All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast

Legendary music writer Peter Guralnick joins us this week on Transmissions. He's been writing about the blues, rock & roll, soul, and R&B since the late 1960s. His latest book is called Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music & Writing. It is a book about the creativity that fueled artists like Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson, Ray Charles, Dick Curless, and Howlin' Wolf, who Guralnick says viewed his music as an expression "not just of personal freedom but of personal difference." He joins us for an open discussion about the early days of music journalism, artistry, and the curiosity that fuels his work.

Northern California mysticism with Fletcher Tucker. His latest album of ritualistic folk music is called Unlit Trail. Like the previous, Cold Spring, it's a record that settles deep into the sacred nature of existence. It's an lp designed to welcome the listener "into a liminal state, beyond ordinary awareness," and into the unknown. Tucker joined us to discuss Star Trek, animism, family and the deep history of his instruments and home in Big Sur, California.

Hope you're enjoying the new season of Aquarium Drunkard's Transmissions. Here's a good one from the archives, a favorite of Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks a roundtable talk with three lifers: Howe Gelb, Robyn Hitchcock, and Steve Wynn. The three share similar paths through scenes and the industry, their paths are shared but divergent, and there’s a spiritual unity at work even in their differences. With his band Giant Sand, Howe Gelb pens strange, dusty songs about love and the desert. Both solo and with his Paisley Underground pioneering band the Dream Syndicate, Wynn composes driving minimalist rock sagas (a recent 11-disc boxset documents much of his range) . And after emerging from the UK punk scene with the Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock has embarked on a career full of wry and funny songs that skewer pop conventions. We spoke in August of 2018 when they performed at HOCO Fest in Tucson, Arizona, a place where they all share considerable history. This interview was recorded at the KXCI studio at the historic Hotel Congress. Please enjoy this one from the vault.

On her second lp, the newly released Urban Driftwood, Virginia-based guitarist Yasmin Williams creates expansive acoustic music. Playing guitar, kalimba, percussion, and kora, she pulls from disparate musical strands—including the smooth jazz she heard growing up—into music that feels spiritually connected to New Age music, Windham Hill guitar, and the work of contemporaries like Daniel Bachman (who calls her "a guitarist for a new century"), William Tyler, and Marisa Anderson, both whom she's recently collaborated. She joined us for a conversation about being a Black artist in a primarily white genre, how she taught herself guitar, and how she processes the "American Primitive" genre tag.

Tamara Lindeman joins us this week on Transmissions for a conversation about Ignorance, her lush and sweeping new album as The Weather Station. Lindeman is the kind of songwriter who dares to write about big topics, like identity and global climate change, but the new album finds her exploring those concepts over deeply rhythmic jazz and pop-influenced compositions. It's out Friday, February 5 on Fat Possum Records. Lindeman joined us from her home in Ontario, to discuss the pandemic, the information overload of daily life, and how she's come to embrace the performative side of artistic practice.

This week we're happy to welcome Margo Price to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions for a talk about the music industry, her creative partnership with husband Jeremy Ivey, her online radio show, forays into the cannabis business, and her latest rock and seventies pop inspired lp, That's How Rumors Get Started. Bold and strident, it's a record that finds her blurring genres, like many of her country heroes, people like John Prine, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. Plus, she fills us in on some of the details about an as of yet unreleased collaboration with the queen of outlaw country, Jessi Colter.    We hope you enjoy this conversation. If you do, consider sharing it with a friend. And if you need more, you can check out the archives, which feature dozens of talks with artists like Nels Cline, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Swamp Dogg, and many more. You can hear Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions wherever podcasts are found, and it’s always available for direct download here. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, check out our Patreon page, and email us your thoughts about the show.

It’s 2021 and Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions podcast is back. Every Wednesday, your host Jason P. Woodbury sits down with a fascinating guest for a rolling conversation about art, process, and inspiration. To kick off our new season, we’re joined by Nels Cline. Known for his many varied solo projects, work in Wilco, and a long history of collaboration with artists like Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, and many more.   His latest work, out now via the legendary Blue Note label, is called Share the Wealth. Backed up by the Nels Cline Singers—punk jazz saxophonist Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsell, bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Scott Amendola and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista—it features the heavier side of Cline’s playing, but also his signature fluidity and extended jams.  Cline joined us to explore the new record, discuss what being off the road has been like, and talk about his early days: falling in love with collaboration alongside his twin brother Alex, working in record stores, and how his life changed when he joined Wilco.

Our guest this week is Patrick McDermott of North Americans. His latest is called Roped In and its blissed out guitar-scapes find him teaming up with cosmic pedal steel master Barry Walker Jr, William Tyler, and Mary Lattimore. He reached us from his place in Los Angeles to discuss pleasant zones, video games, and some particularly good lunches.    A quick note: this is the final episode of our season. We're going to take a break but don't you sweat it, we'll be back early in 2021 with more strange conversations for our strange times. Transmissions is hosted and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Andrew Horton edits our audio. Jonathan Mark-Walls produces content for our social media and video outlets. Transmissions art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer.

This week, we're joined by returning guest Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple and Big Ego, his studio in Long Beach. His latest is called Houses of the Holy, a four-sided double-album, featuring a different band on each side: Cherry Glazerr with garage pop, the Chicago Underground Trio with their jazz inflection, psych warriors the Dream Syndicate, and rapper and producer Xololanxinxo. Schlarb took some time out of his holiday season to speak with us about the creative ethos driving his work.    Transmissions is hosted and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Andrew Horton edits our audio. Jonathan Mark-Walls produces content for our social media and video outlets. Transmissions art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer.

This week on Transmissions, we welcome back a return guest: desert scribe and radio personality Ken Layne. He’s the editor of Desert Oracle, a pocket-sized field guide to the American Southwest and the host of Desert Oracle Radio, a weekly late-night broadcast out of Joshua Tree. With synthesist RedBlueBlackSilver in tow, Layne offers up tales of the paranormal, the odd, and the arcane. Layne illuminates these damned and or transcendent topics with good humor and dusty charm.  This week, he releases a new book which collects and expands stories from the program and the magazine, Desert Oracle Volume 1: Strange and True Tales From the American Southwest. He joins us for a far-reaching conversation about the new book, the allure of the weird, the late ’80s underground music scenes of Southern California, the early days of digital publishing, conspiracy theory and literature, the disenchantment of modern life, and of course, venturing into the spiritual wilderness represented by the desert.  Transmissions is hosted and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Andrew Horton edits our audio. Jonathan Mark-Walls produces content for our social media and video outlets. Transmissions art by D. Norsen. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer. Show notes and more at Aquarium Drunkard.