Talk About the Passion

Episode 78 is part of a new series of episodes focusing on a new or up and coming band. On this episode I talk to leader of Miami, FL band Euro-Asia Pedro Ortiz about how he came up in music as well as his process creating music alone and with various different players. Included in this episode are three songs from the new release Signals: A New Vision, Remote World and You Thought Wrong. The Sign...

Episode 77 is a conversation with Brian Gathy. Brian hosts the excellent podcast End on End which is covering the entire Dischord Records catalog by release. Brian along with his co-host Jeff do an amazing job digging deep into these records, and have had a who's who of Dischord related folks on the podcast. We of course talk quite a bit about Brian's time getting into music in Washington DC, seei...

Episode 28 is a quick update on the podcast and an excuse to fill in two old episode numbers that needed to be replaced. There is a quick 7 Seconds story here as well as some cool news about the podcast. A regular conversation episode will be back next week. This episode includes the song "Skies Filled With Wizards" from my old band Presley. 

Episode 76 is a conversation with Steve Brooks, Steve is best known as the guitar player and singer of bands Torche and Floor. I've been a big fan of both of these bands who play some of the heaviest and catchiest music around. We get into where that inspiration came from to create the music in those bands, starting like a number of my guests, with Kiss, and we end up in the present where Steve gi...

Episode 75 is another conversation with Bob Mayo of the Boston area metal band Wargasm. This episode almost serves as a prequel to the first one we did (Episode 27) where we mostly talked about the history of Wargasm. Here we talk about the music that Bob grew up with starting around 1978 with Sabbath and Kiss, hitting the NWOBHM in 1980 and going up to around when thrash metal hit. Bob is a great...

Episode 74 is a conversation with founder of death metal band Dismember, Fred Estby. Dismember were a pioneering death metal band out of Sweden and Fred I talk about how that band came about as well as his roots way before that in the metal tape trading world. Fred is an amazing story teller, check out his story about Dismember facing obsenity charges in London because of one of their records. Thi...

Episode 73 is a conversation with Kenny Chambers who is most notable for Moving Targets as well as playing in a number of other bands including Jones Very and Bullet Lavolta. We talk about the history of Moving Targets, the different lineups he's had through the years including how he hooked up with his current rhythm section who are amazing and have recorded a bunch of new music including 2020's...

Episode 72 is a conversation with Enoch Thompson who you may know as Skeeter Thompson. Enoch has played bass for the band Scream for over 40 years now. Rather than start at the beginning of time like I normally do we start in 1981 and talk about his time in Scream from their first tour with Government Issue to trips to Europe, recording various records and more recent shows all the while forming a...

In this episode I talk with photographer Nathaniel Shannon about his journey from Michigan to New York, photographing such artists as King Diamond and Dismember to marches in New York after the murder of George Floyd. All of his stories are great and he's extremely passionate about all of his work as you will hear in this episode. I will definitely have Nathaniel back on in the future. 

Episode 70 is a conversation with Chris Johnson. Chris is recording and mix engineer from the Boston area who also plays in the bands Summoner, Deafheaven and Doomriders. We talk about how he got interested in the sound end of music as well as performing music. How he got into the band Deafheaven and what that's has been like. Chris has his hand in a number of different projects and is extremely p...

Episode 69 is a two hour long conversation with my good friend Al Quint. With his fanzine Suburban Punk which turned into Suburban Voice Al reached countless people with issues packed with tons of record and live reviews, interviews and photographs of the punk and hardcore scene. On this episode we talk about his early musical influences from the first show he saw at The Rat with the Plasmatics to...

Episode 68 is a conversation with musician Rich Thurston who has played with a number of bands from Culture to Terror to On Bodies and his current projects Treason and Lowest. We get into all of these projects as well as others and what it was like to get into hardcore in Florida. Rich has some great stories from that era of his life. A great guest I will definitely have back. 

Episode 67 is a conversation with drummer Wes Keely. Wes has played with a number of bands, most notably Walls of Jericho, Earthmover and Until the End. On this episode we talk about those and other various bands he has played with as well as the amazing story behind his drum kit sliding prevention technology company KBrakes. I had a great time talking with Wes, a driven and passionate person who...

Episode 66 is a conversation with Josh Welshman. Josh sings for the death metal band Defeated Sanity. In this episode we talk about how he went from being a fan of Defeated Sanity to becoming their singer, their record from 2020 called The Sanguinary Impetus, and their tour with Origin in March of 2020 that was cut short as a result of the pandemic. This was a great conversation, Josh is enthusias...

Episode 65 is a conversation with Damien Moyal. Damien has been in a number of bands, notably As Friends Rust, Morning Again, Culture as well as one of his newer projects Damien Done. We talk about how he got into music, we go through his various bands and what it's like to be a musician in the midst of a pandemic. Great conversation with a very talented and passionate artist.

Episode 64 is a conversation with Christian McKenna. Christian started the record label Translation Loss which includes bands such as Mouth of the Architect, Rosetta, Cable as well as some of the bands he's involved in including Hex Inverter and Empty Flowers. We talk about growing up outside of Philadelphia and the music he listened to as a kid. Most of this conversation is very loose and we hit...

Episode 63 is a conversation with journalist, drummer Joel Gausten. In this episode we talk about growing up in New Jersey, his time as a teenager in the 90's rehearsing with The Misfits who were auditioning new singers at the time, playing in The Undead, as well as Pigface and Electric Frankenstein. We talk aboutwhat it's like to interview famous musicians and not "fanboy" out. Joel is a great st...

Episode 62 is a conversation with Douglas Sherman, guitar player for the Boston based metal band Gozu. Douglas and I had a pretty loose conversation, while we talked about him growing up and how he got into music we talk about life during the COVID-19 pandemic, what the future holds for entertainment as well as funk music, film and a number of other subjects. Douglas is a hilarious guy and is pass...

Episode 61 is a conversation with Randy Larsen, this is the second time Randy has been on the podcast. You may know him from his bands Cable and Empty Flowers. On this pretty free form episode we have a conversation about various subjects including the ending of Cable, a new musical project he's involved in now as well as a bunch of different bands we go back and forth about. This was a lot of fun...

Episode 60 is a conversation with my friend Julia Agron about cannabis and hemp, particularly in Massachusetts where marijuana is now legal recreationally as of 2016. Julia grows hemp and has been involved in many different arms of the hemp and cannabis industry, we talk about the road to getting marijuana legalized in Massachusetts as well as. come of the challenges cultivators are having the las...

Episode 59 is a conversation with Eric Komst. Eric grew up in Boston (Jamaica Plain to be exact) and was around music as a kid playing in his first band with friends, including Jordan Knight who would go on to be a New Kid on the Block. Later on EK got himself into a number of great bands like Straw Dogs out of Boston and then of course Warzone and Sick of it All. I had a great time talking to EK,...

Episode 58 is a conversation with Richard Brown of The Proletariat, a Massachusetts based band formed in the early 80's, The Proletariat spent time in the hardcore scene (including tracks on the This is Boston Not L.A. compilation) playing with the likes of SSDecontrol and Minor Threat, while adopting a sound that was part Gang of Four part Wire but with an anger much more intense than most of the...

Episode 57 is a candid conversation with my friend Keith Bennett. This is Keith’s second appearance on the podcast, the first episode (# 14) was an origin story about how he got into music, his bands, most notably The Wrecking Crew & Panzerbastard. Recorded in early April 2020 during the Coronoavirus pandemic this episode starts off pretty dark and then I throw some records at him, the second DYS...

Episode 56 is a conversation with Nate Newton (Converge, Old Man Gloom, Doomriders) that took place over the phone in late March of 2020 during the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic. We talk quite a bit about how this has affected creative people who create for a living, what he's been doing to stay busy and focused. Nate also talks about the great new Old Man Gloom record and what it was like to pla...

Episode 55 is a conversation with Duncan Wilder Johnson a Massachusetts based musician, writer, spoken word performer, photographer and film maker (He made the excellent Sam Black Church documentary Leave Behind a Groove in the Earth: The Sam Black Church Story) We talk about his time playing music, doing spoken word shows around the world, as well as how he got the Sam Black Church film made. Dun...