When Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero of Rodrigo y Gabriela were both sixteen years old, they applied to the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City and both were rejected. This may have been the best thing that ever happened to the pair, setting them off on a fiercely independent and largely […]
New Music Release
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Real Estate celebrated the release of Daniel, their ninth album over 15 years, by dropping by Studio A to play a few tunes. As frontman Martin Courtney explained in my chat with him and bassist Alex Bleeker, Martin’s daughter gave Kacey Musgraves’ album, Golden Hour, a lot of play around the house. Courtney […]
Twenty-five years into their career, Kings of Leon sounds like a band that has a deep appreciation and gratitude for holding the group (and the family) together and having the opportunity to build upon their remarkable body of work. The new album is Can We Please Have Fun and it was a pleasure […]
Jesse Malin has been building and nurturing the music scene in the five boroughs for over forty years. He is essentially the New York Mayor of Rock and he makes friends wherever he goes. Through the decades he’s played countless benefit shows and spearheaded more than a few efforts to […]
Here’s a quick peek at the interview – video courtesy of WFUV graduate fellow Maya Sargent Listen to full interview with music here: I’m very happy to be able to post this full one hour radio show recorded 7/19/2023 from 9 – 10p on WFUV. I’ve always been a huge […]
WFUV’s longtime pals Deer Tick celebrated the release of their new album, Emotional Contracts, with a visit to our Bronx studios in June 2023. In this WFUV Live session, American alternative rock-folk band Deer Tick was loose and having a few laughs while warming up and they tore through three […]
The music of Hermanos Gutiérrez brings you to another place. It’s a place of saguaro cacti and miles of sun-baked sand. If you’re a fan of spaghetti Westerns, it may suggest a love of Ennio Morricone and perhaps even evoke images of characters named Blondie, Angel Eyes, and Tuco in […]
American blues, country, and Americana singer, guitarist, and songwriter Charley Crockett is back with a new album, The Man from Waco. It’s a laconic, elegant song cycle that tells the story of a fictional character who has some things in common with the artist but who has a life of […]
Sting is the rarest of artists. In 1978 – the year he first visited New York, “Roxanne” established him as one of the great voices in music and a formidable songwriter who would go on to pen the most played song on the radio ever. (Which one is revealed in […]
The song “Witchoo” explodes right out of the speakers. It’s undeniable and a no-brainer pick for one of my top ten songs of the year. (And now that it’s October I better start pondering what the other nine are.) It turns out the band behind the song have crafted an […]
I had a chance to speak with British singer-songwriter David Gray for WFUV about his album Skellig that came out earlier this year. He’s an excellent conversation partner and he offered great insight into the album while also sharing some fascinating and entertaining tidbits drawn from his lifetime. Here’s the unedited Zoom […]
The Go-Go’s have released their first new song in almost two decades and “Club Zero” will likely make you realize how much you missed them. If you weren’t around in the Eighties, when they helped to define the sound of that decade, it may introduce you to this band whose […]
I spoke with Josh Ritter about his new EP of rare and unreleased songs, See Here, I Have Built You A Mansion. Josh also created the cover art and is an engaging conversationalist. Hear our conversation here.
Hate for Sale by The Pretenders, the follow-up to 2016’s Alone, was unleashed this month. In this freewheeling conversation with me archived on WFUV-FM, Chrissie Hynde names her favorite three Pretenders songs and covers an impressive amount of ground. Listen to it here.
Steve Earle’s new album is called Ghosts of West Virginia. In this recorded interview, Steve chats with me about what inspired the songs on the album and covers some wide-ranging topics. Steve performs 4 of the songs in a WFUV Live session. The interview can be heard, and performances can […]
This past Thursday on WFUV, all the jocks immersed themselves and anyone listening in the world of 1969. With references to cultural tidbits from politics, film, television, popular culture, and only one mention that it was my birth year, we did a deep dive on the phenomenal music that year […]
In September I had a golden opportunity for a lifelong fan of ZZ Top, an invitation to talk with Billy Gibbons for about an hour in front of an audience at The Iridium. The show was taped for Speakeasy TV who distribute the show through PBS. It is airing tonight […]
With ties to the Catskills as well as New York, Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds have built a reputation as a stomping, brass-soaked, eight-piece live band rooted in traditional rhythm and blues. The band’s new album, Gold, is released as a solo work by Sister Sparrow although The Dirty […]
Andrew Hozier-Byrne, who records as Hozier, is friendly and unassuming in person. I met him on a Friday afternoon in September in the photograph-lined offices of Columbia Records on Madison Avenue following a busy week in which the 28-year-old Irishman performed three sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre and also […]
The video for the new song Roman Cars was released this week following a show by Bill Janovitz and Chris Colbourn in Soho this month that was unusual in a couple of ways. It offered the chance to see Buffalo Tom as a drummer-less duo and do it in the homey, […]
Adam Clayton of U2 called me while I was on air at WFUV on Wednesday night! The occasion was the release of You’re The Best Thing About Me, the first new album track from Songs of Experience which will be released on December 1st. They also performed the song on the […]
Tina Guo, the exciting and accomplished cellist and erhu player, turned up in New York this week. Her first love as well as her first training was in the classical realm but Guo’s playing evinces an enthusiasm for music across a wide array of genres. The Shanghai born, California raised and based […]
Thievery Corporation are back with a new album, The Temple Of I & I, that was recorded in Jamaica and is the most dramatic manifestation of their career-long fascination with the music of that island. When Rob Garza and Eric Hilton first got together in DC in the mid 90s […]
As anyone vaguely aware of Talib Kweli knows, the man can spit with the best of ’em and arguably offers more thought-provoking words per song than anyone in the game. The lyrics of Palookas from 2011’s Gutter Rainbows – “You ain’t gotta verse better than my worse one” – would […]
Anything Could Happen: Tommy Stinson Talks Bash & Pop 2.0 – Anything Could Happen by Bash & Pop released 1/20/17 Nothing not to like about the new Bash & Pop record. Tommy Stinson, now safely nestled upstate in Hudson, got some pals together in his home studio with the intention […]