Beezy Listening

Welcome to another Music Monday, today my guest is Indré, a local singer/songwriter that splits her time between Cleveland and Akron. I caught one set by her at the Winchester open mic in Lakewood and immediately booked her for an interview, and as the featured act for the my next house show, which is this Saturday, April 13th if you’re in town.

In our chat today, I learned that Maddie was singing by the age of three (and she has the receipts), that she spent some time towards a Public Relations degree at Kent State before deciding to focus on music full-time, how her first album came to fruition, would she eat crickets if there were a global food shortage, and on and on. I could keep summarizing, but that seems pointless. It’s all in the interview

If you’re listening to this episode in Cleveland on the day it drops, you can catch Indre at Mahall’s tonight at 7pm.

For anyone out of town or out of time to catch those shows, you can find Indre’s links in the footnotes for this episode or visit bzdug.com

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Today’s episode is part two of a new segment on the show, “Personal Days”, where I talk with friends and family about issues we are currently dealing with or have in the past. The subject of for this personal day is transgender issues, because my brother Carl has decided to transition into my sister, Valouria or Val for short.

If you haven’t heard part one yet, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode where I interview trans-advocate and mother of two trans children, Sara Kaplan. I shared that discussion with Val before we spoke to serve as a primer for our interview. 

This is the most important episode of the show that I’ve produced thus far, because until now, none of my family have really been talking about it. I know mom is very interested in hearing this conversation because Val has always been pretty terrible at keeping in touch, or opening up about herself without a nudge, or sometimes a very aggressive shove. 

This discussion made me so damn grateful for my family. Mom, I love you, and I love that you are probably already looking into ways to support your daughter in her new journey. I also need to give a big love shoutout to Val’s wife N’Lou, who was immediately on board and ready to help dole out makeup tips.

My heart truly sinks when I think of the transgender people who have had to walk this road without support from their families. My hope is that anyone who’s listening this and has less than friendly feelings towards transgender people, especially within your family, you’ll think a bit about all of the difficulties they have to endure and the persecution that the world heaps upon them, and realize you can do a lot to make their life better. I love you all, and thank you for listening.

Footnotes:

Valouria's Website: http://argylebox.com

Goldfish "We Come Together" Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tNUur2YoU

Today kicks off a new series on the show that I call “Personal Days”, where I focus on a topic that hits close to home for me. This first one is on trans-rights and acceptance because this year, my brother Carl has come to the realization that he wishes to transition into becoming my sister, Valouria. 

My discussion with Valouria, which is essentially the first conversation she and I have about her transition, will be out tomorrow. But before I reached out to my sibling, I contacted an old friend from high school, Sara Kaplan. 

Sara is the proud mother of two trans children, and as such, is a vociferous advocate for trans-rights. I wanted to understand what she has been learning going thru the process of helping her children transition, and how I can be a good brother to my new sister.

Sara's story in the SF Chronicle:  https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2017/transgender-child/

Sara's Public Display of Self Love: http://publicdisplayofselflove.com

Welcoming Schools: http://www.welcomingschools.org

I’ve known Cutleri for about a decade going back to when I first started playing music in 2009. 

It was at Penny’s Open Mic that I first discovered Cutleri when they were the featured guest. They immediately stood out, from the sheer number of instruments and musical toys amassed around them. Heidi Harris would play everything from piano or blower keyboard to thunder-makers and finger chimes, Christen Napier perfectly plucked away at her banjo while Jessie Shaffer shifted from barnyard fiddling to concert soloist mode on her violin. All the while the trio is tossing out haunting harmonies and rattling their ankles, which were just covered in bells.

Cutleri is truly a band to behold, which is why I booked them for my variety show the Carnivale as many times as I could. Several years back, Cutleri had to disband as the three sirens set sail for separate seas. They recently reunited to record a new album, and hope to continue to circle back to each other over the years. Today we talk about how and where they came together, how they approach songwriting, and what projects they’ve been working on in the years since Cutleri was playing regularly in NYC.

They may not be playing live anymore, but you can still find their music on Spotify and Bandcamp, and you can follow them at the links below:

Cutleri:

https://cutleri.bandcamp.com 

https://www.instagram.com/cutleri_band/

Jessi Shaffer:

https://www.instagram.com/littlestbirdmusic

Heidi Harris:

https://soundcloud.com/heidi-harris-1

Vote for BZ Listening as "Best Local Podcast" in Cleveland Scene's 2019 list:

http://bit.ly/vote4bz2019

Today my guest is Michael Rutushin, aka “Larry Elefante”. On the show we talk about Michael’s musical family, his first gigs, his worst gigs, and his new album, “I Get Sentimental” recently released on vinyl by way of a successful kickstarter campaign and now available on Spotify and Bandcamp.

As always, if you like the show, please throw the episode a good rating, and like the page on Facebook. If you live in my neck of the woods, you can vote for BZ Listening as “Best Local Podcast” on the 2019 Cleveland Scene Best of Cleveland list until April 11th. If it’s any sign of my commitment to publishing an musician episode every Monday, and I’m recording this intro at 2am in my downstairs bathroom so I don’t wake the fam.

Also coming up on the show, this evening I will be interviewing an old friend from high school who is the mother of two trans children, which has roused her to become an activist for trans rights. This is an issue that has hit home for me recently, but I’ll get into that when the episode airs.

For now, please enjoy my interview with Michael Rutushin of Larry Elefante.

Today my guest is Steve Holecko, Political Director of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus or CCPC for short. This is by far the longest episode I have released, so I will keep the introduction short.

As the seemingly endless marathon that is the 2020 democratic primary gets underway and starts to take up all the political oxygen in our brains, I thought it was important to make sure to keep my ear to the ground more with local issues.

For the first half hour, Steve and I discuss his background in political organizing and the campaigns that first activated him, and talk a bit about our experiences with Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. From there we move on to discussing CLASH, the Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing, and the work they are doing to force the city to deal with a lead paint problem in older houses and rental units that is causing lead levels to skyrocket in children. Then we spend the last half hour discussing the Green New Deal Town Hall that the CCPC is helping to organize.

The town hall is actually the reason I am releasing this episode today. If you are in Cleveland, and would like to attend, it will be held at the Brooklyn Branch of the Cuyahoga County Library at 7pm on Thursday, March 21st. I would be there, but my wife and I have our first show booked in quite some time. I will be bringing Steve back again regularly, and we’ll hear how this town hall went in a few weeks.

As always thanks for listening! Do all the like and subscribe things, and consider telling someone about the show with your mouth! It's great.

Footnotes:

Green New Deal Town Hall:

CLASH:

CCPC:

Today my guest is Robert Evans: journalist and host of the “Behind the Bastards” podcast. I first noticed Robert’s work in 2013 when he was writing for Cracked.com, a comedy site that did a surprising amount of important reporting and political commentary. The piece was entitled “6 Myths About Drone Warfare You Probably Believe”, and it kicked off a long running series that came to be known as Cracked's “Personal Experience” articles. They ran the gamut from Sex Workers (both voluntary and involuntary), Ukrainian rebels, drug dealers and undercover agents, and eventually evolved into a podcast.

In 2018 Evans kicked off a new show, Behind the Bastards, where he profiles the worst people in history along with a comedian, to lighten the mood. Robert’s has also done extensive reporting for Bellingcat.com, a relatively new but important journalistic outfit. He penned an in depth report on radicalization through online subcultures, a topic became incredibly important since I recorded this interview on March 10th. Just five days later, the Christchurch New Zealand mosque massacre occurred. The following day, Evans published a follow up piece on Bellingcat, and was quoted in a Washington Post piece covering the attack.

The subject of Robert’s podcast on the week leading up to the shooting was eerily prescient. He profiled George Lincoln Rockwell, a man Evans calls “the grandfather of all modern fascists”. Over the course of three episodes, Evans lays out how Rockwell is the original holocaust denier, coined the term “white power”, and devised tactics that fascists and their sympathizers continue to use this day. It is highly relevant, and highly essential.

Be sure to follow Robert on Twitter @IwriteOK and consider supporting his GoFundme campaign, "The War on Everyone"

Kate Hart is a Cleveland pioneer of “nerd folk”, a genre she may or may not have invented. Please do let me know on twitter or elsewhere if she’s wrong because Kate is also a scientist, and therefore very much would appreciate the criticism, so she can correct that claim.

In today’s interview, we talk about her work as a chemical engineer for a green energy startup in Akron that specialized in waste heat recovery, which apocalypse she thinks would be most fun (if we survive catastrophic climate change), and what she learned after challenging herself to write one song a week for a year.

You can find the album that resulted from that challenge, titled “2018”, at katehart.bandcamp.com.

Today’s episode is with another rising star of the Cleveland music scene, Mikey Silas. Mikey’s stage presence is as big as his heart, and is a font of positivity and encouragement, both in person and online. I first heard him at an open mic in 2018 and was instantly captivated by his soulful vocals and passionate performance style. If you dig Mikey’s work, be sure to visit mikeysilas.com and follow Apostle Jones on Facebook and Instagram.