA, Hard Lovin' Man, Push Up Man, The Theme From The Vindicators, Let's Get Serious, Double Dip, and a behind the scenes on the new CD, Take a Good Look.

The band also released a live DVD of a Paris performance Brooklyn à Paris! Live at La Maroquinerie DVD (Big Enough) in 2006.

I recently met with Zaremba in Brooklyn, New York to discuss:
* what it is that keeps the band going strong, 30+ years in
* how their new CD, Take a Good Luck!, was recorded and what sets it apart from many of their past albums
* how the band has responded to the various garage band revivals over the years

Photo by Anne Streng

Peter recommends The 45s, The Cynics, The Sons of Hercules, The Ugly Beats, The Maggots, The Nomads, and The Hoodoo Gurus.

Well-Rounded Radio recommends Karmafan, Tourfilter, and audio and video podcasts and webcasts from The Future of Music Coalition.

Well-Rounded Radio sixth Mix show includes Bedouin Soundclash, Ronnda Cadle, The Dave Kain Group, Ecce Hobo, Caitlin Frame, Gillian Grassie, Marco Mahler, Anne Roos, Post Oak Savannah, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, The Silver Lining, Devon Sproule, Stepladder, and The United Steelworkers of Montreal.

For all 15 artists on this show who wanted to share their music with you, consider buying their music, whether it's on a shiny piece of plastic or as a digital file. Buy a t-shirt or a hat or whatever schwag they're selling. Go see them live or make friends with them at myspace and last.fm or mog.com or wherever. Tell a friend about them and share your good taste in music. Sign up to their email list or subscribe to an RSS feed. And tell them Well-Rounded Radio sent you if you can. The way the music business works is changing drastically by the day. Support the music you like and love and help change it.

1) Stephan Catenacci's Helga's Song is a beautiful piece of acoustic music in the spirit of John Fahey or Leo Kottke, but some of the other music on his CD Anubis 2 includes some more progressive and psychedelic sounds than you might expect after hearing this track.

2) Eli "Paperboy" Reed releases his second album, Roll with You on Q Division Records in Spring 2008 and this track is It's Easier. We'll have an interview with Reed on Well-Rounded Radio when its released and you can hear how this artist in his early 20s has absorbed so much about the blues and soul and is making a splash with his music that echos back to an earlier era.

3) The Silver Lining were produced by Tony Goddess of Papa Fritas fame and is also in The Rudds, who I interviewed here on Well-Rounded Radio. Their album Well Dressed Blues has a wonderful sound that makes me think of The Mamas and the Papas, Fairport Convention, or the soundtrack from Hair. This song is In the Future.

4) Stepladder's debut album is Nice Guys Finish and this song is Balance Beam. Stepladder is a Boston band featuring Aaron Belyea on guitars and vocals, Chris Burns on drums, and Bill Fallon on bass. The CD also is a who's who of Boston musicians who also contributed to the release of well-crafted power pop.

5) Post Oak Savannah is from Powderly, Texas and their track Sixteen Miles is a great example of their sound from their debut, meshing the sounds of country, Americana, and rock.

6) Devon Sproule album is Keep Your Silver Shined and co-released by Brooklyn's City Salvage Records and Chicago's Waterbug Records. It's a strong album throughout.

8) Marco Mahler's Design in Quick Rotation is also very strong album, much of which was written while he was also working on revitalizing a log cabin in the Appalachian foothills. This song is called Study Airports.

9) Ronnda Cadle is from Decatur, Georgia and The River Run is a strong album of guitar instrumentals in the spirit of John Fahey.

10) Caitlin Frame's Give In comes from The Basic EP. Frame is a Boston artist who taught herself guitar, drums, and piano as a teen and later attended Berklee School of Music in Boston, MA.

11) Ann Roos's Who Can Sail Without the Wind? is from her Mermaids and Mariners CD, which spotlights her beautiful Celtic harp playing and Dorothy Hawkinson's fiddle playing.

12) The Dave Kain Group's A Moment in Time reflects this jazz quartet's sound from the album Citizen Kane. The group is from the New York area and Dave Kain fronts the group on guitar.

13) Bedouin Soundclash's 12:59 Lullaby is a beautiful track from the band's album Street Gospel, which was released by Side One Dummy Records. The album was recorded in Toronto by bass player Darryl Jenifer of the Bad Brains and mixed by Paul Kolderie.

14) United Steel Workers of Montreals' Kerosene and Coal was released by Weewerk Records in Canada and this track of wonderful old timey music is called Enile Bertrand.

15) Gillian Grassie also plays harp, infusing some other modern trip-hop sounds into her songs, on her EP To An Unwitting Muse, which I think is a most promising release. This track is The Surface.

16) Ecce Hobo is from the Seattle, Washington area and this song is Calling My Own Name. Where the Devil Dances is another impressive album and the band cites its influences as The Kinks, Brian Eno, Syd Barrett, and Roxy Music.

Technorati Profile

When I think back to when I first heard Pylon in 1979, I think it was on Hofstra University's radio station, WRHU, and my favorite DJ there, Jeff Foss, playing the songs Feast on My Heart and Volume amid any night's set list of amazing underground music when I was growing up in Queens, NY. I quickly bought Pylon's album Gyrate and later a 10" EP (with their earlier single and b-sides) and became a long-time fan of Pylon's music.

The band included then, and now, Randy Bewley on guitar, Vanessa Briscoe Hay's vocals, Curtis Crowe on drums, and Michael Lachowski on bass.

A brief history of Pylon? Four University of Georgia art students turned musicians inspired by the debut of music from groups such as The B-52's in Athens, Georgia formed their own band and recorded the single Cool/Dub (1979), albums Gyrate (1980) and Chomp (1983), all on DB Records, and a third album recorded during a reunion, Chain (1990) for Sky Records ...then disappeared again for too many years. A more detailed history can be found at wikipedia, the All Music Guide, and a terrific fan site.

Music fans will know that the late '70s/early '80s in Athens, Georgia was a particularly creative period of time, also birthing The B-52s, R.E.M., The Method Actors, Love Tractor, and Oh-Ok. Pylon has, in truth, gone down in musical history as one of those most original bands that may not have had huge commercial success, but who has influenced an untold number of other musicians through their approach and style. Many will also know Pylon by way of R.E.M.'s cover of their song Crazy, which appeared as a B-side and later on Dead Letter Office. When Rolling Stone named R.E.M. "America's Best Band" in 1987, R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry said, "We're not the best rock 'n' roll band in America." Pylon, he said, was the best.

Pylon, who took their name from William Faulkner's novel, often get filed under the post-punk or new wave label, which probably made sense at the time for music critics, but today it doesn't mean much and Pylon's music doesn’t sound dated in the least. Gyrate is an album with angular rhythms and a simplicity that makes the music feel utilitarian, but always had enough funk behind it that the motivation seemed to be to get you up on the dancefloor. In a similar realm to The Bush Tetras, Gang of Four, or The Au Pairs, Pylon really created a language all their own using the very traditional line-up of vocals, guitar, bass, and drums. With simple, danceable, repetitive, funky music paired with Briscoe's raspy, primal, urgent vocals, Pylon’s music was unlike anything I'd heard—or have heard since—and it still stands up.

For those that want to take a look at Pylon in action, there is video online, including a live performance of Working is No Problem from the early '80s, a live performance of the unreleased song Party Zone from the early '80s, a mini documentary from the early '80s, a live performance of Crazy and Beep from 1990, a music video of Look Alive from Chain, a live performance of Danger from 2007, and a live performance of Volume from 2007.

Sometime in October I happened upon the information that Pylon would be playing at The Mercury Lounge in Manhattan in early November and I knew it would be worth a drive from Boston. Not surprisingly, the show was amazing (with opening act Antietam, another favorite band from a slightly later era of New York-based music...and you’ll hear sound checking in the background at the start of the interview) and Pylon’s music kept the sold-out audience dancing and having a chance to enjoy their music live once again.

I sat down with Crowe and Lachowski in the band room at The Mercury Lounge before their show to discuss:

* how and why this landmark debut album was recorded
* why their main goal was to get written up in The New York Rocker
* what other plans the band has now that they’re back together

Photo credit: Jason Thrasher

If you enjoy this trip back in time, be sure to check out Well-Rounded Radio interviews with Clint Conley of consonant and Mission of Burma, Dan Zanes of The Del Fuegoes and Dan Zanes and Friends, and Jonathan Kane of Swans and Jonathan Kane's February.

I first learned about Jose Ayerve when I interviewed the members of Winterpills (check out their Well-Rounded Radio interview here), who Ayerve worked with on their two releases (Winterpills and The Light Divides), during our conversation early this year.

Spouse's frontman Ayerve sent me their latest release, Relocation Tactics, and, during a recent drive to Washington D.C. for The Future of Music Coalition summit, I listened to the album, once, twice...eventually probably about six or seven times on the drive down I-95 from Boston. Part of me kept wondering why Spouse was such a well-kept secret...and another part of me was wondering how soon I could get them on the show.

The current line up is Ayerve (vocals, guitars, and bass), Naomi Hamby (guitars, keys, and vocals), Ken Maiuri (guitars, bass, keys, and vocals), Don McAulay (drums and percussion), Michael Merenda (drums and guitars), JJ O'Connell (drums and vocals), Dan Pollard (bass, guitars, keys, and vocals), and Mark Schwaber (guitars, bass, and vocals).

While some reviews of Relocation Tactics have used the word schizophrenic to describe the diverse musical sounds and styles that the band tackles, I see it as more of all the diverse influences that the band members have creeping into the work. More bold and anthematic than earlier releases, Relocation Tactics is one of those albums where the great songs just keep on coming at you, with songwriting and performances that feels like the group has taken what they do to a whole new level.

Spouse has drawn comparisons to a variety of indie rock bands in reviews over the years, including Pavement, The Pixies, Sebadoh, The Replacements, Dinosaur Jr., and Wilco. I also hear a bit of Boy and October-era U2 through their vocal and guitar styles at that point.

Ayerve is also one of the main organizers behind Pigeon Records, an indie label of collective musicians based in Portland, Maine. Other bands on the roster include Sandra Black, Bullyclub, Dennis Crommett (who also plays in Winterpills), Lo Fine, The Mitchells, and Mark Schwaber.

Spouse has a handful of live dates with Spottiswoode & His Enemies coming up in November in Boston, Providence, New York, and Arlington, VA and more dates in December in Northampton, Chicago, Nashville, Charlotte, Knoxville, and New York City. Check here for more details.

I recently met with Ayerve in Boston to discuss:

* how and why Ayerve splits his time between Portland, Maine and Northampton, Massachusetts
* how he is juggling being both a musician and helping to run a record label
* how working musicians are currently trying to make it in the indie music realm given the constant change that all of them are managing

Highlights from the following songs are featured in the interview:
1) Long Live the Baystate (in preview) (Relocation Tactics)
2) Spouse Visits the World Bank (Relocation Tactics)
3) Japanese Sandals (Nozomi)
4) Focus (Nozomi)
5) Catch 22 (Love Can't Save This Love)
6) Pocket #9 (Love Can't Save This Love)
7) American Run-Through (Are You Gonna Kiss or Wave Goodbye?)
8) Feather Boa (Are You Gonna Kiss or Wave Goodbye?)
9) Coaster (Relocation Tactics)
10) Tonight (Relocation Tactics)
11) It = Love (Relocation Tactics)
12) Boys vs. Girls (Relocation Tactics)
13) Thunder Royale (Relocation Tactics)
14) Boyfriend in Training (Relocation Tactics)
15) Relocation Tactics (Relocation Tactics)
16) The 4.1 Blur (Relocation Tactics)
17) There Goes the Road (Relocation Tactics)
18) Turn the Van Around (Relocation Tactics)
19) Hangover Cure for Humanity (Relocation Tactics)
20) Delta (Relocation Tactics)
21) José Ayerve: Envueltos Con Ganas (unreleased)
22) The Nuclear Waste Management Company: Choke Back the Tears (Separation Anxiety)
23) Long Live the Baystate (Relocation Tactics)

If you enjoy this episode, give a listen to other interviews I've done with other indie popsters such as The Douglas Fir, Francine, Blake Hazard, Joe Pernice, Piebald, Jeffrey Simmons, and Winterpills.

José recommends: Slept, Swervedriver's Mezcal Head, U2's Pop, Blanketeer, Rogue Wave, Bullyclub, Katie Sawicki, Kristin Gass, Snowden, John Doe, and Robert Plant + Alison Krause.

Well-Rounded Radio recommends Pylon's re-release of Gyrate.

As a fan of her work in the band Tsunami, when I first heard that its singer/songwriter Jenny Toomey was working with a group of policy and legislative folks in Washington D.C. at The Future of Music Coalition, I was sort of surprised.

Toomey fronted the indie rock band Tsunami for much of the 1990s and a subsequent solo career that she continues today. She was also the co-founder of Simple Machines Records which, between 1990-1997 released over 70 records for acts including Tsunami, Scrawl, Ida, Grenadine, and Liquorice. Toomey's band mate and business partner was Kristin Thomson, who is also a Deputy and Education Director at The Future of Music Coalition. When you put it all together, though, it all makes perfect sense: Toomey is an independent musician who is still looking out for other working, independent musicians.

Today, the Future of Music Coalition’s mission statement is "a national non-profit education, research and advocacy organization that identifies, examines, interprets and translates the challenging issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. FMC achieves this through continuous interaction with its primary constituency – musicians – and in collaboration with other creator/citizen groups."

Among the issues that the coalition has focused on are music licensing, payola, low-power radio, health insurance for musicians, network neutrality, record label contracts, Internet radio licensing, and many other topics that are key to the current and future era of music-making for both independent and rising musicians.

The Future of Music Coalition is also pretty vital in an age where change is constant and the big companies have plenty of lawyers to push their agenda and financial needs. The organization is able to translate when and where policy is being made for independent musicians to help them and all the various people working in the independent music ecosystem.

I sat down with Toomey to talk about a handful of things that the organization is working on as a bit of taste of what they do. The interview is interesting for both for musicians and music fans who want to help change the way the music business works. There is a lot more to dig into and learn at their site.

I attended the Future of Music’s summit last fall in Montreal and thought it was a great two days of exchanging ideas and checking on the state of the ever-changing world of music. I came away from it really seeing how the organization is helping create a middle-class of musicians, somewhere between the mega-rich pop stars that we all know and love and the starving-artist musician that is also familiar to us all. I know that as a musician back in the 80s and 90s, I did not always think that there was an in-between, but today, thanks to the Internet and organizations like The Future of Music Coalition, the idea of a middle class of musicians has become a reality and continues to grow.

The organization’s seventh policy summit takes place in Washington D.C. on September 17-18, 2007 (and I’ll be at the summit this year, so drop me a line at charlie@wellroundedradio.net if you are attending). The summit includes a mix of industry professionals, public policy experts, and musicians with a mix of panels and parties to help educate attendees and work toward reaching collaboration. Audio podcasts of many of the panels are available online after the show. For more information, visit their event site.

You can also sign up for the Future of Music Coalition’s monthly e-mail list to keep you in the loop on progress, changes, and what you can do to help influence all these changes.

Toomey also continues to make music these days and I’ve included part of one of her songs, from her double CD Antidote, up next. The remainder of the show features independent musicians from around the world who have submitted their music to me and you can find links to all of them below.

I met with Toomey at their offices in Washington D.C. in mid July to discuss…
* what circumstances and events occurred that made her want to form such an organization
* some insight into how the music industry is changing, from the perspective of label executives, indie musicians, and the old music industry guard
* what both musicians and music fans can do to help influence the actual future of music

Music highlighted in the show includes:
1) Yoko K.: Blues of Grande Chai (012906) (in preview)
2) Jenny Toomey: Fool for You (Antidote)
3) J.E. Borgen: Bring You Back (The General Store)
4) Pro and Reg: Maybe (EP)
5) Laughing Stock: Never Met a Missionary (Who Wasn't Right) (Fading Scars)
6) Kellylee Evans: Lead Me Closer (Fight or Flight?)
7) Wedlock: Unsatisfied (Matrimoney The EP)
8) Daria: Under the Moon and Over the Sky (Feel the Rhythm)
9) Explosion: Runaway Success (For Sale)
10) The Dave Kain Group: Trickery (Citizen Kain
11) Jeff Phillips: Bird That Will Not Fly (Handful of Grimmes)
12) H'Atina: Compare
13) Ronnda Cadle: Columbus Returns (The River Runs)
14) Bob Harp: Somewhere (Good Misery)
15) Matthew Pop: Promise (The Great Demise)

Well-Rounded Radio recommends The Covers Project.

And if you enjoy this episode, give a listen to other interviews I've done with music industry thought-leaders, including Brent Bell of PDX Pop Now!, Panos Panay of Sonicbids, Tim Westergren of Pandora, Brad Powell of Calabash Music, Nicholas Reville of Downhill Battle, and Dave Kusek, co-author of "The Future of Music" book.

My wife's family lives in and around Portland, Oregon, so at least a couple of times a year we head west from Boston to visit. The last few times I've picked up copies of the PDX Pop Now! two-disc CD compilations that have been released since 2004. Portland, or PDX as the city has been come to be known due to its airport's truncated ID, has long had a healthy music scene, but the compilations showed how diverse and robust the city's musical offerings had gotten. Each year PDX Pop Now! also puts on a 3-day, all-ages, free festival in Portland, usually in late July/early August (this year's dates are August 3-5, 2007) which brings together many of the artists featured on the CDs in a live setting that is nearly impossible to resist.

From a musical perspective, Portland's often been the step-child to Seattle, being overshadowed by its musical trends over the years, even though the two scenes have also often fostered each other. Lots of big touring artists skip playing Portland altogether when they cross the US, but maybe ultimately that's a good thing. The music scene has gone through many changes over the years (and you can read up more on the history of music in Portland and Oregon on wikipedia), but recent times have made it a varied and robust city of musical offerings. Portland's music doesn't feel or sound much like a scene that will suddenly explode with major labels trolling the city's clubs for the next big thing as much as simply a city with all the right economic and lifestyle ingredients that it needs to foster and sustain a healthy music culture for the long-haul.

In addition to the up-and-coming artists featured on and at PDX Pop Now!, a number of Portland-based artists who have gone on to national or international success have also contributed songs and played live over the previous four years, including The Decemberists, The Helio Sequence, Kristen Hersh, Lifesavas, Menomena, Mirah, The Shins, Sleater-Kinney, Talkdemonic, The Thermals, M. Ward, and others.

Beyond the great music, what interested me most about PDX Pop Now! is that the organization is volunteer-run, which by its nature changes the reasons for such a festival and compilation and is quite a different setting than a CMJ or SXSW festival. They also confess to wanting to keep it local, so I thought I'd include this show not so much because they want PDX Pop Now! to become a destination festival, but to sample the great musical acts on the compilation CDs and to provide some ideas and background for music fans in other parts of the world who might want to create their own local music event in the spirit of what PDX Pop Now! is doing.

In 2006, PDX Pop Now! also released a DVD featuring live performances from 2005's festival, all of which you can now watch on YouTube. And, although this show focuses on the artists on the 2007 compilation, I can guarantee that if you like what you hear, you’ll also enjoy the compilations from 2004, 2005, and 2006, all of which are available via CD Baby for $7 each. This year's disc is also available all around Portland or from CD Baby as well.

This year, the PDX Pop Now! festival takes place August 3-5, 2007 with shows being held at AudioCinema in the SE warehouse district. More schedule info available at their site, natch.

For those of you in Portland, PDX Pop Now! will be presenting a free, late afternoon concert on Wednesday, July 25th on the steps of Portland City Hall with music with art-punk Americana deconstructionists Old Time Relijun, improvisational trio The Watery Graves and an additional act to be announced.

I met with Brent Bell of PDX Pop Now! in December 2006 to discuss:

* what their initial goals were with the festival and how they've changed
* how they work with volunteers, bands, local music fans, and the city to organize the event
* some suggestions for other music fans who might be thinking of putting on their own event or CD compilation in their corner of the world.

Songs featured in the interview from the 2007 compilation (all with their permission) include:

1) Syndel - Let Me Hear it
2) Yacht – See a Penny (Pick it Up)
3) Hungry Mob – To The People
4) The Hugs - North
5) Evolutionary Jass Band - Phyllis' Frindge
6) The World Court - Maps
7) Laura Gibson – Come By Storm
8) Panther – How Well Can You Swim?
9) Mirah And Spectratone International - Community
10) The Better to See You With - Garden
11) Ethan Rose – Ceiling Song 3 (Excerpt)
12) Nice Boys – Johnny Guitar
13) Black Elk – Toss You to the Wolves
14) Run on Sentence – Carrie Part II
15) Swim Swam Swum – Without Your French
16) The Robot Ate Me - Empty Feelings
17) Menomena - Wet and Rustling
18) The Shaky Hands - Soul

About two years ago I interviewed the members of The Stairs on the eve of their final shows as several members were following the calling of higher education. The Stairs released two albums, 2002's Miraculous Happens and 2005's On Sleep Lab, both of which were brilliant and ambitious pieces of rock and roll with instrumentation and a scale that defied its lo-fi production and budget. So, if you want the full story, make sure you listen to this, too.

Around the same time as The Stairs were ending, Ryan Walsh, vocalist + guitarist and one of the band's songwriters, and Eric Meyer, The Stairs' drummer, formed Hallelujah the Hills and started recruiting new members. The band now includes David Bentley (cello + guitar), Elio DeLuca (organ, Moog, guitar + sampler), Joseph Marrett (bass), and Brian Rutledge (trumpet + melodica). The outfit recorded their debut, Collective Psychosis Begone in 2006, signed to Misra Records early in 2007, and it was just released on June 5th. The band is heading on tour now, hitting a number of cities along the east coast and mid-west.

Hallelujah the Hills have been compared to the Elephant 6 (the collective of bands and musicians who emerged from Louisiana in the mid 90s that includes The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, and Beulah among many others), The Mountain Goats, Guided by Voices, and Wilco. I suppose there is some truth to these, but what sets Hallelujah the Hills apart is Walsh is a versatile songwriter first, with the layers of instruments and arrangements that are added to them only serving to build upon a strong foundation.

Hallelujah the Hills' name comes from a 1963 film directed by Adolphas Mekas which is not easy to find (and Netflix doesn’t have it to rent!), but you can watch a few clips of the absurdist comedy here and here where you can also purchase a VHS copies.

Collective Psychosis Begone only runs about 46 minutes, but Hallelujah the Hills has crafted an epic album that takes the listener through an impressive variety of musical sounds, styles, and emotions. After listening, I have the same kind of exhausted and invigorated feeling I get from other epic records, like Sandinista!, Exile on Main Street, Let Me Come Over, or Slanted and Enchanted. Not to put the pressure on 'em, but I wonder where a double (or triple) album from Hallelujah the Hills might take us…?

And, as a result of listening to Collective Psychosis Begone as complete album (remember them?) for many months, I thought it would be most interesting to do a behind the scenes look at each song or a "director’s commentary," as film-school grad Walsh so accurately called it.

Hallelujah the Hills heads out on tour in mid-June and you can also see a video clip that Well-Rounded Radio taped of the band live at TT the Bear's several months to the right or on our Brightcove channel.

I recently met with all the members (except Eric Meyer, who was on tour with his other band, Ho-ag) in Norwood, Massachusetts to discuss:

* whose voice is it that they sampled in Raise the Flag?
* is Sleep Agent about terrorism—or about what happens when you awake?
* why do they call their eponymous anthem The Fight Song?

Songs featured in the interview (all in order from Collective Psychosis Begone) include:

1) Hallelujah the Hills (in preview)
2) Slow Motion Records Broken at Break Neck Speeds (demo; not on album)
3) Sleeper Agent (Just Waking Up)
4) Wave Backwards to Massachusetts
5) Hallelujah the Hills
6) The House Is All Lit Up
7) Raise the Flag of Your Sibling’s Favorite Daydream
8) (The Crux of the Camera Man)
9) Slow Motion Records Broken at Break Neck Speeds
10) Effie’s on the Other Side
11) The Trap
12) Collective Psychosis Begone
13) It’s All Been Downhill Since the Talkies Started to Sing
14) To All My Scientist Colleagues I Bid Your Farewell

Photo credit: JB Galusha

If you enjoyed this interview, give a listen to past shows we've done with Winterpills,
Piebald,
Francine,
and, of course, The
Stairs in the Well-Rounded Radio archives.

Brian recommends Machine Go Boom.

David recommends Andrew Bird, Devin Davis, and Spoon.

Joseph recommends (which HtH band-member Eliio DeLuca also plays in), Tulsa, Viva Viva, Roky Erickson, ESG, and Nick Cave.

Ryan recommends Ford and Fitzroy.

Well-Rounded Radio recommends Enough Project and Operation Happy Note (read more at Washington Post)..

Sonicbids is an online service that offers musicians a way to submit their EPK, or electronic press kit, to a number of outlets for consideration. These including clubs and live venues, compilation CDs, festivals, songwriting contests, film, television, + commercial licensing, magazines, awards, college bookings, podcasts, Internet radio, and plenty of other opportunities, as they call them.

The company was founded in 2001 by Panos Panay and is still run by him today. And as of May 2007, Sonicbids is coming up on 100,000 members and 80,000 promoters from more than 100 countries around the globe.

Plus, I like to produce the occasional show with a music industry thought leader given how much the relationship is changing between musicians, the music industry, and fans in this Internet era. This show is probably most helpful for musicians and the companies that are looking for music, but I’ve mixed in music from 20 different Sonicbids members, so it’s a fun listen for everyone else, too.

I won’t say more than that because 1) I think Panay and I covered pretty much everything about how Sonicbids came to be and what some of their larger goals are as the proverbial playing field gets flattened and 2) because it’s a pretty long interview and we should get right to it!

And forgive a bit of the echo in the interview. We conducted the interview in Sonicbids’ office and, as part of a big, funky tech-space, it is had that kind of natural ambiance, but…it will help you pretend you were really there.

In early March I met with Panay at Sonicbids’ office in Boston’s South End neighborhood to discuss:

* what was his inspiration for starting Sonicbids…and the series of events that led up to it
* some of the advantages for both musicians and the opportunities for connecting this way online
* some of his personal goals that he is hoping Sonicbids can achieve in the music world

Musicians featured in the interview include:

1) Somebody's There from Alex Giordani
2) California from Jay Wells
3) Giving You Away Andy Scisco
4) Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache) by Girl Howdy
5) Cat's Crystal by Poppy Nosh
6) Hot Stuff by The Specimen
7) See You by City Fritter
8) Spancil Hill by Murder the Stout
9) Like I'm Crazy by Kwanza Jones
10) Rolling Hills by Adam Zampino
11) Goodbye by Ever-G
12) Temptations by Emer
13) Walking in Circles by The Brothers Lekas
14) Ringing in Your Ears by Chris Peters
15) Die Slow by DP Da Reapa
16) Bashana Haba'a by The Alexandria Kletzet
17) The Tide by DelHill
18) Child Inbetween by The Pucks
19) Un Amor Antigo by Suzana
20) Drink Instead by Shay Dillon
21) Weird World by KS
22) Easy Come, Easy Go by David Spence
23) track #4 by Copus
24) Ibou by Mamadou
25) Smile on Your Face by The Smiling Strangers

Brooklyn, New York-based Antibalas is a collective of up to 17 musicians whose origins were in celebrating Afrobeat music, made famous by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in Nigeria in the 1970s. Since their origins in 1998, the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra has changed their name to simply Antibalas, but continues to infuse Afrobeat, funk, jazz, Latin, soul, and classical elements into their music to keep it growing in new directions.

In Spanish, Antibalas means “anti-bullets” or “bulletproof.” The line-up on their latest CD, Security, includes Amayo (Vocals, Congas), Victor Axelrod (Organ, Electric Pianos, Clavinet, Electric Celeste, Synthesizers), Eric Biondo (Trumpet), Stuart Bogie (Tenor Saxophone), Marcus Ferrar (Shekere), Dylan Fusillo (Shekere, Congas), Marcos J. Garcia (Guitar, Vocals), Aaron Johnson (Trombone), Nick Movshon (Bass), Luke O'Malley (Guitar), Martin Perna (Baritone Saxophone), Jordan McLean (Trumpet, Flugelhorn), and Chris Vatalaro (Drums).

Many of these New York-based musicians also perform in a number of other New York bands, including Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and The Budos Band. Over the years, members have shared the stage and studios with artists as diverse as Medeski, Martin and Wood, TV on the Radio, Baaba Maal, and Gomez.

The list of influences to these musicians would be a hefty one, but during our conversation they do provide insight into some musical forces who have made an impression beyond Fela, including Fugazi, Bob Marley, Talking Heads, and Eddie Palmieri and the Harlem River Drive Orchestra.

Antibalas have released four albums to date including Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1 in 2001 and Talkatif in 2002, both on Ninja Tune Records. Who is This America? was released in 2004 on Ropeadope Records and their newest, Security, was released in early March 2007 on ANTI- Records.

Security was produced by John McEntire (a member of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake and producer of Stereolab and Tom Zé among many others) and recorded at Soma, his renown Chicago recording studio.

Fela Kuti was also well-known for his political views and activism (he was famously quoted as saying “music is the weapon of the future”) and politics is an essential ingredient in Afrobeat. Antibalas bring this element to their music both by writing about political subjects and also raising awareness about political and social issues, such as food co-ops, prison reform, reduction of auto use, and anti-corporate culture.

At their show at Cambridge’s Middle East, Antibalas’ audience was as much as a mix as the band themselves: black, white, college students, middle-aged, fans of funk, jazz, and jam bands. Truly, Antibalas is keeping the mission of Afrobeat alive.

A special thanks to the folks at the Middle East for letting me record the interview in their ticket office.

I recently sat down with Martin Perna, who founded Antibalas, and Stuart Bogie in Cambridge, Massachusetts just before their show to discuss:

* how the band is a very real democracy, in every sense of the word
* how a band with so many recording and touring members make it happen
* why Antibalas incorporates so many elements of politics and social change into their music

Antibalas is currently on tour around the world. Catch them if and when you can!

Photo credit: Michael DiDonna

Songs included in the interview with Antibalas include:

1) Filibuster X (Security) (in preview)
2) The Big Man (Who is This America?)
3) Uprising (Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1)
4) Who is This America Dem Speak of Today? (Who is This America?)
5) Elephant (Who is This America?)
6) Beaten Metal (Security)
7) I.C.E. (Security)
8) Sanctuary (Security)
9) War Hero (Security)
10) Age (Security)
11) Hilo (Security)

If you enjoyed this interview with Antibalas, give a listen to interviews with Atlas Soul, Lovewhip, and Balla Tounkara in the Well-Rounded Radio archives.

Antibalas recommends Celebration, El Michel's Affair, Of Montreal, Pedro the Lion, and Talib Kweli.

Well-Rounded Radio recommends Antiwar.com, After Downing Street, and Rock the Earth.

I first heard Winterpillls when singer and keyboardist Flora Reed sent me a copy of their debut back in 2005. As a publicist for Signature Sounds Records, an independent label in Western Massachusettts with a focus on folk music, she had helped me with an earlier interview I did with Josh Ritter (check out the Well-Rounded Radio interview from when Hello Starling was first released) and Reed sent me a copy of this new band she was playing in.

Winterpills came across as a breath of fresh air: a delicate and perfect interplay of harmonies between a man and woman's voices, chiming, tasteful guitars, but all with an urgency in the lyrics and songwriting which made for an impressive debut.

The band members all had earlier and have concurrent solo projects: Reed released one solo disc with 2002’s Settle Down on Soft Alarm Music. Price released two solo records: 2002’s 13 Songs for Right Now and 2003’s Honey in the Chemicals (a screenplay), both on Listen Here Records. Crommett and Hower worked together in Spanish for Hitchhiking with their debut, The Starling, in 2004 on Captive Ring Records. Crommett released The Evening Sorrow in 2006 on Pigeon Records, which also includes musical performances by fellow Winterpills. We’ll get to hear some samples from these other projects in the interview. The band members have also performed in a variety of other bands, including Feet Wet, Gay Potatoes, The Maggies, Memorial Garage, and The Nields.

This group of musicians found themselves crossing paths and sharing the stage in different incarnations and, or so the story goes, Price and Reed found themselves playing music in someone’s living room and discovered the way their two voices intertwined and complemented each others. Likely not something anyone would have thought listening to their solo efforts, but it is at the crux of what makes the band’s sound so alluring.

Winterpills does what all great bands do, bringing together some disparate and perfectly-matched skills to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Carefully crafted, somewhat timeless songs are the result.

Their 2005 release received a number of critical rave reviews in The Washington Post, The Big Takeover, No Depression, and others. Their new CD, The Light Divides, was produced by Dave Chalfant, José Ayerve, and Winterpills. It was released by Signature Sounds and Soft Alarm Records in late February. The band is out on a tour in March and April 2007 of the east coast, midwest and several shows at SXSW.

For me, it didn't quite click at first listen as their debut did, but upon a number of listens, The Light Divides started to pay off as an even stronger album, showcasing how both Price's songwriting and the band's interplay of musical elements can work together seamlessly to establish different moods. You can currently stream the full album from their site.

Winterpills don’t get reviewed without people like Elliot Smith, Simon and Garfunkel, Low, and Iron and Wine getting discussed. When I hear the band, I tend to think of the late 60s, as if Winterpills could have played alongside the Los Angeles music scenes that brought us Love or The Byrds or the San Francisco scene that fostered Jefferson Airplane. Were they playing then, they’d likely be considered folk-rock, a phrase that today seems to mean something very different…

On Winterpills’ myspace page, they also cite influences such as The Innocence Mission, Stars, Elliott Smith, X, Joni Mitchell, Bjork, Stephen Merritt, Neil Young, George Harrison, ABBA, Sun Kil Moon, Harry Nilsson, Leonard Cohen, Elton John, and Sam Beam of Iron and Wine.

Winterpills are based in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts, which includes the college towns of Northampton and Amherst. The area is known for its musical roots from the 1980s as the birthplace of indie rock bands Dinosaur Jr., Buffalo Tom (including Bill Janovitz; check out his Well-Rounded Radio interview), and in the 90s the Scud Mountain Boys (Joe Pernice’s first band; check out his Well-Rounded Radio interview), but over the last ten plus years, The Pioneer Valley has become a regular home for a wide variety of musicians from folk and indie rock, to noise and metal. There’s no Seattle or Minneapolis or San Diego sound here (luckily for them), but it clearly is a place that musicians and a wide range of artists find it easy to call home and hopefully will stay that way.

I recently met with the band outside of Northampton to discuss:
* what it is about the Pioneer Valley that makes it such a good place for musicians
* where and how the band recorded their two CDs
* and discover a few of their favorite things from some random questions I throw their way…

Photo: Ana Price-Eckles

Highlights of songs featured in the Winterpills interview include:
1) Winterpills: A Ransom (The Light Divides (in preview)
2) Winterpills: July (The Light Divides)
3) Winterpills: Laughing (Winterpills)
4) Philip Price: Man Down (Honey in the Chemicals (a screenplay))
5) Spanish for Hitchhiking: Tonight We Take the Place (The Starling)
6) Flora Reed: Settle Down (Settle Down)
7) Winterpills: Threshing Machine (Winterpills)
8) Winterpills: Found Weekend (Winterpills)
9) Winterpills: Pills for Sarah (Winterpills)
10) Winterpills: A Folded Cloth (The Light Divides)
11) Winterpills: You Don't Live Long Enough (The Light Divides)
12) Winterpills: Hide Me (The Light Divides)
13) Winterpills: Shameful (The Light Divides)
14) Winterpills: Hankerchiefs (The Light Divides)
15) Winterpills: Broken Arm (The Light Divides)

If you enjoy Winterpills, give a listen to past interviews with Joe Pernice, Blake Hazard, Francine, and Great Lake Swimmers.

Winterpills recommends Kamikaze Hearts, Spouse, José Ayerve, Rose Polenzani, and The Fawns. Other favorites linked to from here.

Well-Rounded Radio recommends 41pounds.org, Shut Down Day, and OpenCongress.

The first time I learned about Frank Morey was in an article in the Boston Phoenix by Ted Drozdowski a few years back. I found a few Morey's CDs on cdbaby.com and at Boston's now-defunct Hi-Fi Records store and, as cynical as I am, I was a little surprised that Morey was not already some huge musical commodity...

Morey’s earlier CDs include Bourbon Soaked Halo from 1998, Father John’s Medicine in 2000, and Cold in Hand and The Delmark Sessions (released by Delmark Records), both of which came out in 2002.

Morey’s back up band consists of drummer and percussionist Scott Pittman who was the drummer for and co-founded The Shods. Pittman plays a drum set up based on a 1920’s traps kit and you can see some pictures on Morey's web site. Andrew Bergmann recently replaced Joe “Tub” Faria on upright bass and he also performs in a jazz duo called Troglodytes. MADE IN USA also includes musical guests Pam Murray, Bryan MacAuslan, Eileen Rose, and long-time collaborator and producer Peter Linnane. This latest disc was recorded at Wonka Sound by Bob Nash.

Based in Lowell, Massachusetts, an industrial city northwest of Boston where Jack Kerouac spent much of his youth before heading out on the road. Morey is still based in Lowell and speaks in the interview about how this city with its industrial roots also has influenced him and his writing. As often quoted, Morey says, "You can sit down in some bar in Lowell and there’s going to be somebody in that place that you couldn’t invent. They’re beautiful and crazy and for some reason they all want to sit next to me."

As such, Morey’s world is filled with characters desperately in love or caught in the pain of heartbreak, sinners seeking salvation, sinners who don’t care to be saved, and folks who are down on their luck or brimming with optimism. He tells his stories not in linear paths, but through painting part of a picture and letting you connect the rest of the dots. It’s not often these days that you consciously pay attention to a songwriter's words, but Morey’s work certainly does demand it.

Morey is known for playing residencies in a number of cities, including Lowell, Boston, Worcester, and New York. He’s done several tours over the years and is heading to Europe later this year. Visit his gigs page to find out when and where he’s performing and to sign up for his email list.

A special thanks to the owners of the Cambridge pub The Plough and Stars for letting me record the interview at their pub. These fine folks include Brendan Curhs, Jennifer Lockwood, and Tim Carey. And, just to prove that Well-Rounded Radio doesn’t record our interviews in some antiseptic, soundproof studio in midtown Manhattan, you’ll get a bit of the ambiance of a real pub (or its basement, I should say!) through some of the audio in the background! Listen and see what I mean…

I recently met with Morey to discuss:
* how he got into playing music and how some musical legends have inspired him
* how religion has played a role in forming him and his work
* and proof that he isn’t faking that voice in the music in the least

Songs highlighted in the interview include:
1) No Good (MADE IN USA) (in preview)
2) Freight Train (MADE IN USA)
3) Murder in Boston (Father's John Medicine )
4) Blame it on the Devil (The Delmark Sessions )
5) Dry Up (The Delmark Sessions)
6) Baby, Don't Leave The Light On (The Delmark Sessions)
7) Must be Hard (To Be So Pretty) (MADE IN USA)
8) Lord Have Mercy (When I Lay My Burden Down) (MADE IN USA)
9) Standing on a Corner (MADE IN USA)
10) You're My Jesus (MADE IN USA)
11) North Atlantic Line (MADE IN USA)
12) This Ol' Life (Seems to Be Taking Forever) (MADE IN USA)
13) I Stopped Believing in You Today (MADE IN USA)

Frank recommends Melvern Taylor, Bob Martin, Eileen Rose, Peter Linnane, The Beat Awfuls, The Drug Rug, Darkbuster, and The Preacher Jack.

Pandora is a leader amid a growing group of web sites and services that look to the user to provide their insight about what kind of music or media we like and then the recommendation engine offers up other artists and music to help expose us to new music. Some others include last.fm, Tagworld, Mercora, and LAUNCHcast.

I had the opportunity to meet with Tim Westergren, Pandora's Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, who has been traveling across the country in recent months meeting with listeners at town hall gatherings. Westergren was in New England for town hall meetings in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. To see if Westergren will be in your neck of the woods, visit blog.pandora.com.

If you’re new to Pandora, it’s free to use and easy to sign up. Visit pandora.com and all you need to divulge is your age, zip code, and an email address. For either Mac or PC users, you’ll also need to have Flash, at least version 7, which can download for free.

Apologies to our listeners outside the US; Pandora currently isn’t able to provide streaming of its service beyond the US due to rights’ licensing, but based on my conversation with Westergren, that may be coming in the future...but if non-US listeners have other similar services they are using, post a comment on them below and tell us your experience.

The roots of Pandora come from the Music Genome Project, which was started in late 1999/early 2000 by Westergren along with a group of other musicians in San Francisco to help listeners discover new music based on their existing tastes.

Analyzing millions of individual songs, Pandora essentially assigns traits to each tracks, choosing from a list of hundreds of characteristics, such as melody, harmony, form, and instrumentation so that someone who likes one song with particular attributes will get some help in discovering other songs in that vein. The listener can tell Pandora if likes each track or not, giving it a thumbs up or down...or you can simple let the service select songs on its own, ultimately taking you off in different directions and offering up music that you either might or might not already know.

Pandora's stream is 128 kilobits per second so the quality of the audio is quite good. It does, also, require a broadband Internet connection. For music fans who want to find out more about more about the service or for artists who want to learn how to submit their work for consideration, visit pandora's faq.

The word Pandora means "all gifted" which can be traced back to ancient Greek mythology, when Pandora received a variety of gifts from the Gods, including the gift of music, from Apollo. She was, so the story goes, a little on the curious side. The company behind Pandora state they want to "celebrate that virtue and have made it our mission to reward the musically curious among us with a never-ending experience of music discovery." And, as I always enjoy busting a myth, take a read through wikipedia to read how it wasn’t actually a box at all...

We recently met in Cambridge, Massachusetts while Westergren was in New England for town halls to discuss:

* what Westergren, the listeners, and the company get from his town hall gatherings.
* some of the other jobs Westergren has held over the years and helped him with creating Pandora
* what percentage of Pandora listeners are buying more music—and how many are buying less.

Photo credit: Rafael Fuchs

If you enjoyed this interview, also give a listen to interviews with Brad Powell of Calabash Music and Dave Kusek of The Future of Music book.

And I also wanted to mention a new format of show that I’ve added to the feed: it’s called the Well-Rounded Radio Mix and is an hour-long mix of "quality music from every genre" featuring independent music in the shape of a mix tape that you might give or get from a friend. Subscribe to our RSS feed to listen to the show and I’m planning on adding these to the feed each month.