TCBCast: An Unofficial Elvis Presley Fan Podcast

Gurdip & Justin react to the virtual holiday duets with Pentatonix and Kane Brown released within the last week or so, briefly discuss the leaks of emails sent from Lisa Marie to Sofia Coppola, and dig into Songs of the Week. Gurdip selects the bubbly "It's A Wonderful World" from 1964's "Roustabout" while Justin goes deep on the obscure 1960 Elvis home recording "When the Swallows Come Back to Ca...

In the finale to the epic Elvis and country music miniseries, Justin and guest host Garrett Cash briskly fly over nearly four and a half decades of time, tracing Elvis' impact and influence on country music, starting with several of the tributes paid to him immediately following his death and his posthumous country hits, including the success of the 1981 "Guitar Man" country overdub project and it...

Part 5 of the Elvis and Country Music miniseries brings the curtain down on the 1970s. Justin and Garrett Cash begin by discussing the state of pop music and country-pop crossovers in the '70s and the history of Country Music Month before stopping off at Stax Studios in Memphis as Elvis lays down the tracks that would comprise the albums "Raised on Rock," "Good Times" and "Promised Land" and those...

FYI - not "new" - we had some sort of technical hiccup we only just noticed that seemed to have unpublished the except on YouTube and Patreon, just making sure it's reposted! Gurdip, Justin, Ryan and Bec are back together for the first time since January; the gang is reacting not only to the exciting news from Baz Luhrmann confirming via Instagram that he is in fact still working on a project invo...

Remembering our friend Jaime Kay, host of The Jungle Room Podcast and recurring TCBCast guest. We reflect as best we can on her passing and her impact on the Elvis community, then we're grateful to be able to share with you one last gift from Jaime Kay: the 2019 crossover episode of the Jungle Room when we first joined her on her show, an episode otherwise now completely unavailable and inaccessib...

Guest host Garrett Cash and Justin begin Part 4 of Elvis and Country Music journey right where they left off: Elvis' iconic 1969 sessions at Memphis producer Chips Moman's American Sound, which provide Elvis his first country hits – as the industry considered them – in a decade. They then trace Elvis' path from Las Vegas, where he brings together the finest country-rock band ever assembled in the...

Garrett Cash rejoins Justin for Part 3 of the epic Elvis and Country Music saga as they start by breaking down the Nashville Sound, the members of the Nashville A-Team and the state of country music in the early 60s as the establishment puts up artificial barriers in an attempt to shun Elvis Presley and his irreversible influence. Then, Elvis arrives home from the military and we find him both ful...

Part 2 of the Elvis and Country Music saga picks up right where Justin and guest host Garrett Cash left off, with a deconstruction of both sides of Elvis' first Sun single. Elvis's country career is traced through his time at Sun and on the Louisiana Hayride, dedicating time to sidebar the realities of how flawed the way we discuss and understand country music as a genre during this period will al...

The epic saga begins. Music aficionado Garrett Cash joins Justin for the first part of a sweeping miniseries on Elvis Presley's lifelong, intertwined history with country music. We begin with the complex web of myriad influences that paved the way for rock and roll, and we start by treating the history of the genre not as strictly "hillbilly music" but as part of a vital continuum of American musi...

Gurdip and Bec join forces to gush over Bec's very first Elvis album, Elvis' Golden Records, Volume 2, aka 50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong. Encapsulating singles released between 1957-1959, this iconic album captures the Elvis of the 50s at perhaps his very best, accompanied on many tracks by more members of the Nashville A-Team. For Song of the Week, Justin tags in for a brief discussion on...

Gurdip is back! The guys discuss the latest FTD releases, early reviews of "Priscilla" and listener feedback before Justin is joined for a brief Elvis chat by young Elvis fan Mal, of TCB Discussions ( instagram.com/tcbdiscussions ), who has been posting and blogging about Elvis, his career, his life and his influences. It's a very loose talk, but Justin picks her brain on how she became an Elvis f...

At the request of (and joined by!) previous TCBCast guest (and fellow Patreon supporter) Olivia Murphy-Rogers, we look back at the #1 UK & Australia album, which is now 8 years old as of this recording, along with the bonus tracks from the expanded deluxe version of the album, to see if it has held up. Bec also joins Justin and Olivia, wanting to make sure someone was around to stick up for one of...

Justin and Bec go a little experimental and offbeat this week, deciding to formally and "scientifically" rank 11 of Elvis' home, studio and live performances which have "lonely," "lonesome" and "alone" in the title, as well as loosely exploring how Elvis is so frequently linked to the concept of loneliness - and some of the things Elvis himself had to say about feeling alone. It's been a bit since...

Part 2 of the TCBCast gang's review of Elvis' 1961 movie for 20th Century FOX, "Wild in the Country," goes "wildly" off the rails as the "High Tension" and drama of the weighty back half is undercut by some giggle fits. Justin, Ryan and Bec also discuss where the known deleted songs "Lonely Man" and "Forget Me Never" would have likely slotted into the script, and offer their thoughts on the choice...

Ryan reports in on his recent trip to Graceland and Memphis, Bec gives her initial impressions of the new documentary "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback Special" (which releases today, August 15, on Paramount Plus in the US) and the gang begins to dig into the first part of 1961 drama "Wild in the Country," starring Elvis, Tuesday Weld, Hope Lange, Millie Perkins, John Ireland, Gary Lockwood and...

Bec joins Justin for a very loose, silly, and not-remotely-serious discussion about some of our least favorite Elvis songs and performances. Not "the worst," just some of the ones that don't hit us in quite the same way they might hit everyone else. The subject is so spirited that there are both giggle fits and strong disagreements! For Song of the Week, Justin revisits one of the songs he feature...

In 2004, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" director Joel Zwick unleashed the comedy film "Elvis Has Left the Building" onto the world. Starring Kim Basinger as a makeup saleswoman whose seemingly supernatural bond to Elvis Presley leads to the accidental string of deaths of Elvis impersonators across the American Southwest. Co-starring  John Corbett, Denise Richards, Annie Potts, Sean Astin and many othe...

This week, enjoy a sampler from the TCBCast Patreon bonus episode archives as Gurdip and Justin revisit the 7th episode of the 2016 HBO program "Vinyl," a show centered around a struggling fictional record label in the 1970s trying to scoop up real life popular artists. In the episode "The King and I," the series protagonists visit Vegas in an attempt to sign Elvis (played by ETA Shawn Klush) to l...

This week, we're talking about the topic voted upon by our Patreon backers, loosely exploring how Elvis's time in the US Army affected his life & career, both in the short term and the long term.  For Song of the Week, from similarly poll-winning tracks, Gurdip & Justin tackle both ends of Elvis' career, with Justin handling the flip side of Elvis' very first demo acetate, "That's When Your Hearta...

Justin is joined by John Michael Heath from EAP Society to mark 2023 as the 20th anniversary of the release of "2nd to None," the follow-up to the smash compilation "30 #1 Hits." Unrestrained by the limitations of only including #1 chart hits, "2nd to None" showed a broader flavor of what Elvis was capable of, but the constraints of the physical medium also placed limits on just how many selection...

Gurdip and Justin get together this week to dig into the 1965 compilation album "Elvis for Everyone" and ponder what reasons there might have been behind the scenes for this oddball collection of previously unreleased tracks put out to mark the 10th anniversary of Elvis's RCA contract.  Before that, though, the guys briefly discuss the trailers for "Priscilla" and the Paramount+ documentary "Reinv...

Justin joined this week by Elvis fan and host of "Stories We Could Tell: A Mavericks FANCast" Mark Potter, and together they dive into the deeply-felt influence of Elvis's music on Raul Malo, lead singer of the band The Mavericks, famously known as the Grammy-award winning country music band that had their most mainstream success in the 1990s. Gurdip and Justin have discussed and praised Raul and...

The TCBCast gang is taking it relatively light this week; no main topic but Gurdip and Justin discuss the news about the newly announced Aloha from Hawaii 50th anniversary set from Sony, Gurdip takes a round of trivia, and Justin talks about his trip at the start of the month to visit Jamie Kelley, John Michael Heath and Ryan in Iowa. Then, for our Songs of the Week, Gurdip sings the praises of "S...

Julius Adame, who appeared on the show last summer to talk about For LP Fans Only, returns to discuss the 1985 blues compilation "Reconsider Baby". Gurdip bemoans the fact Elvis never did a proper blues album during his lifetime, while Justin dig into the originals that inspired Elvis, and overall the crew has an excellent conversation celebrating this remarkable release from the year of Elvis's 5...

The TCBCast gang wrap up the second part of their review of 1961's "Follow That Dream" pondering where it ranks among Elvis's best acting roles. For Song of the Week, Bec bows but from featuring a song but hangs around to comment on the boys' picks, with Ryan tackling Elvis' live performances of Neil Diamond's iconic American classic, "Sweet Caroline" throughout the 1970s, while Justin pops back t...