The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth

Drew Ryder Smith has been around music for a long time, even if you’re only hearing his name now. He grew up between Middle Tennessee and Muscle Shoals, got into radio while he was still a kid, worked for Sam Phillips, became a professional songwriter in Nashville, and eventually had one of his songs recorded by Merle Haggard. Along the way, he spent years writing and producing for other people, learning the strange little machinery of how songs move through the music business and, every so o...

Benny Sings has spent more than two decades refining one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary pop music. The Dutch singer, songwriter, and producer has a knack for creating songs that feel immediately familiar—warm keyboards, melodies in soft-focus, touches of soul, jazz, R&B, and 1970s singer-songwriter pop—while often hiding something far more complicated beneath the surface. That tension is at the heart of his latest album, 22 Durnham Dew. Written during a period of significa...

On this episode of The Sharp Notes, we’re doing something a little different. We recently welcomed Eddie Brigati of the Rascals to The Sharp Notes at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey for a live conversation in front of an audience of about 50 people. It was a wonderful night—part interview, part celebration, and a chance to hear some remarkable stories about New Jersey, the Rascals, songwriting, recording, family, and a lifetime in music. What you’re about to hear is that conversatio...

There are certain film scores that become so closely associated with the movies they accompany that it’s hard to imagine one without the other. Elmer Bernstein’s music for Ghostbusters is one of those scores: playful, eerie, sophisticated, and somehow able to take the supernatural seriously without ever forgetting that the film is a comedy. My guest on this episode has a particularly unique connection to that music. Peter M. Bernstein is a composer, orchestrator, arranger, and the son of lege...

Record collectors have never exactly demanded convenience. We like shelves, sleeves, turntables, careful handling, and we have the occasional mild panic over a fingerprint. So perhaps Tiny Vinyl makes perfect sense. At just four inches across, these playable records shrink the familiar vinyl experience into something portable, collectible, and undeniably fun and maybe even adorable. The catalog already stretches from BTS and Olivia Rodrigo to Bob Marley, the Rolling Stones, and beyond. Founde...