Performance Anxiety

Two legends join the podcast for this episode. Danny Kortchmar and Steve Postell hop on to talk about what got them into music in the first place. Steve defines what a musical director does. Danny discusses his Spinal Tap connection and working with Carol King. And while Danny was producing albums with Neil Young and others, Steve was touring Man of La Mancha with Bonnie Raitt’s dad, John. They ha...

My guest today is Chuck Wright. We hit the ground running, talking about his new album, Chuck Wright’s Sheltering Sky. It’s an impressive piece of work with 41 guest musicians on it! It also contains a wide variety of styles and genres, reflecting his own musical career. Chuck reveals some very strange coincidences with this album. And he admits that this album is 100% a result of being in lockdow...

This show is different from most of the others I’ve done. My guest is Scott Dikkers. He’s not a musician. He is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and co-founder of The Onion. He jumps on the podcast to chat with me about creativity. He talks about his early influences, like The Muppets & Jay Leno, how he gets inspiration from bad comedy, and how he got his start writing the comic Jim’s Journal all th...

Janet Weiss of way more bands than I can mention here joins the podcast. She’s here to talk about her latest release, Cockroach In A Ghost Town by her band, Slang. But we go back to find out how that band came to be. We start with her playing guitar, NOT drums. But once she did find drums, it was an instant connection. It was so obvious that everyone else felt it, too. Janet talks about how many l...

With two notes, James Calvin Wilsey announced his presence to the music world at large. But by the time Wicked Game launched Chris Isaak, Rowland Sally, Kenney Dale Johnson, & James Calvin Wilsey onto MTV and in front of millions, Jimmy was already living a very rock & roll lifestyle; one that would lead him to crash and burn half an album later. Journalist and author Michael Goldberg joins the po...

Today we welcome Brad Elvis & Chloe F. Orwell of The Handcuff to the show. They have a new album out, Burn The Rails,  that’s inspired by 70’s rock. It’s got big guitars, great vocals, and Mott The Hoople’s Morgan Fisher playing some keys! But before we get into all of that, we go deep into Brad’s extensive discography. We go so deep that Chloe thinks I’m a wizard. Brad talks about his time with T...

I don’t even want to do an introduction because I just want to get into these stories. I’m joined by Simon “Spence” Dudfield and Martyn Goodacre of Fabulous. They exploded and flamed out in a span of 18 months. But they accumulated a lifetime of stories in that blink of an eye! They weren’t even musicians when they started the band. They’re STILL not musicians! They had somewhere between 8-10 bass...

We have a bit of a different episode this time. Kevin Mellon joins the show. And while he DOES have a new EP out called Songs From The Giant’s Chair, there’s a lot more to him than that. He is a comic book creator and a storyboard artist for Archer, Hitmonkey, & The Vampire Diaries. We start of discussing our mutual love of Failure but move into his comic and musical influences like Teenage Mutant...

It was so much fun talking with Isobel Campbell. We hit on so many topics; some you’d expect like starting with Belle & Sebastian, working with Mark Lanegan, the effect COVID had on her projects, and what she’s working on now. But we also talk about some things that you might not expect like how church music influenced her, how a cheeseburger and Annie Hall were the reasons she left Belle & Sebast...

Ivan Nahem had no choice but to be creative. Born in the 50’s, his mother was a graphic designer and his father played professional baseball. In fact, his dad, Sam, played a big part in the integration of minority players into Major League Baseball. But Ivan was drawn to music. He wanted to play drums, but he was told he had to learn the accordion first. After some less than constructive criticism...

Today we speak with Fredrik Saroea of Datarock. He’s had quite the career! Datarock blew UP when their song Fa Fa Fa was EVERYWHERE in 2005. It was in commercials, video games, TV shows, and I’m sure some other synchronizations Fredrik has forgotten about. That led to the band playing over 1000 shows in 36 countries. But it all kind of snuck up on them. Take the first festival they played in Austr...

I’m thrilled to welcome Carré Callaway and Joe Cardamone, AKA Queen Kwong and Skeleton Joe. Carré talks about growing up in a hotel and her dad’s industrial/punk nightclub in Denver. Once she started focusing on music (this would be AFTER her 6th grade band, Population 3) one of her first gigs was opening for Nine Inch Nails and, as she describes it, messing up on a large scale. She’s also written...

Today’s guest is Felix Bechtolsheimer; and I’m only going to say that once. His band, Curse Of Lono has a new album out called People In Cars. But before we get into that, we talk about a lot of stuff. Felix has my unfailing respect and admiration for being completely open and honest about the path that led him to go to rehab, including a harrowing experience in an experimental opioid addiction pr...

If anything good came out of the pandemic, it was projects like the release by The Trypes. I’m joined by founding members John Baumgartner and Marc Francia. The guys talk about how the band formed with the goal of recording one 45 for a local jukebox. But they DO have connections to the influential band The Feelies. They also discuss some of the more unusual aspects of the band, like using a wind-...

Today’s guest is Colin Peterik. If that name sounds familiar, you know your stuff. Colin is the son of Jim Peterik, who wrote some of the biggest hits of the 70’s & 80’s with Vehicle by Ides Of March Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor, & Hold On Loosely by .38 Special. Colin talks about growing up in the industry. He remembers being woken up at 6am by his dad working out some of these hits on the piano....

Pierce Turner and I begin this episode talking about castles and end it discussing Patsy Cline & Roy Orbison. But in between we do manage to touch on his career. He’s been playing music since he was a kid in Ireland in the 60’s. He couldn’t help it; it was all around him. His mom had her own band and the family had their own music store. And as a 14 year old kid, he was in charge of inventory! He...

This episode has been a long time in the making. I initially reached out to guitarist Jeff Young Well over a year ago, but the timing was never right. Well once the timing was right, we made up for lost time. Jeff and I had an epic discussion about his first exposure to listening and playing music (he took viola lessons in 1st grade!). He recounts the BB gun trade that literally changed his life....

Liz Lamere’s path to her debut album was not a direct one. She was actually a high powered Wall Street lawyer. But she wasn’t your typical high powered Wall Street lawyer. She was the only one with purple hair and a spike in her nose who played drums in a punk band. But she met Alan Vega and everything changed. The couple began working on Alan’s music together, raised a family, and toured the worl...

This is a really cool episode. My guest today is Mike Leonard. He plays guitar for The Magnolias, but that’s not what we’re discussing today. Almost 30 years ago, Mike was in a band called The Bleeding Hearts with Bob Stinson of The Replacements. Mike tells me how he got into music and how The Bleeding Hearts formed. He tells me about how he got Bob to join the band. It wasn’t exactly easy. But on...

This episode I talk with Alice Genese & Shaune Pony Heath; two friends who would meet on Tuesdays to talk and informally play some music in their living rooms. Those meetings eventually became the band OV Stars. Alice talks to me about how she grew up a block from the legendary venue, Maxwell’s, in Hoboken, NJ. She began her music career playing bass with Gut Bank and Sexpod. She eventually met up...

Never in the history of this podcast has a band’s name been so apropos. Ellia Bisker & Jeff Morris of Charming Disaster join me. They were charming. I was the disaster. This is actually the second attempt at a podcast with the goth-folk duo. The original recording vanished into the ether. And once you give Charming Disaster a listen, nothing could be more appropriate.  They tell me all about formi...

We go international this episode with Tone Of Voice Orchestra’s Trinelise Væring. Her family enjoyed music when she was growing up, but it wasn’t a career choice. She didn’t even think about it after recording two jazz albums while in school, studying architecture! But somehow she wound up marrying a musician. Once she finally made the decision to focus on music, she decided she needed to find her...

Sam Weber joins me, literally from the road. He and his band had just finished the final show of their tour the night before and Sam was driving their gear home. We begin by discussing his family’s love of music as a big influence on him. In fact his first band was him, his brother, and his father. He also describes how architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright can be considered influences to him.  Sam...

My guests today are Deborah Bonham and Peter Bullick of Bonham Bullick. We talk about their musical histories, including the influence Deborah’s brother, the legendary John Bonham, had on her life. Deborah explains the 16 year gap between her first two albums, working with Paul Rodgers, and Robert Plant’s continual guidance. His ringtone on Deborah’s phone is Kashmir, by the way. They tell me how...

Welcome Ben Vaughn into our world. The world of Performance Anxiety. Ben is one guest whose career left no room for Performance Anxiety. He was always that guy who was SUPER into music. Even though he had a genuine love of music, he started a family and worked as a landscaper in New Jersey. But once he started playing, he was hooked. But until Pulp Fiction, he was a man out of his time. But when h...