House of Crouse

NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards and Richard Crouse discuss the recent allegations surrounding the "Ellen" show. Will this be the end of the show or is there life after a scandal for the afternoon talk show?

This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast:

We meet Dawn Tyler Watson. via Zoom from her home in Montreal. To call Dawn Tyler Watson a blues singer isn’t quite accurate. Sure, she’s called the Queen of the Blues in Montreal and latest record “Mad Love,” just won the 2020 JUNO award for Blues Album of the Year, but her music also infuses elements of Jazz, Soul, Rock, and Gospel to pushes the boundaries of traditional Blues.

We caught up, talking about what she learned while busking in the subway, taking home the coveted first-place prize at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 2017, why she used to have imposter’s syndrome, but doesn’t anymore and how her perspective on everything changed after triple bypass surgery.

I started the interview by asking how she and her dog Molly are doing these days.

Then, Chris Hadfield stops by to discuss when science and pop culture collide.

On this week’s The Richard Crouse Show we meet:

Joe Pantoliano, a working actor for over forty years. From doing plays in empty basement theatres in New York City to Broadway to guest roles on the biggest television shows of several decades like “M*A*S*H” and “The Sopranos” and juicy supporting parts in films like “Risky Business,” “The Goonies,” “The Fugitive,” “Memento,” “Bad Boys” and “The Matrix” he says “There aren’t any small parts, only small paychecks.”

He jokes that he has a twenty-minute face, perfect for character work but his new film, “From the Vine” offers him the chance to show off his ninety-minute face. His first starring role in recent memory sees him playing a man who gives up a high-flying career as an executive to return to Italy, where he was born, to search for find his centre and regain his moral compass. In this interview we talk about the parallels between his life and that of his “From the Vine” character, Jimmy Stewart’s wig and how “On the Waterfront” made him want to be an actor… and here’s a surprise. It had nothing to do with Marlon Brando.

Let’s get to know Joe Pantoliano.

Then we meet hip hop musician, former elementary school teacher and author Humble the Poet. He stopped by the “Pop Life” bar to discuss his new book “Things No One Else Can Teach Us,” what he learned from his failures, including a bad record deal, how even after he crawled out of crippling debt, the satisfaction was short lived and much more.

Finally, we close with legendary rock photographer Mick Rock who talks about his collaboration with David Bowie.

On this week's The Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet:

James Purefoy, direct from the south west of England, via Zoom. If you were a fan of HBO’s “Rome,” you know him as joyfully decadent Roman general and politician Mark Antony. Perhaps you were a fan of “The Following,” which saw him play a college professor-turned-serial-killer and cult leader for three seasons opposite Kevin Bacon. The versatile actor has a list of credits as long as my arm including the film he joins me to talk about today, “Fisherman’s Friends.” No, it’s not about the cough drops… it is a is a good-natured crowd pleaser about a real life singing group from Cornwall in England who went from singing at the local pub, when they weren’t on the water making a living, to producing the biggest selling traditional folk album of all time. Purefoy plays Jim, the leader of the group, who was initially skeptical about their chances for success outside their tiny village. When we did this interview he was sitting in his garden, and proudly showed me all the produce he’s been growing since the beginning of the pandemic. That also means that from time to time you’ll hear a bird chirping or a bit of wind… it’s not your speakers, it’s just nature on Purefoy’s property.

Then we spend time with Rod Lurie, a West Point graduate who became a film critic and was once banned from screenings for referring to Danny DeVito as “a testicle with arms.” He is a journalist and author and, since 1999, a filmmaker.

In this interview we talk about West Point, why he stood at attention at a screening of “Poltergeist” and, of course, his latest film, “The Outpost.”

It’s an intense recreation of the Battle of Kamdesh, a bloody 2009 confrontation that saw 400 Taliban fighters attack Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan, a station manned by 53 American soldiers and just days before it was to be disbanded. Critics are raving about the film. “IndieWire” said that Rod shot “much of the 45-minute long ambush in hectic, agile long-takes that allows him to capture the Battle of Kamdesh for all of its terror, and with a clarity that allows us to feel that terror in our bones."

The film is also being praised by veterans, including those who fought in the battle, for its realistic depiction of warfare and the life of a soldier.

“The Outpost” is available now on VOD, wherever you legally rent or buy movies.

Finally Richard welcomes Phil Dellio, author of "You Should've Heard Just What I Seen: Pop Music at the Movies and on TV."

On the Richard Crouse Show Podcast this week we meet Liberty DeVitto. He joins me via Zoom but you’ve been listening to him for decades. As Billy Joel’s drummer from 1976 to 2003, he’s credited as drummer on records with sales of over 150 million copies. Do you love “Just the Way You Are”? That Liberty DeVitto. How about "She's Always a Woman,” “Only the Good Die Young" “You May be Right” or “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”? All Liberty DeVitto. He’s what they call a New York City style drummer, solid and powerful. He also an author with a new memoir, “Liberty: Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness,” available now wherever you buy fine books. It details not only the good times with Joel, but also the bad… leading up to their split in 2006. Later in the show I ask Liberty about how his relations with the singer disintegrated… and how they buried the hatchet after fifteen years. We started though, by talking about something we’re all missing these days: live music.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast: My guest today joins me via Zoom from his home in Massachusetts. Dan Lyons has spent much of his recent career, following jobs as a senior editor at Forbes magazine and a writer at Newsweek, examining something that is on people’s minds these days… work.

Drawing on his experience at his first job outside of a newsroom, at the HubSpot start-up he has looked at how and why we work from all angles.

He has been called “the Mark Twain of Silicon Valley,” and “Jonathan Swift for our own digital age.” No less an expert than money man Dave Ramsay, of daveramsey.com,” says Lyons is “the expert on the culture of work, and how it’s changing business and lives.”

Today we take the conversation he started in his last book, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for The Rest Of Us, and recontextualize for the pandemic to talk about what work will look like in the coming months and years.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast: “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” author Marlon James, recently named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. From Time magazine: James lives part-time in St. Paul and teaches at Macalester College, where he is writer-in-residence. He was born in Jamaica and is the author of “The Book of Night Women,” winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” winner of the Man Booker Prize, and “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” already being made into a movie. About that book, Rushdie writes, it is “highly original, its language surging with power, its imagination all-encompassing. Marlon is a writer who must be read.”

Then, stand-up Comic & host of CNN’s “United Shades of America” W. Kamau Bell’s Twitter bio reads, “I tell jokes, but I’m not kidding.” Find out what he means in this exclusive, full-length interview.

And finally, Spike Lee gives us his perfect movie double bill!

This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast: Ian Williams is the author of Personals, Not Anyone's Anything, You Know Who You Are, and a finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. He was named one of ten Canadian writers to watch by CBC. His latest book is a novel called “Reproduction,” a love story about the way families are formed. That novel, which explores unconventional connections and brilliantly redefines family made him the second writer with Trinidadian roots to win the coveted Giller Prize, the biggest prize in Canadian Literature.

Then, Sir Ben Kingsley stops by. He burst onto screens in 1982 playing the title role in "Gandhi," a part that won him an Oscar for Best Actor and a shelf full of other awards… other memorable roles followed in "Schindler's List," "Bugsy," "Sexy Beast" and dozens upon dozens of other great films. He was made a Knight by Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2002 and it is there that we began our conversation.

Finally, an in-depth interview with Arlene Dickinson, Canadian businesswoman, investor, television personality and author of, “Reinvention: Changing Your Life, Your Career, Your Future.” She is a dragon investor on CBC television’s Dragons' Den, she owns one of Canada's largest independent marketing and communications firms and is someone who has shaped and reshaped her life. Arlene stopped by to discuss her new book, and how to make meaningful changes in your life at any age.

This week on the June 15, 2020 episode of Richard Crouse Show Podcast: We meet Clarke Peters, one of the stars of the new Spike Lee joint “Da 5 Bloods.” It’s an adventure movie that also examines the role of African American soldiers in Vietnam and how that conflict affected the rest of their lives. We talk about how he was accused of draft evasion by the FBI, how life during the pandemic has taught us to think about more than just ourselves and why he considers himself a stage actor first and foremost.

Then we talk to Steve Earle, a Grammy award winning singer-songwriter, a record producer, author and actor whose song Copperhead Road is still a jukebox favorite thirty-three years after it made him a superstar. Earle Zooms in from his home in Tennessee to talk about how his new album “Ghosts of West Virginia” might bridge the political gap, going to Walmart and how doing yoga helps to center him in these anxious times. NSFW Please note that some of the language used on this podcast may not be appropriate for all listeners.

What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Fourteen! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, a coming of age story, a comic playing against type and the secret history of disco. #Pariah #Drive #TheSecretHistoryofDisco