The Show On The Road with Z. Lupetin

Remember when Easy Listening became the Smooth Jazz section of pop and rock n’ roll? But maybe we could use things a little easier these days. In the second part of my epic talk with Bahamas from his cozy cottage in Nova Scotia - we lean into embracing that softer side of ourselves as songwriters, fathers and edgy citizens just trying to make sense of a changing world. Afie Jervanen isn't shy about it: he would LOVE his records to be in the Easy Listening section of your local record store. While Afie’s newest record Bootcut may seem like a warm country-tinted collection that you can safely put on in the background at a dinner party with everyone wearing turtlenecks and sweatpants - underneath, there are needles and shards of memory glass sticking up through the softness. Look no further than “Sports Car” maybe about his absent father who would have preferred a fast muscle car to a new kid in the house - or “Gone Girl Gone” the banger of the LP which takes a squinting look at what that crazy (but exciting) ex is up to now (yes he references Only Fans). Wonder how that one went over at his Opry debut a few months back? Feel free to dive into the first part of our conversation to jump into more songs from Bootcut or stay right here as Afie and I discuss how travel, social media and the tricky financial realities of being a touring musician and dad mess with our sense of self as partners, fathers and creators - and how the music can always be there like a magic potion - no matter who you choose to be in the future.

We’re back with David Shaw of the New Orleans soul-rockers The Revivalists to dive into what happens after the band really takes off - how being the conductor of a massive machine that plays before thousands every night and is faced with trying to top their radio hit, can mess with your head - if you let it. We dive more into the making of their powerful new LP Pour It Into The Night, how new babies in the band raised the stakes, how they love covering Dr. Dre, and David finally introduces us to each member of the band - and their oddball superpowers.

We dialed into New Orleans to chat with the tireless and talented lead singer- songwriter of beloved soulful rock n’ rollers The Revivalists. We dive into their bold fifth studio LP Pour It Out Into The Night, how their big-hearted hit "Wish I Knew You” changed everything and sent them around the world - and how David went from being a lonesome Ohio transplant laying pipe on a construction crew in a Katrina-ravaged crescent city to sleeping on floors and playing tiny bars across the gulf coast to selling out Red Rocks and creating a loving community that keeps him inspired to keep hitting the road. Make sure to listen to their new AAA radio staple “Kid” which could be David talking to himself in the past - or sending good vibes to his not-yet-here child in the future.

This week, we bring back an old friend of the show, Fort Worth-based trickster singer/multi-instrumentalist Robert Ellis.  We last spoke in 2018 while we were were both criss-crossing the Netherlands. Then he was in full character as the Texas Piano Man, jumping across the stage between keyboards and guitars with cheeky ear worms like “Topo Chico” and searing Harry Neilsen-esque ballads like “Fucking Crazy,” whipping appreciative crowds into a frenzy. After a long pandemic hiatus, he’s back without his lion tamer white tux, stripping things way back to bring us an achingly intimate trance-lullaby of a new record called Yesterday’s News. With no jaunty piano to speak of, the new LP uses his tender nylon string guitar and voice as the main storytellers (with upright bass and assorted hand percussion lifting up the songs saturated in delicious tape hiss), diving into the delirium and beauty of being a dad, a husband and an artist who maybe has finally let go of his ravenous ambitions to find a sort of uneasy peace.  As a fellow sleep-deprived songwriter dad myself, the quiet rage and bleary-eyed hope in “Close Your Eyes,” about the long nights spent with a newborn, hit very close to home. Ditto the opener “Gene,” which could be seen as both a moonlit conversation with his young son, but also a fantasy talk with his younger self who maybe didn’t have enough encouragement to just be his oddball self and live his truth. How does he put himself to sleep these days, you ask? He listens to old X-Files episodes… in audio form.  While many things have changed since our first episode with Robert (he now owns and runs a bar-music-venue-studio and is touring much less) his mischievous streak remains (you’ll hear his cackle of laugh pop the mic many times) making us wonder if the lovely title track to Yesterday’s News is both a clear signal of defeat (the relentless capitalist album cycle push is so last century!) and a quiet reminder that Ellis still has so many sharp stories to tell. And this time, you’ll have to lean in close to hear them. He will be making some appearances at listening rooms and jazz clubs this summer, and I for one am really looking forward to seeing and hearing this new side of Robert’s shapeshifting songwriting in person.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we dive into the revelatory first solo record from rising Louisiana-born roots-soul singer-songwriter Durand Jones.  Wait Til I Get Over is years in the making. While nearly giving up on his dream to be a singer several times, Jones was diligently collecting songs about his upbringing living in his father’s trailer in the tiny Mississippi River town of Hillaryville, his grandmother giving him the confidence to sing (and also dragging him to church), escaping broken relationships and infidelity, his yearning for a connection to a higher power, and how betting on the music and himself was a jubilant radical act that just may be finally paying off.  The lush strings and almost Broadway-ready power of his voice on the opener “Gerri Marie” harken back to a time when artists like Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin were creating cutting edge pop and soul music that could at once get you to hit the streets to protest injustice and woo your new love with total abandon.  Most folks may know Jones as one of the co-lead singers with falsetto-master (and drummer) Adam Frazer of the Bloomington, IN-based throwback "sweet soul” group Durand Jones & The Indications, a project he began out of graduate school (he also plays the saxophone) at The University of Indiana. Starting with their hard-hitting 2018 self-titled record and the follow ups American Love Call (2019) and Private Space (2021), they became a coveted national act and AAA radio favorite, with this writer seeing their biggest show yet, last summer at the Hollywood Bowl in LA. You would be forgiven if you thought the club-ready romantic earworm “Witchoo” dropped in 1971 not in the height of the pandemic - but the unrestrained Chaka Khan-esque vibes are hard to deny. As I told Jones, that tune got me through a very hard time. While Jones admits he likes to play a certain version of himself on stage - flamboyant outfits and soaring vocal runs are what keep audiences coming back - at home, he’s a much more introspective character who is a big fan of journaling. It’s the quieter, more vulnerable sides of his story (being queer in the Deep South for one,) and the complicated figures like “Sadie" (not her real name) that he renders in full cinematic detail that point to a powerful solo career ahead if he wants it.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we call into Nashville to speak to one of the preeminent and most prolific singer-songwriters of our time, Courtney Marie Andrews. Born in Arizona, Andrews first started singing at Phoenix-area karaoke bars with her mom before setting out to see the country in Greyhound busses as a teenager, finding a place in bands like Jimmy Eat World with her signature high-aching voice and talent on guitar and piano. Writing in fiery spurts (she mentions on the taping that thirty new songs emerged just last month), Andrews has put out eight records and counting, beginning with 2008’s Urban Myths and culminating in 2022’s lush and cautiously hopeful Loose Future. “These Are The Good Old Days” finds her trying to be present in a world of relentless distraction and hidden pain – and while the chord changes and harmonies harken back to 1950s girl group vibes, there is always a searching, aching energy roiling underneath. If you feel like you missed out seeing touchstone genre-defying singers like Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in their 1970s roots-pop primes, fear not: it can be argued that Andrews is leading the newest wave of honey-voiced performers who just happen to be writing the most honest, heart-stopping work in the expanding Americana universe. Many first heard her with the acclaimed, gorgeously direct Honest Life in 2016 which helped develop her following, especially in Europe, and the mournful and cathartic Old Flowers which earned her a 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album. We all go through painful breakups and have to learn how to process the fallout. But what Andrews can do with the thorny moments most of us would want to forget, may be her superpower. “I’m not used to feeling good,” Courtney Marie Andrews sings with a weary smile on “Change My Mind” towards the finale of Loose Future. And yet, as she penned many of these timeless tunes in a small cabin on Cape Cod during the height of the lockdowns, sometimes realizing that you can be happy after all is that big first step that can get your future to start opening up. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we feature a talk with genre-leaping singer-songwriter Devon Gilfillian who is back with a remarkable new LP, Love You Anyway. Shapeshifting between danceable southern soul, hip-hop, silky R&B, and AM gold rock n roll, the record isn’t afraid to confront the thorny politics of voting rights and wrongful incarceration while still celebrating a newly revolutionary Black joy. Raised in Philadelphia and now based in Nashville, Gilfillian was so inspired by socially-conscious soul icons like Marvin Gaye that he used his time in the darkness of 2020 to release two albums: first the fiery Black Hole Rainbow which became a critical hit, and then a new take on What’s Going On, which raised funds for low-income communities of color, and provided resources and education around the democratic process. Taking a cue from the lush production of 1970’s Stax and Motown, the new LP leads with the joyous “All I Really Wanna Do,” inviting us onto a cosmic journey of discovery and continues with the playful, sultry "Brown Sugar Queen," a Prince x Anderson Paak super-sized jam that features rising Swedish pop star Janice. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, the show is back in New Orleans for a special talk with Sam Doores, one of the talented founders of well-traveled roots-rockers The Deslondes. We dive into their newest LP Ways & Means and how California-born Sam - who plays various instruments from electric guitar to keys, and sings in seven bands and counting throughout the Crescent City - collected many of its slow-burn soul-adjacent songs like "Five Year Plan" while holed up in a storage unit studio squat, questioning his place as an adult with real responsibilities who also happens to be a soul-searching artist criss-crossing our beautiful (or crumbling) almost-post-pandemic world. Imagine if you will, you walk into a saloon lost somewhere between 1930 and 1975. The band onstage has three distinct lead singers, and the songs feel like hard lived-in tales that could live in a TV western or the soundtrack to Boogie Nights, with vibes that would inspire both Ray Charles and Woody Guthrie, Tom Waits and The Beatles. If you’re confused, good. Algorithms can force music upon you at any time these days and I’ll admit, Spotify wants me to listen to The Deslondes, at all hours. They’re not wrong. If I have one job in this podcast it’s to share the music that lights a fire in me as a fellow songwriter and has me grasping for genre-descriptor straws. I have no idea, clearly, how to describe this band. I will say, songs like “Howl at the Moon” make me feel like I’m somehow still proud to be an American, plying my trade somewhere in the still kind of Wild West. Starting with their charmingly ramshackle and bluesy self-titled debut in 2015, the band, which formed in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, has always made a point to write democratically and spread songs around to their singers. Sam for one, Dan Cutler (bass) for another and notably the always compelling Riley Downing, whose ancient deep drawl sounds like it should be its own character in Yellowstone - and all harmonize gorgeously together. Downing and Doores also both have duo and solo albums which are lovely, but what they create here in The Deslondes - especially in timeless story songs like “South Dakota Wild One” about Riley’s wandering youth - are special in the way accidental supergroups make music that somehow shouldn’t exist.  It was a pleasure getting together with Sam for a rare in-person chat just off Frenchmen Street. If there’s one thing I love most about New Orleans, it's that it creates new artists that seem to follow the beat of their own drummer, genres be-damned. Give Ways & Means a spin - it might transport you somewhere you need to go. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we feature a conversation taped live in New Orleans with Arkansas-born multi-instrumentalist and roots-soul singer Anna Moss, who has criss-crossed the country in recent years with her sonic partner Joel Ludford in their band Handmade Moments. Growing up as a bathroom-singing nerd playing saxophone in the school band, Anna admits that if she could wield any superpower it might be invisibility. Not necessarily the first thing you think of for an openly political, big-voiced folk festival favorite who has made a name for herself sitting in with some of the biggest names in the Americana scene. A recent collaboration with Rainbow Girls bore especially potent fruit - and if you read my Music That Moved Me in 2022 list you’ll see at the very top was Anna’s thorny "Big Dick Energy.”  Rarely does a song make you laugh and then dance and then follow with a sucker punch about how unsafe many women feel just taking up space in the world. The video also illustrates the song’s deft twist: how women can gang together to mock and minimize the men who for so long have taken away their agency and power. And yet, the song also makes you want to forget it all and just groove to the sexiest flute solo in recent memory. If this is a foreshadowing of what’s to come with Anna’s solo work, call me quite intrigued.  Whether she’s playing crunchy bass clarinet or upright bass, electric or acoustic guitar, or singing with Joel in Handmade Moments or her other jazzy group the Nightshades, Anna is never shy about speaking her mind in her music. Take a listen to Handmade Moments' rapidly rhyming, gorgeously harmonized climate change banger “Hole In The Ocean” which wouldn’t feel out of place in a slam-poetry jam. A song on their forthcoming record End Of The Wars (coming in May) directly confronts Trump’s cult-like status, again not pulling any punches. Want to see an early version of the song played with sax in a cave? Sure you do.  The dangers of the road are not lost on Anna and Joel of course. They were hit head-on during a freak accident on a run in Northern California years back and were lucky to make it out relatively unscathed. She’s trying to keep things a bit mellower these days. It was special talking to Anna in her adopted new home of New Orleans, and the soulful sounds that trickle into her living room on Frenchman Street can be heard throughout the songs she’s working on. Fittingly, a slow burn live track she released, “Slow Down, Kamikaze,” is a great reminder to stop trying to do too much and focus on what actually matters.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we feature my conversation with beloved folk firebrand Iris Dement. Born the youngest of fourteen to a singing Pentecostal family in Arkansas and raised in California, Dement released her iconic 1992 John Prine-endorsed debut Infamous Angel and has been creating poetic protest records and warm collaborations ever since (garnering two folk Grammy nominations along the way), culminating in her much anticipated and fiery new LP Working On A World. Certain songwriters in the folk field will occasionally speak up about injustice or corruption - but with Working On A World, Dement puts the protest front and center: honoring luminaries like Mahalia Jackson, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and even The Chicks for giving her hope that putting your principles and life on the line will help bend history towards progress and righteousness. Dement, who is now based in Iowa with her musician and collaborator husband Greg Brown (check out their biting co-write “I’ll Be Your Jesus”), will be the first to say that at times in her wide-ranging career, playing clubs to enraptured but small audiences, she has questioned whether she was doing enough to make a difference. But songs like the epic Dylan-esque take-down “Going Down To Sing in Texas” show that Dement is still at her fired-up best, confronting the Lone Star State's open carry gun laws that put so many at risk, while also spitting in the face of all the wannabe tyrants who shun the very progress she is still hoping to see. In many ways, Working On A World is a hard-won release of pent up energy, created over the course of six years with co-producers Richard Bennett, Jim Rooney and Pieta Brown. While many of her longtime fans are used to her fearless political confrontations - 1996’s seething The Way I Should and its dark anthem “Wasteland of the Free" demand answers from sexual abusers and government war mongers alike - casual listeners may only know Dement from her playful duets with sonic soulmate John Prine, most notably the foul-mouthed love song “In Spite Of Ourselves.” With a little laugh, she says she’s alright with that too. Life is long and the music, no matter the light or the dark, is equally as powerful. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, my talk with self-described folk-country scientist and songwriter Cleve Francis, whose winding fifty year story in music is nearly unparalleled. Few African-American artists had their work heard in the folk boom of the early 1960’s, and while Francis studied to become a heart specialist after leaving the small hamlet of Jennings, Louisiana, the honey-voiced gems he laid down with his guitar in the gorgeous compilation Beyond the Willow Tree are finding devoted new audiences – this podcaster included. After diving into that encyclopedic collection which showcases his songs from 1968-1970, you can see that Francis’s tastes were vast. Sparsely recorded with his beautifully airy yet powerful voice leading the way, he covers everything from Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement to his loving interpretations of Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, The Beatles and Bob Dylan (his fiery take on “With God On Our Side” is a must-listen). And yet, if you look deeper into his story, you’ll notice that Francis’s real love was for old school country music. In Nashville, the list of major-label Black stars not named Charley Pride was short thirty plus years ago – and still is. But in the 1990’s, while already a successful cardiologist, Francis took leave of his office in Virginia and jumped on a tour bus to promote his catchy CMT-approved records Tourist In Paradise and Walkin’. Always the trailblazer, he also founded the Black Country Music Association to help find opportunities for up and coming artists who were left out of the Music City limelight. While he did return to his patients and left Nashville to its devices in the late 1990’s, Francis and his work creating what he likes to call “soul-folk” are thankfully being discovered anew via the wizardry of the internet. I was so personally moved by the open-hearted power of his collection Beyond the Willow Tree that I had to find out more, and I’m so glad I did. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we place a call to a Tennessee front porch to talk to rock-n’-soul trickster and acclaimed singer-songwriter Rayland Baxter. He’s our first returning artist on the show for a good reason. Besides being a personal favorite of host Z. Lupetin since his gorgeous, folky debut Feathers and Fishhooks a decade ago, Z. was first able to catch up with Rayland in a Vegas hotel room (where he played through a cigarette pack mini amp) to discuss his deliciously catchy and soulful 2018 record Wide Awake and how growing up around his side-man legend dad Bucky Baxter (pedal steel and guitars for Bob Dylan’s touring band, and countless others) inspired him to make his own playful visions real and to always follow his ear. But while Wide Awake felt accessible as a funky aural high five, his 2022 offering If I Were A Butterfly is a more challenging, experimental work - think Jackson Pollock filmed through a Super 8 camera after a mushroom trip. He uses archival audio going back to his childhood, sings about goats, demons and his forever yearning to find a love that loves him back in a way that doesn’t seem transactional. The result is a fractured but intimately moving portrait. I’ll admit, it took a few listens to warm to Butterfly, but after our latest talk, we can see how the ever-upbeat Baxter was processing some pretty heavy adult stuff on this record - most notably losing his dad and two of his most trusted recording partners to sudden ends. He hence did much of the producing himself, laying down the record in an abandoned rubber band factory. “Graffiti Street” shows Baxter at the height of his unique game, writing signature effortless rootsy-rock hooks with a new sense of gravity that never holds the butterfly within him down. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, to kick-start our fifth season we call into an organic vegetable farm in Texas to chat with an upright bassist who also happens to be a former New Orleans ace street performer, and singer and songwriter, who sounds like she might have stepped out of a saloon in 1955 filled with the warm echoes of her heroes Hank Williams and Patsy Cline: Melissa Carper. Is there such thing as a “new nostalgia” movement happening under our noses in the Americana scene? I’m going to say there is, thanks to folks like Melissa. She’s lived several lives as a working music maker in groups like Sad Daddy (“Daddy” being her beloved nickname), Buffalo Gals, and the Carper Family (her folks in Nebraska growing up had a roving band), before collecting her favorite vintage-tinted songs and breaking out with her whip-smart solo debut Daddy’s Country Gold and then 2022’s Ramblin’ Soul, which she penned while working on that vegetable farm with her fiddle player/partner during the height of the pandemic. The latter record is a celebration of the small victories and tiny glories of taking your hard earned art onto the road, while also pausing to reflect on the important folks she lost recently, like her beloved pup. While Melissa gets a good chuckle about being called the “Hillbilly Holiday” with her high lilting voice and silky delivery, it’s the impossible pleasure of hearing the lost music of pre-modern country, jazz and blues fronted by a proudly queer bassist lead-singer that almost seems like science fiction when you look at it deeply. Make “new nostalgia” a new genre! Or throw genre right out the window and just turn modern classics like “Makin’ Memories” (one of my top songs of 2022) up nice and loud, however you listen these days. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome back, friends. Season 5 is here to help launch us into 2023, starting off with the new old-time sounds of the singing upright bassist who everyone calls “daddy,” Melissa Carper. Plus, the return of the rock-n-soul butterfly Rayland Baxter taped on his porch in Tennessee, and also a fascinating talk with Cleve Francis, a singing heart doctor who once rubbed elbows with Garth Brooks and the big boys in the country pantheon, but was recently rediscovered for putting out a transcendent complication of rare Black folk songs from the late 1960s. Recently Z. Lupetin went down to New Orleans and talked to artists in their studios and living rooms and, as the bandleader of Dustbowl Revival, will continue to bring you newly discovered music he found on the trail from coast to coast. New episodes every other Thursday!  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How can I try and summarize the soundtrack to my life this year? Indeed, we are in year three (!) of this endless pandemic and I find I am more and more drawn to pure escapism, fantasy and what I might call the “new nostalgia”? Personally, I don’t go more than a few hours in the day (or during sleep at night) without something on, whether it’s playing on my bluetooth speakers around the house, or in headphones as I walk the dog or the toddler around the neighborhood, or in the car rolling to the next spot. As I teeter towards 40, I admit I love old school radio - while driving especially - and while most of the year has felt like a bit of a creative slog, I was thrilled to finally launch my own radio show on actual airwaves which you can listen to on Saturday mornings. And as a new dad, I am not ashamed to say that playlists like morning classical chill or sadgirl piano background are what actually got me through. But what about the songs that moved me? I live for a new song that knocks me out of my reverie: unexpected lyrics, or ripping solos, or funky beats that slap me across the face and make me go, "WHAT. WAS. THAT?" And there are some songs in the list below that surely did that. But does one song sum up a whole year? A year that began with me almost losing my wife to a horrifying rare syndrome while giving birth to our daughter? Of seeing her recover courageously and witnessing my daughter growing like a grinning weed that careens from room to room like a joyful banshee? Or traveling the country playing songs I wrote to sometimes empty or sometimes full theaters or festivals or saloons of happy or heckling strangers? Or talking to dozens of hard-working bands and songwriters with my mic from Nova Scotia to London, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, or right in the front bar of LA’s hallowed Troubadour? How can songs, like short stories, be stitched together to create the novel that is your life? Maybe one can’t really sum up a year like 2022 with a few songs. But if you are curious about some of the music that did truly move me or make me smile or got me through, this is it! I truly love these tracks. I will always love them. Are all of these safe for your to blast at work? Probably not! But let’s get started. Songs featured in this episode: Anna Moss feat. Rainbow Girls, “Big Dick Energy” The Deslondes, “Five Year Plan” (Ways & Means) Melissa Carper, “Makin’ Memories” (Daddy's Country Gold) Seratones, "Good Day" (Love & Algorhythms) Ondara, "An Alien in Minneapolis" (Spanish Villager No. 3) Onda Vaga, "Milagro" Silvana Estrada, "Tristeza" (Marchita) The Heavy Heavy "Sleeping On Grassy Ground" (Life and Life Only) The Cactus Blossoms "Hey Baby" (One Day) Dustbowl Revival "Be (For July)" (Set Me Free) Monica Martin "Go Easy, Kid" Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we cross the pond for a talk with rising British roots-rockers Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, who harness the freewheeling sonic spirit of the sixties with a new Brighton-based band they call The Heavy Heavy.   While the British coast isn’t exactly known for its blissed out sunshiny beaches (or as a haven for rock 'n' roll stardom), Will and Georgie decamped there during the pandemic. And through the power of imagination (and production wizardry), they somehow mastered the reverb-y sun-soaked harmonies that Laurel Canyon favorites the Mamas and the Papas and the Byrds brought forth during the summer of love, with their breakout EP Life And Life Only (with a wink to Mr. Dylan), issued stateside by ATO Records.  The response to their Woodstock-flavored tracks like “Go Down River” and “All My Dreams,” led by pairing Will’s roaring guitar and Georgie’s gospel-tinted vocals, has been overwhelming. European tours with label-mates Black Pumas preceded national U.S. TV appearances and their first full run in America. While some could write them off as merely skilled nostalgia-hounds, what Turner has pulled off with his masterful production of Life And Life Only shows an obsessive attention to detail, helping resurrect a sound and, more importantly, a feeling that isn’t stuck in the utopian hippie era, but could be the soundtrack to a more hopeful age that we may just be entering now.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we head down to Austin, Texas where we talk to multi-instrumentalist and renowned producer Adrian Quesada.  Many know him as half of ground-breaking deep soul duo Black Pumas, where songs like “Colors” rose up the charts, taking them from tiny Austin clubs to the biggest festivals in the world, garnering Grammy nods, playing as the theme for the Major League Baseball playoffs and even featuring at Joe Biden’s inauguration. But on his own, Quesada has had a remarkably fruitful 2022, first releasing his Spanish-language debut Boleros Psicodélicos with some heavy collaborators, and in November he brought forth Jaguar Sound,  a cinematic instrumental opus that’s one part Daptone R&B groove, one part hip-hop sample jam and one part Morricone vintage score mystery.  Growing up on the border town of Laredo, Texas as a MTV-loving, hip-hop and hair-metal obsessed only-child, Quesada discusses how he used the isolation of the pandemic lockdowns (and a pause in his relentless Black Pumas touring) to begin creating the music that had been living in his head for decades, but never had a chance to be heard. Gems like “Noble Metals” feel like a cross-section between an early dreamy Santana cut and something that could be found in a trippy Japanese animation.  A self-professed “studio rat," Quesada teases at the end of the talk that he’s only just scratched the surface of what he hopes to create. One can only hope that a Black Pumas reunion with charismatic vocalist Eric Burton is in the cards too.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we talk with Kenyan singer-songwriter Ondara, who came to Minneapolis in search of his voice as a young musician, and found a new creative persona which he now embodies called The Spanish Villager. He has since taken audiences by storm, garnering a Grammy-nomination and now returning with a stunning politically-charged new LP. Spanish Villager No: 3 is produced by Ondara and Mike Viola (Jenny Lewis, Dan Wilson) with collaborations from Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes, Sebastian Steinberg, Tim Kuhl and Jeremy Stacey. While he would still call himself a folk singer like his Minneapolis hero Bob Dylan, Ondara (like Dylan) has gone a bit electric on the new offering, harnessing his massive vocal power with a full band around him. Ondara’s immigrant journey is truly one for the storybooks, and while he has dutifully paid homage to American folk protest singers in his previous work, the newest Spanish Villager work shows him really finding his own sound, at once sharply modern and steeped in a dark history he can’t wait to mine. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we call into Minnesota to talk to frontman and lead-songwriter Dave Simonett of the innovative jamgrass pioneers Trampled by Turtles. Celebrating a new record, Alpenglow, produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, the six-piece band has gone from storming shaggy local bars in Duluth to playing their famously fast roots-n-roll in the biggest venues and festivals in the world.  Twenty years in, Simonett is keeping it fresh by letting masters like Tweedy bring his punky minor chord sensibility to the band’s warm acoustic camaraderie (bassist Tim Saxhaug, banjo player Dave Carroll, mandolinist Erik Berry, fiddle player Ryan Young, and cellist Eamonn McLain round out the group) with standout songs like “Starting Over” not shying away from the expectations that come from recognition and giving your art to the world - with the brightness of the banjo always leading the way. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we call on an Americana pioneer and a beloved fixture of the Nashville roots-country scene, the always affable Grammy-winner Jim Lauderdale. This year he celebrated the release of his thirty-fifth record Game Changer. Growing up in both North and South Carolina, as a young man Lauderdale fell in love with country music but took an unconventional path to becoming a sought-after songwriter, harmonist and writer in Music City. He toured in New York theatre productions when he was starting out, and ended up in LA. Even today you can hear the drama in his aching harmony-soaked songs like “Lightning Love” off Game Changer. While sales and national recognition haven’t always aligned, the “stylistically restless” Lauderdale has played the Opry over 200 times, collaborated on albums with his heroes like the late bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, written tracks for artists as diverse as George Strait and Elvis Costello, and has accidentally become one of the leading elder-statesman of the Americana movement. What is Americana exactly? Even Jim impishly won’t say. But it’s that earthy genre-bending sound that has kept his longtime fans coming back for more nearly for decades into his storied run. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-show-on-the-road-with-z-lupetin1106/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy