Low Profile with Markly Morrison

This is, as you will discover, a very special episode.  The first thing you'll hear on this episode is the sound of the English-born, Scottish-dewlling musician Richard Youngs playing guitar with his feet. Entitled “Foot Guitar XXXV,” it’s one example of the many forms that Youngs’ music can take. On the other 99 and a half percent of his recorded output, you can hear him singing and playing nearl...

Keyboard wizard and punk pioneer Martin Rev, (born Martin Reverby) grew up in New York where he still lives today. In his youth, he was a fan of doo wop music, and then became engrossed in the emerging jazz world that was happening around him, brushing shoulders with the likes of Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp and Eric Dolphy, and playing in a combo called Reverend B in the late 1960s. It was in th...

On this bonus episode we have yet another clash of the podcasts.  I had the pleasure of a zoom call and DJ roulette session with the host of Dollar Country, Franklin Fantini, or as his listeners know him, Frank the Drifter.  It’s one of my favorite shows, and shares a common mission to this program: that’s to preserve overlooked music history and share it with a wider audience.  For Low Profile, t...

Corey Ledet is a 2012 Grammy-nominated Zydeco musician unlike any other.  He was born in Houston, and started playing this traditional Creole music professionally when he was a kid, performing with Wildbert Thibadeuax’s Zydeco Rascals and others before moving to the small town of Parks, Lousianna, where he spent his summers immersed in his extended family’s Creole traditions… especially Zydeco mus...

Season 4 Finale: The incomparable Sean O’Hagan’s first major band was the Irish 1980s pop group Microdisney. After that group disbanded, he started recording with his next project, the High Llamas, who released some of the most beautiful pop music of the last 30 years. This is a song “The Hot Revivalist” from their 1996 album Hawaii. Recently, he has dropped the High Llamas moniker in favor of his...

On this episode, guest host Eli Moore returns to speak with Jeff Johnson of the Canadian indie band OK Vancouver OK. The project has been consistently cranking out a stream of primarily self-released albums since 2005, and their efforts are hard to classify in terms of genre, but they are clearly experimental, socially conscious, and family-friendly. Their latest record as the time of this episode...

Jonny Fritz is a man of many talents.  In addition to being one of my personal favorite artists at the forefront of 21st century country music, he is a father, leatherworker, and according to his business card, “LA’s Premiere Used House Salesman.”  He grew up in Virginia, lived in Philly later in life, and then moved to Nashville where he get his country music career going releasing a pair of albu...

 Gretchen Christopher of the iconic 1950s and 60s pop vocal group the Fleetwoods returns to the show. Gretchen talks about that band’s formation, and rise straight to the top of the Billboard charts, and her solo career that followed. The Fleetwoods were comprised of Gretchen Christopher, Barbara Ellis, and Gary Troxel and were the first group to hit number one TWICE on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart...

The second part of Michael Sean Coleman's interview with Dublin-based psych-folk legend Alison O'Donnell. This conversation covers her time in the band Flibbertigibbet while living in South Africa during apartheid in the late 70s and early 1980s, more about her work with Mellow Candle and the process that went into their classic album "Swaddling Songs," and her upcoming solo record. This episode m...

Michael Sean Coleman will be your guest host for this two-part episode as we take a closer look and a bit of a listen to the amazing life and incredible music of Alison O’ Donnell. You may know that Alison, along with Clodagh Simmonds, were the vocal powerhouse that drove the Irish prog/psych/folk rock band Mellow Candle - the two teenage girls lending their soaring harmonies and timeless songwrit...

Temple of Bon Matin founded in Philadelphia in 1990 and would continue through the two thousand teens with a rotating cast with the only constant being Ed Wilcox at the center and helm. Ed was the singer, drummer and band leader of Temple of Bon Matin which was an extremely loud band with electric guitars and smashing drums. A band of blue collar workers (Ed Wilcox is a truck driver currently), th...

Instead of a new episode this time around, here’s some music representing the artists who have been featured on the program so far, from the most recent back to the first episode. Hang out for a couple hours, enjoy the jams, and if you like a song or artist, dig it: There’s a Low Profile episode about them for you to devour. See y’all in a couple weeks with more new shows as season 4 continues to...

This episode, guest hosted and produced by Eli Moore, is an interview with Negativland co-founder Mark Hosler. Since the late 1970s, the art collective known as Negativland has been sticking it to the status quo through their albums, radio program, live performances and visual art for over 40 years. Hosler tells Eli of the group’s beginnings in the San Francisco suburbs, their inevitable involveme...

Hey Low Profile listeners, this is Markly with a surprise bonus episode! This episode's featured guests are influenced by people like Jesus, Gandhi, God and Buddha. About a year ago, I got to have a conversation with two living members of one of the most influential bands of all time. Then my computer completely died, and I lost the entire interview! I was crushed. But to my amazement, earlier thi...

This episode is a crossover with the oral history podcast Welcome To Olympia, hosted and produced by Rob Smith. I first met Rob when we were both beginning work on our respective shows, and he asked me if he could use my band Skrill Meadow’s song “Going for Broke” for his show’s end theme music. (I obliged.) Since then we’ve been bouncing back and forth the idea of a further collaboration, and I s...

Jeffrey Lewis is a musician from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who followed in the tradition of NYC’s “anti-folk” movement. He writes songs that come from his observations of the changing world around him. In the last 25 years he has released over 35 albums’ worth of material- including collaborations with the likes of Kimya Dawson, Diane Cluck, and Peter Stampfel. Here, Jeffrey speaks with gue...

SEASON 4 PREMIERESinger, composer and multimedia artist Briana Marela’s transcendent music emphasizes love, thick and swirling, like frozen yogurt you can listen to. Briana grew up in Seattle and found herself immersed in its vibrant independent music community when she was still in high school. We spoke about how she came to record her first album with a cast of established music royalty (includi...

On this week's episode, we team up with Andy "Remex" Moreno of The CapCity Presents Podcast for our first ever cross-over episode! CapCity Presents Podcast is a show that digs into the world of Puget Sound region musicians and beyond, from the lens of Andy's background as a promoter of live entertainment. We discuss life in Olympia, hip-hop, live shows, obsure music and what pickled dishes we'll b...

For this second holiday 2020 bonus episode, Low Profile brings you a high-profile artist. She has won multiple gold records and is in the Vocal Group Hall of fame. Her name is Gretchen Christopher, and she is one of the founders of 1950s-1960s pop sensations the Fleetwoods, who began their career here in Olympia, Washington. She will be featured in an upcoming episode about the Fleetwoods next sea...

Happy holidays everybody! It’s Markly, and I’m happy to bring you this little bonus piece in between seasons. Here’s what’s up: I had the idea to make a special mixtape of non-traditional Christmas music to share with the show’s Patreon supporters, with songs performed by artists who’ve been featured on Low Profile over the past few years. I figured out that almost half of the people who’ve been o...

SEASON THREE FINALE!This episode is a feature on the band Lavender Country, whose eponymous 1973 album was the world’s first gay-themed country record. Back then, if you weren’t part of the gay community, it was highly unlikely you would be hip to this record, but it was a game-changer for the initiated, and has since been archived in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The songs were culled from sugg...

Berlin denizen Markus Popp has been creating music under the name Oval since the early 1990s. His earlier albums brought a new sound to the world of electronic music that would come to be known as "glitch." On first listen, one might think they had a damaged copy of the album before eventually falling under its lilting trance. He designed his own audio software called "ovalprocess" that was access...

Welcome to the 32nd episode of Low Profile with Markly Morrison, the show that stands at least six feet away from popular music. My guest today, Julian Koster, is a master of the singing saw, a prominent member of cult heroes Neutral Milk Hotel, and the founder of his own group The Music Tapes, both part of the storied Elephant Six Collective in Athens Georgia. He is also the creator of a lavish s...

This episode’s featured guest is Jerry Williams Jr., better known as Swamp Dogg, who has been a force in the music world since 1954. His many credits include the song “She’s All I’ve Got” made popular by Freddie North and Johnny Paycheck, and the honor of having the second-worst album cover of all time with “Rat On!” He speaks to me from his home studio in L.A. about his early days as a child prod...

The Julies were a band formed in the early 90s in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The band had already broken up by the time their EP “Lovelife” was released on the indie Christian label Flying Tart, but the small amount of music they created made an impact on me, a guy I recently met named Jason, and countless dozens on top of that. “Lovelife” has recently been reissued on vinyl by Lost in Ohio, amo...