Nakedly Examined Music Podcast

Lincoln established the Seattle-based singer/songwriter vehicle Red Jacket Mine in 2003, made three albums and an EP with them, and in 2017 released his first solo album, the jazzy, live-in-studio Trembling Frames . We examine “Desperate Tormentors” and hear “How To Escape” and a bit of “Memory Up and Die” from that album, and discuss Red Jacket Mine: “Apr...

Chris rose to fame on keys for Arizona’s country punks Green on Red from 1981–1987, and has since then been singer/songwriter/guitarist for 12 albums while still being a sought-after session keyboardist (e.g., with Steve Wynn , with whom he’s currently touring). We discuss “Pale Blonde Hell” by Chris Cacavas and Junkyard Love from Pale Blond Hell (1994), “Do Me No Fav...

Seth Swirsky was a highly successful staff songwriter for over 20 years, and has put out three solo albums and three albums as The Red Button since 2004. He’s a huge Beatles fan and has released a Beatles documentary Beatles Stories and has multiple books about psychology and baseball. We discuss his heavily covered and sound-tracked tune “Love Is a Beautiful Thing”; you’ll...

John is an amazing guitarist who started in the late-’60s British blues boom, had his first compositions set to tape with Darryl Way’s Wolf in the early ’70s, then joined the latter line-ups of jazz-prog legends Soft Machine (replacing Alan Holdsworth) in the late ’70s. He’s collaborated with luminaries like violinist Stéphane Grappelli, guitar great John Williams, an...

Laura Davis-Chanin, now a lawyer whom you may know from the Phi Fic podcast , drummed in the late ’70s with an NYC punk band called The Student Teachers and has written about that experience, in which she became friends with David Bowie and dated Jimmy Destri (keyboardist for Blondie), in The Girl in the Back: A Female Drummer’s Life with Bowie, Blondie, and the ’70s Rock Scene (...

Christopher Millar played as Rat Scabies for about two decades with first-generation British punk band The Damned starting in 1976, and has now released his debut solo album, P.H.D. (Prison, Hospital, Debt) . We discuss “Dazy Bones” (feat. Jesse Budd) and “Rat’s Opus” (feat. Robbie Aaron) from that 2018 album, then look back to The Damned’s “History of the...

Byron is an in-demand session/touring bassist whose main band since 2004 has been Ollabelle , a multi-headed gospel band based out of NYC. He has co-fronted Lost Leaders since 2011 and just released his first solo album, Disappearing Man . We talk about “Losing You” and “Gypsy Wind” from that album, plus “Gone Today” by Ollabelle from Riverside Battle Songs (2007). We...

Lindsay has released four albums and an EP of depressed alternative rock under the band name Gretchen’s Wheel since 2015. She provides an interesting DIY model of music production: Home recording using software for amp simulation and keyboard parts, then ship it elsewhere for drumming and mixing. All songs are written on acoustic, but the acoustic part is eclipsed or eliminated in the final...

Nashville singer/songwriter/fiction-writer Rod laid sheet rock for years before releasing his first album in 2001; he has now released ten albums of vivid Americana. We focus on his new double album Out Past The Wires , discussing “Take Home Pay” and “Date of Grace” (with intro/outro from “Be My Bonnie”), then look back to “Rust Belt Fields” from Wel...

Prateek was named artist of the year for 2016 by MTV India, and has been releasing tasteful, lyrics-focused songs about relationships in English and Hindi since 2011. Our discussion, recorded last November, focuses on his 2015 album In Tokens & Charms , which was rereleased with extra tracks in 2017. We discuss “Go,” “Oh Love,” and “Flames” from that album,...

Tara has been building her heavy metal guitar skills for many years, but has only recently gone public with this venture, building a huge following through social media and now releasing Evil Enough , an album of her original, autobiographical songs featuring A-list L.A. musicians Like Vinny Appiece (Dio/Black Sabbath), Mark Boals (Yngwie Malmsteen), and Phil Soussan (Ozzy Osbourne), all of whom s...

Shawn started with two albums as a ’60s folk singer, went to England to cavort with Donavan, The Beatles, et al, and emerged in the ’70s with ten albums of eclectic, progressive music with shamanic lyrics delivered with a twang. We discuss “She Was Waitin’ for Her Mother at the Station in Torino and You Know I Love You Baby but It’s Getting Too Heavy to Laugh” (...

Phil was a core member of Roxy Music through the ’70s and early ’80s, has released 10+ solo albums since 1975 and many collaborations—appearing on around 80 albums in total—with an experimental yet tasteful guitar that’s sometimes mistaken for a keyboard or something else. We discuss “No Church in the Wild” (feat. Sonia Bernardo) from The Sound of Blue (2015), which i...

Nick has released 22 albums as The Bevis Frond since 1986, alternating jangle-pop with psychedelia and power-guitar rock… pretty much anything ’60s-flavored. We discuss “Longships” from Example 22 (2015), “Opthalmic Microdots” from White Numbers (2013), and “Coming Round” from London Stone (1992). We conclude by listening to “Portobello Man” fr...

As bassist/co-frontman for XTC, he released around 14 albums between 1978–2000, and for the first time since, he has a new release, the Great Aspirations EP now under the name TC&I (the “TC” being XTC drummer Terry Chambers). We discuss “Scatter Me” and “Kenny” from this 2017 release, plus “Say It” an 2002 XTC song, and conclude by listening to &...

David J. Haskins gained fame with Bauhaus in the late ’70s/early ’80s, gained more fame with Love and Rockets, and has since 1983 released around ten albums plus several EPs and other collaborations. We discuss “The Auteur (Redux / Reprise)” a 2018 single (featuring Rose McGowan and Emily Jane White), “Vaudeville Ghost Light” from Carpe Noctem (2016), credited t...

Sarah has recorded five solo albums since 1997, starting with traditional folk songs, sometimes guitar instrumentals, and now focusing on originals that mix British and American folk in a style influenced by Joni Mitchell, among others. She has lately pared back her songwriting to ensure that every note counts. We discuss the title track and “The Silence above Us” from If We Dig Any De...

Aaron was born into show business, staring young in L.A. in the early ’00s with All Hours, then went solo, moved to New York, became an actor, and has now released his first album in seven years, Wry Observer (2017). We discuss the title track from that album plus “Brooklyn at Dawn” (the intro music is from that too: “The Last to Die in Battle”). Then we look back to...

Amy has recorded nine albums of emotionally stark but often artistically decorated original folk music, punctuated by cover tunes like the opening music here, Townes Van Zandt’s “Buckskin Stallion Blues,” which appeared in the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri . We discuss “Mouth to Mouth” from The Autopilot Knows You Best (2000), “The Nightjar’s Bl...

On NEM#15 , Craig introduced us to his songwriting style: How a hardcore aesthetic informs even his most syntho creations, and how whimsicality and beauty can coexist harmoniously. Craig has since then released the Adult Desire album, and returns to talk to us about the song “Safe Home/Fadeland” and about the Adult Desire 360 VR application he’s released as a way for people to ex...

As Glass Onyon promotions, Billy works with many of his idols from the ’60s–’80s. He began as a drummer, attended Berklee College of Music, and began Ant-Bee in the late ’80s, both as a Zappa-esque improv live act and as a tightly layered, Beach Boys–psychedelic solo recording effort. He’s released four albums as Ant-Bee, increasingly including as collaborators many of thos...

RHEMA started in the late ’70s as a Christian band, and quickly became a secular prog band, and as a six-piece produced an album called Voyage of the Rock Aliens that accompanied their appearance in the not-really-released-in-the-U.S. Pia Zadora–vehicle film of that name. The band then broke up, but songwriters Marc and Jeffrey continued to work together on various projects, and have finally...

Arrica and the …’s (pronounced DOT-DOT-DOTs) has released four albums and three EPs of floaty, poetic, California rock since 2006, and she’s also in a collaborative roots-rock project called Dear County. We discuss “Whole Lotta Lows” and “X-Ray Eyes” from Low as the Moon (2017) and “When the Clouds Hang This Low” from Let Alone Sea (2011). We c...

Jherek started off as bassist in the late ’90s for the Seattle art rock bands The Dead Science and Parenthetical Girls , and has released about five solo albums (and other things) since 2006, the last two being full-on orchestral works, despite the expense and logistics involved and his not being trained as a classical composer. We discuss the title track from Cistern (2016), “The Nest...

Mike fronts a hard-working Madison power trio more or less in the glam rock vein that’s put out 7 albums and 7 EPs since 2000. He also runs (and records a new song every week for) a podcast about the occult. We discuss “Sulfur” from The Wilderness of Almost Was and Never Were (2017), “Saturday Night Gospel” from Dangerous Times (2014), and “Prozac Girl” fr...