Soundcheck

What were you doing when you were three years old? Were you, like pianist Stewart Goodyear, absorbing the entire canon of classical music? Were you even doing that at 30? When Stewart turned 32, just a few years ago, he played all 32 of Beethoven's sonatas in one sitting. Many of us are still working on chopsticks. Now, Stewart has turned his electrifying powers on something for the holidays: Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker,' and he does so in predictably jaw-dropping fashion. Click above to listen.

The LA band called YACHT (which apparently stands for Young Americans Challenging High Technology) has just released its latest album, the memorably titled I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler. The music is a memorable blend of art-pop and indie-rock, but the band doesn’t stop there. They have a line of sunglasses, and an app that gives you 5 cool things to do (so apparently the future isn’t completely uncool) in LA every day, and a truly bizarre sense of what I can only describe as metaphysical geography. Tune in to hear the band play live, and perhaps they'll explain why LA, Portland, Oregon, and Marfa, Texas, collectively form what the band calls the “Western American Utopian Triangle.”

Playing in and around Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in the early 2000s, songwriter Josh Scott got to know a guy named Justin Vernon—some of Scott's band members even played with the man who would go on to perform as Bon Iver. A spate of physical and mental challenges sidelined Josh Scott's career just as Vernon's was reaching orbit. But while it's tempting to compare the two artists as a case of if/then, it does both a disservice. Josh Scott's new music as Aero Flynn doesn't much resemble the "alienated bearded lumberjack crooning over a battered acoustic guitar" trope that Bon Iver rode to stardom. Scott sounds more like Radiohead's Thom Yorke at his most thoughtfully melodic, with a song like "Dk/Pi" skittering across a frozen pond of beats, occasionally punctuated by a searing guitar line. 

Rock, folk, blues, country, everything troubadour Steve Earle says his latest album Terraplane was influenced by Howling Wolf...and ZZ Top. Tell that to the Steve who's snarling like an Exile-era Mick Jagger on the cheekily-titled "Baby Baby Baby (Baby)." Wherever the inspiration comes from, the new album is as authentic a blues outing as you'll find in 2015. Sharing a name with a long-dead automobile, the record sees Earle returning his sonic palette to the scales and growls of the blues: a rich channel for his notoriously acerbic songwriting. Click on the link above at noon to hear Steve Earle play live in the Soundcheck studio, and talk about his new annual benefit show at Town Hall on 12/14, which features his son Justin Townes Earle, Jackson Browne, and other special guests raising funds and awareness for children diagnosed with autism.  

This week, the fate of our werewolf-ridden world rests in the hands of one man: Jon Glaser. Or at least, it rests in the hands of his new Adult Swim character, Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter. The fruit of a one-off joke on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Neon Joe is ....a werewolf hunter with not much of a back-story, other than the silver bullet he wears in his ear and the neon clothing he wears while doing his hunting. But comedian Glaser's hysterical previous Adult Swim outing, Delocated, involved a character who was largely naked but for a ski mask, so there's plenty reason to expect gut laughs. Glaser has recently also had star-making appearances on 'Parks & Rec,' 'Inside Amy Schumer,' 'Louie,' and 'Trainwreck.' Before he tries his hand at werewolf management, Glaser joins Soundcheck to provide a suitably weird soundtrack to his predictably weird show: he picks a playlist of songs inspired by each word in the title 'Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter.'  The 'Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter' mini-series premieres on Monday, December 7th at Midnight E/P and airs over 5 consecutive nights on Adult Swim.  

Soundcheck goes to the opera, with a distinguished — if surprising — guide. Pop star, pianist, and composer Rufus Wainwright grew up in one of the grand families of contemporary music. His mother, the late Kate McGarrigle, was a celebrated songwriter who performed with her sister Anna. But it wasn't folk music she used to rouse Rufus in the mornings: it was Bach. (As for dad, singer Loudon Wainwright III? Says Rufus: "He likes baseball.") Fast forward a few decades, and Rufus has followed in both parents' footsteps with a major pop career. And in 2009, Rufus also wrote his very first opera, "Prima Donna" (the recording of which has just been released on Deutsche Grammophon). It's a day in the life of a graying operatic diva who lost her voice mid-performance and is now left to reflect on her halcyon days. It's a grand story, told entirely in French, and moves with unmistakably Wainwright melody. Rufus talks to host John Schaefer about his plans (or not) to ever actually perform in an opera, and explains why his new recording was crowd-funded.  

"Does this tree make me look fat?" It's a question on all our minds as we select seasonally-appropriate evergreen materials to decorate our homes. It's also the subtitle of the 15th annual Christmas Without Tears musical review show, hosted by husband-wife comedy and song duo Harry Shearer and Judith Owen. When the Welsh-born Owen relocated to Santa Monica, she sorely missed Jack Frost nipping at her nose amid the 75-and-sunny climate. So she and Shearer began a "Child's Christmas in Wales"-style tradition in their own home, which has now become a touring charitable event featuring a number of celebrity accomplices. Shearer and Owen take a seat next to the crackling Soundcheck fireplace to play a few songs and talk about Christmas in L.A.  

Soundcheck host John Schaefer goes inside the modern hit factory with The New Yorker's John Seabrook, to explore the tiny cadre of mega-producers who manufacture the pop confections that get stuck in your head with annoying regularity. And yes, "manufacture" is the right word. Hooks, melodies, beats, and grooves get assembled with astonishing efficiency and remarkable effect: Swedish producer Max Martin is second only to Lennon-McCartney for the Number One records he's amassed since the mid-1990's. It sounds all shadowy and puppet-master-y...it sort of is. But not nefarious: as Seabrook tells Schaefer, "pop music binds the group." That is to say, there's something undeniable about the fact that millions of people have found something valuable and rewarding in this industrial pop. But steady yourself, and maybe stay away from heavy machinery if glossy pop changes your heart rate: herein you'll find two servings each of Ace of Base and Taylor Swift, and single shots of Beyonce, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Rihanna, Eminem, and Katy Perry. At least Led Zeppelin gets a mention.

Nathan Salsburg is a Louisville-based guitarist who moonlights as the curator of the famed Alan Lomax Archive of American folk music. Or maybe it’s vice versa. He joined us as a solo performer back in 2012, but now he’s back in a duo setting with the English guitarist James Elkington, now based in Chicago and known for his work with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, and Steve Gunn, among others. Elkington and Salsburg have just released an album of guitar duets called Ambsace, a Middle English word that today we would translate as “snake eyes” – the lowest roll of the dice. The album is both virtuosic and accessible – you don’t need to be a guitarist to like it. Today, the two of them join us to play live and to perhaps explain their choice of album title.  Click here to listen to Bert Jansch's live Soundcheck set from 2010, as referenced in the interview.  

Little May is an Australian trio whose signature sounds include dark and poetic lyrics, urgent guitar strumming and, above all, beautiful 3-part vocal harmonies. Their 2015 album, For The Company, was produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner and may have a bit of New York in its musical DNA. The band has spent much of the past year on the road, touring with Mumford and Sons, Alabama Shakes, and others, but before they headed back home for the holidays, they stopped by our studio for a live set. Click here to listen to Little May's appearance in our studio last year.

In Appalachia, a "holler" is a colloquialism for a valley or "hollow." So not only is the band name Quiet Hollers a fun oxymoron, it's also a sly shout-out to the band's roots in Kentucky. The group says it makes "weird, sad music for weirdos like you." But they named one of the standout songs from their new self-titled record "Aviator Shades," which might just mean they're going for something cool and even sexy. Find out what went into the making of their self-assured new tunes in this live set from the Soundcheck studio.  

Duncan Sheik's career has followed two parallel tracks: ever since his Grammy-winning, Gold record debut in 1996, with the single “Barely Breathing,” he has maintained a career as a touring and recording singer/songwriter. But he has also become a sought-after composer for the theater: his music for Spring Awakening won several Tony awards and a Grammy, and has now been revived on Broadway in a mixed American Sign Language/spoken English adaptation. He’s working on a long-awaited feature film version of Spring Awakening, and his musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is coming to Broadway this spring. Somehow, he’s found time to record a new album, called Legerdemain, and he brings his band to the studio to perform some of it today.  

The Damned released the first punk rock single in the UK, the first punk rock LP, and were the first English punk band to make it to the States, where they first played at CBGB's and then burst upon an unsuspecting Los Angeles. The Damned were first; they were important, and influential -- but then they fought through a series of lineup changes, fought a music industry that seized on The Clash and The Sex pistols as if The Damned were just an afterthought...but mostly they fought amongst themselves. Yet, they're still around, and a new documentary, The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, follows up with Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies, David Vanian and the rest. Director Wes Orshoski joins us in the studio to talk about these true punk originals.   Interview Highlights Orshosk on The Damned’s claims of being the ‘first real punk band’: The Clash has always been my favorite band and in a lot of ways The Damned are kind of the most punk of all those bands in that they really did not care what they looked like. Captain Sensible used to dress up in a nurses uniform or tutu, David Vanian used to dress up as a vampire. Musically they dressed up however the felt, they weren't constrained by the “three chord formula” as Sensible calls it. Orshosk on the tension between Captain and Rat:  There’s all this bickering about money but a big part of the war between Captain and Rat has to deal with time. As we all grow older, we grow apart from people and just the space between us becomes a part of the weirdness. It's hard to talk to people and you forget sometimes exactly what you’re mad at. Orshosk on the million dollar record deal The Damned never saw: Rat is still very friendly with Jake Riviera, who is one of the co-heads of Stiff Records, and he’s remained friends with him all these years. Jake retired and he’s been cleaning out his office and they found a letter from EMI Records promising The Damned over four years, a major label worth around a million pounds now. And the band never even saw it, they never saw that offer. In 1977 right when they got off the plane, CBS offered them a million dollar deal they said no to it -- CBS would go on to sign The Clash. They said no out of some weird allegiance to a company, this punk company who would just drop them in a year. The reason I bring that up is that if they took that offer, there’s no question that The Damned wouldn’t exist right now, or one of them would be dead if they had that money then. Because what made the Machine Gun Etiquette record so great is their hunger and need to prove themselves again -- to resurrect themselves. Such a big part of the story is that they didn’t get the money. See The Damned: Don't You Wish That We Were Dead in Yonkers, New York at the Alamo Drafthouse August 30. For a complete list of screenings visit their website. 

Boogaloo was the reigning Latin music of 1960's New York City. The distinctive genre combined the sounds of the previous decade's popular Cuban mambo with R&B, jazz, and funk to create distinctive and danceable beats that were popular across ethnic and racial lines. While boogaloo enjoyed an extended heyday in the '70s thanks to the iconic label Fania Records, salsa music eventually eclipsed it and gained a national following that still eludes boogaloo to this day. But now a recent documentary, We Like It Like That, aims to honor and to introduce listeners to the infectious sounds of the genre. The film celebrates the 50th anniversary of Fania and remembers the boogaloo legends that shaped the label and New York's Latin music scene. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, the film's director Mathew Ramirez Warren talks about discovering boogaloo when sifting through old records, and brings along bandleader Joe Bataan to talk about music industry resistance that some claim was the death of boogaloo. We Like It Like That releases to New York on Wednesday, August 5, and Joe Bataan headlines the Latin Boogaloo Celebration at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Thursday, August 6. Special guests include boogaloo legends Richie Ray and Pete Rodriguez with Ray Lugo and the Boogaloo Destroyers and latin boogaloo expert DJ Turmix spinning his latin boogaloo vinyl. Get tickets here.  This episode of Soundcheck was originally published on July 24, 2014. 

Emily King’s debut, East Side Story, was nominated for a Grammy back in 2008 in the “Contemporary R&B” category. But King’s latest album, The Switch, has more of a classic soul vibe. It glides through orchestral R&B hooks, poppy, syncopated rhythms with simple and soulful melodies. It’s spawned a couple of striking videos – “Distance” especially has gathered a lot of attention – and after years of opening for artists like John Legend, Alicia Keys and Sara Bareilles, Emily has just completed a headlining tour of the East Coast. But before her band members went their separate ways, everyone gathered in our studio for one final performance.  Setlist "Distance" "The Switch" "Sleepwalker" See more pictures from the session over on our Tumblr.