Strung Out

Send us Fan Mail David Rocco Facchini is an artist's artist.  He's at once a visual artist, making amazing sculptures out of found objects, such as bits of old movie equipment, he's a storyteller, a stop motion movie maker whose most recent film was featured at the Cannes Film Festival, and also an adventurer of sorts.  He recently set out in a Sprinter Van to explore the psyche of...

Send us Fan Mail Creator of independent films, found object artist, college professor and cultural intellectual, David Rocco Facchini joins me for a two-part conversation that is a must-listen for those who truly wish to be an independent artist.    Support the show We are always grateful to have you listening to STRUNG OUT.    Here are some important links: SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.buymeacof...

Send us Fan Mail If there is one critter in the world that defies any logical explanation as to the benefit of its existence, consider the tick.   Having been around for over 120 million years, the tick feeds on the blood of its host.   The saliva contains an analgesic, an anti-coagulant and a glue to bond it to its host.  And oh, a bunch of various parasites that they are host to that cause such...

Send us Fan Mail The Irish have been a race of people that have known their share of suffering.  Millions died during the An Gorta Mor, The Great Hunger or better known as the Potato Famine.  The uprising of 1916 resulted in the partition of Ireland, a bloody civil war and untold dead.  English politics and the result of having an island next to a world power ended up with Ireland oppressed and ma...

Send us Fan Mail We take a little break from a lot of things to focus on one thing: that it is the young who will have to make the decisions sooner than later.   And in this case, I thought it would be interesting to interview my daughter Aine and hear what she (and her peers) are thinking about what worries them most, what sort of music they like, their grasp of current politics, the wars and mor...

Send us Fan Mail Chicago has had a poetry scene for decades, going back to the 1980's when such events as the Uptown Poetry Slam began.  Chicago poetry has a unique cadence and flow that today is found almost everywhere.  Poet Howard Friedman has been part of the scene for some time now.   His approach to poetry is akin to the way Jackson Pollock would take on a canvas--stream of consciousnes...

Send us Fan Mail I have a habit of collecting interesting sounds.   Since I do a lot of traveling with my band, I find myself in places where it is easy to hear something.   So on this podcast we listen to the shoreline of Lake Michigan in the winter, New's Year gunfire.  A Mexican restaurant in Phoenix.  Bell choir rehearsal in Scottsdale.  The quiet of the desert near the Superstition Mount...

Send us Fan Mail Oh, Chicago.   Once upon a time you had the WLS Barn Dance.  Once upon a time you two professional football teams. One upon a time you had the stockyards. Once upon a time you had the world's tallest building.  Once upon a time you had a music scene that was the envy of the world.    People would migrate to Chicago to play here.  Sure, there were other scenes like Greenwich V...

Send us Fan Mail Film maker, social activist and artist David Rocco Facchini returns to Strung Out to discuss with Martin his years practicing Freeganism.  According to Wikipedia, Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. Freeganism is often presented as synonymous wit...

Send us Fan Mail Film maker, social activist and artist David Rocco Facchini returns to Strung Out to discuss with Martin his years practicing Freeganism.  According to Wikipedia, Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. Freeganism is often presented as synonymous wit...

Send us Fan Mail Most musicians dream of growing up and forming their own band.  Or perhaps joining one.  As a young musician, growing up in a predominantly African-American community in Cleveland, Ohio, Gary Geiger was exposed to rock, soul and many other forms of roots music.  Later in life, he turned toward classical music and on a chance, was given direction of a children's choir.  Inspir...

Send us Fan Mail Most musicians dream of growing up and forming their own band.  Or perhaps joining one.  As a young musician, growing up in a predominantly African-American community in Cleveland, Ohio, Gary Geiger was exposed to rock, soul and many other forms of roots music.  Later in life, he turned toward classical music and on a chance, was given direction of a children's choir.  Inspir...

Send us Fan Mail Part Two During an arts conference last September, Martin met Ananda Bena-Weber, who performed part of her one-person show, Fancifool .   So unusual was the combination of choreography, humor and acting that a request for an interview was made.   Not only is Ananda a great artist, she also has a strong mission to present her art in an effort to bring all people together as in the...

Send us Fan Mail Part One During an arts conference last September, Martin met Ananda Bena-Weber, who performed part of her one-person show, Fancifool .   So unusual was the combination of choreography, humor and acting that a request for an interview was made.   Not only is Ananda a great artist, she also has a strong mission to present her art in an effort to bring all people together as in the...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast looks at some of the statistics Martin received regarding STRUNG OUT on Buzzsprout, the platform we use.   It's gratifying to see that the show has listeners in other countries, and a great shout out to our listeners in Germany.  Danke!   Martin's daughter, Aine reads out the stats, and we listen to her wishes for 2024.  We end the year playing two cuts from...

Send us Fan Mail Like a ship stuck out in the doldrums, the holiday season is an odd stillness of time, when activities slow down, families gather together, and less attention is paid to what is going on around them.    Sure, there will be that odd family that loves to post pictures of everyone making snow angels, but for most of us, it is a welcome time to let time run its course, without us glan...

Send us Fan Mail Invasion and Migration.  Two words that are used quite interchangeably.    Both are the displacement or change of an existing population by a new group.  While migration can be beneficial to a country, there can be a tipping point where a country either will not or cannot be able to host such a surge of humanity.  In the case of ancient Rome, migration, fueled by violence in borde...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Strung Out, Martin plays some of the music performed by the Evanston Children's Choir at the holiday concert given on December 8, 2023, at Alice Millar Chapel at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.  Just back from a Switchback holiday road trip himself, Martin talks about the need to cultivate joy, spins one of his own holiday tunes and features a...

Send us Fan Mail Do you want a sneak listen to some of the music from Red or Blue?  Well, here it is! Support the show We are always grateful to have you listening to STRUNG OUT.    Here are some important links: SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/MartyfineaK MARTIN'S WEBSITE: http://www. MARTINMcCORMACK.COM   (note---you can get my weekly bulletin when you sign up on the list!) M...

Send us Fan Mail Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe nation, is one of the oldest and most historically important Native American languages in North America.  It is the native toungue of the Great Lakes Region of North America.  But it is in danger of becoming extinct if not passed on to a new generation. In earlier times, the language was passed on orally from a tribe’s elders to it...

Send us Fan Mail Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe nation, is one of the oldest and most historically important Native American languages in North America.  It is the native toungue of the Great Lakes Region of North America.  But it is in danger of becoming extinct if not passed on to a new generation. In earlier times, the language was passed on orally from a tribe’s elders to it...

Send us Fan Mail Martin and Sandeep look at some of the huge problems taking place right now in the world and on the domestic front.    Support the show We are always grateful to have you listening to STRUNG OUT.    Here are some important links: SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/MartyfineaK MARTIN'S WEBSITE: http://www. MARTINMcCORMACK.COM   (note---you can get my weekly bulleti...

Send us Fan Mail Part one of our series with Rebecca Jasso explored her music.  This part is about her passion as a visual artist.  Rebecca uses computer-generated watercolor programs to help illustrate an eclectic variety of art: from musical posters to work on children's books.   The result of such computer-generated watercolors is a piece of art that is almost indistinguishable from conven...

Send us Fan Mail Halloween comes to us this year with a world that is far scarier than anything that can be conjured up on October 31.   Martin looks at what is happening between the State of Israel and the Hamas Extremists and draws a correlation between that, the recent mass slaughter of people in Lewiston, Maine and the upcoming election cycle in the US.   The common thread is of narrow interes...

Send us Fan Mail Chicago native Rebecca Jasso is a singer/songwriter who playfully writes around the themes of love, loneliness, and fantasy, skillfully weaving her melodies into the harmonic fabric of her fingerstyle guitar playing. Music has had a strong hold over Rebecca since childhood. At age 10, she took up the guitar, and since the very beginning, sought to write good songs. Despite learnin...