Performance Anxiety

This week we take a left turn. I invited a chef to be my guest this week. His name is Jay Reifel and he just beat Bobby Flay! With a mincemeat pie. And that’s why I reached out. His supper club, Edible History, takes recipes from ancient manuscripts and recreates them to give diners a literal taste of history. But he didn’t start out as a chef. We talk about his early life, somehow dual enrolling...

Steve Dawson grew up listening to a transistor radio instead of satellite radio and streaming platforms. And that informs the music he writes today. After playing in Dolly Varden for years and releasing albums as a solo artist, Steve stepped away from music. But after taking a class with Richard Thompson and Patty Griffin, he felt the time was right to come back. Some of the work he created in tha...

Lizzie Edwards of Lizzie and The Makers is my guest. And we were having a really fun talk when we were interrupted by an uninvited guest. We were talking about music literally being in her DNA, how she had created and booked a blues festival, featuring her band, when everyone but Lizzie decided to quit two weeks before the show. That led to meeting Greg McMullen and the formation of Lizzie and The...

I am joined by singer, Kate Clark. She’s an up and coming country music star but she’s not exactly new to singing. Prior to her move to Nashville to concentrate on her music, she lived in LA, trying to learn everything she could about the entertainment business. She wound up being a body double for Scarlett Johansson and singing in the Pitch Perfect movies. And before that, she was a girl from Tex...

We chat with Alan Hewitt this week. Alan’s list of credits is too extensive to mention in a short podcast intro. But they include Earth, Wind, & Fire, The Moody Blues, Warrant, & The Grand Tour. He has written music that has appeared in critically acclaimed movies and TV series, played with Hall of Fame musicians, and released several solo albums. His new band is called One Nation and leans more o...

This episode I am honored to be joined by a great guitarist as well as an all-around great guy, Dave Weiner. Dave has been Steve Vai’s rhythm guitarist for many years. He shares how he met Steve and how Steve has helped him grow by keeping him out of his comfort zones. He also tells us the most important lessons he’s learned from Steve. Dave has released three solo albums (and already remastered o...

This is a Performance Anxiety Podcast first. We welcome Livio Ercoli of the punk band Round Eye. Round Eye is based in Shanghai China. But the band is not Chinese. It’s full of ex-pats. Livio talks about how he got to China from Italy and how he started playing music there. He talks about how things are changing there and not for the better. Livio tells a story about having a meeting with the Mini...

Mark Farner, formerly of Grand Funk Railroad, and currently part of Mark Farner’s American Band is hanging out with us this episode. His extensive career began after a football injury. He has a great technique for conditioning your brain to sing and play guitar at the same time.  After his time in other bands was over, Mark co-founded Grand Funk Railroad and had a harrowing trip to their first gig...

Welcome Scarlett Sabet to the podcast. She’s not a photographer, but she’s on the podcast because of one. When I had photographer Scarlet Page on the show, I mentioned that I loved this photo she had taken of a red headed young woman with the sun shining in the space between her arm and her face, partially obscuring her. It’s an incredible shot. She said, “That’s Scarlett Sabet. She’s an incredibl...

This episode I have put together a panel of creative people to discuss the effects of literature on popular music. I’m joined by artist Christa De Mayo, author Robert Duncan, and musicians Morgan Geer and Jordon Zadorozny. The ground rules were to pick two musicians who were influenced by literature and used it in their songwriting. The discussion quickly goes off on all kinds of tangents and ends...

I’m joined by the entirety of the band Kataan. That means I have two people on the show this time. Nick Thornbury of Vattnet Viskar and Brett Boland of Astronoid have joined forces to create a death metal EP. And it’s been a long time coming. It’s a great talk about their history, the band name, and the effect of context on our perception of people and music. And maybe doing a Def Leppard covers a...

Henry Frayne is a laid back guy! This is reflected in his music. It’s relaxed, thoughtful, and purposefully made. From Ack Ack, to Area, The Moon Seven Times to Lanterna, his guitar playing is clean and beautiful. He focuses on instrumentals that let your imagination work. He talks about his career, his trouble with Apple algorithms, and recreating songs from fragments on old cassettes. He also sh...

Post Punk legend and founder of The Membranes and Goldblade, John Robb. Before we go any further, the connection John and I had was not great. A million thanks to Jordon Zadorozny of Blinker The Star for helping to fix it as much as humanly possible. I’m releasing it, even with less than perfect audio because the conversation was great with some killer stories. John has been everywhere, done every...

We are joined by Pablo Alvarez of Good Bison. His story begins with his emigration from Colombia to Miami as a kid. He went from not speaking any English to freestyle rapping for 26 hours to set the Guinness World Record! Good Bison formed after Pablo’s original band, Dinosaurs ‘N Disasters fizzled out after moving from Miami to LA. After recording a Point Break themed album, they have a new EP co...

If you’re a fan of shoegaze, this show was meant for you. My guest is Moose McKillop of the shoegaze pioneers, Moose; but more recently of the non-supergroup, Piroshka. Moose is the band that spawned the term shoegaze. Or rather, the term was spawned during one of their first live performances. Moose talks about how the band changed their sound pretty early on, his longtime connection with Miki Be...

Today we have the distinct pleasure of speaking with concert promoter extraordinaire, Danny Zelisko. He’s worked with the biggest names in rock and roll and he’s just released a book that’s full of great stories and pictures. He talks about DJ’ing a Led Zeppelin gig, helping Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson warm up, flying to LA on an air mail flight, and the day to day life of a concert promote...

I’m so pleased to release this episode! I have such a great guest in Donna Jean Godchaux, but I’m also joined by my good friend and former podcast co-host, Tommy Caprio. Donna Jean has been a part of some legendary recordings, like Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman and Elvis’ 1968 Comeback special. But that was all before moving to California. She moved just to have an adventure, music wasn’...

Bob Lord does a lot of things. He’s the CEO of PARMA Recordings. He’s the bassist for the long running, genre defying band Dreadnaught. And now he can add solo artist to the list. He has recorded what can only be described as possibly the most eclectic album of the year called Playland Arcade. It’s filled with surfing western sounds, orchestral snippets, and 8-bit jams. Bob also talks about the fu...

Today we head to France with Rabih Gebeile. We decide to take a walk through the French countryside and no, that’s not a euphemism. So occasionally there will be a bit of wind noise. But Rabih has led a fascinating life, including escaping civil wars. He’s lived all over the world and all of this can be felt and heard in his music. It’s also been influenced by the medical condition his father deve...

Astrid Young comes from a long line of creative people. Her father is legendary writer, journalist, & author Scott Young. And her brother is...well her brother is Neil Young. Those are some tough acts to follow. Astrid talks about growing up and getting into music in her own way. She describes what it was like when Neil asked her to sing on Harvest Moon. There are some great stories about the Unpl...

Beth Jeans Houghton, AKA Du Blonde, joins the show. We talk about the value of free shoes, week long constipation, and bootlegging your own records. Her mom has a bath while we also discuss making videos for Ezra Furman and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, creating video games, and the 2000 year old computer. We swap childhood phone numbers and in between all these hilarious tangents, we talk about her...

Josh Caterer is our guest. And he’s got quite a story. He started a band with two brothers which became the Smoking Popes. They decided to let Josh sing because he was the best at singing and playing while not looking at his hands. They quickly went from recording 18 songs in a day to opening for bands like Green Day. There’s a funny story about that. But with all that success came a pretty big fa...

I’ve mentioned this list I made early on of “unicorn” guests. Well today I get to check another one off the list. Rob Marshall is one of the most incredible people I’ve had on this show. He’s an amazing guitarist, but more importantly, he’s a great human. He began making walls of sound with Lyca Sleep & Exit Calm. When that period ended, he began writing for & with Mark Lanegan, culminating in the...

Tim Foljahn has had a very interesting career. He’s worked with Steve Shelly, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. He’s toured extensively with Jad Phair, Half Japanese, Cat Power; Thurston Moore, Townes Van Zandt, and others. He’s been in a TV band called Side Boob on Orange Is The New Black. He’s pursuing a Master’s degree in psychoanalysis. AND...he has a new album coming out. It’s c...

Benjamin Wright joins us on Performance Anxiety. And I’m going to stay in touch with him because in addition to being a musician, he’s a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. He’s releasing his second album with his sister Amanda, under the band name Benjamin Jayne. Benjamin lives in Vermont but Amanda lives in Barcelona. Spain. Not New York. So the pandemic rally didn’t change how they wrote music. In...