Caropop

John Hall has been CEO of the family-run Rickenbacker guitar company since 1984, right around when R.E.M.'s Peter Buck was inspiring a generation of jangly bands with his Rick riffs. The Beatles had led a Rickenbacker surge 20 years earlier as John Lennon and George Harrison played Ricks in A Hard Day’s Night and prompted the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn to get a 12-string Rickenbacker and basically to invent folk rock. Hall tells a hell of a story about meeting the Beatles and McGuinn, and he reflects on company’s history, which dates back to 1931. He explains why Rickenbacker still makes all of its guitars at one California factory instead of expanding its production; discusses the company’s fierce trademark protection; weighs distinctions among hollow-bodied, solid-bodied, 6-string and 12-string models; addresses whether pricey vintage Ricks are actually better than new ones; and, once and for all, clears up the pronunciation of “Rickenbacker.”

David Lowery is looking back while pushing forward. The brainy, witty Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker frontman just released a two-CD, three-LP solo album, Fathers, Sons and Brothers, that’s a sort of musical memoir. Here he tells stories about those stories, reflecting on the recent Camper shows to mark the debut album’s 40th anniversary and speculating on whether the band would have had its career if he hadn’t written “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” He also discusses the almost accidental ways in which Cracker’s “Low” and “Eurotrash Girl” became hits, tells whether he’s surprised by which of his songs have had legs, ponders whether he and his bands appreciated the good times, notes his preference of his new album on CD or vinyl, asserts how record companies blew it with streaming, shares new song ideas and weighs the economics of recording them with Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker or on his own. (Photo by Jason Thrasher.)

Zev Feldman, a.k.a. the “Jazz Detective,” has turned his crate-digging passion into a career: He tracks down previously unreleased recordings and jumps through the necessary hoops to get them released, often in lavish packages for his label, Resonance Records. This past Record Store Day featured such Feldman finds as live albums from Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham and Charles Mingus plus a limited-edition double album of previously unreleased Patsy Cline performances, Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963). Feldman also co-produced last year’s incendiary Blue Note release from McToy Tyner and Joe Henderson, Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs. In this expansive conversation, Feldman tells his Jazz Detective origin story and describes how he finds these recordings (or vice versa), he gets specific about the importance of Record Store Day and these projects' tight margins, and he reveals his white whales. (Photo by Jean-Louis Atlan.)

Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill, who are married to each other, have been making music for many years but recently released their first album together, Long After the Fire. Peterson has been singer-songwriter-guitarist for the Bangles and Continental Drifters. John Cowsill began drumming for the Cowsills at a young age, more recently was the Beach Boys’ drummer and now fills in as lead singer for the Smithereens. The new album features songs written by John’s two late brothers, Bill and Barry Cowsill, and John and Vicki harmonize beautifully and, as you’ll hear here, crack each other up. They recount how they decided (and occasionally tangled over) who would sing what and tell great stories too, covering Vicki’s long connection with the Cowsills (which dates back to 1978) and John’s cosmic if heartbreaking moment with Brian Wilson. (Photo by Henry Diltz.)

Called "the Wizard of Vinyl" by the New York Times, Chad Kassem has devoted his professional life to the cause of great-sounding records. In addition to running Acoustic Sounds, a go-to mail-order company for audiophile albums and equipment, the outspoken Kassem oversees the specialty label Analogue Productions, the Mastering Lab, Quality Record Pressings (QRP) and other related businesses, all based in Salina, Kansas. In this freewheeling conversation, Kassem discusses how Analogue Productions has been able to obtain and execute such projects as the Atlantic 75 Series and Steely Dan UHQR releases. He previews upcoming releases from Jethro Tull, Robert Flack and Bob Marley and the Wailers. And he gets into the joys of early recordings, the evils of compression, the market manipulations of record labels, his take on the One Step controversy and the reason a CD has never made him cry.

With mid-‘60s hits such as “Jenny Take a Ride!” and “Devil with a Blue Dress On,” Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels all but created the rock ‘n’ soul rave-up, and he became the musical godfather of the so-called blue-collar rockers including Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. In this career-spanning conversation conducted from his Michigan home, the 80-year-old Ryder reflects on the impact that he and Detroit had on each other, the genesis of those early hits, the assist he gave the Who and Cream, the insulting question he fielded from the British press, his reasons for stepping away from the rock ‘n’ roll life in the early '70s, his resurgence in Europe and his continued work into 2025 with a new album, With Love, produced by fellow Detroiter (and previous Caropop guest) Don Was. There’s also a priceless Prince story. (Photo by Alejandro Saldana.)

How does a label execute ambitious rerelease campaigns for its key artists, in this case Yes and Talking Heads? We talk with Rhino A&R directors Jason Jones and Steve Woolard about the Super Deluxe Editions, Record Store Day releases and other archival packages they have been assembling for these two bands. Woolard also oversaw Yes rereleases more than 20 years ago—how have the band’s audience and their expectations changed since then? Why does the Yes Close to the Edge box mix CDs, a Blu-ray and an LP while the Talking Heads: 77 box is all vinyl? Where are Jones and Woolard finding the treasure trove of live recordings from both bands? Which band members do they work with? Are Tales from Topographic Oceans and More Songs About Buildings and Food the next to get the Super Deluxe treatment, with the later albums to follow?

As this episode kicks off, Kevin Godley and his longtime songwriting and creative partner, Lol Creme, have just left 10cc, so instead of being part of hits such as “The Things We Do for Love,” the duo continues pushing their artistic boundaries as Godley & Creme. Godley describes how he and Creme collaborated on music and, eventually, videos—for themselves and, among others, Herbie Hancock (“Rockit”), the Police (“Every Breath You Take”) and George Harrison (“When We Was Fab”). He recounts work on the groundbreaking video for Godley & Creme’s biggest hit, 1985’s “Cry,” which uses a pre-CGI version of morphing to merge one face into another, as Michael Jackson would do with more technology years later. Godley also tells of the end of his partnership with Creme, the current state of relationships among the four original 10cc members and where his creative drive is taking him next.

“If we did something that was too drab, too normal, too obvious, we'd say, ‘Nah, let's give it a kick in the ass.’” That’s how Kevin Godley describes the approach of his former band, 10cc, and his drive for creativity and art has not abated. Godley was 10cc’s angelic-voiced drummer who would go on to make inventive music and groundbreaking videos with Godley & Creme. In Pt. 1 of this illuminating conversation, Godley explains how Lol Creme, Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart and he—all strong songwriters and singers—formed 10cc near Manchester, England, and figured out who would do what. They stretched out on such Godley-Creme songs as “Somewhere in Hollywood” and "Une Nuit a Paris" (which perhaps inspired Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”), but the popularity of “I’m Not in Love” had unintended consequences. What was it about the new song that Stewart and Gouldman played for Godley and Creme that blew apart the songwriting teams for good?

Omnivore Recordings co-founder and four-time Gramny-winning producer Cheryl Pawelski has figured out how to do what she loves for a living. She went from obsessing about music in Milwaukee to having great adventures in the "floater pool" at Capitol Records in Los Angeles. With stints at Rhino and Concord as well, she oversaw ambitious reissues by, among others, the Band, Big Star, the Smithereens, the Beach Boys, Pat Benatar, Nina Simone and the Miles Davis Quintet. Her long association with Wilco has included deluxe boxes for Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which won a Grammy) and, earlier this year, A Ghost Is Born. She won another Grammy for the 2023 7-CD set Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos. She recounts it all with the passion of a fan, even as she deals with the challenges of running a record label and the recent loss of her Altadena home in the Southern California wildfires. (Photo by Greg Allen.)