Spotlight On

Today, the spotlight shines on author and educator Michael Kuelker, here to talk about his recent book, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils On Record: A Narrative Discography. Michael is a teacher, writer, and reggae radio DJ in St. Louis, Missouri. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils are an American rock group who first formed in 1972. Hailing from Springfield, Missouri, the band had two major hits, "If You Wanna Get to Heaven" from their debut album in 1974 and a certified smash, "Jackie Blue" from their 1975 follow-up.Michael’s book uses the framework of their discography as the scaffolding on which to hang not only over 50 years of their story, but to go back further to describe the music and cultural scenes of the Ozark region as well as the various threads of the music business and cultural industries that the band buffeted against over the years. It is a unique mode of storytelling, one worth reading and applying to other artists and scenes. Michael joined us to talk about his work on the book and to give us some insight into the band and the world they developed in.Author WebsiteHost Lawrence PeryerMore Spotlight On. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, the spotlight shines on the wildly influential post-punk group, That Petrol Emotion. Guitarist and songwriter Raymond Gorman and lead singer Steve Mack joined Spotlight On host Lawrence Peryer to mark the release of the band’s career-spanning box set, Every Beginning Has a Future: An Anthology 1984-1994.Spawned from the ashes of the Northern Irish pop-punk group, The Undertones, the Petrols synthesized all of the music, culture and politics around them to create something vibrant and new. Across five albums - all given a fresh clean-up and augmented with singles, B-sides and rarities in the new box - the band combined 80’s indie/alt rock, post-punk, garage, dance and hip hop to innovate their way into becoming one of the most important and influential bands of their era. Their genre-hopping and political identities came with a cost. While their fanbase was fervent and ever-growing, mainstream success eluded the band, as their sound was too difficult for marketers to pigeonhole and their politics - particularly their identification with Northern Ireland and other liberation struggles, made them untouchable and in some cases censored by the mainstream press of the time. But the music and legacy is undeniable. That Petrol Emotion fits neatly on a record shelf with trailblazers like the Clash or Public Image Limited and you would be hard-pressed to imagine a BritPop or the Manchester scene without the path they forged. ThatPetrolEmotion.comHost Lawrence PeryerMore Spotlight On. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brigadoon is a global affairs news and information platform for founders + thought leaders with global ambition. Brigadoon curates the emerging issues and the independent thinkers shaping commerce + culture. Brigadoon sees this curation as global street smarts. The conversation covers the history of technology and innovation in creative fields - specifically music - and highlights the innovations of artists like Franz Liszt, Frank Sinatra and David Bowie.Born out of personal frustration of spending too much time with the same people thinking the same way, Brigadoon is a simple idea, connect founders + thought leaders who believe in the power of conversation and embrace curiosity. Brigadoon organizes powerpoint free discussions, family-style salon dinners, and multi-day excursions that foster deeper knowledge and enable better connections. Established in 2013, Brigadoon is produced by Caracal Strategies LLC and curated by Marc A. Ross. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Saxophonist-composer Jeremy Rose leads a multi-dimensional career spanning a dozen releases of original music with collaborative and solo projects across the world, including The Earshift Orchestra, Jeremy Rose Quartet, and The Vampires. Rose is the founder and director of the Earshift Music record label and festival. Rose has performed at festivals, venues, and concert halls throughout Australia, Europe, and the UK, including recently touring Europe with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and collaborating with Benin-born Blue Note guitarist Lionel Loueke. Rose has been described as “one to watch on the Australian jazz scene” (Jazzwise, UK), “one of the most creative and restless musicians in the Australian jazz scene” (Australianjazz.net), “a brilliant jazz composer and instrumentalist, a young man with a social purpose” (The Australian), and “a bold, emerging Aussie voice” (Limelight Magazine).Rose has received recognition through nominations for the ARIA Awards, three AIR Awards, Australian Music Prize short-listing, two Jazz Bell Awards, the APRA Professional Development Award for Jazz, a four-time finalist for the AMC Art Music Award for Excellence in Jazz, and runner up at the National Jazz Awards saxophone competition. As a label director of Earshift Music, Rose has fostered a community of creative musicians throughout Australasia, which NYC Jazz Records describe as “hell-bent on pushing the very definition of jazz.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Markus Reuter is a music producer, composer, performer, and creative educator with international credentials and a vast discography. Reuter's work as a recording artist, solo performer, and collaborator spans (and frequently fuses) electrophonic loop music, contemporary classical music, progressive and art rock, industrial music, world jazz, jazz fusion, pop songs, and pure improvisation. Over the course of a two-decade career, he has been a member of multiple bands, ensembles, and projects (including centrozoon, Stick Men, Tuner, The Crimson ProjeKct, and Europa String Choir) as well as a solo artist. Since 2011 Reuter has established himself as a contemporary classical composer, starting with the performance and recording of his large-scale orchestral piece Todmorden 513.A specialist in touch guitar playing, Reuter became known as a leading player of the Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick during the 1990s and 2000s before developing, adopting, and marketing his own U8 and U10 Touch Guitar instruments. In collaboration with former King Crimson member Trey Gunn, he runs the Touch Guitar Circle, a teaching and support network for touch guitar players.As well as further collaborations with artists including Tim Bowness, Lee Fletcher, Ian Boddy, and Robert Rich, Reuter has produced records by numerous musicians and released several solo recordings as both performer and composer. He is also part of an artist-owned production consortium that encompasses Iapetus Media, Unsung Productions, and Unsung Records. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duncan Chapman is a composer/musician based in Lincolnshire, UK. Much of his work involves collaborations with a wide range of people creating performances, installations & recordings. Recent projects include online live-streaming events, curating a concert for the Aural Diversity project, and performing morning music with Supriya Nagarajan at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India. Recent projects include work with BCMG, x-church Gainsborough, COMA Glasgow, online performances with Comb Filter (with Simon Limbrick and Adrian Lee), and Humbox (with Mike McInerney). His solo work is on Silent, Takuroku & Linear Obsessional labels & Dusk Notes (a collaboration with Supriya Nagarajan) was released in 2020. His current work includes an album of marimba and live electronic pieces with Simon Limbrick, a residency at EMS in Stockholm, performances (with Supriya) of Lullaby: Sonic Cradle at Radiophrenia in Glasgow, Casa Da Musica (Porto) and at the 2022 WOMAD festival. Duncan is also developing participatory events using the new multichannel sound system at x-church in Gainsborough, undertaking a sound mapping residency in North Lincolnshire, and leading participatory projects with Music in the Round (Sheffield), Manasamitra (Yorkshire), and Sound Scotland. He is a mentor for Sound And Music's Listen Imagine Compose project, and a trustee of Liquid Vibrations. He has contributed to courses at York, Aberdeen, Goldsmiths, Limerick, and De Montfort Universities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based in the musical hotbed of Marin County, California, Grahame Lesh is a guitar player and singer-songwriter for Midnight North, Phil Lesh & Friends, & the Terrapin Family Band. A mainstay in the scene centered around Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, Grahame has joined such luminaries as The Mother Hips, Chris Robinson, Twiddle, Amy Helm, The North Mississippi All Stars, Neal Casal, Jackie Greene, Eric Krasno, ALO, and many more in singing, playing, and interpreting the American songbook.As a founder and co-frontperson (with Elliott Peck) for Midnight North, Grahame has played hundreds of concerts around the country and released 4 studio albums, 3 live albums, and two digital EPs of original music since the band's inception in 2012. In 2021 the band released "There's Always a Story", their most successful studio album to date, and toured throughout the country in support in 2021 and 2022 as the music industry recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Midnight North's new live album "Selections from Levon Helm Studios", co-produced by Grahame, was released in May of 2022 to celebrate Midnight North's legendary show at Levon Helm Studios in November of 2019. As a member of Phil Lesh's Terrapin Family Band and Phil Lesh & Friends, he has traveled the world, performing Phil's updated version of the Grateful Dead's sound everywhere from the famed Fuji Rock Festival in Japan to London to Newport Folk Fest to New York city. The TFB has welcomed guests like Sheryl Crow, Benmont Tench, John Scofield, Nicki Bluhm, Dawes, Warren Haynes, Bob Weir, and many more onstage as they performed at venues and festivals around the world. Always focused on the song and the groove, whether it be his or another's, Grahame's music stays rooted in the present while touching on all aspects of rock, folk, blues, soul, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicholas Berkeley Mason, CBE (born 27 January 1944) is an English drummer and founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. He is the only member to feature on every Pink Floyd album, and the only constant member since its formation in 1965. He co-wrote Pink Floyd compositions such as “Echoes”, “Time”, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and “One of These Days”. In 2018, he formed a new band, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, to perform music from Pink Floyd’s early years.Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets is on tour. Go see them live.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer John Barry joins us on the podcast to talk his new book, "Levon Helm: Rock, Roll & Ramble—The Inside Story of the Man, the Music and the Midnight Ramble."Ringo wrote the foreword, and Roger Waters, Graham Nash and Warren Haynes are among those interviewed. Larry Campbell, who served as Levon Helm Band Musical Director and produced or co-produced Levon's three Grammy-winning solo albums, which were inspired by the Rambles, had this to say about the book:"John Barry was the perfect 'fly on the wall' during this great last chapter and final curtain call in Levon Helm's life. He was the quintessential observer from the early days of the Midnight Ramble to the end and has brilliantly captured the details and the spirit of that wonderful timein this book."Born in the Bronx, raised in the New York City suburbs of Rockland County and living in New York State's Hudson Valley since 1990, John W. Barry is an award-winning journalist with a passion for writing and a love of music.This combination has brought John to some pretty incredible places and put him in the company of some incredible people. From Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado and many places in between, John's relentless pursuit of the stories, the people and the circumstances that define the world around us has enabled him to assemble the puzzle pieces of a compelling tale or two over the course of his lifetime.John is a very proud graduate of Clarkstown South High School and the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he earned a journalism degree. The latter is what brought John to Ulster County, New York, and set him on his path to Woodstock, Levon Helm Studios and the Midnight Ramble. As a journalist for the USA Today Network's Poughkeepsie Journal in Dutchess County, New York, John found himself in the center of Levon's Midnight Ramble house concerts, getting to know Levon, his band, his crew, his management team, Team Levon and, of course, his fans.Prior to serving as the music writer for the Poughkeepsie Journal, John wrote for his hometown newspaper, The Journal News, as a police reporter, covering municipal beats and writing extensively about local angles to the Northern Ireland peace process. John has also freelanced for RollingStone.com and since leaving the USA Today Network at the end of 2020, has been working as a freelance writer and blogger, and editorial consultant. In the wake of the publication of this book, John is already working on his next project and continuing to do what he enjoys most, hiking and camping in the Hudson Valley's stunning terrain, cooling off in its swimming holes and breathing in deeply its crisp night air.Purchase a copy of the Levon book here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in the early 70s, drummer Mike Clark and bassist Paul Jackson were best friends living in East Oakland, playing flatbed gigs at Black Panther rallies, and generally raising hell. Cooking was not their forte, so the barbecue joint next door became a hangout. Mrs. Jones (of Everett and Jones) asked them to write a song to promote the spot, and they came up with the first version of ‘God Made Me Funky.’ Bill Summers worked with Jackson at the local record store, and he jumped at an opportunity to open a show for Herbie Hancock in the Bay Area. He got the call to audition for Herbie’s band, joining Herbie for the album “Headhunters“ and many more. Hancock took a new turn in the 70s, handpicking a new band and sound that would ‘take some more of the earth and feel a little more tethered.’ The result was the first platinum-selling Jazz album in history. The lineup on that first album: Bennie Maupin, Paul Jackson, Harvey Mason, and Bill Summers. Mike Clark replaced Mason afterward, and the lineup continued on several key Herbie Hancock releases such as “Thrust” and “Flood.”Mike Clark and Bill Summers are two of a kind - they share a love for music that never dies. The pair kept The Headhunters alive, releasing two albums “Survival of the Fittest” in 1975 and “Straight From The Gate” in 1977, with Herbie as a featured guest. The chemistry between them is undeniable: They have persevered for over 40 years through industry setbacks, the death of band members, and more, to stay true to their mission with the same energy and zeal that the music demands. “We’re not in a gym, this isn’t a competition… this is art. What Bill and I and The Headhunters do is experience the moment and explore. After the count, we’re in that moment, and there is no other. This is an act of passion, of love for humanity, and for our planet.” -Mike Clark“We live this every day. We have some secrets to give to the youth of the world. We’re not musicians, we are physicians - we heal people.” - Bill Summers11 years after their last release, The Headhunters are set to release “Speakers In The House,” a new full-length album featuring Summers, Clark, NEA Jazz master Donald Harrison, Stephen Gordon, bassist Reggie Washington, and organist Jerry Z. The album also features Scott Roberts and Fode Sissoko on kora. The Headhunters spirit is alive and well on the album, which fuses the band’s African and New Orleans influences with their ever-present technical jazz-funk, rooted in music history and growing in the present moment. ‘We’ve always made a statement as The Headhunters, and I’m looking at our longevity. Every time we’ve dropped notes on the wax, it has value and can influence people and change lives.” - Bill Summers“Speakers In The House” is set for release on November 4, 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.