Stereo Embers: The Podcast

"Garage Glamour"

It's hard to think of a more dynamic and exciting band as the Claudettes. The Chicago-based rock/blues/pop outfit have been at it since 2010 and with six albums under their belts, including their riveting new one Garage Glamour, The Claudettes have established themselves as one of the most singular outfits on the planet. From Dance Scandal In The Gymnasium to High Times In The Dark, The Claudettes' music is informed as much by Junior Wells as it is The Minutemen. Are they a piano punk band? Sure. Are they a punk piano blues band? Yes. They're all of that. The band's new album Garage Glamour, which features the soulful Rachel Williams, is exhilarating, and life-affirming. It's a sweaty sonic reminder that when the world is falling apart, like it is now, it's music that keeps alive. As for Mr. Iguana, that's the nom de plume of one Brian Berkowitz, the New Jersey-born, Chicago-based braintrust of The Claudettes. Iguana has played with Junior Wells, Koko Taylor, Eddie Shaw, Carey Bell and Oh My God, which is the band where our paths first crossed. You'll hear about that in the chat, but a few more things to know about Johnny Iguana: he's a brilliant piano player who plays with the perfect blend of muscle and finesse. He played on the Grammy-nominated album Junior Wells: Live at Buddy Guy's Legends, played the Montreaux Jazz Festival, toured for three years as part of Junior Wells' band and co-composed the score for season one of The Bear. He's a great guy to chat with and this conversation was really fun.

www.theclaudettes.com (http://www.theclaudettes.com)
www.theclaudettes.bandcamp.com

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Stereo Embers:

THREADS + IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast
Email: [email protected]

"Of Ghosts And Gods"

The New Jersey-born, Harvard educated David Berkeley is one of modern music's true renaissance men. Now, people throw that term out a tad lazily but in the case of Berkeley, it truly fits. Aside from releasing close to ten perfect albums, including
The Confluence, Some Kind Of Cure and Oh Quiet World, Berkeley is an author, a label owner, and he's been a river rafting guide, a band manager, a travel writer and a creative writing teacher. A writer of tremendous depth, focus and sensitivity, much like Paul Simon or Nick Drake, Berkeley has the uncanny ability to slow the world down and hold it still. Informed by actual geography as well as the geography of loss and emotional reconstruction, Berkeley's songbook is a wondrous collection of compositions that gaze out at the map of the human heart with effortless poeticism and grace. He's toured with Billy Bragg, Ben Lee and Gary Jules, appeared on This American Life and played South By Southwest and he's one of the most consistently critically-acclaimed musicians around. He's also one half of the aforementioned transatlantic folk duo Sons Of Town Hall. Along with singer/songwriter Ben Parker, Sons Of Town Hall are hard to describe, but I'm going to try. Under the guises of Parker's George Ulysses Brown and Berkeley's Josiah Chester Jones, Sons Of Town Hall are fictitious 19th Century Victorian-era vagabonds who sing about their travels by way of a kind of magical hand-built raft. Falling somewhere between Coleridge, Lord Byron by way of Simon and Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3AM, Sons Of Town Hall's new album Of Ghosts and Gods is a stirring collection of songs about travel, friendship, following your heart and staying afloat while doing it.

www.davidberkeley.com (http://www.davidberkeley.com)
www.sonsoftownhall.com (http://www.sonsoftownhall.com)
www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com)
www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com)
www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com)

Stereo Embers The Podcast:

IG + BLUESKY + THREADS: @emberspodcast

"Crying The Neck"

With seven marvelous albums under his musical belt, including 2003's Lycanthropy, 2005's Wind In The Wires and his latest album Crying The Neck, which broke a nearly fifteen-year hiatus from recorded music, Patrick Wolf is a wondrous talent. The London-born musician is one of the most arresting artists on the planet--his songs effortlessly meld trip-hop, electronica and indie rock into some of the most compelling, dramatic and altogether moving compositions you're likely to hear. Wolf's music is literary, emotionally precise and sonically arresting. I know a lot of people say his music is baroque and that's not too far off the mark, but an easier way to think of it is Tricky by way of Scott Walker. A multi-instrumentalist, a model, a producer, a playwright a label owner, a poet, and a student at Trinity College, Wolf has played with Arcade Fire, Patti Smith and The Hidden Cameras. He's the recipient of The Edmund Burke Medal from Trinity College Historical Society, Dublin for his Outstanding Contribution to Discourse through the Arts and he's on tour this summer.

www.patrickwolf.com

www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com)
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www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com)

Stereo Embers:

IG + THREADS + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast
Email: [email protected]

Patrick Wolf Tour Dates:

June 5 in Washington, DC at DC9
June 7 in Raleigh, NC at The Pour House Music Hall & Record Shop
June 10 in Nashville, TN at 3rd & Lindsley
June 11 in Atlanta, GA at Smith’s Olde Bar
June 13 in Miami, FL at Churchills Pub
June 18 in New Orleans, LA at Gasa Gasa
June 20 in Houston, TX at The Secret Group
June 21 in Denton, TX at Rubber Gloves
June 23 in Austin, TX at Long Center For The Performing Arts
June 26 in Tucson, AZ at Hotel Congress
June 28 in Phoenix, AZ at Valley Bar
June 30 in Los Angeles, CA at Lodge Room

Porto"

Over their nearly twenty-album history, the Canadian outfit 5440 have proven themselves to be one of the most enduring rock and roll bands of all time. Their career highlights are numerous, so bear with this partial list of their achievements. They've been nominated for 8 Juno Awards, have had #1 singles and Gold albums in Canada, had their song "I Go Blind" covered by Hootie and the Blowfish and have toured all over the world. The band's new album Porto is the perfect addition to their fabulous discography. Filled with melodic crunch, introspective lyrics and some of the catchiest songs of the year, Porto reinforces the power and enduring quality of this legendary band. The partnership and friendship of singer Neil Osborne and bassist Brad Merrit is the secret to what makes 5440 tick and this chat addresses that and a lot more. This is a great chat and Brad couldn't be a nicer guy, so enjoy this conversation.

www.bombshellradio.com
www.stereoembersmagazine.com
www.alexgreenbooks.com

Stereo Embers:
IG + THREADS + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast
Email: [email protected]

"But What Time Is It Really?"

Because their legacy is so vast, their musical output so singular and their influence so far-reaching, telling you a little bit about Cabaret Voltaire is like telling you a little bit about outer space. A long tine ago, say 1973, in a galaxy far, far away, say Sheffield, England, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson got together to, in their words, make music without musical instruments. What did that mean? Well, it meant innovation because this was not a three-piece banging away in a garage, it was three guys experimenting with tape loops, custom-built kit oscillators, keyboards and wind instruments. Although traditional instruments were included, Cabaret Voltaire were anything but a traditional band. Falling somewhere between performance art and industrial music, Cabaret Voltaire remain one of the most innovative, idiosyncratic and unique bands of all time. Incorporating elements of techno, house, funk, synthpop, electronica and dub, the band's striking soundscapes were massively influential to bands like Depeche Mode, New Order, Skinny Puppy, David J. and Nine Inch Nails. Watson left the band in 1981 but Mallinder and Kirk soldiered on, keeping up Cabaret Voltaire's unbelievable working pace. The band put out fifteen albums in as many years, including classics like Mix-Up, Red Mecca, The Crackdown and Micro-Phonies. Kirk died in 2021 at 65 and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band, Mallinder and Watson started touring, put out a live album and will be on the road until year's end, taking their valedictory bow. A journalist, an academic, a studio owner, a producer and a filmmaker whose videos have been exhibited at MOMA in New York, Mallinder remains a busy man and I'll let him tell you all about that. But let me say this: if you listen to Cabaret Voltaire, it's like listening to the future before it happened. Their work is an astounding blend of multi-media and post-punk that eludes the timeline--their records aren't fixed to any point on the map and instead sound like they come from a universe that is at once both distant and familiar.

www.cabaretvoltaire.bandcamp.com
www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com)
www.stereoembersmagazine.com
www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com)

Stereo Embers:
IG + THREADS + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast
Email: [email protected]