The New Dad Rock

What if the next Led Zeppelin album isn't made by Led Zeppelin? This week, Steve and Keith tackle a question that sounds ridiculous today and inevitable tomorrow. From the first time Cleveland listeners heard Rush's "Working Man" and thought it was Led Zeppelin, to the rise of AI-generated music that can recreate almost any sound, we ask whether the world's most famous ban...

What happens when your favorite musician is... you?  This week on The New Dad Rock , Keith reveals a startling discovery: he's become the world's biggest fan of an artist who doesn't actually exist. Thanks to AI music generators, he's been creating songs tailored precisely to his own tastes—and then listening to them. A lot. Steve, naturally, finds this deeply troubling. The co...

On this episode of The New Dad Rock Podcast , we ask the question every aging music fan eventually faces: when is a band too old to keep going — and are we too old to care? Using the 2026 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a jumping-off point, we dig into the strange, emotional lifecycle of legacy artists, reunion tours, and rock immortality. From the long-overdue induction of Iron Maiden...

Episode 111 finds Steve and Keith riding the chairlift straight into the soul of music discovery. Inspired by that eternal mountain question — what is the liftie listening to right now? — the dads talk skiing, snow culture, and the strange magic of hearing life-changing music while dangling above the trees. Along the way, they dig into a mix of new discoveries and familiar names seen from a fresh...

Steve goes up into the attic to sort through his CDs, what he finds will change the course of The New Dad Rock. Tune in to reminisce about spending $20 on imported CD singles that had two crappy songs on them. Settle the debate of whether Sugarbush is better than Killington. And most importantly...fuck ICE! Let us know what’s up. Support the show Did you know that The New Dad Rock has swag? Coffee...

The dads are back—and this time, the list is real. After months of listening, debating, reshuffling, and second-guessing, Steve & Keith finally unveil their definitive Top 25 Albums of 2025 . But in classic New Dad Rock fashion, they do it backwards: starting with their Album of the Year and counting all the way down to #25, unpacking the twists and surprises hidden inside every pick. This is...

Steve & Keith return to The New Dad Rock with their annual year-end ritual: sorting the chaos, controversy, and unexpected brilliance of 2025 into a definitive Top 25. Consider this episode your backstage pass to how the list is made—before the list is actually made. In this preview, the dads look at the albums that shaped the year’s conversations: the boundary-pushing weirdos, the stadium-lev...

🎙️ The New Dad Rock – Episode 107: TNDR Radio (Return of the College DJs) This week, Steve and Keith spin the dial all the way back to their roots—college radio, where the knobs were dusty, the playlists were handwritten, and the banter was always optional. Welcome to TNDR Radio, the station where the music comes first, the dads come second, and the FCC probably has some questions. Inspired by a w...

This week on The New Dad Rock , we’re diving headfirst into the messy, thrilling, and utterly unpredictable world of new music. From the FOMIES , the garage-fuzz band obsessed with obscure, badly recorded records in weird places, and their latest 12-track album Liminality to  the cosmic textures of Hawkwind’s There Is No Space for Us , the chaotic energy of Viagra Boys , and a whirlwind of other s...

Join us for a retelling of one of HP Lovecraft's most enduring tales of horror, The Music of Erich Zann. I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place; and have personally explored every r...

🎧 Episode 104: The Three Ds — Death Cab, Deerhunter & The Decemberists It’s Q4, and while the rest of the world is deep in annual planning, Steve and Keith are focused on a different kind of alignment — the Three Ds : Death Cab for Cutie, Deerhunter, and The Decemberists. In this episode, the dads unpack how these indie titans shaped the mid-2000s emotional landscape — from Plans and Halcyon...

Buckle up. This week, Steve and Keith are in the cockpit, trying to figure out: does it really take 21 pilots to fly a plane? Or is that just too many guys with matching hoodies? We check in on Twenty One Pilots’ Clancy Breach Tour , detour into the ever-expanding Gizzverse, and flap our wings over Geese’s new record ( spoiler: no geese survive ). Then it’s off to Vegas, where Metallica at the Sph...

A Love Letter to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Is King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard the best band in the world… or are they just really good at making us buy concert tickets? This week, Keith and Steve swap war stories from the Gizzverse: the 2025 European Residency Tour (aka “how many nights in a row can one band melt your brain?”), the Phantom Island Orchestra Tour (spoiler: it’s as trip...

For the first time ever, Steve and Keith sit down face-to-face, live and in person, to record an episode of The New Dad Rock . The occasion? A thought experiment that turns into a full-on festival fantasy. Imagine this: we charter a plane to take ten of our favorite bands to the inaugural TNDR Festival. But somewhere between takeoff and soundcheck, fate intervenes—the plane goes down… and everyone...

The New Dad Rock presents a field-recorded farewell. This wasn’t the episode we planned—but it’s the one we had to make. Episode 100 is a requiem for Rubén, Keith’s dear friend and one of the few true guerilla contributors to this podcast.  Keith was supposed to meet Rubén in Lucerne, Switzerland the first couple days of June 2025, but Ruben left this world ten days before Keith arrived. Keith did...

On July 3, 1999 Mark Sandman, frontman and two-string slide bassist of Morphine collapsed and died while performing onstage in Palestrina, Italy. Ironically a few years earlier he wrote aa song in which he sang about hoping to have french fries with pepper on September 9th of that year.  But don't let that get you down. As we approach our 100th episode, we turn back the clock 25 years to the...

🎙️ Episode 98: Montauk Mix and UFO Flix Strap in for a cosmic ride back to the Summer of '98 —when alternative rock was maturing, Montauk was still weird and wonderful, and UFOs might have been hovering just offshore. Steve and Keith dig through the musical treasures of 1998, spinning tracks from Neutral Milk Hotel , Elliott Smith , Mercury Rev , Beastie Boys , Sunny Day Real Estate , and mor...

🎙️ Episode 1997: Desert Island Classics – The Year That Was Everything What if you could only bring one year of music to your desert island? For The New Dad Rock , that year just might be 1997. In this special “Desert Island Classics” edition, Keith makes the case for a trio of albums that still echo through indie rock history:   🎸 Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West    🎸 Pavement – Brighte...

1996 was a wild, weird, and wonderful year for music. Alternative rock was shifting in unexpected ways, techno was taking over clubs and airwaves , and Gen X was riding the high of a pre-Y2K world —blissfully unaware of what was to come. In this episode of The New Dad Rock , Steve & Keith take a joyride through the sonic landscape of ‘96 , from scrappy indie rock to stadium-filling anthems to...

Step into 1995—a time when five-disc CD changers ruled the bedroom, cassette Walkmans were essential for the commute, and a record player still held a place of honor in the living room. Not a single MP3 in sight. This was also the golden age of mixtapes , crafted with care and burned onto CDs, blending the past and future of rock into something unmistakably 1995 . This episode of The New Dad Rock...

Tune in as The New Dad Rock breaks it all down—one track at a time. 1994 was a year of seismic shifts—both in music and in pop culture. Nirvana’s Unplugged set the tone for the band's tragic final chapter, while Woodstock ‘94 marked the peak (and beginning of the end) of the alternative rock explosion. Meanwhile, the slow-speed chase of O.J. Simpson had the world glued to their TVs, raising t...

Oh, the nerve of the season, the audacious charade, Of this barber shop simulation where reality’s frayed! I plopped in a chair, unassuming and tame, In this den of shears and holiday fame. With old barbers tending, and old carols a-playing, The sort of tunes that leave your spirit decaying. Oh, the pomp and the fuss, the ho-ho-humbug so trite, In a soundtrack that’s anything but merry or bright....

EP 2024:  The New Dad Rock Forever: A 2024 Mixtape In this milestone episode, Steve and Keith look back on their favorite music of 2024, celebrating the sounds that defined the year while pondering how their ever-evolving tastes reflect the state of New Dad Rock . From iconic returns to boundary-breaking debuts, this episode is a whirlwind tour through a wildly eclectic musical landscape. 🎵 Their...

1993—The Year Dad Rock Cemented Its Legacy Steve and Keith crank up the time machine to 1993, revisiting the year where grunge, alt-rock, and indie collided in an explosion of creativity. From late-night dorm radio at WGSU to the first season of Beavis & Butthead , they uncover the cultural threads that tied their formative music experiences together. This episode is packed with tales of Chape...

In Episode 92 of The New Dad Rock , Steve and Keith take a deep dive back into 1992, a year that arguably defined the dawn of dad rock. This was the year that grunge hit mainstream radio, MP3s were born, and Lollapalooza was the place to be, with acts like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Ice Cube, and Ministry. As they journey through memories of late-night concerts and cheap beers in Central Park, they r...