Tasty Brew Music

Quite often my involvement in the Roots Music Community affords me the opportunity to witness the launch of an artist that has the promise of a bona fide lyrical life. Forrest McCurren has that kind of potential with songs that can give you the spiritual and emotional reboot you may have difficulty achieving on your own. Stylistically you’ll hear a tip of the hat to the greats he mentions in this...

The music of Wade Bowen has been spinning in my playlists since I went on the radio in 2010. My niece Shae was attending Texas State University in San Marcos at the time and Wade Bowen, Randy Rogers, Jason Bowland and others were working hard to become the “go to” purveyors of that very distinctive sound that some came to label as Outlaw or Red Dirt Country. Today Wade is a familiar and awarded na...

Pi Jacobs draws inspiration from her unconventional upbringing in the Land of Weed and Wine aka Northern California. Blending roots-rock swagger and storytelling soul, her music has drawn comparisons to Tom Waits, Dolly Parton and Lucinda Williams. She has been heard on NPR, Austin Music TV, Americana Highways and regularly on radio stations across the nation including 90.1 FM KKF I Kansas City Co...

Debbie Cole is a classically trained violinist with over 35 years of experience as a musician. She plays “by ear”, is proficient in and is a fan of multiple genres of music. In 2014, she started playing the acoustic guitar;  it proved to be a pivotal point in her musical growth. Playing the guitar led to the discovery of her actual voice and empowered the composition of original music. Debbie...

I receive dozens of new music submissions and requests for radio interview every week. I do my best to respond to or sample them all.  It doesn’t take long to get way behind in the exercise. One such request for a phone interview came to me on behalf of the renown fiddler in the Irish tradition, Martin Hayes. I had not heard of Martin (shame on me) and my direct contact with Irish traditional...

Some years ago, I went to Knuckleheads’ Gospel Lounge in Kansas City to see a song swap with all female songwriters. I was very familiar with the line up but for a young woman named Jenna Rae. When that song swap was over, I remembered thinking this young lady’s voice is uniquely suited to country music but the ease with which she told stories and engaged the audience with a wonderful sense of hum...

I have been a fan of Jeff Black’s songwriting for many years. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Liberty, Missouri.  In the 1980’s Black began performing at Blayney's, a blues club here in Kansas City where he also worked as a bouncer. Jeff began touring and eventually relocated to Nashville where he re-connected with Kansas City friend, Iris Dement lending some backing vocal...

I first became aware of Songwriter Terry Klein in 2018 when Radio Promoter Adam Dawson of Broken Jukebox Music sent me Terry’s sophomore effort, “Tex”. I saw that Walt Wilkins produced the album and that’s really all I needed to know to be intrigued enough to give it a full and complete listen. He has garnered high praise from two of my musical heroes, Mary Gauthier and Rodney Crowell as well as p...

My friend Rex Pryor grew up in a small northwestern Missouri town… you become aware of these roots very quickly when listening to his songs. We met through a mutual friend, the late Scott Ford, who tragically passed away New Year’s Eve 2021. Although now retired from a storied career in corrections and law enforcement, Rex remains busy writing and performing music and serving on the Board of Direc...

This edition highlights one of my most favorite things to do….have an aspiring and supremely talented young songwriter live in the studio with me on my radio program…. a “get to know each other” chat which may or may not include the world broadcast premiere of originally penned songs. Leah Sproul is most known for her work in the Heartland with a Western Swing outfit called Cowtown Country Club. A...

I first met Fred Wickham at the old Coda venue here in Kansas City as the lead guitar player for Country Band The Naughty Pines. I subsequently learned of and became a fan of his band Hadacol and now the Fred Wickham Caravan . Hadacol was around in the late 90s and early 2000s with Wickham, bassist Richard Burgess along with Wickham’s brother Greg. They recorded two critically acclaimed albums and...

I’m pretty certain I met Rigby Summer in 2017 in connection with the Monday@ Modella songwriter pop-up and the All Music Starts Local Initiative she started in Stillwater Oklahoma after a 5-year hiatus from the music scene. Our paths have crossed numerous times since then in Kansas City but also on the road in Oklahoma and even as far away as Montreal, Canada. While returning from the 2019 Folk Al...

I was introduced to Oklahoma City based songwriter Carter Sampson some years ago after she played a gig at Kansas City’s Knucklehead Saloon. I was very impressed by her command of the stage and storytelling. We briefly crossed paths multiple times in Nashville during Americanafest, in Oklahoma during Woodyfest and in Kansas City for occasional gigs at the Westport Saloon and again at Knuckleheads....

I was introduced to Jess Jocoy’s music by Graham Jackson, a gentleman actively supporting Americana Music in the UK. I met Graham when he attended a Folk Alliance International Conference in Kansas City some years ago and introduced me to the UK’s Danni Nicholls, the subject of another episode of this podcast. Graham regularly listens to my radio show online in the UK. We have similar musical tast...

I met Samantha Fish when she was about 19 years old…just starting to play in public at local Kansas City venues and jams. We have stayed in touch and connected over the years and it has been alternately terrifying and gratifying to see her trajectory into the international music stratosphere. Not content to be labelled solely as a “blues” or “rock” artist, she is constantly evolving and experiment...

Singer/Songwriter Sara Morgan and I go back a ways now…I was the first dj to play her music on the radio circa 2014 or so. We did a Tasty Brew Music podcast episode back in 2019. She has released in the summer of 2021 a very personal project called “Another Nail.” In this conversation, you’ll hear how the process differed with this, her first “Nashville” effort with producer Eric Conn, from her pr...

Iowa troubadour and multi media artist Chad Elliott is back for his second Tasty Brew Music podcast episode. He is one of the most gifted people I’ve ever encountered during my many years of supporting the arts. His songs have been a mainstay of the Tasty Brew Music Radio Show since it’s inception in 2010. As a reminder… or by way of introduction… Chad has an academic background in the fine arts a...

Alisa Jefferson says she has always been very passionate about music and the songs she delivers as a singer/songwriter. She grew up in the Kansas City area with influences from '70s Motown to mostly '80s and '90s rock/pop. She played viola in orchestra before she received her first acoustic guitar at age 13 and she has NOT looked back since. Alisa and I connected via phone on my radio show that re...

Ryan Manuel is a singer-songwriter based in Lawrence, Kansas. He got his start playing music in his hometown of Sedalia, Missouri after winning the 2011 MO State Fair Idol competition. He has been playing shows around the Midwest, writing and recording music ever since. Ryan has opened for Whiskey Myers, the Randy Rogers Band, William Clark Green, and many others. Since hitting the Kansas City mus...

Danielle Ate the Sandwich is the stage name of pop-folk songwriter, Danielle Anderson. As you’ll hear in this conversation on my Tasty Brew Music Radio Show, Danielle got her start in Fort Collins, CO, and is now based in Kansas City, MO. Until the pandemic she had been touring nationally since 2009, after cultivating an online following from her homemade videos on Youtube . She has multiple album...

I met Austin singer songwriter Mandy Rowden some years ago when she breezed through Kansas City to meet up with former tour mate Duncan Hill. I quickly became a fan of her music and work ethic. The icing on the cake was she and my dearly departed friend Tom Green were from the same bustling East Texas metropolis of Sulphur Springs. We have stayed in touch over the years and I was so happy to recen...

This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast comes from a radio interview I had recently with Julia Othmer…  a "captivating" piano-playing singer/songwriter known for her energetic live performances. She recently relocated back to Kansas City from Los Angeles and we had the opportunity to get updated on some of her current and future plans. Passionate and engaging, Othmer creates intimate war...

My friend Courtney Patton is a storyteller. She’s also a mother, a wife, a producer, a singer, a songwriter, a tour-van driver and a musician- as well as a world-traveler when she’s out on tour throughout the continental U.S., Canada and Europe. In a musical era in which clichés and bravado are the norm, Courtney is far more brave in peeling back highly personal and emotional open-book songs deliv...

Every so often an artist or group circles in the periphery of my musical consciousness…recommended by peers or supporters…I may hear a snippet of their offerings or perhaps forget to check them out altogether. Such is the case with Barnaby Bright , an indie folk duo comprised of marital team Becky and Nathan Bliss, from Kansas City. As their online bio reveals, Nathan and Becky Bliss have made som...

This episode of the Tasty Brew Music podcast is a wide-ranging conversation with the very talented Chis Hudson recently tapped as the Heartland Song Network’s November 2020 Artist of the Month. Chris is a singer, songwriter and composer, with a passion for various forms of American folk music and finger style guitar. Involved with Heartland groups Gullywasher, The Bard Owls and The Multiverse. &nb...