Stereo Embers: The Podcast

“You Are Magic” Alison Faith Levy is super busy. She was in the post Game Theory outfit the Loud Family, she’s one half of the McCabe and Mrs Miller duo, the other half being Camper Van Beethoven’s Victor Krummenacher, and you might also know her from the alt rock for kids outfit the Sippy Cups. So yes, Alison is always busy, but somehow between the music and raising a family with her husband Danny Plotnick, she went on to receive a master's degree at Boston's Hebrew College in 2020. She now serves as a cantorial soloist and educator at two Bay Area synagogues. And she has a new album. Her third solo effort, You Are Magic is a joyful blast of effusive and thoughtful pop for adults and kids alike. The album’s mission statement is to open up dialogue in families about all sorts of stuff that families should be talking about in the first place: morals, ethics, expression, mindfulness, creativity and connectivity. It’s a brilliant and refreshing collection that’s inspiring, heartwarming and rousing. And so is this chat! In this conversation, Alison talks to Alex about….well, about everything: Game Theory, XTC, Judaism, teaching and raising a son who loved John Fahey at age eight. www.alisonfaithlevy.com www.alisonfaithlevy.bandcamp.com Stereo Embers: Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast

“Kiss Off, Kiss Off” Erin McKeown is best categorized as un-categorizable. Whether the Virginia-born musician is playing guitar with the Mountain Goats, tearing through big band music in a tailored suit or writing an off-Broadway musical, McKeown pretty much does it all. A graduate of Brown, McKeown, over the course of her over 20 year career, has put out almost 15 solo albums, toured with Andrew Bird, Thea Gilmore, Josh Ritter and the Indigo Girls, played Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, had her music appear in commercials and TV shows, was a resident artist at Providence, RI’s revolutionary community arts organization AS220 and she was the 2011-2012 fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society. Yes, she’s busy. The recipient of a 2016 writing fellowship from The Studios of Key West and a 2018 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. McKeown is currently a 2020-21 Professor of the Practice at Brown University. Her new album KISS OFF KISS OFF is a raw blast of nervy rock and roll that’s got street smart grooves and real poetic grit. It’s fast and catchy and it swerves with all the lippy snarl of early Joan Jett. In this chat, McKewon talks to Alex about sports, creativity, self-preservation and why she won’t answer emails after 6pm. www.erinmckeown.com www.bombshellradion.com www.alexgreenonline.com Stereo Embers Twitter: @emberseditor IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

“The Police: Deranged For Orchestra” Born in Virginia and raised in Cairo and Beirut by a Scottish archoeolist mother and an American father who founded the CIA, Stewart Copeland has had quite a life. So much so, that his biography deserves its own podcast but for the sake of time, let’s go with the expurgated version. Copeland started playing drums at 12 and after finishing boarding school in England and college at UC Berkeley, he returned to the UK to play drums for Curved Air. In 1977 he founded The Police with Sting and after recruiting guitarist Andy Summers to replace Henry Padovani, the new wave power trio locked in and the rest, as they say, is history. But in the case of the Police, let’s go with history to the 10th power. The Police are one of the best selling bands of all time, with record sales heading close to 100 million worldwide. They put out five albums from 1978 to 1983 and by the time their last one hit shelves, they were arguably the biggest band in the world. Their legacy is safely enshrined in the rock and roll hall of fame and Copeland is considered one of the greatest drummers to ever sit behind the kit, but his legacy doesn’t stop there. He’s scored movies like Rumble Fish, Wall Street, and Talk Radio; TV shows like The Equalizer, Dead Like Me and Star Wars: Droids. He’s also scored ballets that were commissioned by everyone from the San Francisco Ballet Company to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He’s collaborated with Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, Les Claypool and Adam Ant; he played in other bands like Animal Logic and Oysterhead with Trey Anastasio of Phish. He’s scored video games, done voices for movies like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, he put out his memoir Strange Things Happen: A Life with the Police, Polo and Pygmies and he collaborated with the Long Beach Opera on a production of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Telltale Heart. Well, the always busy Copeland’s new project is called The Police: Deranged for Orchestra. It’s basically a fresh take on The Police songbook, by way of the 28 member ReCollecitve Orchestra. They reimagine songs like Roxanne and Don’t Stand So Close To Me and the results are captivating and spellbinding. In this conversation, Copeland talks to Alex about rock and roll bands as democracies, the elasticity of the Police’s compositions and why he speeds things up when Sting is in the audience. www.stewartcopeland.net www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com Stereo Embers: Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

“Psyche" Reb Fountain is one of the most beguiling, affecting and captivating musicians out there. And people are catching on. The California-born, but New Zealand raised Fountain has won the esteemed Taite Music Prize, she was shortlisted for the Silver Scroll award for her track "Don’t You Know Who I Am" and she was nominated for five New Zealand Music Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Solo Artist. She’s played sold-out shows across New Zealand, she opened for Crowded House on their To The Island Tour and she played a spellbinding set at the Splore music festival. Spellbinding is a great way to describe Reb Fountain’s music. Or at least it’s a good place to start because one word does not do the trick. Her songs are dark blasts of gothy noir infused with punk, folk and indie rock. And her new album Iris is as captivating as it gets—lush, jagged, and cinematic, Iris is stirring, hypnotic and unreasonably beautiful. In this conversation, Reb talks to Alex about how she ended up in New Zealand, what it was like working with the Finn family and why she’s happy to be an honorary Californian. www.rebfountain.com.nz www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com STEREO EMBERS THE PODCAST Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

“The Ghosts” Kira Roessler, who was just known back in the '80s as KIRA, was the bassist for the legendary Black Flag from '84 to '86. A ferocious outfit that played a physical and fiery brand of blistering and punishing punk rock, Kira was no stranger to getting in the van and tearing from town to town with her bandmates. After leaving Black Flag, the UCLA educated Roessler who had also played with DC3, the Monsters, the Visitors and Twisted Roots, formed the bass-led duo Dos with her husband Mike Watt. Dos put out a couple of great albums and then Roessler retreated a bit from music and focused on her day job as dialog editor in the film industry. With a few Emmys under her belt and contributing to two Academy Award- winning films, Kira has done dialog editing on Game of Thrones, Joker, Mad Max Fury Road and A Star is Born. Her debut self-titled solo album is an intricate and instrumentally complex album. With vocals that bring to mind a blend of Kim Deal and Hope Sandoval and bass-fueled arrangements that provide a perfect foundation for the compositions, KIRA is a moving and stirring debut. In this chat, Kira talks to Alex about carving out time for the creative process, the power of musical minimalism and memories of d. Boon. https://kittenrobot.com/records www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com www.stereoembersmagazine.com Stereo Embers Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

“Her Favourite Hitchcock Films” A native of Northern California, Jerry Vessel was the bassist for the beloved San Francisco outfit Red House Painters. The band, who formed in 1989, put out four albums on 4AD and toured all over North America and Europe before calling it a day in 2001. Post-Painters, Vessel played drums for the Muons and bass for Six Eye Columbia and he also put out two solo albums under the moniker Heirlooms of August. Heirlooms' sophomore album Down at the 5-Star found one of the songs featured in the TV series Parenthood. Vessel’s third effort is under his own name this time around and it really makes sense. A stripped down affair that’s stark, spare, personal and unflinchingly honest, Her Favorite Hitchcock Films was written about his relationship with fashion designer Alexis O’Connell and it not only details their time together, it also confronts dealing with her sudden loss. Punctuated by piano violins, cellos, and atmospheric production courtesy of American Music Club’s Bruce Kaphan, the compositions on Her Favorite Hitchcock Films are as poetic as they are conversational. Beautifully constructed, they’re parenthetical, interstitial, referential and emotional. Name-checking Darby Crash, David Lynch, aluminum boats, Thelonious Monk, druid forts and Townes Van Zandt, the songs that make up this album are filled with lyrical intensity in that they conjure the world Vessel and O’Connell built and occupied together. When you’re close with someone you construct universes that are made up of the things you mutually love and this is a stirring homage to those universes. Yes, there’s darkness and of course, there’s pain here, but every song is charged with love. It’s vulnerable but in that vulnerability there’s tremendous life-affirming strength. It’s quite an album. And this is quite a conversation—Vessel talks to Alex about grief, his friendships with his former Red House Painters bandmates, Townes Van Zandt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jack London and why the piano was his go-to instrument this time around. www.jerryvesselmusic.bandcamp.com www.jerryvesselmusic.com www.bombshell radio.com www.alexgreenonline.com

“Starting Now” The Santa Barbara bred Toad The Wet Sprocket got their start in the late ‘80s when high school pals Glenn Phillips, Dean Dinning Randy Guss and Todd Nichols decided it was time to form a band. Cut to 1989 and the band’s demo Bread and Circus which came out on their own Abe’s Records label, was re-released by Columbia Records. From there, Toad pretty much owned the '90s, putting out albums like Pale, Fear, Dulcinea and Coil. They had massive hits with All I Want, Walk On The Ocean, Something’s Always Wrong and the Number One Modern Rock chart topper Fall Down. But as the story goes, owning the '90s was exhausting and citing creative differences, the band took a break from being a band for a long time. They played sporadic shows here and there, but for the most part, Toad The Wet Sprocket were kind of on ice. The band members went on to do different projects, Phillips had a busy solo carer and that was that. That ice melted in 2009 and the band reactivated themselves from hiatus, putting out their first new album since 1997. New Constellation was a blast of West Coast pop that reestablished Toad as a force to be reckoned with. Eight years later, we have Starting Now, the band’s 7th full length effort. A stirring platter that’s melodic, joyful and undeniably catchy, Starting Now is as rousing as it is hopeful. The band is down an original member—drummer Randy Guss left in 2020, but Josh Daubin is behind the kit now and he’s crushing it. In this conversation Phillips talks to Alex about his relationship to alcohol, vaccines and learning to not be so hard on himself….. www.toadthewetsprocket.com www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com STEREO EMBERS THE PODCAST Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast EMAIL: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

“The Last Of The Gentleman Adventurers” Over the course of a 40-year career that started in 1982, the London born and Northampton raised and Oxford educated Pat Fish fronted the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. The JBC was shortened to the Jazz Butcher and Fish, along with co-conspirator and guitarist Max Eider, had a rotating cast of characters in his band, varying from guys like David J of Bauhaus or Rolo from the Woodentops, The Jazz Butcher put out close to 15 studio albums, several live albums, a handful of compilations, box sets, singles—you get the idea. If you’re a collector—the Jazz Butcher is the band for you. They put our records on Big Time, Creation, Fire and Glass, and they played with R.E.M., Jonathan Richman and the list goes on and on. "She’s on Drugs" was the closest they came to a mainstream hit and by the late 90s, things had slowed down a bit for the band. Pat owned a bookshop, played locally a great deal, hosted the Masters of Budvar live series, and kind of just chilled out after nearly two decades of frantic touring, late night drinking, hotel staying and rock and roll mayhem. He was adored and never far from those who did all that adoring. He loved his cat, he loved to read, he loved to drink, he loved to smoke and he loved to play music. Recorded in 2009 as the Jazz Butcher’s The Last Of The Gentleman Adventurers album hit shelvers, this interview finds Fish in fine form, talking about the new record, Roddy Frame, The Blue Nile, his long-standing relationship with Eider and why it’s so hard to age in rock and roll…. www.thejazzbutcher.com www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com Stereo Embers The Podcast: Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast

“I’ll Meet You Here” The New York-born Dar Williams has been crafting some of the most engaging music of the last 30 years. A graduate of Wesleyan, Williams got her start in the early '90s in Boston. She had moved there to pursue a career in theater, but inspired by contemporaries like Throwing Muses and Melissa Ferrick, Williams starting writing songs of her own and she hit the ground running, knocking out cassette-only efforts like I Have No History and All My Heroes Are Dead. Her proper full length debut The Honesty Room came out on her own label Burning Field Music and found her a fan in Joan Baez who not only later recorded some of Dar’s songs, she invited Williams to tour with her. With almost 20 albums under her belt, including The Green World, Mortal City, My Better Self and her new one I’ll Meet You Here, Williams has established herself as one of the most enduring and endearing songwriters out there. She’s toured with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Ani Di Franco, recorded with everyone from John Prine to Clifff Eberhart and she formed the group Cry Cry Cry along with Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky as vehicle to honor their favorite folk numbers. An environmental activist, an educator and an author of several books ranging from YA to urban planning—her book The Tofu Tollbooth is an essential directory of natural food store-- Dar Williams kind of does it all. I’ll Meet You Here is her first new album in 6 years and it’s a refreshing blast of rootsy rock, introspective folk and horn-tinged Americana. This record is a melodic blast of utter musical joy. A playful lyricist who can also be so emotionally exact it’s like a direct sucker punch, Dar Williams is one of our very best.

“Really Great” Since 1984 The Connells have been crafting some of the most compelling, infectious and riveting pop music around. The North Carolina outfit have just put out their first new album in 20 years. Called Steadman’s Wake, the album is another winning entry into an already winning discography. The band sounds reinvigorated and the songs are brimming with intelligence, grace and some of the catchiest hooks of the year. Singer Doug MacMillan sounds as youthful as ever and he sings with some of the most inventive phrasing you’ll ever hear. The tracks jangle away mightily and the Connells are at the top of their game. In this chat, Doug talks to Alex about TVT Records, The Replacements, and how being a collegiate athlete informed his life in a rock and roll band. www.theconnells.com www.bombshellradio.com Stereo Embers: The Podcast Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com