Tasty Brew Music

Well it finally happened. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I conducted my first Tasty Brew Music Podcast conversation with a subject online via Zoom. This episode features Elexa Dawson,  native of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation and amazing vocalist and songwriter. As you will hear in our conversation, Elexa was chosen as the Heartland Song Network’s Artist of the Month for August 2020 so you will hea...

There are beautiful, amazing and talented people in this world. Sometimes you have to travel to a music conference in Montreal to find out one of them, Kelly Dougherty, has lived a few houses down the street from you for years. Until recently, Kelly served as the Communications Director for Folk Alliance International…an organization whose mission is to serve, strengthen, and engage the global fol...

Being sheltered in place due to COVID 19 has presented a unique and unusual challenge to continue to conduct conversations with artists and industry insiders. One of the benefits of being isolated is taking time to do some housekeeping of computer audio and video files. I literally stumbled across what you will hear next…my very first on air radio interview in 2011… and it was a precious one…  wit...

Sheltering in place during the COVID -19 pandemic of 2020 made it necessary to utilize other resources to bring you content for this podcast. The following is the audio from a magical night in the studios of 90.1 FM KKFI when I brought together two completely different artists who just happen to share the name Kelley/Kelly Hunt. Before this evening on March 1, 2018, these women had never meant.   ...

Mary Bragg, a lovely woman from Georgia that crafts beautiful songs from her home base in Nashville, was another one of those serendipitous Folk Alliance finds discovered in the wee small hours of a Conference private showcase. When I caught a show she did in Kansas City as part of the “First Friday” events hosted at the Folk Alliance HQ last August, I knew I wanted to have a sit down with her for...

Folk Alliance 2019 in Montreal did not pan out exactly as I planned…I caught some wonderful music and some audio for this podcast but for the most part, I spent the entire week trying to navigate and operate with incredible back and hip pain…what I thought was sciatica turned out to be, among other things, a couple of stress fractures in my lower back. I will always be most grateful for two things...

As a music business professional, Brad Paul has actively promoted a wide variety of music genres through his work as a radio promoter, radio host and producer, concert promoter, video producer and director. I first met Brad nearly 10 years ago at my first Americana Music Association conference in Nashville after I had just gotten on the air on KKFI with the Tasty Brew Music Radio Show. He has been...

I caught up with singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalists Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore at the 2020 Folk Alliance International Conference in New Orleans. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were booted out of the Media Room I had reserved so that NPR’s Anne Powers could do an impromptu interview with Ani DiFranco. No worries, The Mastersons went with the flow and we conducted our c...

Not too long ago, Grammy award winner, member of the Grand Ole Opry and brother to Bluegrass Queen Rhonda Vincent, Darrin Vincent, of Dailey & Vincent, called into the KKFI studios for a conversation in advance of the duo’s appearance in Kansas City at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. As you will hear, Darrin is thoughtful, kind, a loving husband and father…generous in his praise of ot...

It is not every day I meet a Grammy award winning artist.  That honor came to me some years back when my friend Beau Bledsoe of Kansas City’s Ensemble Iberica introduced me to the music of and the goddess that is Mireya Ramos… founder of the all female mariachi band Flor de Toloache. As you will hear in this episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast, Mireya has found a “heartland home” in the middle...

My introduction to Israeli guitarist, singer and songwriter, Bat-Or Kalo, or “B” as her friends call her, came some years back when she played a show at a very unlikely venue for her…a cocktail bar in the Waldo neighborhood in Kansas City. She came to play on my Tasty Brew Music radio show. We’ve stayed in touch over the years as she has come to play solo at the Folk Alliance International Confere...

This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast features Songwriter Sara Morgan. We were introduced by a mutual friend about 6 years ago late one Friday night as I was leaving Knuckleheads Saloon in Kansas City. I was going to Host KKFI s Radio Show “Womansong” the next morning, and after a short introductory conversation, asked Sara to come in and play live in the studio (she had never been on the r...

Welcome to lucky Episode No. 13 of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast. I discover new music through word of mouth, radio promoters, podcasts, other artists, friends and family. There are those that seek ME out, finding me through any number of channels…perhaps through my membership in Folk Alliance International, the Americana Music Association, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters or just...

Amy Speace is a modern troubadour whose music is reminiscent of folk music’s 1970s glory days. She has spent the last 20 years on the road chasing her dreams from New York City to Nashville to around the world. She has built an international audience without the help of a major label performing an average of 150 shows a year including the Glastonbury Festival and NPR's Mountain Stage. Discovered a...

Welcome to Episode 11 of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast…a conversation I had during the 2018 Folk Alliance International Conference with Doug and Telisha Williams also known as The Wild Ponies. They grew up together in Southwest Virginia, an area steeped in a powerful and rugged musical tradition. Musically, they are somewhat of a pinball, bouncing between folk, rock and roll and country music inter...

The daughter of an opera singer and a world travelling saxophone playing airline pilot, Kelly Hunt was raised in Memphis, TN, and grew up performing other people’s works through piano lessons, singing in choirs, and performing theater. During her teenage years, influenced by musical inspirations as diverse as Norah Jones, Rachmaninov, and John Denver, she began writing her own songs on the piano....

This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast features one of my favorite human beings on the planet… Chad Elliott…Iowa based singer-songwriter, poet, author, illustrator, sculptor, ceramicist, podcaster, and yes I’m going to say it…Renaissance Man! I was introduced to his music early on with my radio show in 2010. I’ve seen Chad perform dozens of times in many different settings, including my own...

This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast is a conversation I had with Texas Songwriter and author Radney Foster…. Initially a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, Foster made his recording debut as part of the Foster & Lloyd duo, recording three studio albums and with nine singles on the country charts. Foster began his solo career in 1992 and his album Del Rio, TX 1959 produced four consecutiv...

   Tim Easton, American songwriter and fellow Buckeye, has learned the ways of the hardcore troubadour…making his way around Europe and America by busking in the streets and playing the clubs. Although Rolling Stone Magazine praised him as “having a novelist’s sense of humanity” I believe his education as a Poetry Major at Ohio State University is the not so secret ingredient to his lyrical life....

   One of my favorite features of the annual Folk Alliance International conference is the Folk DJ reception. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet Roots Music Artists and their representatives up close and personal. At that reception in 2018, I was approached by a British gentleman, Graham Jackson, asking if I would be willing to meet an Americana artist from the UK,  Danni Nicholls. We made arra...

   This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast is a conversation my dear friend, Art White, and KKFI listener and supporter Joel Weir and I had with multi-instrumentalist and songmaster Darrell Scott. Darrell had just released the epic Couchville Sessions project and was playing his very first show EVER in Kansas City. I remembered it as a solid conversation but until I re-visited it for the firs...

   This episode of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast brings a conversation with Canadian born, Austin based Roots Musician Ray Bonneville. Ray had a former life as a Marine in Viet Nam, a bush pilot in the Canadian wilderness and the leader of a garage blues band. Ray’s music came to me at the suggestion of fellow KKFI DJ John “Junebug” Stuerke, host of the weekly Blues Kitchen Show. He said I should c...

I am a latecomer to the world and talent of Jim Lauderdale...I "discovered" him in 2010 in Nashville at my first Americanafest (the annual conference of the Americana Music Association); he hosted the Annual Awards Ceremony at The Ryman Auditorium and I caught his official showcase with a full band at The Mercy Lounge.  Shortly thereafter he was on a bill with Carrie Rodriguez at Knuckleheads Salo...

   Episode 2 of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast is a conversation with American music icon, John Oates (Hall & Oates), recorded in Kansas City in February 2018 during the Folk Alliance International Conference.  John was at the Conference to promote his latest musical release “Arkansas” and his written memoir “Change of Seasons.” There was a bit of background drama before the conversation started as...

Welcome to Episode #1 of the Tasty Brew Music Podcast!  Host Diana Linn met and had a conversation with Singer/Songerwriter  Ilona Pal in Montreal, Canada during the 2019 Folk Alliance International Conference.  They quickly established a connection not only via Ilona's music, but through the spirit of Hollywood icon James Dean.    Ilona Pal has traveled the rails between Montreal and Ottawa many...