Independent's Day

Independent's Day

By Joe ArmstrongMusicMusic CommentaryMusic Interviews
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Independent's Day episodes

  • Episode 220: Leeann Skoda
    Nashville is a town filled with great singers and great songwriters, and certain rare artists are endowed with exemplary gifts in both endeavors. Leeann Skoda is just that kind of artist, and although she’s from Arizona and currently calls Los Angeles home, she chose Nashville as the setting to record her new EP, Lucky Penny. While it’s true that Skoda cut her teeth singing choral music and the kinds of country standards that comprise the foundation of every storied building on Music Row, her musical evolution on Lucky Penny reveals that her palette is infinitely more varied than yet another cookie cutter country singer in a sequined shirt. Sure, she can pull off a convincing Emmylou, Maybelle Carter, or Sheryl Crow - and she’s been doing so for years both with her own songs as well as a hired gun session singer - but the adventurous soundscapes of her new direction are more indicative of a Fumbling Towards Ecstasy-era Sarah McLachlan or even Radiohead’s pioneering The Bends or OK Computer albums. The five gems on Lucky Penny were written during an especially inspired artistic period fomented by a month-long songwriting challenge with a friend, and the self-imposed ambitious parameters of turning out new songs day by day paid off in spades. Skoda makes both the writing and the singing sound easy, but they most certainly are not. Making rare gifts sound easy is the hallmark of a true artist.
    1 hr 31 min
  • Episode 219: David Burchfield
    Anyone who has ever attempted to entertain an audience with only their voice and an acoustic guitar faces a daunting task. Both the guitar and the human voice to be sure are versatile and dynamic instruments, but it can be a serious challenge to pique and retain the interest of listeners without the driving beat of a drummer or the pyrotechnics of an accomplished lead guitarist or saxophone player - especially in the Internet age, when performers find themselves competing with a world of entertainment options in their listeners’ pockets. Solo performers had damn well better have good songs and an engaging presence, and Rocky Mountain troubadour David Burchfield is a natural in this setting. Burchfield cut his teeth playing in churches in his native Kansas, but it was during collegiate summers when he learned how to connect with an audience in an intimate setting by swapping songs around mountain campfires. A detour into a teaching career was redirected back to music after a nighttime scooter trip to the store resulted in a harrowing accident that left Burchfield bruised, but with a newfound sense of life’s fleeting brevity. His new lease on life and its associated perspective became a fortunate outcome for both Burchfield and his listeners, as he is adept at quickly and elegantly interpreting both life’s grandiose and intimate moments into song. Now fully rededicated to songwriting and performing, Burchfield’s newest album, State to State, is full of gems. Songs like “Glad I Got Out Of There” connect the things the author loves about the people and places of his formative home with what happens when a soul discovers that home can also be somewhere else life has delivered you. And on a recent tour, Burchfield found himself in Los Angeles for the first time, where he discovered that California’s largest city was something far more complex and nuanced than his expectations - and he wrote a song about that, too. It is a rare gift to be so close to one’s muse.
    1 hr 25 min
  • Episode 218: Benjamin Jaffe
    Benjamin Jaffe spent over ten years as half of the Americana duo HONEYHONEY, making acclaimed records and crisscrossing the country playing catchy and memorable songs for dedicated fans. But every band has a life cycle, and after more than a decade of steady grinding, HONEYHONEY’s indefinite hiatus left Jaffe in the challenging position of having not been the primary singer in his former outfit. But the lemonade in this situation is that Jaffe is an incredibly gifted singer, songwriter, and performer in his own right, and shedding the conventions and expectations of a band meant that he was standing at the threshold of a musical tabula rasa. Jaffe took the ball and ran with it, and his newfound freedom to explore any and all disparate influences is evident on his solo debut album, Oh, Wild Ocean of Love. With Jaffe playing nearly all the instruments himself, smooth crooning rubs up against aggressive electric guitars, pithy and clever lyrics delve confidently into subjects familiar to fans of the best of American songwriters, and a rich sonic palate may surprise fans more accustomed to hearing an Americana stomp out of Jaffe and Co. Benjamin Jaffe’s new solo direction places him in the company of Father John Misty’s wry observations, Jeff Buckley’s emotive vocal prowess, and Rufus Wainwright’s compositional bonafides.
    1 hr 29 min
  • Episode 217: Geoff Pearlman
    It was a concert by glam rock juggernauts Kiss that opened a 9-year-old Geoff Pearlman’s eyes to the possibilities of a life in music. Guitar lessons soon followed, as did a series of high school rock and roll bands playing the usual Rush and Van Halen covers. But when most kids were picking traditionally sensible collegiate career paths, Pearlman turned into the wind and signed up at Boston’s Berklee College of Music - a breeding ground for legitimate musicians and a unique place to learn the particulars of the craft. After all, a profusion of musicians can play some guitar, but it is a select few who put in the work to dig in and play the instrument beyond what’s necessary to accompany themselves. A significant percentage of Berklee students leave before finishing a degree program, launching themselves into work opportunities - but Pearlman stuck around and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in professional music in 1991. He gigged in San Francisco for several years before settling in Los Angeles, a town with a rich history of talented sessions players. Pearlman’s hard work continues to pay off, as his list of credits includes Norah Jones, Shelby Lynne, Jakob Dylan, Linda Perry, Syd Straw, George Drakoulias, Joan Osborne, Marc Ribot, Don Was, Disney’s High School Musical albums, and music written for for the Travel Channel, The Food Network, Fuller House, Jag, and more. His most recent high-profile gig was playing guitar in the house band in the 2019 film Echo in the Canyon, a documentary about the fertile late 60s music scene in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon. Echo in the Canyon found Pearlman sharing the screen and stage with some of the most respected and well-known musicians in history. Although Pearlman maintains a busy schedule working with other artists and producers, he continues to release his own albums to showcase his writing and performing. His new release, Lost in the Satellites, provides an interesting what-if glimpse into what modern pop music could sound like if the music industry hadn’t been waylaid at the mumble rap exit. Lost in the Satellites is sonically rich and packed with great songs, inventive arranging, and performances by Pearlman and other musicians devoted to putting in the work necessary to be great at what they do.
    1 hr 19 min
  • Episode 216: Robbie Fulks
    Robbie Fulks is a sort of latter-day Renaissance Man. After spending his formative years in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia, Fulks eventually settled in Chicago - where his fresh take on American roots music established his status as one of the progenitors of what would become the alt-country genre. Fulks’ fearless and uncompromising approach to his art is exemplified by a longtime association with insurgent country record label Bloodshot Records and a friendly working relationship with firebrand Chicago-based producer and engineer Steve Albini. In the last twenty-plus years, Fulks has released thirteen albums of his own, as well as accompanied numerous other artists both onstage and in the studio. Fulks is also known as a music journalist, having penned a blog and had his writing published in GQ, Blender, Chicago Reader and elsewhere. When he wasn’t playing, recording, or writing, Fulks has hosted an XM satellite radio interview and performance program and spent twelve years teaching at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. But it is Fulks’ whip-smart songwriting, high lonesome Buddy Miller-esque vocals, and facile and inventive guitar work that first earned him fans in Chicago’s underground country music scene, and it’s what keeps them coming back to shows across the country.
    1 hr 7 min
  • Episode 215: Monks of Doom

    In the great and colossal tree of music there are many, many branches - and out toward the tall leaves on the side that faces the highway to psychedelic oblivion there exists bands and artists that truly follow their own sun regardless which way the wind blows. Monks of Doom grew out of the late-80s California experimental music scene that birthed one of the original indie rock juggernauts, Camper Van Beethoven. As Camper started to build a fan base and garner industry attention, it seems that the band's peculiar blend of gypsies-on-acid folk and angular psychedelic pop weren't quite experimental enough for Camper members Victor Krummenacher (bass), Greg Lisher (guitar), Chris Pedersen (drums), and Chris Molla (guitar) - the latter of whom was soon replaced by their friend, session musician and eventual member of Counting Crows, David Immergluck (guitar). Indicative of their fearless approach to creating music, Monks of Doom's 1987 first album Soundtrack to the Film 'Breakfast on the Beach of Deception' was a mix of improvisational instrumentals and quirky songs from a movie that didn't actually exist. After the dissolution of Camper Van Beethoven in 1990, Monks of Doom entered an artificially fertile period that saw the release of two albums and an EP in the span of less than a year. But even with a devoted fan base across the country, the grind of relentless indie-level touring and minimal label support took its toll and the band amicably split in 1992. Solo projects from Krummenacher and Lisher followed, and a 1998 send-off performance after Pedersen announced a move to Australia put the band once again in the same room, fomenting an atmosphere for Monks of Doom's legendary chemistry. The good vibes were an epiphany for the band, and perhaps inspired by the reformation of Camper Van Beethoven in 2004, Krummenacher, Lisher, Immergluck and Pedersen figured out what they already knew - that Monks of Doom makes music on their own terms, when and where they want - and the band has been sporadically active ever since. The band's most recent album, 2018's The Bronte Pin, is another beautifully strange chapter for a musical ensemble built to expressly exemplify being beautiful and strange.

    1 hr 27 min
  • Episode 214: ID FFWD with Ted Russell Kamp

    The hardest working man in Los Angeles, Ted Russell Kamp, dropped by Joe Armstrong's Studio Tropico with his bull fiddle and some ace musicians in tow for a Fast-Forward episode of Independent's Day. With Brian Whelan, John Schreffler, and Jamie Douglass grooving behind him, Ted tore the roof off the studio with a greasy version of his new song "Tail Light Shine" from his new album Walkin' Shoes. Ted's positive energy is palpable, and the conversation was wide-ranging and entertaining.

    44 min
  • Episode 213: Mara Connor
    Mara Connor is a delight; she's a young singer/songwriter with the perfect bona fides to match her breezy Southern California vibe. Connor was born in Los Angeles to middle-western parents whose California dreams were big enough for them to chase them west. She studied theater in college in New York but changed tacks when she started performing with live music ensembles and she learned how audiences respond when you're playing yourself instead of a character. Now back in Los Angeles, Connor began working on her debut record and honing her songwriting chops, and although she's new to the game, she's artistically ahead of the curve. Connor's penchant for the heydays of California folk rock is evident in spades on her advance releases. The video for her premiere single, "No Fun," plays like a love song to the Laurel Canyon scene from long before she was born - the wardrobe, the roller skates, the pool parties, the yellow-sunset lens filter, the color palette, a clever nod to The Graduate, and the other star of the show - a powder blue bomber of a convertible - are all a stylistic time machine set in the pleasant valley Sunday world of an eternal summer California afternoon. In both her songs and in the "No Fun" video, it wouldn't be a stretch to expect Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, or Linda Ronstadt to be hiding just around a corner. Mara Connor is such a talented young artist with such a clear artistic vision, one can't help but wonder where she will go next.
    1 hr 22 min
  • Episode 201: Mara Connor
    Mara Connor is a delight; she's a young singer/songwriter with the perfect bona fides to match her breezy Southern California vibe. Connor was born in Los Angeles to middle-western parents whose California dreams were big enough for them to chase them west. She studied theater in college in New York but changed tacks when she started performing with live music ensembles and she learned how audiences respond when you're playing yourself instead of a character. Now back in Los Angeles, Connor began working on her debut record and honing her songwriting chops, and although she's new to the game, she's artistically ahead of the curve. Connor's penchant for the heydays of California folk rock is evident in spades on her advance releases. The video for her premiere single, "No Fun," plays like a love song to the Laurel Canyon scene from long before she was born - the wardrobe, the roller skates, the pool parties, the yellow-sunset lens filter, the color palette, a clever nod to The Graduate, and the other star of the show - a powder blue bomber of a convertible - are all a stylistic time machine set in the pleasant valley Sunday world of an eternal summer California afternoon. In both her songs and in the "No Fun" video, it wouldn't be a stretch to expect Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, or Linda Ronstadt to be hiding just around a corner. Mara Connor is such a talented young artist with such a clear artistic vision, one can't help but wonder where she will go next.
    0 min
  • Episode 212: The Teskey Brothers
    The Teskey Brothers have been grinding it out in the bars and festivals in their hometown near Melbourne, Australia for a decade. While it's true that the four-piece is comprised of young devotees of the classic era of American soul and R and B, their reverence for the genre is far deeper than mere imitation. It's simple enough to learn some tried-and-true chord progressions and lean hard on the blue notes, but to so faithfully capture the elusive vibe of the 60s Muscle Shoals sound exhibits a musical maturity far beyond their twenty-something perspective. The Teskey Brothers - two proper Teskey siblings, along with a pair of musical blood brothers accompanying them on bass and drums - recorded their debut album, Half Mile Harvest, in their own studio - utilizing vintage recording gear to add an extra level of realism to their take on old-school soul music. When singer Josh Teskey's vocals distort - intentionally - on songs like "Pain and Misery," it's because he and his band mates took the time to learn the archaic manner in which Otis Redding's microphone distorted on the kinds of classic recordings that made legends of artists like himself, Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and others. With this preternatural affinity for stylistic restraint and obvious inherent talent, it's easy to see why The Teskey Brothers' brand of soul music has transcended their home country and landed with a welcome triple-meter bang in America.
    1 hr 25 min

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The music business is changing at the speed of light. The traditional model of the way music is made, distributed and enjoyed is going the way of the dinosaur, allowing independent artists to control…