Song Chronicles

Season 3 Episode 5 Carole King To Be Home Again  Forest Ecosystem Preservation   Carole King at the 1972 Grammys   Our guest today is one of the most successful female songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century, writing or co-writing 118 pop hits in Billboard's top 100 in the US and 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts fo...

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 4 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is Dave Davies, co-founder and lead guitarist for The Kinks, one of the most influential and quintessentially English rock bands.  Dave has recently released his autobiography and an album that goes with it, which are both called Living On A Thin Line. He has much to share in this conversation about the creative process, how a sens...

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 3 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is singer and songwriter Billy Valentine, who just released a new album called "a masterclass in soul interpretation" by Record Collector. Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth was chosen as the first record for the relaunch of Flying Dutchman, the iconic imprint known for releases by Duke Ellington, Gil-Scott Heron, and Leon Thoma...

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 2 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is Michelle Lewis, an Emmy- and Peabody-winning songwriter and composer and an advocate of songwriters’ rights as executive director of SONA. Michelle’s parents were both musicians. Her dad was the tenor saxophone player in Frank Sinatra’s band and her mom was a session singer who sang with the likes of Benny Goodman. Michelle talk...

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 1 of Song Chronicles. Our guest is producer, engineer, and educator Mark Rubel. Mark has produced thousands of recordings for artists including Alison Krauss, Rascal Flatts, Fall Out Boy, Ludacris, and many more. Mark sees humans as storytelling machines, with production and mixing as a unified field of sonic storytelling. Mark placing microphones to record Roy "Future...

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 12 of Song Chronicles. Our special guests today are the bewitching jazz vocalist Marley Munroe, better known as Lady Blackbird, and the award-winning producer, writer and musician Chris Seefried. Together, the two created the incredible Lady Blackbird debut album Black Acid Soul, which they describe as a genre all its own they almost invented. As Chris explains, the wo...

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 11 of Song Chronicles. Our special guest today is Thomas Walsh, an Ivor Novello-nominated songwriter who is the front person and songwriter behind the Irish pop-rock project Pugwash. As a band, Pugwash released six albums and toured through the UK and Ireland before Thomas returned Pugwash to its roots as a solo project with the most recent album Silverlake. He's curre...

  Season 2: Episode 10 Billy Steinberg     Welcome to Season 2, Episode 10 of Song Chronicles. Our special guest is Songwriter Hall of Fame member Billy Steinberg, who with collaborator Tom Kelly wrote many Number 1 hits including "Like a Virgin" by Madonna, "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper, "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston, "Alone" by Heart, and "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles. The duo also co-wrote...

Season 2: Episode 9 Jon Platt   Welcome to Episode 9, Season 2 of Song Chronicles. Our special guest is Jon Platt, the Chairman and CEO of Sony Music Publishing – a man Jay-Z proclaimed as the “the Obama of the music industry.”     Jon took a quite unusual path to becoming one of the most powerful and influential (music) publishers of the past 25 years," according to Variety. Born in Philadelphia...

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 8 of Song Chronicles. Our special guest this week is cardiologist and singer-songwriter Suzie Brown, whose work has been recognized by NewSong Music Competition, the Great American Songwriting Competition, and the International Acoustic Music Awards. Born in Montreal and raised in Boston, Suzie seemed predestined to follow in her parents’ footsteps to become a doctor a...

Welcome to Episode 7 of Season 2 of Song Chronicles. Our featured special guest is Aaron Lee Tasjan. We spoke back in February, right after the release of his fantastic new album Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! Aaron's newest album   Aaron has led a fascinating life. He's lived in many different corners of the country, and has worked with the New York Dolls, Lucinda Williams, Jack White, and Tony Visconti...

Season 2: Episode 6 Nicole Atkins   Photo by Barbara FG   Episode 6 of Song Chronicles’ second season features a freewheeling conversation with Nicole Atkins, a singer-songwriter NPR Music hailed as “one of those people who is so inventive in everything she does.”     Last April, Nicole released her fifth full-length, Italian Ice, an album she described as to "an acid trip through my record collec...

Season 2: Episode 5 Bob Ezrin Part 2                                This episode features the second half of our conversation with Bob Ezrin.     Few producers have had careers as Bob Ezrin has had. The award-winning producer has worked with some of rock’s biggest acts (Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Green Day, Kiss, Rod Stewart, Jane’s Addiction, and U2).   Bob worked with Jane's Addiction...

Season 2: Episode 4 Bob Ezrin     Episode 4 of Song Chronicles Season 2 presents the first of our two-part interview with the renowned producer Bob Ezrin. Since the 1970s, Bob has been the producer of some of the biggest albums in rock history. Here are some of  the albums he did during his first decade as a producer: KISS’s record Destroyer, Lou Reed’s Berlin, Peter Gabriel’s solo debut, Pink Flo...

Season 2: Episode 3 Jeff Trott       “When you make a record, it's like a snapshot of your life at that time.” Jeff Trott, the guest on this episode of Song Chronicles, certainly knows what he’s talking about when it comes to making records. The songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist has appeared on hundreds of albums since he started out playing guitar with the San Francisco-based alt-rock ban...

Season 2: Episode 2 Robin Danar     “I work in the shadows.”   For over forty years, Robin has operated behind the scenes making performers sound great whether he is manning the board in the studio or handling the front-of-house sound in venues large and small around the world. The New York City native started hanging out with college DJs in Albany when he was a university student and soon found h...

Season 2: Episode 1 Linda Edell Howard Song Chronicles launches its second season with a truly unique music insider conversation with Linda Edell Howard. Linda during her high school cheerleading days    Linda is an attorney in Nashville who has been an advocate for songwriters and artists over the last 30 years. Her expertise, and the focus of our interview, is in the often-complicated areas of c...

Episode 12 The McBroom Sisters   "Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"     After spending years working on other people’s projects, the McBroom Sisters have just released their own album – and done so on their own terms.     In this episode, we talk with Durga and Lorelei McBroom. These incredible sisters are on the shortlist when some band needs a powerhouse gues...

Episode 11 Gloria Estefan Part Two   Song Chronicles proudly presents its eleventh episode, the second of a two-part conversation with Gloria Estefan. Gloria Estefan has lived a phenomenal life since arriving in America with her family from Cuba when she was two years old. As a teenager, she joined the Miami Sound Machine, where she also met her future husband Emilio. The group slowly built a foll...

Episode 10 Gloria Estefan  Part 1   Song Chronicles is proud to present its tenth episode, part one of a two-part conversation with Gloria Estefan.     The Cuban-American singer achieved worldwide stardom in the mid-80s. Her long, successful career has been recognized with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedy Center Honors, the American Music Award for Lifetime Achievement, and induction int...

Episode 9 Al Schmitt Part 2   Song Chronicles is proud to present the second of a two-part interview with Al Schmitt. This episode, done via Zoom on August 7, took place three days after the first interview after Al emailed to say that he had some additional stories and memories he wanted to share. It’s a testament to his generosity and work ethic that Al would take the time to follow-up because h...

Episode 8 Al Schmitt Part 1 Song Chronicles is proud to present the first of a two-part interview with Al Schmitt. These episodes offer a unique behind-the-scenes look - from a master of his craft –  on what happens on the other side of the glass when musicians go into a recording studio.         Al Schmitt is the definition of a living legend. During his unparalleled career, the 90-year-old engin...

Episode 7 Peter Case Part 2 Peter in Venice, California with his dog Mattie April 8, 2019 photo by Louise Goffin "I write to know what I think" - Peter Case   In the follow-up to Episode 6, which was Part One of this interview, the conversation continues that took place on April 8th, 2019. To bring us up-to-date, Louise makes a Zoom call to Peter in August 2020 to find out how his music, recording...

Episode 6 Peter Case Part I Song Chronicles is proud to present the first of a two-part interview with Peter Case. For Peter, music is an economy of energy, a spiritual economy. His career stretches out over half a century and is still going strong. Through the experiences he's had, the different band line-ups, the travels, the epiphanies, the inspiring companions, he pours vibrancy into each new...

  Episode 5. Gail Ann Dorsey Song Chronicles is proud to present its fifth episode, a conversation with singer-songwriter, bass player extraordinaire, and dear friend Gail Ann Dorsey.  "I think... since I was a little kid... I wanted to get out of Philadelphia. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to do these things. Honestly, the odds were not in my favor, from my background, of me achieving what...