Caropop

Chef Rick Bayless worked in his parents’ Oklahoma City BBQ restaurant before he found his passion exploring Mexico’s regional foods. When he and his wife Deann opened Chicago’s game-changing Frontera Grill in March 1987, he wowed the ever-packed dining rooms with complexly flavored Mexican dishes featuring hard-to-source ingredients. The chef pushed the boundaries of fine dining two years later by...

More than a half century after co-founding the classic power-pop band Shoes, guitarist-singer-songwriter Gary Klebe is releasing his first solo album, Out Loud , though he was reluctant to do so. He explains why here and digs into Shoes’ unlikely, inspiring career—how he and brothers Jeff and John Murphy (a previous Caropop guest) formed the band in Zion, Ill., before any of them could play instru...

Ronnie Barnett was a rock journalist in Houston when he met Kim Shattuck, then bassist for the Los Angeles band the Pandoras, and their fates intertwined. Soon Barnett was living in L.A. and playing bass in the Muffs, Shattuck’s new pop-punk band in which she played guitar and applied her impassioned vocals to her tight, tuneful songs. The band had a strong three-album run with Warner Bros., thoug...

Vince Wilburn Jr. was growing up on Chicago’s South Side when his mother would get him all dressed up because his Uncle Miles Davis was coming to town. Sometimes they'd see the brilliant trumpeter perform, including at the tiny Plugged Nickel club in Old Town. By the 1980s, Wilburn was playing drums in Davis’ band and helping produce his albums. Wilburn now performs in Miles Electric Band (MEB) an...

Len Kasper is starting his sixth season as the Chicago White Sox’s radio play-by-play announcer after 16 years as the Cubs’ TV play-by-play guy, but he’s got another passion: playing bass and writing songs for his band Sonic45. This Chicago all-star five-piece, which features recent Caropop guest Dag Juhlin on guitar, made its debut performance after my 2019 “Talking in Space” conversation with Ka...

Any author would dream of the kind of acclaim and attention that Christine Sneed has received, including a front-page Sunday New York Times Book Review rave of her 2013 novel Little Known Facts. The accolades continued for subsequent novels and short-story collections, yet getting her work published has become harder than ever. Sneed launched a Substack called Bookish that offers tips, reflections...

Musicians are said to have a lifetime to create their first album and six months to make the follow-up. That was literally the case with Graham Parker, whose landmark debut album, Howlin’ Wind , came out in April 1976, followed that October by the acclaimed Heat Treatment . Parker, the subject of Jay Nachman’s excellent new book Graham Parker’s Howlin’ Wind , tells his fascinating origin story her...

Michael Blair had much training in percussion, including a degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, by the time he pulled out the marimba, congas, drums and other instruments for Tom Waits’ landmark 1985 album Rain Dogs . As was the case with recent Caropop guest Mark Ribot, Rain Dogs propelled Blair to more work with Waits (including the album and Steppenwolf Theatre performances...

I saw bassist Victor Krummenacher, one of my favorite music people, perform twice within three weeks last fall: with Camper Van Beethoven to end perhaps their last-ever tour in Washington, D.C.; and with the Third Mind, the improvisatory band also featuring Dave Alvin, in Milwaukee. Both shows were fantastic. Now Krummenacher has a new album, the cinematic Block Out the Sun , and is reflecting on...

I first saw and interviewed Dag Juhlin more than 30 years ago when he was singing, writing and playing guitar with the power-pop trio the Slugs. He’s had many musical lives since then, including playing in Poi Dog Pondering’s expansive Chicago lineup, performing deep-cut covers in Expo’76 and Courtesy Patrol, supporting Len Kasper’s songwriting in Sonic45 and singing and writing songs with his lat...

I first noticed Marc Ribot’s slinky, spiky guitar playing as “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” from Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, slithered over the opening of Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. Rain Dogs was a breakthrough for Ribot, who previously had played in Brother Jack McDuff’s soul-jazz band, backed Wilson Pickett and Solomon Burke, and been a member of the Lounge Lizards. More Waits collaborations followed, as...

In our annual check-in with renowned mastering engineer Kevin Gray, he reflects on a very busy 2025 that included his Rhino High Fidelity versions of Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’ long-out-of-print Buckingham Nicks. How did Gray and fellow mastering engineer Chris Bellman feel about Rhino releasing separate versions of Buckingham Nicks mastered by each of them? Gray also d...

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...