WNXP Podcasts

Nashville native Jess Awh hated country music. Until she moved away and started missing home. Now she’s back and she’s written an album that is country in its core but also dabbles in long extensions of layers of found sound that she has been collecting since she was 15, big droning guitar. For Nashvillians there are detailed references to what it’s like to drive on Dickerson Pike after a DRKMTR s...

Legendary hip hop trio De La Soul released the 35th anniversary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising featuring some previously unreleased records. Around this time last year their music became available to fans on streaming platforms for the first time and Maseo of De La Soul spoke to WNXP’s Marquis Munson back in 2023 about the impact of their music being released on streaming services, sa...

If one generation found Nashville inhospitable to their hip-hop and R&B ambitions, what about the next wave of artists? And what role could Lovenoise play for them? After 20 years of mounting influence for the company, the final chapter of “Making Noise” examines the work that is still to come.

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Analog Soul - A Celebration of Making Noise with Jewly Hight and Nicole Kemp. Nashville Public Radio’s podcast series Making Noise tells the story of the music promotion company Lovenoise, who for 20 years provided a platform for Black music and reaching underserved audiences across generations. The final episode airs tomorrow, and the event at the Hu...

Real Estate, a band with New Jersey roots but now spread out around the country, convened in Nashville to lay down their sixth LP, Daniel . A return to some of the early sounds of Real Estate -- uncomplicated, melody-forward, easy and breezy indie rock -- 'Daniel' showcases the songwriting of frontman Martin Courtney, who spoke with Celia about his vision for this full-length. Also reached to talk...

By the early 2010s, Nashville was exploding as a destination for tourists and new residents. If Lovenoise wanted to make a difference in a city on the rise, they’d need to figure out how to tap into that growth — and try to make sure music-makers holding down the R&B and hip-hop scenes didn’t get left behind. Or pushed out.

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Regeneration Live at The Blue Room with jazz trumpet player Rod McGaha and Nashville hip-hop artist Mike Floss. The latter is known for his immersive shows from his Contraband EP release show to the Meat and Three series. Now, the father and son duo will perform together this Saturday night to bring together their respective social movement and visual...

Keyon Harrold has showcased his trumpet playing for various artists in the studio and on the road, most notable Jay-Z on his 2007 hit “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is).” The trumpeter from Ferguson, Missouri started playing around the age of six studying the greats from Miles Davis to Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. His journey led him to a jazz camp in Colorado when he was a teenager, that’s where he...

Last week, we introduced you to Lovenoise. Now we’re zooming in on exactly how they pushed through barriers that had long existed in Nashville. We’re also going to travel further back in time, to the heyday of Nashville’s Black music scene, and the role the city played in unraveling it. Then we’ll meet the first generation of R&B players, hip-hop MCs and neo-soul singer-songwriters who found w...

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Music In My Neighborhood with Kimberly Kraft McLemore, VP of Education and Community Engagement for the Nashville Symphony. It’s a weeklong musical takeover of the North Nashville and Bordeaux neighborhoods — in a partnership with the symphony and local organizations to highlight the history, culture and residents.

Record of the Week artist Madi Diaz has a lot going on. Since her reign as WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month a couple of years ago, she’s been co-signed by Muna and Waxahatchee. Her friend Kacey Musgraves jumped on a duet. She was picked by Pitchfork as a top album and Rolling Stone recently proclaimed this “the year of Madi.” Oh and Harry Styles handpicked her to not only open some shows but t...

Sometimes, a concert can be so big that it makes the local news. Like in 2021, when legendary rapper Nas performed with the Nashville Symphony. So how did that watershed moment come to be? Behind the scenes — for some 20 years — the music promotion company Lovenoise was laying the groundwork, carving out “a safe space for Black culture,” and boosting artists of color. “Making Noise” is a joint pro...

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Chuck Indigo: Live From $ville with Carlos Partee, owner of Cashville etc. There’s a ton of nicknames to describe Nashville. Music City, more recently the It City, but Cashville as a moniker has embraced the city's black community. Partee has taken the name and turned it into a clothing and community brand highlighting black creatives through fashion...

Big Sigh is the fourth LP by British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Marika Hackman, and her first original material in several years. The songs that make up Big Sigh are lush, expansive, thoughtful, and deep, so unsurprisingly my conversation with Marika Hackman felt that way, too. Hear Hackman discuss the making of Big Sigh -- a collection of tunes about "relief, release and acceptan...

"Making Noise" is a four-part series by WPLN and WNXP about how the music promotion company Lovenoise has changed the music landscape of Nashville. Subscribe now!

This week for What Where When-sday , we discuss Black History in Music: Work, Worship, and Celebration at Jefferson Street Sound Museum with Lorenzo Washington, founder and curator, and Karen Lynn Coffee, vice president. Taking place every Saturday during the month of February, the event features an exclusive art exhibit that aims to celebrate businesses and entrepreneurs that made Jefferson Stree...

Our Record of the Week is Katy Kirby’s Blue Raspberry. After graduating from Belmont University here in Nashville Tennessee, Katy Kirby released Cool Dry Place on the Keeled Scales record label out of Austin. The record received acclaim far and wide. The folks over at Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits and Fleet Foxes noticed it too and signed a record deal with Katy Kirby. The new label has a new e...

Outside of being one of Nashville's most prolific MCs, Brian Brown's passion outside of music is sports. You can hear it in his lyrics you can see it on his social media the avid Detroit Lions fan and our WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month spoke about his love for the Lions and playoff prediction, the Tennessee Titans new head coach, and playing NFL Blitz while writing his breakout 2020 project Jo...

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Cannery Hall with general manager Brent Hyams. The site off 8th Avenue South formerly known as Cannery Ballroom, Mercy Lounge and the High Watt, sold to a New York-based real estate company back in 2019. After undergoing renovations for the new space, the new Cannery Hall is set to start running shows starting tonight. Hyams discuss the process and vi...

Ty Segall is inarguably prolific. The indie rock artist will drop his 15th full-length album, Three Bells , early this year. It must be a combination of all the aforementioned factors, with the underpinning of just being a very cool dude , that keeps the SoCal native pumping out the jams. His tour brings him to Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl on April 24, and we talked about Three Bells right before he...

Our guest this week is Rachel Scarbrough, a former Nashville resident who’s worked with Ground Control Touring to bring Saturday’s Abortion Access Benefit at DRKMTTR to fruition. This fundraiser show (100% of ticket proceeds go to regional organizations supporting reproductive rights) is one of five held around the country on the same night, and Nashville’s boasts a stacked bill of some of our fav...

Nashville singer/songwriter Alanna Royale uses her classic soul and R&B influences to explore the highs and lows we universally experience in life while sharing her own personal experiences on her latest album T rouble Is . She linked up with Kelly Finnegan of Monophonics to produce the record during the pandemic and during a time when she was dealing with her own personal trauma. Going to the...

This week for What Where When-sday , we discuss the 31st annual Let Freedom Sing with Dr. Jeffery Ames, director of choral activities at Belmont University and conductor of the event. Happening at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center this Sunday, the choose-what-you-pay community event honors the life, legacy and triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Nashville Symphony, Celebration Chorus and the...

Olivia Barton is a bighearted songwriter who wears her emotions on her sleeves and in her songs. 2023 was a big year for Barton, she featured on a song with her partner Corin, whose artist name is Corook on the song “If I Were A Fish” which has now been watched and listened to over 20 million times and has been made into a children’s book. In December Barton released her EP Big Sad which is our Re...

Generations of rappers have made music repping where they came from and how it’s shaped them. After spending most of his 30 years in Nashville, hip-hop artist Brian Brown has arrived at his own way of doing that. Senior music writer Jewly Hight says the Nashville Artist of the Month has a keen eye on those who’ve been shoved aside in his changing city.