Stereo Embers: The Podcast

"Detroit Soul" The six-time Grammy-Award winning Don Was' resume has more highlights than a Steph Curry career retrospective. It's just three pointer after three pointer with this guy. The Detroit-born musician, producer, film composer, documentarian and record executive got his start in the high school outfit The Saturns, but his band Was (Not Was) is the one that put him on the musical map. A kind of New Wave soul outfit, Was (Not Was) put out a handful of fabulous albums, and had a few hits before calling it a day. From there he became the music director and consultant for movies like Thelma and Louise, Toy Story, Honeymoon in Vegas and The Paper. He produced albums by the B-52's, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan, directed the Brian Wilson documentary I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, and snagged an Emmy for his work on the CBS special "The Beatles: The Night That Changed America." Remember, this is just a partial list. He's hosted a show on Sirius XM, been i

"Bloodbrothers" The Bronx-born Richard Blum took his love of wrestling and Catskill Mountains humor and created Handsome Dick Manitoba, the wildly charismatic frontman of the legendary proto-punk outfit The Dictators. Along with his childhood best friend Scott Kempner, Andy Shernoff, Ross Friedman and Stu Boy King, The Dictators tore out of the gate with all the fuel-injected energy of the MC5, and absolutely demolished the stage with high octane live shows that were nothing short of legendary. Although not huge commercial successes, albums like Go Girl Crazy! and Manifest Destiny were instant classics and still sound as urgent and alive as they did over 40 years ago. So why weren't they commercial successes? I don't know. The Ramones had their leather jackets, and The New York Dolls had their sleazy glamour, but hook of The Dictators was a mystery? I mean, come on--a fevered cultural cauldron of cars, girls, television, and raging weekends, The Dictators' hook was simple: it was an adrenalized and fevered v

"Anniversary" Abigail Lapell is one of the most arresting voices in modern music. The Canadian-born singer-songwriter has been on an undeniable winning streak since her 2011 debut album Survivor. She followed that up with stunners like 2017's Hide Nor Hair, 2022's Stolen Time and her brand new one Anniversary. We'll get to Anniversary in a second but before we do, here are a few things to know about Abigail. Aside from snaring honors like the Canadian Folk Music Award, the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award, the Toronto-based musician has scored a Canadian folk radio #1, logged close to 50 million streams and been quietly forging a reputation as a heart-stopping live performer, knocking people out at SXSW, the Edmonton Folk Fest and POP Montreal. Her new album was recorded with Tony Dekker of the Great Lake Swimmers in a 200 year old church in Niagara on the Lake and it's a riveting listen. Filled with haunting percussion, musical precision, and folky finesse, Anniversary is one of the most achingly beautifu

"The Clocks Are Out Of Time" The East London outfit The Jack Rubies may have gotten their start in 1987 and quickly fired off two brilliant albums--1988's Fascinatin' Vacation and 1990's See The Money In My Smile--but that was it; they literally dropped off the musical map. And it was a weird disappearance because they were poised for big things--they had critical acclaim, they'd toured with The Triffids, They Might Be Giants, Modern English and the Blow Monkeys and were fan favorites on MTV's 120 Minutes. So what happened? Where did they go? Well, the short answer to the first question is, they went on hiatus. And the short answer to the second question is New York, North Carolina and England. That clears nothing up, right? Let me help a bit: The musical landscape was changing, things got weird with their record company, they were young men acutely aware of getting older and it just didn't seem to make sense to go on. I'm oversimplifying, but that's kind of the gist of it. The band's singer Ian Wright will

"Good Thing" Her new album might be called The #1 Zookeeper (Of The San Diego Zoo) but Abby Hamilton does not hail from San Diego. The singer/songwriter was born and raised a little over two thousand miles away in Wilmore, Kentucky. Hamilton's family was a musical one--so much so, in fact, that she has aunts who sang in a Southern Gospel group called The Hamilton Family. But lineage aside, what Abby started to realize when she was in college is that artists like Bruce Springsteen, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt and Jason Isbell have been having musical conversations with each other through their art and she wanted in on that dialogue of collective consciousness. Well, she's in. Her album is a startling and thoughtful blend of rootsy swagger, blissful Americana and lyrical smarts. It's one of the most riveting and fully-formed debuts in recent memory. www.abbyhamiltonmusic.com (http://www.abbyhamiltonmusic.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.bombshellradio.com (http

"Revolución to Roxy" Yes, the London-born guitarist and producer Phil Manzanera is part of one of the greatest bands of all time, but that really isn't the story. It's just part of it. Like, 10% of it. Which is crazy when you think of the cultural impact of Roxy Music, but the fact is, Manzanera has lived an interesting life that goes far beyond his tenure in an influential rock and roll band. His book Revolucion to Roxy explains everything and after you hit the first chapter you'll see his origin story isn't a simple one. He covers being multi-racial, traveling around the world as a kid and witnessing actual revolutions in Cuba and Venezuala, being sent to a posh boarding school, and the sudden death of his father. And all that happened before he was fifteen. An old story is a guy picks up a guitar and his life changes and that's for sure a big part of the story here, but the long-time history buff only started to understand why he was drawn to music in the first place years later. It turns out that Manzane

"I Just Want To Go Home" I've been obsessed with the Trashcan Sinatras since 1990 and for good reason--the Scottish outfit's winning discography featuring albums like Cake, I've Seen Everything, Weightlifting and In The Music is a perfect body of work. From the punchy pop of "Obscurity Knocks" to the sweeping rush of "All The Dark Horses," the Trashcan Sinatras' sound is shimmering and pastoral. They've toured rather extensively over the years and have an international fanbase that cherishes every note. The recent reissue of Cake found their debut album hitting #2 on the charts and a new album is around the corner. In the meantime, guitarist John Douglas has just put out his debut solo album and it's a stunner. A riveting 11-song collection featuring original material, a few Trashcan numbers and a Prefab Sprout cover of We Let The Stars Go, it's a stirring song-cycle that's nostalgic, achingly beautiful and emotionally precise. Douglas' delivery is gentle and thoughtful and his phrasing is redolent with

"Primrose Was In Season" The Florida-born Mackenzie Shivers is a singer/songwriter of tremendous sensitivity and strength. Her new album Primrose Was In Season--and her fourth overall-- is a layered blend of moving compositions that summon joy and loss with dexterity and finesse. Produced by Kevin Salem, the album, which is the follow-up to 2021's Rejection Letter, brings to mind the stirring textures of Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball and Joe Henry's Trampoline. Now living in the Hudson Valley, the song-cycle on Primrose Was In Season braids together themes of healing, struggle, resilience and resolve and in the end, provides one of the most stirring listens of 2024. Shivers' career has found her acting off Broadway and touring Japan as a musician--and as an artist she's brave and bold and unreasonably wonderful. www.mackenzieshivers.com www.bombshellradio.com wwwstereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com Twitter: @emberseditor IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

"Highlander" Born in Short Gap, West Virginia, the Grammy-nominated Missy Raines is one of the most legendary bluegrass musicians on the planet. A ten-time winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Bass Player of the Year and the first woman to win the award--a feat nobody has even come close to--Raines is a virtuoso musician who plays with unmatched dexterity and heart. She's not just a bass player--she's a singer, songwriter, teacher, sideman, and bandleader as well. Raines started her career at a very young age but what's really interesting is that she started her solo career in 1998 nearly twenty years after touring non-stop and making records with Cloud Valley, Mac Wiseman, and Bill Evans. Raines' new album Highlander is a stirring song-cycle dedicated to her native soil--is it a concept album about West Virginia? Well, kind of, but more accurately, it's a tip of the hat to the textured nuances of rural Appalachia. Produced by the marvelous Alison Brown, Highlander is a musical tribute to

"Let Go" Formed by braintrust Sascha Konietzko in Germany and Paris in 1984, KMFDM got their start as a performance art project but it didn't take long for their propulsive industrial rhythms to establish them as one of the most dynamic bands around. Over the course of their career they've toured the world, sold millions of records and unleashed an uninterrupted string of classic albums like 1986's What Do You Know, Deutschland?, 1990's Naive, 2002's Attak and their brilliant new one Let Go. KMFDM's albums are always a blast of unbridled energy and Let Go is no exception--it's a dynamic blend of crunchy electronica, cascading metal riffs and lashing industrial beats and all combining to make one of the most ferociously danceable albums of 2024. As far as branding consistency goes, it gets no better than KMFDM, whose unmistakable and inimitable sleeves have been done by artist Aidan Brute Hughes, whose work captures the ferocious energy and belief system of the band. And what of that belief system? Well, let'

"Starting Over" With close to thirty albums under his belt, the Iowa-born Dan Bern is one of the great iron men of rock and roll. I guess he's kind of the Cal Ripken of modern music--why? Because he keeps showing up with high quality work. From albums like Fifty Eggs to to the newly re-mastered New American Language, Bern is one of the very best we have. His music is observational, clever and poignant, and it always comes with a melodic center that makes each number he writes more impossible resist than the last. He's collaborated with Emmylou Harris, opened for The Who, written songs for the movie Walk Hard, authored two books, recorded children's albums, created and hosted two podcasts, and painted countless portraits of sports figures. If you're getting the idea that Dan Bern is busy creating things you're right. Part traditionalist, part punk, Bern has proven over and over that he's one of the best and most durable songwriters on the planet. His 2001 album New American Language has been re-mastered and i

"I See You" Led by the Bay Area born Destani Wolf, Destani's Piece is a sonic healing project whose compositions are lush and layered affairs, boasting rich textures that conjure vast heavenly landscapes. Filled with dreamy musical nuances--like rolling angelic harps, harmonic pianos and Wolf's otherworldly vocals, the music of Destani's Piece is reflective and meditative and each composition serves as a balm for a world, that, let's face it, can be a bit raw. The Grammy-nominated Wolf has emerged as a brilliant sonic architect and this music is restorative, comforting and healing. As for Wolf, she's been in the game since she was 15 and found herself playing live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Since then, she's been packing her resume' with achievement after achievement. Her voice has been heard on over forty albums, and she's worked with everyone from John Cale to Bobby McFerrin to The Pharcyde. You've heard her on video games like Call of Duty, soundtracks like Disney's The Descendents

"Shane O'Mara Wore Mascara" Okay, so let's not be ridiculous--it's impossible to tell you a little bit about Lindy Morrison because there's so much to tell. But for the sake of time I'll condense what I can about this remarkable woman--just keep in mind this is a partial and very expurgated description of her accomplishments. My suggestion is that you read My Rock And Roll Friend, by Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn, who writes about her friendship with Morrison while offering a contextual explanation about why she's such an important musician, drummer and artist. The Sydney-born Morrison played in the all-female Aussie punk band Zero before joining the Go-Betweens in 1980. She was with the Go-Betweens until 1989, playing on such classic albums as Tallulah, Spring Hill Fair and 16 Lovers Lane. In addition to being a drummer, Morrison is an activist, a social worker and a humanitarian. She's worked on behalf of Aboriginal rights, women's rights and the rights of musicians with mild intellectual disabili

"Kindergarten Heart" Well, the Canadian singer/songwriter Shaina Hayes finished university and did what most graduates do--she started a farm. Ambitious? Of course it was--but Hayes, who was actually raised on a farm, was more than up for the challenge and spent her twenties tilling the land for her vegetable farm which was also a local CSA. The art of farming gave way to another art form--music. Hayes put out her debut album To Coax A Waltz in 2022 and two years later comes the follow-up Kindergarten Heart. A stirring blend of aching melancholia and gentle indie folk, Kindergarten Heart is powered by percussive rhythms and poetic flourishes that weave through each composition with hopeful elegance. It's truly beautiful work. And this is a lovely, lovely chat. www.shainahayes.bandcamp.com www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.bombshellradio.com X: @emberseditor IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

"Natural Magick" Formed in the mid '90s in London, Kula Shaker emerged as one of the most dynamic and engaging musical acts around. Mixing psychedelia with traditional Indian music and pop, Kula Shaker tore it up right out of the gate, with their debut album K hitting #1 and making them immediate superstars. Over the course of their career they played Glastonbury, T in the Park, the V Festival, and they supported Oasis at their legendary Knebworth shows. Singer Crispian Mills is the grandson of the Academy Award Winning actor Sir John Mills and the son of director Roy Boulting and actress Hayley Mills, who you might remember from the 1961 film The Parent Trap. Mills got into ancient Sanskrit texts as a young man and carried their wisdom into his adulthood. He also got into psych music as well as The Doors. He's played with X-Ray Spex and appeared on the Prodigy's The Fat Of The Land album and when Kula Shaker were on hiatus, he played in a band called The Jeevas. Also, he's a writer and director; he wrote an

"I Will Never Let You Down" Marcellus Hall has been doing so much, his resume it'll make you look at your resume and think What have I been doing? Let's back up: The Minnesota-born Marcellus Hall went to the Rhode Island school of design then moved to New York after graduating to form the band Railroad Jerk. Railroad Jerk put out four perfect albums for Matador, thought they recorded a fifth called Masterpiecemeal, that didn't come out but is available now on Bandcamp. After the band broke up, Hall formed White Hassle with Railroad Jerk's Dave Varenka, who were awesome and they put out a handful of brilliant albums like National Chain and Death of Song. After White Hassle called it a day in 2006, Hall put out phenomenal solo albums like The First Line, Afterglow and now his new one I Will Never Let You Down. But what about those ten years? You're probably still wondering. He's been illustrating. As an illustrator, Hall's work has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Fortune and he's done several New

"Angles And Ordinary Men" Back in the late '90s Wendy Lands' debut album Angels and Ordinary Men landed on my desk in the form a package from Canada and I dove right in. Falling somewhere between Beth Orton's Trailer Park and Sade's Stronger Than Pride, the album was a revelation. It was soulful, it was atmospheric, it was melodic, it was rich, and it was filled with musical finesse and jazzy textures that made repeat listens more and more rewarding. So who is Wendy Lands and what in the devil has she been up to since her marvelous debut album? She's going to fill you in far better than I ever could, but let me give you some quick details: In the early '90s the Montreal-born, Toronto-raised Wendy Lands cut her musical teeth doing theatre adn playing in a pop band called Double Dare. Her debut album spawned two top 40 hits and landed her a Juno nomination for Best New Solo artist in 1997. She toured with Jann Arden, grabbed two Canadian Radio Music Award nominations and as a side hustle, she recorded a series

"Boom Boom Boom Bingo" Scruffy The Cat dominated the College Rock scene of the late '80s with a run of fabulous albums like Tiny Days and Moons of Jupiter, plus two stellar EPs High Octane Revival and Boom Boom Boom Bingo. If you don't have these four releases-get them. They're the most perfect blasts of rootsy indie pop you'll ever hear. The six member Boston outfit, which formed in '83 lasted just under a decade, breaking up in 1990. Over the course of their career they went Top 5 on the CMJ College Radio Charts, were played on MTV's 120 minutes, were critically lauded by pretty much everyone, including the Village Voice and The Chicago Tribune, cracked the Billboard Top 200 and toured with Los Lobos, The Replacements and Yo La Tengo. The six member Scruffy personnel consisted of Charlie Chesterman, Stephen Fredette, MacPaul Stanfield, Randall Lee Gibson IV, Stona Fitch and Burns Stanfield. Omnivore put out two great anthologies that celebrate the band's legacy and as far as alums go, Scruffy is down two m

"Chaos And Wonder" Donnette Thayer went west for college and when the Colorado-born Thayer arrived at UC Davis with veterinary aspirations she found a thriving arts community that she fell right into. She'd played classical music growing up, but suddenly found herself fronting alternative bands like X-Men, The Veil and No Matter What. She guested on Game Theory's Blaze of Glory and then joined the band full-time in 1986. She was in the band for the Lolita Nation and Two Steps From The Middle Ages albums before she left in 1988. That same year she formed Hex with Steve Kilbey of The Church and put out two marvelous albums--the self-titled debut and the swooning follow up Vast Halos. Thayer put out a solo album called Chaos and Wonder and then what? Well, I'll have her fill in the gaps and bring you up to date. But let me say this about Donnette--her voice is a breathtaking blend of beauty and finesse and it swirls through the compositions with a beguiling and airy command. She's a marvelous musician and an ab

"A Family Album" The California-born and Washington-raised Holly Palmer has had quite a career. Signed to Reprise in the mid-nineties, Palmer garnered well-deserved critical-acclaim and toured with the likes of Paula Cole, k.d. Lang and Shawn Colvin. David Bowie asked her to sing background vocals on his Hours album and then he asked her to join his 1999 world tour as a singer/percussionist. Some career highlights: she joined Gnarls Barkley on their World Tour, recorded a duet with Michael Buble', sang background and played acoustic guitar on Idina Menzel's I Stand Tour, wrote the theme to the television show Mob City, and formed the musical duo Bubbles and Cheesecake with Ailee Willis who wrote September and Boogie Wonderland with Earth, Wind & Fire. She's worked with Jellyfish's Roger Manning Jr, Dr. Dre, Don Was and Dave Navarro--how's that for range? She can do anything. Holly Palmer has put out five perfect solo albums including her 1996 self-titled debut, 2007's Songs For Tuesday and 2017's A Family Al