Transmissions

This week’s conversation with Cochemea Gastelum brings our season to a close. The saxophonist and bandleader joins us to discuss his beautiful LP Ancestros Futuros, out now on Daptone Records. Mining his Indigenous roots, soul jazz, and funk, it's a fantastic album, and it completes a trilogy that began with 2019’s All My Relations, continued with 2021’s Baca Sewa, and now concludes.  Cochemea’s resume is lengthy. He worked extensively with the late soul singer Sharon Jones as part of her Dap Kings ensemble and has played with the Budos Band, Antibalas, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, Archie Shepp, Public Enemy, the Roots, David Byrne, and more. Genre-hopping comes naturally to the San Diego-raised saxophonist, but the cultural conversation that occurs on these records is especially unique, and it was a pleasure to have him join us to discuss it.  Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

The '90s were a strange time. From Gregorian chants to swing bands, you never knew what would make it onto the radio. But some of the strangest groups to improbably infiltrate the mainstream came from the post-Grateful Dead jam band scene. Our guest today is Mike Ayers, author of ⁠Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene that Followed. ⁠ The book, an oral history, is really a blast. It covers all the big players of the era: Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, but Ayers takes it to the next level by expanding the definition of "jam band" to include Medeski, Martin and Wood, Greyboy and the acid jazz scene, New Orleans funk band Galactic, and John Zorn and the Knitting Factory downtown NYC scene, and much more. This episode, guest host (and Transmissions audio editor) Andrew Horton, Jason P. Woodbury, and Ayers sit down to hash out the era in which even Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo embraced their jammiest free improv tendencies. What are the limits of the whole "jam band" thing really? Come along with us as we dig into Sharing in the Groove. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, a return guest: Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and solo fame. He last joined the show part of a trio: in 2018, we taped with him, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, and Robyn Hitchcock live at the KXCI studio at Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. That talk also made it into the Transmissions feed again in 2020.  This time, Steve is with us to discuss the 40th anniversary reissue of The Dream Syndicate’s second album, 1984’s Medicine Show, which has been reissued in expanded form by Fire Records. Produced by Blue Öyster Cult and Clash associate Sandy Pearlman, the album found the Syndicate jumping from the smaller Slash indie label to A&M. But it also found Wynn shifting his songwriting approach into darker territory, embracing a kind of pulp fiction, hardboiled crime aesthetic that paired well with the group’s rangy, intense sound, which had been amplified and solidified during the tours that followed the band’s debut,  1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses.  Wynn is a tremendous conversationalist, and this convo opened us up to plenty of fascinating terrain, from record store lore to interactions with bands like R.E.M. and U2, as well as lots of behind the scenes info on Medicine Show. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week: Steve Von Till, of sludge legends Neurosis, the tribal ambient spin-off Tribes of Neurot, solo albums under this own name, and the psych folk project Harvestman. He runs the independent label, Neurot Recordings. And as if all that isn’t enough, he’s also a poet, and an educator—when he’s not playing music, he’s bringing knowledge to the next generation, working as a fourth grade teacher in North Idaho. If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for awhile, you know that we’re hardly dogmatic when it comes to genres, but we don’t often feature artists who could be classified as metal. But that’s part of what makes Von Till such an interesting guest—his own music certainly qualifies as “heavy,” but it’s shot through with influences from very much within the AD canon: krautrock, ambient, folk, haunted country rock. His latest is a solo LP, the piano and synth drenched Alone in a World of Wounds. It is full of songs that, to hear Von Till put it, work as expressions of his soul, his heart, mind, his “earthly being and the whatever unearthly bits…connect with it all.” In addition to his work with Neurosis and Harvestman, this talk focuses in on the connection between humans and their natural surroundings, his work with the indigenous suicide prevention campaign Firekeeper Alliance, and some reflections on how his early punk days made him peers with Green Day and Operation Ivy—not often bands you hear mentioned in relation to Von Till. We are pleased to share this conversation as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, a time to reflect on our place in relation to each other and to the land itself. We hope you enjoy it. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

This week on Transmissions, Kate Pierson, vocalist and keyboardist of The B-52s. Writing about the legendary Atlanta band, AD founder Justin Gage says, “The B-52’s 1979 debut album ushered in a practically fully formed sound/band. No one else was doing this…whatever ‘this’ was.” Indeed, The B-52s created a one-of-a-kind sound, blending punk, funk, and art-pop, and while they broke into the mainstream with ubiquitous radio hits, they never sacrificed their avant-garde edge. This fall, the band embarked on a co-headlining tour with Devo—we recorded this talk just before they departed on the jaunt—and last week, Kate Pierson released a cover of Patti Smith’s “People Have The Power!” featuring the Uniting Voices Chicago teen choir. Benefiting the choir and the anti-gun violence organization Sandy Hook Promise, the recording reifies Pierson’s radical bonafides.  Pierson joins us for a loose chat about her life in art, solo projects, and the band’s longtime association with Devo. Along the way, we get into their status as queer icons and reflected on the passing of Julee Cruise, the Twin Peaks vocalist who also served as a member of The B-52s. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.