Caropop

Joe Harley oversees some of the best jazz vinyl rereleases around as producer of Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet series. Harley picks the titles, and, as he did with the much-coveted Music Matters series, he preps each release with ace mastering engineer (and recurring Caropop guest) Kevin Gray. Here Harley reflects on how he went from growing up (and playing drums) in Nebraska to preparing audiop...

Producer Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention/Richard Thompson, R.E.M.) has written a massive, highly entertaining, illuminating book about world music called And the Roots of Rhythm Remain , the title a lyric from Paul Simon’s Graceland song “Under African Skies.” That album is a jumping-off point for Boyd’s explorations of music from around the globe, with stops in Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, In...

No one mixes fury and vulnerability, ferocious energy and pop smarts like Bob Mould. His 15th solo album, Here We Go Crazy , comes out March 7, and he remains at the peak of his powers. Here he reflects on his tremendous, sometimes turbulent career, starting with his attending Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., meeting Grant Hart at Cheapo Records and launching the trailblazing punk trio Hüske...

Mike Mills of R.E.M. and the Baseball Project and a new supergroup with Darius Rucker is here, and we’ve got questions: How did R.E.M. come to share all songwriting credits, and why did Mills initially object? What impact did the albums’ producers have? Given the bandmates’ senses of humor, why wouldn’t R.E.M. smile in photographs? Had R.E.M. decided to call it quits before it made Collapse into N...

Part 2 of our conversation with guitarist-songwriter-singer-storyteller Dave Alvin begins with him discussing musical biopics and the one that put him off the genre for good. (Hint: He was in it.) Has he seen A Complete Unknown ? How did he wind up actually recording with Bob Dylan? Will any of these recordings ever come out? Alvin also revisits his early songwriting efforts, including the first s...

Dave Alvin has had such an epic career that we’re going to need two episodes to fit it all in. Much of Part 1 spotlights Alvin’s values as a musician. As he tells it, the Blasters, the revved-up L.A. roots-rock band for which he was the main songwriter/guitarist, had lots of rules. The Third Mind, his current psychedelic improvisatory band, has few. Why does the latter appeal to him now? How did s...

Do you know the tragic story of Badfinger? Behind such life-affirming songs as “No Matter What,” “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue” and the much-covered power ballad “Without You” lay a dark tale in which Badfinger’s manager defrauded the band and left them destitute. Bob Jackson played keyboards and guitar in the last Badfinger lineup that featured Pete Ham, the honey-voiced singer-songwriter behind...

Nora O’Connor is a super collaborator, someone who loves singing harmonies and makes everyone sound good. She’s a member of the Chicago all-star group the Flat Five and a formidable singer-songwriter in her own right, as her 2022 solo album, My Heart , her first in 18 years, reminded us. Here she reflects on her life as “a music worker,” including what she’s learned from performing with such artis...

Macie Stewart, half of the Chicago-based duo Finom, is one of those musicians who can do almost anything. She’s a classical pianist and violinist who wrote her first piece for an orchestra at age 11 and still creates string arrangements, such as on her 2021 solo album Mouth Full of Glass . She also taught herself acoustic guitar and began writing songs on it when she was 13. When she finally picke...

Michael Jerome had been drumming in a post-industrial metal band when he auditioned for Richard Thompson in 1999, little knowing he would be this brilliant guitarist's percussive foil for the next 25 years and counting. Jerome also has played with Charlie Musselwhite, the Blind Boys of Alabama and, for several years, John Cale. He’s been Better Than Ezra’s drummer since 2009 and played and toured...

It's time for our fourth annual check-in with masterful mastering engineer Kevin Gray as he comes off yet another crazy-busy year. What new did he and Doors engineer/producer Bruce Botnick think they could bring to the instant-sellout Rhino High Fidelity box The Doors 1967-1971 ? Which Rhino High Fidelity album doesn’t make sense to him as an audiophile release? Among Rhino, Blue Note and Craft’s...

Redd Kross, a band overdue for massive appreciation, is having a moment. There’s a new page-turner of a memoir, Now You’re One of Us , co-written by brother bandmates Jeff and Steven McDonald with Dan Epstein. Their narrative rocks to life in Andrew Reich’s new documentary, Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story. The movie, in turn, inspired the 2024 double album Redd Kross , a candy-colored collecti...

Beatles author Bruce Spizer wrote the liner notes for the new vinyl box The Beatles U.S. 1964 Albums in Mono, and here he digs into the history of these reconfigured U.S. Capitol albums, from Meet the Beatles! through Beatles ’65 and The Early Beatles. Spizer is a New Orleans tax lawyer and CPA, and that expertise has helped him untangle the Beatles’ early dealings with labels such as Chicago’s Ve...

Steve Conte became lead guitarist in one legendary band, the New York Dolls, and co-wrote half of his latest album, The Concrete Jangle , with the main singer-songwriter of another one: Andy Partridge of XTC. Conte is a longtime New York working musician who has played with such artists as Paul Simon, Peter Wolf, Phoebe Snow and, in a great story, Chuck Berry. Now he has released two solo albums o...

Don Was may be an accomplished performer and producer, as covered in Pt. l, but he’s also got quite the day job: president of Blue Note Records. How did this rock-funk musician become the top executive at one of the most prestigious, influential jazz labels? What was the Blue Note album that turned him on to jazz when he was 14 years old? What early mistakes did he make at the label, and how did t...

His ‘80s band Was (Not Was) scored a top 10 hit, “Walk the Dinosaur,” but Don Was has had an even greater impact on the music world as a producer. In 1989 he produced two big comebacks: Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-winning Nick of Time and “Love Shack” and other songs on the B-52’s Cosmic Thing . Then came work with Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson and—in a long, fruitful collaboration—the Rolling Ston...

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you so much for listening to Caropop since our launch in the fall of 2021. We’re now 157 episodes and more than three years in, and we can’t wait to share more great conversations about creative work with you. Please enjoy this brief message from the Caropop team, and take this opportunity to catch up on any episodes you may have missed, and we'll be back with another fan...

Graham Gouldman already had written classic ‘60s hits—including the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” and “Heart Full of Soul,” the Hollies’ “Bus Stop” and “Look Through Any Window” and Herman’s Hermits’ “No Milk Today”—by the time he and Manchester schoolmates Lol Creme and Kevin Godley plus ex-Mindbender Eric Stewart formed one of the '70s’ most tuneful, innovative bands, 10cc. These four singer-songwr...

“It felt like I just stepped into a rodeo, and they shut the gate behind me.” That’s how Grant Achatz describes his first day of working in the kitchen of Charlie Trotter’s, then considered one of the world’s finest restaurants. The future 3-Michelin-star Alinea chef was just 21 in the summer of 1995 when he convinced Trotter to give him a shot at his namesake Chicago restaurant. But Achatz did no...

Susan Cowsill was the kid sister of the family band the Cowsills, and she made an indelible impression singing “and spaghetti’d!” on the Cowsills’ 1968 hit version of “Hair.” Jump to the 1990s, and she was singing and, for the first time, writing songs in the indie supergroup the Continental Drifters, which also included her friend Vicki Peterson of the Bangles and Peter Holsapple of the dB’s. Wit...

Sima Cunningham has had two albums released this year: Not God from Finom, her band with fellow Chicago singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Macie Stewart; and a long-gestating solo project, High Roller . With Finom kicking off a tour this weekend and a solo album launch and a Roches-themed show coming up, Cunningham is enjoying the culmination of a lifetime of music-making and collaboration. H...

Iain Matthews was an early member of the pioneering British folk-rock band Fairport Convention, singing on its first two albums and leaving during the recording of the third one, Unhalfbricking . Since then this singer-songwriter has formed other bands — Matthews Southern Comfort, Plainsong — and released much solo work, including the just-released How Much Is Enough. He has scored some hits — Sou...

Joan Osborne is best known for a certain big hit yet has amassed an impressive career since then. Her latest album, Nobody Owns You , may be her most personal yet, with songs about her mother’s Alzheimer’s, the impact of time spent in “Too Many Airports” and the title track addressed to her daughter. Yet she remains as enthusiastic interpreting others’ songs as her own. One early such song, Eric B...

When the young Zion, Ill., band Local H shrunk from four members to two, leader Scott Lucas decided he liked the guitar-and-drums attack and has stuck with it for more than 30 years. Local H has had its moments of popularity (the 1996 album As Good As Dead and single “Bound for the Floor” ) , critical triumphs that fell short commercially (1998’s dazzling concept album Pack Up the Cats ) and subse...

To mark Episode 150 of Caropop, we’re doing something different. My friend Steve Dawson— an awesome singer-songwriter who was my guest back on Episode 10, as well as my co-author on Take It to the Bridge: Unlocking the Great Songs Inside You —said he wanted to turn the tables and interview me for an episode. So here we go, with Steve probing me on what drove me to become a newspaper writer and, ev...