Transmissions

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. 

This week on Transmissions, we're joined by sound healer, reiki practitioner, and avant-garde composer Devi Mambouka, better known as Masma Dream World. Her latest LP is called Play At Night, out on Northern Spy Records. It’s a blend of subterranean bass, spooky backwards masked poetry, and shifting, nocturnal soundscapes designed to entrance, inviting you to examine your “preconceived relationship with darkness, guiding you to step into it—to play in it.”    Mambouka took some time out of a weekend last month to speak with us about her global backstory, discuss how DJing influenced her alchemical approach, and play around with the concept of darkness.     We hope you enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend. Let them know they can listen wherever they get podcasts. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, check out our Patreon page, send an email letting us know what you like about the show.   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. Art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, executive producer, seer, and captain.

You’re tuned into Transmissions, where each week Aquarium Drunkard presents a strange conversation for these strange times. Today on the show we’re joined by Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Makers. The Markers’ new album 2020 is out now on Drag City. It’s a gloriously smeared burst of noise, raw riffs, and damaged country and folk songs. Ambrogio joined us to discuss the importance of good quarantine companion, living out west, and getting into music—really inhabiting it—before you are even sure what you are doing.  We hope you enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend. Let them know they can listen wherever they get podcasts. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, or check out our Patreon page, where you can help us keep the lights on. 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. Art by D. Norsen. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer.

Incoming transmission from...Yves Jarvis. The singer/songwriter/producer's latest is called Sundry Rock Song Stock, and it's a blur of soft-focus pop and shimmering melodic mirages. He joined us from the Tree Museum in Ontario to discuss his interest in progressive rock, creative approach, the disparate influence of Joni Mitchell, Bill Bruford, and Kanye. Plus, a check in with Vic Berger IV and Doug Lussenhop of Tim Heidecker's Office Hours regarding their upcoming noise-show-slash-audio-visual experience, Drop Concert: The Motion Picture, featuring a baffling sonic collage of clips, loops, and found sound drops combined with Heidecker's improvised keyboard and animation by Ben Levin.    We hope you enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend. Let them know they can listen wherever they get podcasts. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, or check out our Patreon page, where you can help us keep the lights on.    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. Art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, sage, guide, and executive producer. 

Transmissions…strange talks for these strange days. This week on the show, we’re joined by ambient hero William Basinski and his collaborator and engineer Preston Wendel. They’ve got two wildly divergent projects out this year. In July, they released To Feel Embraced a collection of saxophone-laden lounge and electronica under the name Sparkle Division. And on November 13th, they release William Basinski’s Lamentations, which assembles more than 40 years of archival tape loops and studies from his archives. The dual albums encompass the ecstatic highs and dread-soaked lows of this strange year. We spoke with the duo in September, when it was still warm out enough to take a dip in the pool about doom scrolling, iPhone recordings, cutting loose, and much more. Thanks for tuning in. We hope you enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend. Let them know they can listen wherever they get podcasts. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, or check out our Patreon page, where you can help us keep the lights on. 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. Art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer. 

Bonus episode! We put out episodes every Wednesday and we have already done so this week—a great chat with novelist and podcaster Hari Kunzru—but since this week being the week it has been, we’re in an energetic mood. So here we are. Our guest for this extra episode is John Darnielle. Since 1991, he’s released music under the Mountain Goats banner, in addition to writing a couple of great books, including Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester.  He’s got two albums out this year—first, a lo-fi boombox recorded tape, Songs for Pierre Chuvin, and now, Getting Into Knives, recorded with the full Mountain Goats band and producer Matt Ross-Sprang at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, the same place people like Booker T. Jones, Alex Chilton, the Cramps, Three-6-Mafia, Roy Orbison and many more have cut albums. His songs have hailed Satan and cast possums in a theological light. He’s written about myths, tragic heroes, and people trying to unwreck themselves. Getting Into Knives is yet another winner from Darnielle. We were very excited to speak with him about it (and talk about his incredible AD Lagniappe Session). Hope you enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend. Let them know they can listen wherever they get podcasts. If you want to take your support a step further, you can leave us a review, or check out our Patreon page, where you can help us keep the lights on. 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. Art by D. Norsen and Heavy Hymns. Justin Gage, head honcho and executive producer. We’ll be back this week too, Wednesday, with another Transmission. Until then, take it easy.  Further reading: John Darnielle :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview