The Self Portrait Gospel :: Podcast

From one end of the shore of some spiritually secluded sanctuary, resides a melodic memory of a time that has long since passed. Where world-renowned National Geographic photographers carefully captured the elemental essence of the natural world, a melodic meditation was eventually born from its atmospheric ashes. LA-based psych pirates and students of the sonic sunset Allah-Las have been creative...

Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter, teacher, and DJ, Jeffery Silverstein, first came on the scene during his participation in groups such as the Brooklyn-based duo Nassau and Baltimore's Secret Mountains, before releasing his 2020 solo debut "You Become The Mountain." Since living in "Rose City," he has carefully crafted his atmospheric artisry within the cinemtaic cascades of spiritual soun...

Bulverde, Texas-based singer-songwriter, producer, and beverage connoisseur, Jerry David DeCicca, has been intimatley involved in music for more than two decades, tending the gardens of a creative career that has seen him both on the scene as well as behind it, working with folks such as our mutual friend Ralph E. White, Larry Jon Wilson, Bob Martin, and our main focal point for this episode of Th...

Longtime friend and cosmic collaborator on such works as 1997's "Thorny Path" and 2024's "Rising Phoenix" Erik Shumpert, and his twin brother Paul first met Snarb in the early 1980s, and would soon all move in together in a tiny, historic abode on Brooks St. in LA county where Barnes had been laying down some of Amps For Christ's earlier works like "Plains Of Alluvial," and "Beggars Garden." Influ...

This episode takes place right in the harmonious heart of Barnes' liberating laboratory at the legendary Folk Music Center and Museum, located in Claremont, California, where he's worked as a luthier specializing in the setup and repair of sitars, banjos, mandolins, and volins, fret replacement and fret dressing of all stringed instruments, neck resets, electronics, and pickup installation for ove...

Having first met the late great David "Cloud" Berman sometime in Dallas in 1984, poetic painter Chris Kysor has been an incredibly important individual in the world of the Silver Jews before they even lifted off the ghostly ground in the 1990s. Friends since high school, Kysor tells us about his dear friend, and poet, the only way he knows how: through his intimate connection and precious friendsh...

Logtime Providence-based rockers Deer Tick have been releasing aggressively atmospheric, sonically seductive music for over two decades now. Since forming in the winter of '04 as a duo dynamic for McCauley's melodies, the group has spiritually secured a poetic place in the creative cosmos, alongside their peers and critical contemporaries. We had the chance to sit down with McCauley to talk about...

Hailing from Claremont, California, a suburban city in eastern Los Angeles County, Henry Branes (Ranger Barnes, Enid Snarb) first began connecting with the meditative melodies of music through his incredibly talented parents. With a mother who played guitar and a father who was a member of the local collective The Real Jazz Band, Barnes' exciting enviroment eventually led him down the endless path...

Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersery, Wilkes relocated to the West Coast with his family, where he would go on to earn a BA at UC Santa Cruz, before eventually deciding to study screenwriting at the American Film Institute (AFI). Having worked as a screnwriter on such cult classics as 1994's "Airheads" (Adam Sandler, Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, Chris Farley, and Michael Richards) and "The...

Remaining a romantically revolutionary voice among his peers and contemporaries for nearly two decades, Durham, North Carolina-based singer, songwriter, and producer MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) returns to the sonic surface with his latest effort, "I'm People", which he says is "An intensely human record." Written and recorded throughout Bolinas, the North Carolina Piedmont, and a Santa Fe mo...

Maybe you've seen his vidoes while doom scrolling on your phone at two a.m. in search of elementary enlightenment or a break from the gravitational gloom of the world and its lunatic leaders. The universal use of his entire body through the meditational medium of the acoustic guitar, jaw harp, harmonica, nose flute, and vocals radically radiates the revolutionary reaction of the avant-garde in all...

Frank Hurricane is much more that just a songwriter or spiritual soothsayer; he's a psychedelic pirate manning the ancient waters under the splintered sun's biblical breast. Like some cosmic character from J.M. Barrier's 1904 masterpiece "Peter Pan", Hurricane's artistic approach to life and his work are rare these days, as everything has been melted down into this galactic goop for social media,...

Both prolific, and poetic, Seattle, Washington-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and all-around spiritual splendor Chris Ballew has been writing and rapidly recording music for over thirty years like no one's business. As the frontman and bassist for the alternative rock band The Presidents Of The United States Of America, Ballew started his career busking in the busy streets of Bost...

Rutili's Califone has been around for nearly 30 years, if you can believe that. Rutili can't, and we talk about that for a mortal moment. Still, there were bigger topics on our minds, like ICE, the Trump administration, the pulverizing politics running rampant in our country, the confusing violence that seems to continue painting the numbing narrative of the "American Dream", and of course, the Gr...

After relocating to the Bay Area in the late 1990s to pursue a vibrant vision of becoming a professional skateboarder, life had other plans for future artist, illustrator, and psychedelic painter Joe Robert (LSD Worldpeace). To properly pivot in the throes of reality, one has to put one foot in front of the other, and Roberts did just that. Later, studying at SFAI, he eventually began releasing bo...

For the final episode of The Self Portrait Gospel Podcast of 2025, we had the great pleasure of sitting down with multi-instrumentalist, activist, composer, and multimedia artist Micah Nelson (Particle Kid) to discuss the future of music streaming services like Spotify and the revolutionary reclaiming of musicians'/artists' intellectual property through a newly developed, creator-owned music and s...

There are some folks you feel like you've known forever, and perhaps you have in some other life than the one you're currently occupying. Westerlund is one of those people. A sonic soul that shifts in and out of an atmospheric array of outfits and poetic projects, his presence is equal to his artistic output. Positive, curious, and above all, genuine. On this episode of The Self Portrait Gospel Po...

While conjouring those familiar relams of romanticism found within the captivating caves of Leonard Cohen, Eduardo Bort, and Donovan, Sao Paulo, Braizil-bases multi-instrumentalist Sergio Victor Sayeg, known professionally as Sessa, has sincerely brought to the sonic surface a mesmerizing meditation on life, lover, fatherhood, and cultural connection with his latest effort, "Pequena Vertigem de Am...

It's been almost a year since we last spoke to Nastanovich, and what a year it's been, to say the least. From touring to moving to Maco, GA, to an official docufiction about the band called "Pavements", and everything else in between, the group's lyrical legacy and existential existence have only grown over the decades, and we're here for every second of it. Nastanovich is one of those critical ch...

Since 2016, the LA-based supergroup, cover band, and iconic institution for all things Dead-related, Grateful Shred, has been a presence on the sonic scene for the last decade, emerging as one of the most well-respected and highly regarded acts of thier generation. Blending the essential efforts found within the Dead's early energy from the 1960s psychedelic era with the cosmic countryside of the...

On this episode of The Self Portrait Gospel Podcast, we sit down with the wizard behind the flowing crimson curtains of all things Uknown Mortal Orchestra, Ruban Nielson, to talk about his favorite cult classic horror films and how the unique process and trailblazing approach to some of those classics from the 1980s have inspired him on his melodic journey from the group's monumental 2011 self tit...

On this terrifyingly spooky and melodically macabre episode-well, not actually that terrifying at all-of The Self Portrait Gospel Podcast, we had the wonderful privilege to sit with the great Cass McCombs to discuss his brilliant new effort, "Interior Live Oak," and other atmospheric anecdotes such as how West Coast skateboard culture adopted him, made him one of the thier own, his late friend and...

Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Zachary Cale first came onto the scene with his 2005 debut "Outlander Sessions" some 20 years ago, if you can believe that. Having navigated an eclectic era that's far beyond different from the one we currently occupy, Cale has kept a steady pulse on the melodic machine, while simultaneously sharing the stage with the likes of the great James Toth (Wooden Wand), De...

Embedded in the collected consciousness of popular culture, cinema, and creative charisma for the last four decades, legendary actor, filmmaker, and author Crispin Hellion Glover has danced on the elusive edge of artistic freedom, while simultaneously inhabiting an abstract atmosphere  like no one else of his generation. His almost alchemical approach to his craft is unparalleled and unpredictable...

Now based in East Nashville, not too far from our little operation here in Tennessee, the subliminal songstress and mistress of melodic mastery, Marissa Nadler, has been gracing the alchemical airwaves for nearly two decades with her majestic meditations on life, death, love, memory, and several other elements of the human experience. Having signed with the Brooklyn-based label Sacred Bones Record...