Caropop

Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, accomplished producers and performers on their own, came together to produce one of rock’s greatest debut albums, R.E.M.’s Murmur . That 1983 classic plus the preceding, Easter-produced EP, Chronic Town, have gotten the all-analog, One Step treatment in a numbered, limited-edition vinyl release from Interscope-Capitol’s Definitive Sound Series. We reunited Easter and Di...

Robyn Hitchcock turned 14 in 1967, the year that blew his musical mind open. This English boarding school student and future singer-songwriter-musician already looked to Bob Dylan for the meaning of life when along came the psychedelic train powered by the Beatles, the Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Kinks, the Incredible String Band and much more. Hitchcock reflects o...

Here's a quick holiday message that you can squeeze in amid all of your seasonal running around. And please check out our Caropop YouTube Channel in the meantime and hit "Subscribe." Thanks for listening, and happy everything!

Many of us first heard Wesley Stace on the 1990 album Here Comes the Groom that he recorded as John Wesley Harding, the name taken from Bob Dylan’s stripped-down late-1967 album that itself misspelled a Texas outlaw’s name. The English singer-songwriter has enjoyed a robust folk-rock career as Harding but also has written four acclaimed novels under his own name and began recording albums without...

Dave Specter didn’t pick up a guitar till his late teens, yet in his 20s he was Son Seals’ rhythm guitarist for two years, and soon he was a bandleader himself. Specter grew up amid Chicago’s blues scene and became one of its great players and ambassadors. Here he recalls the glory days of Chicago’s blues clubs and the varying vibes. He recounts the evolution of his sound and his progression of gu...

Running a boutique audiophile label is not easy, as Shane Buettner has learned in the 10 years since he founded Intervention Records. There are licensing agreements to be negotiated, artists to please, mastering engineers and pressing plants to be engaged, vinyl formulation and cover design to be arranged, plus marketplace changes and ever-increasing competition to be navigated. The label’s first...

It's our Thanksgiving message for 2025!

Louie Pérez has written many great songs for Los Lobos, but “Saint Behind the Glass” is especially close to his heart. It was inspired by a saint statue from his family’s home and now is part of the exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion and Culture at the American Writers Museum in Chicago. Perez offers that song’s origin story, digs into his songwriting dynamic with singer-guitarist David...

Bob Merlis ran the Warner Bros. publicity department for much of his 29 years at the label, and he has tales to tell. He recalls his adventures as a Columbia University student presenting concerts by the Byrds and others, as well as his rock journalist stint, his encounter with “supernova” Little Richard and a classic misunderstanding with the Carpenters. Soon he was working with Dion DiMucci, ZZ...

Paul Kelly has been one of Australia’s—and the world’s—premier singer-songwriters for decades, having been introduced to American audiences with the mid-‘80s albums Gossip and Under the Sun and songs such as “Before Too Long,” “Darling It Hurts,” “Dumb Things” and “To Her Door.” His new album, Seventy , finds his voice and songwriting powers undiminished as he continues delivering deep reflections...

Paul Myers is one of those do-it-all guys: author of the new John Candy: A Life in Comedy , host of the Record Store Day Podcast (which he also writes, produces, engineers and composes the music for), radio and TV host, musician, and author of books about Kids in the Hall, Long John Baldry, Barenaked Ladies and the one that hooked me on his work, A Wizard, a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio....

After Camper Van Beethoven performed the final show of its recent tour in Washington, D.C.—and perhaps its last show ever—violinist/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel returned to Stockholm, Sweden, where he has lived for the past 13 years. Segel is well traveled as a musician and otherwise, having been born in Marseille, France, grown up in Davis, Calif., and played with Sparklehorse as well as...

This conversation with Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist-songwriter Tom Morello took place immediately after the final preview of the new punk-metal-hip-hop musical, Revolution(s) at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. Little did Morello, whose music propels the show, and playwright Zayd Ayers Dohrn know when they began work on Revolution(s) that it would be opening in a freshly militarized Chi...

Peter Guralnick, an author I've long admired, wrote the definitive Elvis Presley biographies Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love and has returned with The Colonel and the King. Drawing on fresh research and volumes of previously unseen letters, the author casts new light on Colonel Tom Parker, an identity-changing Dutch immigrant who became Presley’s manager for life. Guranick’s complex portra...

I’ve been a Peter Orner fan for a long time, appreciating how—whether he’s writing short stories, novels or essays—he makes every word count. Stories and chapters are short, sentences lean, zero fat. His justly acclaimed new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter , springs from the apparent 1963 murder of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, the real-life daughter of Chicago Sun-Times columnist and TV persona...

Emma Swift is a sublime singer of her own songs as well as those of Bob Dylan, as she demonstrates on her new album, The Resurrection Game, and the previous Blonde on the Tracks . She says The Resurrection Game is about “how art can get us through quite brutal experiences by making them beautiful”—i.e. what a lot of us need right now. Swift tells of her Australian upbringing and influences, how sh...

Scott McCaughey returns to Caropop as busy as ever. He’s currently on the Baseball Project/Minus 5 September Doubleheader tour, with each band consisting of Steve Wynn, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Linda Pitmon and McCaughey. This comes after a three-week jaunt in England with Luke Haines and Buck and another Minus 5 variant. He also has recorded an upcoming Young Fresh Fellows album on the heels of th...

Robbie Fulks released his debut album back in 1996, and here we are in 2025 with him, at age 62, still on the rise. His awesome guitar-picking skills and singing drew the attention of Steve Martin, who added him to his bluegrass band for performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! , at the Hollywood Bowl and beyond. Fulks also has a brilliant new album, Now Then , that covers much stylistic ground while di...

Squeeze’s Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are one of rock’s greatest songwriting tandems, with Tilbrook crafting indelible melodies around Difford’s emotionally detailed lyrics. Here Difford digs into the evolution of his and Tilbrook’s partnership. When Difford hands over his lyrics, does he suggest a musical direction to Tilbrook? Did Difford know that “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” would b...

We're going on summer recess--for a good reason: Caropop is getting a long-awaited tune-up. We’ll be tweaking the presentation and improving the way we let you all know about episodes. In addition to keeping them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the RSS platform and caropop.com, we’ll also be posting them on a new Caropop YouTube channel. Stay tuned for more details, and please subscribe to all of the...

No surprise, talking music with Craig Finn is stimulating and a lot of fun. The Hold Steady’s frontman/lyricist recently released his sixth solo album, the character-driven song cycle Always Been . He also hosts the podcast “That’s How I Remember It,” which explores the relationship between memory and creativity, and writes the Substack “Versions of Security.” Finn has thoughts on the power of his...

Bassist Gina Birch is a founding member of the legendary British post-punk band the Raincoats, whose self-titled 1977 debut album is an off-kilter classic. More Raincoats albums followed, as did stints with Dorothy and the Hangovers, but it wasn’t until 2023 that Birch released her first solo album, the acclaimed I Play My Bass Loud . Now she’s made Trouble , which again draws on dub, reggae and e...

Bassist Dennis Dunaway was—and is—one of the key figures in the 1970s rock band, Alice Cooper. That’s right, the band Alice Cooper, which recorded seven albums between 1969 and 1973 (and had such hits as "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out") before the singer Alice Cooper (nee Vince Furnier) went on to a successful solo career. Now the surviving members of the Alice Cooper band, which was inducted in...

When I spoke with Chris Stamey way back for Caropop Ep. 30, he shared a sheet music collection called Marvelous Melodies Songbook, New Songs Vol. III. Several of those songs appear on his wonderful new album, Anything Is Possible (out July 11), as do the Brian Wilson-evoking “I’d Be Lost Without You,” the Wilson-covering “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” and the optimistic, guitar-driven...

May Pang was John Lennon’s companion for the late-1973-to-early-1975 period that has become known as Lennon’s “lost weekend.” Although Pang has used that phrase for her documentary and photo exhibition, she doesn’t see this time as “lost” for Lennon. Not only did he record two albums ( Walls and Bridges and Rock ‘n’ Roll ) and produce another (Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats ), but Pang reunited him wi...