Performance Anxiety

If you listen to this podcast, you’re most likely a fan of music. And chances are, you’ve seen a live concert. Have you ever wondered what goes into getting a band from one show to the next? What kind of preplanning is needed? And how much more goes into an overseas tour? Well my guest and friend Chris Bergstrom joins me to give us all a taste of what it takes to make a tour successful and how it...

This is an episode of a different kind, even for the Side Projects series of the podcast. I’m joined by Larry Hall. Larry is the Chairman of The Jim Irsay Collection; one of the most amazing private collections of musical and historical artifacts in the country, if not the world. Jim Irsay is the owner of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. But his love of music, history, pop culture, and in many instan...

Not too many of us know what we want to do when we’re teenagers. Hell I’m still not entirely sure, and I’m coming up on 50. But Jennifer Hartswick did. But she almost didn’t have a choice. Music and entertainment ran in the family. And while she’s best known for playing trumpet with legendary musicians like Trey Anastasio and Phish, Carlos Santana, Tom Petty, & Herbie Hancock (to name just a few),...

My guest today is the one and only Dan Navarro. Dan was so kind to do this interview because he had just arrived in London and it was about 1 in the morning for him when we recorded. His career is as varied as it is long. It started when he was just a kid, with his cousin Dave, but it began several branches earlier in his family tree. Dan has done everything from being a singing waiter to voice ov...

One of things I love is to see former podcast guests in concert. A while back I had The Ritualists on the show. They came to DC to play a gig, so I went. The band that played before them was a duo called Monsoon and please forgive the pun, I was blown away; so much so that I had to reach out to see if they wanted to be on the podcast. To my delight, singer/guitarist Sienna Chandler was happy to ma...

Mike Baggetta has always loved music. It’s been a constant part of his life. His dad was a guitarist who played for years! Some of his earliest memories are of his dad’s guitar case and amp stacked up after a wedding gig, smelling like old cigarette smoke. He still finds that smell nostalgic. But Mike found his own path into music, writing original songs from the start. He went to Rutgers to study...

I am pleased to present the episode I recently recorded with Alex Stephens, AKA Strawberry Guy. Since I was involved in a little incident literally just before recording, we naturally discuss our favorite alcoholic beverages. Turns out, Alex is a Straw-Beery Guy! Since you can’t see me winking, it means he made a Strawberry Guy beer! Alex shares tales of his own Performance Anxiety and how that in...

Rebecca Pidgeon is today’s guest. You may know her from one of the ten albums she’s released. Or, you may recognize her from her roles in movies like The Dawning, The Heist, RED, or Bird Box. It turns out that creativity runs in her family. Her mother is a yoga instructor, her grandmother was the editor of Architectural Digest ( a magazine that I used to study like a textbook), and HER sister was...

This is a cool episode. Nora O’Connor joins me for the second time, but it’s her first as a solo artist. This time we get a chance to go a bit deeper into her musical past. She talks about being child bartenders at parties her parents would throw where, eventually, everyone would gather together and sing, just for the joy of it. She went to college for music, but mostly for the business side of th...

Chris O’Rourke, Rachel McNally, and eventually Derek van Beever, collectively known as Sleepyhead, are my guests this episode. All three had very different paths into music. Drummer Rachel didn’t even start playing drums until college and that was really just to be in a band with Chris. Speaking of Chris, one of his biggest influences was a childhood friend, Jon McLean, who is a founding member of...

This week we venture away from music for a bit. Welcome actor and podcaster, Michael Pisciuneri. We talk about how he discovered his creative side and some of his early creative endeavors (with air quotes). He’s one of my guests that really does discuss having performance anxiety and what he’s done to combat it. Michael went to college to earn a creative degree and promptly had his dreams crushed,...

My guest today is singer David Reed Watson. This guy is one of the nicest guys I’ve had on the podcast. He’s been singing for years but he was also in the advertising game. But before ALL of that, he was a Marine. While he was deployed to Egypt he had the opportunity to lay in the sarcophagus in the great pyramid of Giza. That changed his life. That and getting hit by a car.  He tells me how a sev...

I’ve said it in the past but it bears repeating…I love doing this podcast for episodes like this one. Mercury from the band Priest joins me to talk about their new release, Body Machine. Electronic music is not my area of expertise, but I had a lot of fun checking these guys out. Mercury talks about growing up with musical parents and starting his musical career in pop music. He joined his first b...

Today’s guest was into music earlier than most. Neil Gust had an obsession with vinyl as a toddler; he would walk around the house with records in his hands. His obsession stayed with him through college where he met Elliot Smith and started playing in bands with him. After graduating, the duo decided they would continue playing together and decided Portland Oregon was the place to go. That’s wher...

Heavy metal veteran Jack Starr is our guest today. He’s been playing metal and hard rock guitar since the 70’s. He talks about moving to the US from France when he was a kid. He tells me the best TV shows to watch to learn english. When the music bug hit as a student, he didn’t start off on the guitar. He began his journey as a drummer. But he discovered that he wasn’t coordinated enough to be a d...

Blues guitarist Albert Cummings is my guest on this episode. And although music is literally in his DNA, he got a bit of a late start playing music. He didn’t even start out on guitar: there was the trumpet and 5 string banjo before he started playing the blues. But after a friend suggested he play at wedding, he was hooked. He formed his first band, Swamp Yankee, recorded his first album, 11 trac...

I’m joined by photographer Paul Natkin. You may not know the name but you’ll recognize his images. He tells me about his father’s own incredible photographic legacy before we get into his own. Paul reveals the exact moment he knew he wanted to be a photographer and the serendipitous moment that thrust him into live music photography. He discusses how two months in 1984 changed his life, starting w...

Let’s give a warm welcome to singer/songwriter Alicia Blue. She’s got an interesting history with music. It starts with her father, who learned English listening to Sam Cooke on his way to America to propose to Alicia’s mom! She and I also decide that maybe we should trade dads for a day. But it wasn’t her father who instilled a love of music in her. It was the relationship she developed with soul...

Two legends join the podcast for this episode. Danny Kortchmar and Steve Postell hop on to talk about what got them into music in the first place. Steve defines what a musical director does. Danny discusses his Spinal Tap connection and working with Carol King. And while Danny was producing albums with Neil Young and others, Steve was touring Man of La Mancha with Bonnie Raitt’s dad, John. They ha...

My guest today is Chuck Wright. We hit the ground running, talking about his new album, Chuck Wright’s Sheltering Sky. It’s an impressive piece of work with 41 guest musicians on it! It also contains a wide variety of styles and genres, reflecting his own musical career. Chuck reveals some very strange coincidences with this album. And he admits that this album is 100% a result of being in lockdow...

This show is different from most of the others I’ve done. My guest is Scott Dikkers. He’s not a musician. He is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and co-founder of The Onion. He jumps on the podcast to chat with me about creativity. He talks about his early influences, like The Muppets & Jay Leno, how he gets inspiration from bad comedy, and how he got his start writing the comic Jim’s Journal all th...

Janet Weiss of way more bands than I can mention here joins the podcast. She’s here to talk about her latest release, Cockroach In A Ghost Town by her band, Slang. But we go back to find out how that band came to be. We start with her playing guitar, NOT drums. But once she did find drums, it was an instant connection. It was so obvious that everyone else felt it, too. Janet talks about how many l...

With two notes, James Calvin Wilsey announced his presence to the music world at large. But by the time Wicked Game launched Chris Isaak, Rowland Sally, Kenney Dale Johnson, & James Calvin Wilsey onto MTV and in front of millions, Jimmy was already living a very rock & roll lifestyle; one that would lead him to crash and burn half an album later. Journalist and author Michael Goldberg joins the po...

Today we welcome Brad Elvis & Chloe F. Orwell of The Handcuff to the show. They have a new album out, Burn The Rails,  that’s inspired by 70’s rock. It’s got big guitars, great vocals, and Mott The Hoople’s Morgan Fisher playing some keys! But before we get into all of that, we go deep into Brad’s extensive discography. We go so deep that Chloe thinks I’m a wizard. Brad talks about his time with T...

I don’t even want to do an introduction because I just want to get into these stories. I’m joined by Simon “Spence” Dudfield and Martyn Goodacre of Fabulous. They exploded and flamed out in a span of 18 months. But they accumulated a lifetime of stories in that blink of an eye! They weren’t even musicians when they started the band. They’re STILL not musicians! They had somewhere between 8-10 bass...