The Hustle

This week it's the accomplished producer/engineer/mixer Julian Mendelsohn! Julian's golden touch (and golden ears) created some of the most beloved songs of the 80s. He's responsible for legendary tracks like "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and "Always On My Mind" by Pet Shop Boys. He's also worked closely with artists like Level 42, Paul McCartney, Tasmin Archer, Kate Bush, Nik Kershaw, Kill...

This week we are honored to hear from one of the most decorated songwriters of all time, the legendary Holly Knight! Holly's career began in the early 80s with the AOR band Spider, but it was when other artists began having success recording songs she'd written (like John Waite's "Change" and Tina Turner's "Better Be Good to Me") that she switched her focus to songwriting. She went on to pen some...

This week we get to hear from the wonderful singer/songwriter Bonnie Hayes! Coming out of the Bay Area nearly 40 years ago with her band the Wild Combo, Bonnie mastered the new wave sound and even had a couple songs featured in the movie Valley Girl. For some reason, the solo career never quite took off like it should have, but good fortune bounced in her direction when some of her songs made thei...

Jon and Noel from the Reliving My Youth podcast are at it again! This time they countdown their top 10 yacht rock songs. What counts as yacht rock? Is it a guilty pleasure or seriously awesome music? Do the songs hold up or are they tied too much to an era? You tell us how you feel! 

Jon teams up with Steve and Drew from Suburban Underground once again, this time to play some of their favorite lesser known R&B jams! You hear songs you may not know from some of the legends of the genre, some modern goodies, and many others that may be completely new to you. Let us know what you think! 

Jon and Jan discuss the highs and lows of 2019 including, the last few months worth of guests, our top 10 episodes of the year as well as the listener picks, and we answer your questions. 2019 was a wild ride and we share what we learned and how we feel about it. Special thanks to everyone that makes The Hustle a unique endeavor. We love you all! 

It seemed fitting to pay tribute to an excellent Canadian drummer by speaking with another excellent Canadian drummer. Barry Connors of the fantastic AOR band Toronto (ep 9) returns to tell us what Neil meant to Canada, the influence he had on his own drumming style, and what it was like seeing Rush live back in the early days. There has never been anyone else like Neil Peart and we're lucky to di...

This week we are lucky to welcome the guitarist for one of the biggest bands of the 80s - Chris Hayes from Huey Lewis and the News! Chris and I discuss his time in the band and  the stories behind many of the songs, but what I mostly wanted to know was why he chose to walk away almost 20 years ago. You realize what became more important to him was family and sobriety. He's a wonderful guy whose st...

If you were one of those people who read the liner notes on all your records, no doubt you saw the name Jerry Marotta on many of your favorites. From the late 70s til the mid 80s Jerry drummed for Peter Gabriel AND Hall and Oates at the same time! When those gigs came to an end he joined up with the Indigo Girls for a while. Along the way he recorded with the likes of Paul McCartney, Tears For Fea...

One of our most popular guests, Marshall Crenshaw, returns to discuss the brand new deluxe vinyl edition of his 1996 album Miracle of Science. One of his great, but unsung albums is finally getting the treatment it deserves and is available now! Marshall recounts the writing and recording of it and we discuss the shows he's been doing with the Smithereens since the passing of frontman Pat DiNizio...

It's been a wild ride for Michelle Shocked. Her career as a protest singer began in the mid-80s by accident and has expanded to touch on every genre you can think of. She doesn't want to be pigeonholed and she does what she wants. Which makes the "Yoshi Incident" even more confusing. In March of 2013 during a concert in San Francisco, Michelle, believing rightly that there were bootleggers in the...

Charlie Midnight's success as a songwriter has spanned nearly 40 years. After partnering up with Dan Hartman in the early 80s, the two wrote a string of hits for both Dan and others, many of which were featured on soundtracks for films like Fletch, Ruthless People, Breakin', and Rocky 4 with James Brown making "Living in America" iconic. From there, Charlie forged his own successful writing and pr...

Audio engineer Brad Sundberg returns to discuss the making of the epic Quincy Jones album Back on the Block from 1989. The legendary producer called all of his famous friends to contribute to this opus of an album that went on to win seven Grammys and sell a million copies. Among the legends appearing on Back on the Block are Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Ice T, Barry White, Sarah Vau...

Imagine getting only one chance at the big time and it not working out. That can't be easy to deal with, but that's what happened to this week's guest, Tom Croucier of the band Life By Night. Tom's career started picking up steam in the early 80s when he played with both Scorpions and Dokken (his brother Juan is in Ratt), so when he fronted his own band that was equal parts rock and new wave, it s...

Here it is, warts and all! It's another Merry Chris-mas at the Hustle! This year we hear from indie legend Chris (get it?) Stamey! After forming the dbs in Chapel Hill 40 years ago with Peter Holsapple, Chris has carved his own unique and diverse solo path. To prove my point, this year he released a new album New Songs for the 20th Century that was heavily influenced by the likes of Cole Porter an...

Forrmer guest Richard Bush (ep 69) returns to talk about the brand new album Social Studies by his current band The Peace Creeps. You may remember that 40 years ago, Richard fronted the wonderful Philly power-pop band The A's. The Peace Creeps brand of rock is more psychedelic, but no less effective. The first single, "Through Our Ruins" is getting some radio attention, thankfully, so we talk abou...

The Knack are the poster band for both extreme success and extreme flame out. They had the biggest hit of 1979 with their debut single "My Sharona", a song that remains as killer today as it was then. But, almost immediately the backlash came - they copy the Beatles too much, the lyrics are misogynistic, power pop is over, etc. Unfortunately, the band never really got over that despite staging man...

Jon and the boys from Suburban Underground come together for another hour of music. This time the topic is "songs that move us." You'll notice when you listen to this that we each define "move" in different ways. Who do you identify with the most? Don't be shy!  https://www.facebook.com/SuburbanUndergroundRadio/

The 90s were a fickle time. Fads came and went, stars were made and just as quickly left behind. Austin's Fastball had what it took for the long haul, but it hasn't been easy. Lead by the dual songwriting chops of Tony Scalzo and Miles Zuniga, the band broke big on their second album with hits like "The Way," "Out of My Head," and "Fire Escape." But, as it often happens, by the time the follow up...

Imagine this - one of the greatest rock singers in history decides to leave his hugely successful band and you've been selected to take his place. That's what happened with Johnny Edwards. Though it was the beginning of the 90s, Foreigner's Mick Jones felt that even though Lou Gramm was out of the band there was still enough gas in the tank to keep things going. He recruited Johnny and they record...

Walter Egan's 1978 smash "Magnet and Steel" will follow him around wherever he goes, deservedly so, but what gets lost sometimes is the absolutely stellar power pop album he made in 1983 called Wild Exhibitions. It featured his last hit "Fool Moon Fire", but didn't get the attention it deserved then, and still doesn't, so we attempt to right that wrong. In this Deep Dive, Walter and I shed light o...

There's never been anyone like Mike Watt. He's an American treasure at this point. There's the Minutemen. Then fIREHOSE. Then about a million other projects of various size including a period with Porno For Pyros, another with Iggy and the Stooges and even an appearance on a Kelly Clarkson record! One of Mike's recent projects is the Jumpstarted Plowhards - a collaboration between him and guitaris...

In a decade that churned through artists as tastes and fads changed weekly, Everclear managed a heckuva lot of hits. Storming the gates with the hyper-catchy "Santa Monica," the guys dropped radio staple after radio staple like "Everything to Everyone," "Father of Mine," "I Will Buy You a New Life" and the list goes on and on. By the 2000s, the wave was starting to die down, but the band never rea...

Cinderella may have been put to bed years ago, but frontman Tom Keifer has been slowly building up his solo project for a while now and it just keeps getting bigger. The Tom Keifer Band recently released the new album Rise and completed a US tour (another leg is taking shape early next year). In this short conversation, we discuss the difference between his current band and his old one, how he vie...

The last few years have been a blur of prolific activity for Juliana Hatfield. There was the anti-Trump album Pussycat from 2017, there have been side projects with Paul Westerberg (The I Don't Care's) and Nada Surf's Matthew Caws (Minor Alps), and there have been albums of new material (2019's Weird and 2015's Whatever, My Love), but what is a wonderful new focus for her are these albums of cover...